Chương 86: Epilogue - Part I

I have forgotten what silence sounded like before this place. There was a time when I believed silence meant peace. It does not. Peace carries life with it. The rustle of leaves before the wind arrives. Rain striking stone. The distant call of birds greeting the dawn. This silence is different. It devours. It stretches endlessly in every direction until even memory begins dissolving beneath its weight. I learned long ago that counting serves no purpose here.

Without sun or moon, beginnings and endings lose their meaning. Only waiting remains. And waiting has become an old companion. Memory, an even older enemy. Every so often I convince myself I hear echoes. A scream carried upon a wind that no longer exists. Steel meeting steel. The crackling of flames consuming timber. I reach for them every time despite knowing they are nothing more than ghosts my own mind insists on preserving. Ghosts fade; they always do. This, does not. I stop.

The sensation is so faint that, for the briefest instant, I almost mistake it for another memory. It flickers against my awareness like the final ember buried beneath a mountain of cold ash before threatening to disappear once more. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. I close my eyes. The silence presses against me from every direction, yet beneath it I feel something impossibly familiar, hunger. Not my own.

A slow smile finds its way across my face before I even realize it. How long has it been since I last felt that hunger? Long enough that lesser minds would have forgotten. Mine has not. It cannot. I know every edge of it; every whisper; every pulse. Once, it had answered my hand. Now, it reaches me only as the faintest ripple passing through an endless sea. I do not chase it. I learned that lesson long ago. Instead, I wait patiently. The sensation returns. Stronger this time. Brief, yet unmistakable. It is feeding.

Barely enough to stir the old appetite sleeping within the steel. A single life, perhaps two. Nothing more. The feeling vanishes almost as quickly as it arrived, leaving the silence to reclaim everything once again. I remain perfectly still. There is no frustration this time, no disappointment only cold certainty. The little blade still corrupts. After everything, after all this time, it still hungers. A quiet laugh escapes me. I have not found it yet.

But for the first time in longer than I care to remember I no longer search for a memory. Somewhere beyond the silence; beyond distances I cannot measure; beyond places I can no longer reach, Nemain has awakened. I open my eyes and allow the last fading trace of that familiar hunger to slip away.

"You always were impatient," I murmur. The words vanish into the endless silence without an answer. I find that I do not mind. The blade will feed again. And the next time I will be listening.