By IMERPUS RELUR
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The silence in the village wasn't natural—it was too perfect. The kind of stillness that made even the wind hesitant to breathe.
Imer moved through the darkness, sensing something broken in the rhythm of the world around him. He could hear the dirt sigh beneath his steps, as though warning him that the ground itself was grieving. No birds, no insects, only absence.
He approached the well at the center of the village. It was dry.
Not from drought.
But from fear.
As he leaned closer, he heard a sound—not from the well, but from beneath it. A slow, choked sobbing, echoing up like a child left in the dark too long. His eyes narrowed. The village was not abandoned. It was devoured.
The Sin had become something else here. Not hunger. Not wrath.
Sorrow.
He descended.
Stone steps spiraled into shadow. The cries grew louder, not desperate, but resigned. A sadness so heavy, it crawled into his bones. Imer reached the chamber below, where a single figure sat curled on the floor—hands over its ears, whispering nonsense to itself.
But it wasn't nonsense.
They were names.
All the names of those forgotten.
"Why do you carry them?" Imer asked.
The figure lifted its head, eyes hollow and tearless.
"So they won't disappear completely," it said.
And Imer understood.
He didn't say a word. He simply sat beside the figure, and for the first time in his journey, he let himself mourn.
Not for himself.