They followed me still.
Broken.
Wounded.
Changed.
They did not sing anymore.
They did not offer prayers.
They shouted.
They wept.
They demanded.
"Rule!"
"Speak!"
"Lead us!"
Their faith was not pure.
It had been born from fear.
From the desperate need to believe the world had meaning.
Then, when silence remained their only answer,
their voices grew sharper.
More violent.
They screamed.
They ordered.
They hurled stones at the dust near my feet.
Not in rebellion —
but in rage against my silence.
They wanted to bind me to their need.
To chain me to their dreams.
To force sense from a world that had none.
So I stopped.
A single step.
Frozen in the dust.
Silence crushed them.
Thicker than iron.
Heavier than despair.
I turned.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
And I looked at them.
A single look.
No anger.
No threat.
No plea.
Just a void.
A chasm.
An ancient coldness so pure, so vast,
the earth itself seemed to shudder.
It was not hatred.
Not contempt.
It was solitude.
The true kind.
The kind that gnaws through bone and soul.
A gaze that carried the memory of a fallen world,
and countless rebirths that had already rotted.
A gaze that said, without words:
"You are nothing to me.
You were never anything.
You will never be anything."
They recoiled.
The strongest lowered their eyes.
The boldest fell to their knees, trembling.
The youngest broke into sobs.
The wind swept away their fervor like dead ashes.
They prayed no more.
They sang no more.
They understood.
I did not move.
I stood.
Anchored.
Like a relic the world could not erase.
Like a stone no prayer could soften.
They left.
One by one.
In groups.
In waves.
They abandoned me.
As one abandons a forgotten tomb.
But not all.
No.
In the shadows of retreating eyes,
some remained.
Not to worship.
Not to adore.
Their eyes were cold.
Clear.
Calculating.
They saw not a god,
nor a king —
but a weapon.
A tool.
A raw force.
Something to break.
To forge.
To wield.
They did not revere me.
They did not fear me.
They plotted.
And I stood still.
Watching the errors of mankind repeat,
again,
and again.