Days passed.
Time went on.
The concept of time itself had lost its meaning.
And Ashen… Ashen kept walking alone.
One day, he saw from afar a distant stone forest.
He felt it was calling him — not for more trouble or battles, but for a small moment of rest.
A rest whose meaning he had never known in his memories.
Night spread its heavy curtains, swallowing the stone forest piece by piece, like a silent beast slowly devouring the light.
The sky hung in solemn silence, and the bluish moon poured its dim rays over the gray rocks.
The place was still — so still it was terrifying, as if time itself hesitated to pass through.
Ashen walked with steady steps, but inside him, there was never stability.
Each step on the ground felt like knocking on a door in his memory — a rusty door that opened only to release screams from the past.
Since his escape from the ordeal, or maybe since his very birth, he had never known rest, not even true sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw blood… he heard the echoes of wailing, the sound of blades tearing through flesh and bone.
He saw a face — a face he didn't know if it belonged to him or to someone else.
When he reached the stone forest, he felt something strange...
It was as if the ground already knew him.
As if it whispered to him: "Stop here, even for a moment."
He stood among the smooth stones that looked like pillars raised for the worship of forgetting.
Every stone seemed to carry the mark of an ancient battle, as if blood had seeped into its surface long ago and never dried.
Yet among this stone silence, he found himself surrendering.
He sat down first, then lay back on one of the cold rocks.
Its chill seeped into his skin, then into his bones, then into depths he had never felt before.
He raised his eyes to the sky… the moon was staring at him, gazing as if pitying him — or mocking him.
A long moment passed before anything moved.
Then Ashen's mind began to drift among his thoughts.
Who am I?
A simple question, yet heavier than all the battles he had fought.
Since the moment he became aware of himself, he had known only hell.
He had never known the warmth of family, nor a voice calling his name without fear or harshness.
Even his name, "Ashen," he could not remember who gave it to him.
Maybe no one did… maybe he chose it himself after his memories burned, just as his clan had.
Was I ever human? Or was I just the embodiment of ancient wrath?
He turned his head slightly, his crimson eyes catching the moon's glow.
The reflection of blood in the light made his face look like something between life and death.
His torn clothes, his red hair moving with the wind like dead flames, and his body strong as if built from the ashes of battle.
But inside, there was only emptiness.
A vast void swallowing everything he tried to understand or remember.
Why does he fight? For whom? What meaning does strength have if no one is there to see it?
A cold breeze brushed his face, carrying the old scent of blood and ash.
Ashen smiled faintly — a smile closer to mockery than joy.
Even the wind… is like me.
Without direction. Without a home. Without a beginning or an end.
He closed his eyes, and a flood of images washed over him.
Screams, flames, fading shadows, and a small child crying among ashes, swearing revenge.
A child with crimson eyes, just like his own.
Is that me? Or one of the ghosts of the past haunting me?
Each time he tried to grasp a thread of his memory, it vanished from his hands — as if the world itself refused to let him know his truth.
Was this his punishment? To live without roots, without memory, without a past?
To exist only as a being driven by instinct, fighting because he knew nothing else?
He opened his eyes again.
The night was at its peak, the moon at its highest, yet everything seemed to stop in respect for the silence that filled him.
He raised his hand upward, looking at his hardened palm, the same hand that had spilled so much blood.
How many times have I killed?
How many lives have I extinguished?
And why?
He found no answer.
All he felt was that the blood he shed didn't belong only to others — every drop also took something from him.
The moonlight slid across his skin, and his veins looked like rivers of dormant fire.
Each heartbeat was heavy, as if announcing his existence in a world that didn't want him to remain.
At that moment, he thought of something he had never dared to consider before:
Do I want to live?
Or am I only alive because death hasn't been able to take me yet?
The peace around him wasn't rest — it was a temporary prison hiding behind it a wall of suppressed rage.
But for the first time, he didn't try to escape the silence, nor did he try to ignite the blood in his veins.
He let himself sink — sink into a stillness that felt like an ending.
The wind passed slowly, moving his red hair as if whispering to him:
You are alone.
You have always been alone, and you always will be.
He laughed softly.
A laugh without warmth, without joy, without soul.
A laugh of someone living in isolation not of his choice, but forced upon him.
He lifted his eyes to the moon again and whispered, barely audible:
— Is there a place in this world for something like me?
The moon didn't answer.
But his shadow stretched beside him on the rock, as if mocking him.
Ashen closed his eyes again, this time very slowly.
He knew he wouldn't sleep — nightmares didn't wait for sleep to come.
Yet, for the first time in a long while, he didn't feel the need to fight or defend.
He let his body relax, his thoughts drift without resistance.
A rare moment of calm slipped into him.
A calm not of peace, but of pain stopping only because the body could no longer feel it.
Maybe rest isn't in sleep, nor in strength…
Maybe rest is simply to stop asking questions.
His crimson eyes dimmed slightly, losing their shine for a moment.
The cold rocks embraced his body, and the night wrapped him like a cloak of forgetting.
Nothing moved anymore.
Only a body on a stone — and a soul searching for meaning in a world that gave meaning only to strength.
Yet, amid this deadly stillness, a faint sound could be heard, as if the earth itself was breathing around him.
As if it whispered to him:
Sleep, son of blood… for what awaits you is greater than can be endured, and deeper than can be understood.