"I am what I was ages ago," the old man whispered, his voice ragged and strained. His eyes, once sharp with fire, were now clouded and dim, their light receding as though a final curtain were being drawn across his soul.
The barn smelled of dust and rot, the air thick with the staleness of forgotten hay. It was here that he found himself trapped, the last fragment of his world collapsing around him. His house had been raided only hours before, not by soldiers of discipline or honor, but by mercenaries, ragged men with hollow eyes and laughter that reeked of cruelty. They had come out of the woods like wolves starved of prey, and what they left in their wake was ruin.
His mistress was the first to fall. She had opened the door with trembling hands, and the shot that tore through her chest was said to be a mistake. A mistake, they claimed, though the word was delivered with smirks that betrayed the lie. Yet even had it been true, the things that followed stripped all meaning from the excuse.
The old man remembered his daughter's cries most of all. They dragged her into the dirt, their jeers filling the night while her voice cracked beneath the weight of her terror. One after another, they defiled her, until her body trembled with more pain than her spirit could endure. When at last they released her, she stumbled away with a hollow look in her eyes. He had thought she was retreating to find shelter, to breathe. Instead, she climbed the lip of the well in silence, her figure framed for a brief moment against the pale light of the moon. Then she cast herself down into the darkness below, her scream cut short by the echoing splash of water.
The old man had seen it all. He had pressed his hands against the wooden beams of the barn, powerless to intervene. His body was frail, his strength long vanished, and though his heart raged with the need to strike them down, his limbs betrayed him with weakness. He could do nothing but watch as his bloodline was torn apart before his very eyes.
Now he sat among the shadows of the barn, his words falling into silence, his memories pressing against him like a weight too heavy to bear.
The old man sat in the barn's half-light, his breathing shallow, his mind circling the abyss of grief. The silence pressed upon him like a coffin lid, until the creak of the door broke it.
From the threshold stepped a figure so small that, at first glance, the old man thought him a child who had wandered in by mistake. He was slight of frame, his clothes hanging loosely as though they belonged to another, and his hands were delicate, unstained by labor. There was even an innocence about him, the softness of his features casting him in the guise of weakness.
Yet when the old man lifted his weary eyes, he saw something that did not belong to that frail shell. The newcomer's gaze was sharp and unyielding, brimming with a strength that had not dulled with age. Ferocity burned there, not the wild cruelty of beasts or mercenaries, but a controlled and repressed avenger, the kind that spoke of storms long past but not forgotten.
The old man searched his memory, struggling to recognize the face, until the truth hit him like a heavy blow. This man was no defiler, not one of the cruel, yet he had come alongside them.
An ally to the monsters, he took no part in their deeds but still shared a connection with them.
Though the old man saw no harm from him, his heart harbored hatred, for his mind told a different story.
For a long moment the two regarded one another in silence, the dust of the barn drifting lazily between them. Then, with a voice that carried sorrow more than fear, the old man asked,
"Who are you, little boy?"
His words trembled as they left his lips, the question not only of identity, but of purpose, as though what mattered most was not who this strange visitor was, but why he had come.
The little man shifted where he stood, half-hidden by the shadows of the barn. Moonlight fell across his shoulders, softening his slight frame, though his face remained in darkness. When he spoke, his words came slowly, with the uneven cadence of someone unused to speaking much.
"My name is Rivered Callahan," he said, his voice quiet, almost uncertain. "I came from far—yes, very far from here. Longer than I care to measure."
He gave a faint shake of the head, as though to dismiss the thought, and then let out a breath. "Don't be afraid, old man. I'm not going to hurt you. I see the pain written on you. It's… too much for one soul to carry. I'm sorry."
He shifted again, the barn's dust swirling in the thin light. His tone softened, almost apologetic. "Hold on a little longer. This will pass soon. My friends—they've had their rest. When the sun rises, we'll be on our way again."
The old man's chest rattled with a shallow breath, his eyes fixed on the stranger. Rivered's voice carried no cruelty, no mockery, only a kind of sadness, as if he had known suffering too, and understood the weight of it.
"I know what you want," Rivered murmured, lowering his head. "But revenge… it isn't mine to take. It doesn't belong to me. I can't give it to you, no matter how much you ache for it."
The words hung between them, heavy yet gentle, like the hush of prayer spoken at a bedside. And in the silence that followed, the old man felt the strange warmth of familiarity, though he was sure he had never seen this small, weary traveler before.
The old man's voice trembled, rising from the depths of his chest like something torn loose.
"Why did you come here then? To console me?" His tone was jagged, bitter, each word burning his throat. "I do not need consolation. I do not need your pity."
He pressed his palms against the floorboards as if trying to push himself upright, but his strength betrayed him. His body sagged back into the shadows, frail and useless, his anger left to do the lifting his limbs could not. His eyes, wet and red, fixed on the small figure before him.
"Why did you come today?" he spat, the sound more a broken bark than speech. "What harm did we ever do? Tell me that. We lived quietly. We did no wrong to anyone. We shared what we had when we could, we were fair, we were good, we were honest. So why us?"
His voice cracked into something like a sob. His hands curled into fists, nails pressing against his palms until the skin broke.
"For once in my life, I thought we were safe," he rasped. "I thought we had found a corner of the world where nothing could reach us. Far from the city, far from its filth. I believed that here we might grow old in peace. And still, death came knocking. Not death alone, but cruelty. Cruelty so sharp it cut through my home, through my blood, through everything I ever loved."
He lowered his head, shoulders shaking, his words spilling into the silence as though he spoke to the dust itself.
"They took everything from me. Everything. And I cannot even lift a hand to stop them. Do you understand what that feels like? To be alive and powerless, to watch what you love torn apart, and to know you can do nothing but sit here and breathe?"
For a time, there was only the rasp of his breath and the groan of the barn's timbers in the wind. Then, softly, Rivered spoke.
"I know."
---
The mercenaries were already drifting away, their laughter thinning as they stumbled back toward the woods. The night seemed ready to swallow them, their shadows vanishing one by one into the dark.
Then, as though seized by some last, senseless whim, one of them paused. He turned back, a half-smile twisting his face, and pulled a torch from the dying fire where they had cooked their meal. Without a word, he hurled it against the house. Flames licked at the dry wood, spreading with greedy speed.
Another, catching sight of it, laughed and shouted for him to do the same to the barn. The man obliged, tossing a second torch high into the rafters. It landed in a heap of brittle hay, and in an instant the barn was alive with fire.
Inside, a groaning cry rose above the crackle of burning beams. It was the sound of someone trapped, flesh and voice breaking under the fire's embrace. The sound carried out into the night, raw and helpless, until it was swallowed by the roar of the blaze.
Rivered stood still, his face caught in the flicker of orange light. He did not shout, did not move to intervene. His small figure remained motionless as his eyes grew heavy and distant. Whatever life had lingered there seemed to dim, leaving behind only a hollow, lifeless stare.