Boots. Boots. Boots. Boots.
Not an army. Only one. Cinica walks.
The city trembles, but he does not. Strange, terrible tremors in the air—like the pulse of some invisible heart—and every man, every woman, every shadow feels it. Faces turn, but turn too late, as if realizing too late that they are no longer alone, that someone, something, watches with no eyes, judges with no mind, and yet knows all.
No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Only a mind. Only a heart. Burning. Pure. And yet—what terror lies in purity, in clarity, when the world has lost both? He walks, and the sound of boots echoes behind him, or perhaps within him, or perhaps it is the sound of the city itself unraveling.
A man stops in the street. He looks at his neighbor—no, not his neighbor. The face smiles too long, eyes blink too slow. And yet he cannot scream. He cannot breathe. The panic curls in his chest like smoke, and the city folds in upon itself. Boots. Boots. Boots. Boots.
Inside homes, mothers clutch children. Fathers grip knives and pistols. But what is the use? The shadows do not care. The shadows do not wait. They are already here. Their eyes are mirrors; their smiles are accusations. He sees none of it. He carries only prayer. He carries only love.
A child cries—silent, or is it soundless? The air itself holds it back. Dogs vanish. Windows crack. Doors shiver. A chandelier swings overhead like a pendulum measuring inevitable doom. And still—boots, boots, boots, boots—step by step, closer, closer, toward the inevitable.
Arnold's house. The faint glow of candlelight. Cinica does not falter. The world quivers beneath panic, beneath fear, beneath itself. Faces stretch, smiles linger, hearts stop. And he walks. Always walks. Step by step. Heart by heart. Prayer by prayer.
The city trembles. The world shudders. And yet the one certainty remains: boots. Boots. Boots. Boots. And Cinica. Only Cinica.
And when he reaches the house, the world bends—not violently, not cruelly—but for a single instant, toward love, toward clarity, toward mercy that no one else remembers how to give.