Chapter 422
The presence spoke without sound, advised without words, reminded without reproach.
Five times a day, five cycles repeating across five days, that golden-yellow something came and went, came and went, like the tides of the ocean that never grow tired of erasing the boundary between land and sea.
And every time it came, there was always the same message.
Return.
Return to your path.
Rise from the despair that troubles you.
There are still those who are waiting.
There are still things you must do.
There are still things unfinished.
In between his encounters with that golden-yellow presence, in the midst of the endless cycle that continued to turn without pause, Xavier began to see another figure.
A young man standing in the distance, his body illuminated by the same light yet with a different intensity.
The young man walked closer slowly, and when the distance began to shrink, Xavier realized something that shook his heart.
That face looked like his.
Very much like his.
The same nose, the same jaw, the same line of the lips.
Yet there was a difference that could not be explained with words.
His eyes were deeper, older, as though they had witnessed thousands of years of journeys.
His posture was firmer, steadier, as though he had passed through millions of battles.
And when the young man finally stood right before him, when his mouth opened for the first time, the voice that emerged was not a foreign voice but one that sounded like an echo from a future that had yet to occur.
You possess a potential that has long remained buried, Xavier.
A potential you have never realized, never touched, never awakened.
Not because you are weak, not because you are incapable, but because you were not yet ready.
And now, after everything you have experienced, after everything you have witnessed, after everything that almost claimed your life, perhaps this is the moment.
Perhaps this is the time for you to begin recognizing what has long been hidden within you.
Something that cannot be explained by your parents, cannot be taught by your teachers, cannot be learned from any book.
Something that can only be discovered when you stand at the boundary between life and death, between surrender and endurance, between forgetting and remembering.
And when the young man began to fade, when the golden-yellow color began to dim, when the dream world started collapsing piece by piece, Xavier heard the final whisper that would continue echoing inside his mind forever.
Wake up, Xavier.
Wake up and prove that you are not merely a boy who survived a massacre.
Wake up and show that the blood flowing in your body is not ordinary blood.
"I'm sorry. I had to fall first. My strength wasn't enough to protect all of you."
When consciousness slowly crept back into his body, when the fog inside his head began to thin one layer at a time, when the dizziness that had imprisoned him gradually faded until it finally disappeared completely, Xavier opened his eyes.
And for the first time after five days submerged in strange dreams filled with golden-yellow light, he saw the real world again.
A world that turned out to be no kinder than any nightmare.
He was inside a wooden cart that swayed with the rhythm of the horse's steps ahead, a cart layered with dry straw that had turned black with age, a cart covered with a thin canvas roof that leaked in several places.
Around him, other bodies were crowded within the same narrow space.
Some were still fast asleep despite their uncomfortable positions.
Some sat silently with empty gazes directed toward the sky that occasionally appeared through the torn holes in the canvas.
Some simply remained still with their eyes open but not truly seeing anything.
With only a brief glance, with eyes that still needed time to adjust after being closed for so long, Xavier began recognizing faces he used to see every day.
Beside his left lay a soldier who once taught him how to hold a spear properly.
Now his leg was wrapped in a dirty bandage hardened by dried blood.
In front of him sat a middle-aged woman who used to sell cakes at the market.
Her hair was now tangled, and her eyes were swollen as if she had cried for days without stopping.
In the corner of the cart leaned an old man who used to guard the logistics warehouse.
His arm was gone from the elbow down, leaving only a cloth wrapping that remained constantly wet with a liquid Xavier did not want to imagine.
And all of them—every person inside this cart—shared one thing in common that made Xavier's chest tighten.
They were the remnants of a village that had been destroyed.
They were living proof of a cruelty they had never imagined before.
They were fragments of the past now drifting without direction across an ocean of uncertainty.
Xavier shifted his body slowly, trying to sit up even though every muscle felt as if it were being forced to stretch after remaining unmoved for too long.
He leaned his back against the rough wooden wall of the cart, then directed his gaze outside through the loose opening in the hanging canvas.
Outside, he saw even more people.
Some rode horses with bodies slumped weakly.
Some walked beside the carts with staggering steps.
Others sat in carts just as worn and fragile as the one he occupied.
They all moved in one long, disorganized line, like a herd of livestock being driven toward a place they did not know.
And in every face he managed to see, in every expression that briefly entered the range of his still-recovering vision, Xavier found only the same look.
Exhaustion so deep there was no space left for fear.
Despair so thick there was no opening left for hope.
Emptiness so complete there was nothing left even for tears.
And from within the same cart, from the corner where several small children were crowded together beside a woman trying to calm them even though her own hands trembled, Xavier heard the sounds that would haunt him forever.
Soft whimpers caught in the throat.
Small sobs struggling to remain hidden.
Innocent questions that would never receive answers.
"Mom, when are we going home?"
"Mom, where is Dad?"
"Mom, I'm hungry."
And the woman—who could not possibly be the mother of them all yet struggled with all her strength to become a substitute for whoever needed one—could only stroke their heads one by one with hands growing weaker.
She could only whisper words of comfort she herself did not believe.
She could only pretend to be strong in front of children who did not yet understand that the world they knew had vanished forever.
"What happened while I was unconscious? What happened to all of you?"
In the middle of his still-chaotic thoughts, among the rumbling sound of the cart's wheels and the faint groans of pain drifting through the air, Xavier felt something.
A gentle pull at the edge of his awareness, a call that carried no sound yet felt as clear as a whisper inside his chest.
He turned his head to the right—slowly, hesitantly—as though afraid of what he might find.
And when his gaze finally fell upon the figure leaning against the same cart wall, when his eyes caught detail after detail of a body sitting no more than two arm spans away from him, Xavier froze.
The air in his lungs thickened.
His pulse, which had only just begun to stabilize again, suddenly pounded wildly out of rhythm.
Because before him, at a distance so close that he could see every fold of the dirty bandages, sat a boy about his age.
To be continued…