The desert wind carried with it no song—only the hush of sand shifting across endless dunes. Beneath a sky painted in ochre and fading crimson, a solitary man walked barefoot upon the scorched earth. His robes, coarse and worn, whispered faintly as they trailed behind him.
No caravan bore him company. No beast carried his burdens. He walked as though distance meant nothing, his pace unhurried, his breath steady. The horizon was barren, yet his eyes—calm, unyielding, strangely luminous—seemed untouched by fatigue. Time itself had long forgotten to press upon him.
His name, when asked, was spoken softly: Kaelthar.Few ever remembered it after, and fewer still could claim to have understood the man behind it.
Kaelthar drifted from city to city like a pilgrim without shrine, a scholar without scripture. He spoke rarely, yet when he did, merchants ceased their bargaining, judges faltered in their verdicts, and even the proudest emirs found their tongues heavy in their throats. Not because he sought to defeat them in words—his voice never rose in challenge—but because his answers carried a weight that settled deeper than reason.
And yet, behind those unwavering eyes, there was hollowness. Kaelthar could recall no childhood, no origin, no lineage to bind him. His mind was a tapestry of wisdom drawn from centuries of wandering, yet somewhere within, a thread had been severed. In the void of that missing thread, he carried questions he never dared to speak aloud.
He did not know why, on nights when the stars burned brightest, his chest ached with a strange dread—as if each constellation whispered of a task forgotten, a purpose unfulfilled.
Still, the world turned, and Kaelthar walked on.
Beyond the dunes lay Zarqad, a city of clay domes and narrow streets, its walls rising from the desert like a fortress of stone and shadow. Traders from the southern coast brought ivory and salt. Caravans from the east carried silk, opium, and tales of wars in distant kingdoms. The air was alive with incense and sweat, with the rhythm of drum and pipe.
Kaelthar entered the city at dusk, when the sun bled its last light across the domes. At the gate, the guards barely noticed him. His robe was plain, his hands empty, and he carried no banner to mark him as noble or outlaw. He was swallowed by the crowd as though he had always been among them.
The market blazed with torches. A piper played beside a stall of figs, his tune half lost beneath the shouting of merchants. A woman bargained over dyed cloth, her voice sharp enough to cut the air. Children chased each other through the narrow alleys, their laughter rising above the din.
Kaelthar paused at a well in the center square. Its stones were cool beneath his fingers, worn smooth by generations. He drew water with the rope-bucket and drank slowly. The taste was bitter, but real.
Nearby, two men argued over coin. Their quarrel grew loud, their gestures sharp, until one reached for his dagger. The crowd shifted uneasily, some urging them apart, others watching with eager eyes.
Kaelthar stepped between them without a word. His presence was neither threat nor plea, only silence. Yet it was enough. The men froze, their anger faltering, as though the weight of their fury had been measured and found hollow. Neither spoke again. Slowly, one sheathed his dagger, and both turned away.
The crowd muttered, unsettled. Kaelthar did not linger. He walked on, leaving the moment behind as though it had never mattered.
That night, he found a place to rest in the courtyard of an abandoned caravanserai. The plaster walls were cracked, the well dry, but the silence suited him. He sat beneath a fig tree whose branches had long since withered, and raised his gaze to the sky.
The stars ignited the heavens. Countless and unblinking, they stared back at him with the cold patience of eternity.
Something stirred within his chest—a sharp ache, like a memory clawing to be remembered. His breath caught, though he did not know why. The constellations seemed to shift, their patterns whispering in a language older than thought.
Kaelthar pressed a hand to his chest. For an instant, he felt as though he stood not beneath the stars, but above them—beyond them—alone in a silence deeper than the desert's. A silence where something nameless waited, vast and ineffable, a presence that could not be spoken of yet could never be denied.
Then the moment passed. The stars burned as they always had, distant and indifferent. The ache lingered, but the meaning was lost to him.
Kaelthar closed his eyes. His breath steadied, his thoughts quieted. He did not dream.
But far beyond Zarqad's walls, in the dunes where the moonlight faltered, shadows moved. A caravan had vanished that very night, swallowed whole by something unseen. Whispers would reach the city by dawn, and Kaelthar's path—silent though it was—would begin to tangle with theirs.
For the world remembered what Kaelthar had forgotten.And the world would not let him walk forever in peace.