SEENEE watched Odania burn.
For once, he did not follow Safsan.
He did not follow Safuu.
He did not even follow NAREZEN.
Instead, he looked at the war.
Because wars are strange things.
People remember the battles.
The names.
The victories.
The defeats.
But a civil war is not only fought by the people whose names survive history.
Sometimes, the most important moments happen to people history never remembers.
The sun was setting over a marketplace in Odania.
Chaltu was packing away the last of her spices when a strange buzzing sound came from above.
People looked toward the sky.
Nobody moved.
Then something fell.
Blood.
One drop.
Then another.
Then hundreds.
It began raining blood.
People screamed.
Stalls collapsed.
Colorful fabrics disappeared beneath red and black.
Families ran in different directions.
Some found each other again.
Others never did.
The sky that had once meant rain, crops and life became something people were afraid to look at.
Elsewhere, soldiers received orders they no longer understood.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Some obeyed.
Some refused.
Some lowered their weapons.
Others raised them against people they had eaten beside only days earlier.
Homes became shelters.
Schools became places for the wounded.
Roads became borders.
Neighbors became enemies.
Enemies saved each other's children.
And throughout Odania, everything people had neglected began returning.
Anger.
Fear.
Regret.
Truth.
Things buried for years were suddenly impossible to ignore.
SEENEE watched it all.
Then his attention returned to the battlefield.
Safuu stood opposite NAREZEN.
But there was something about NAREZEN that had not yet been told.
Something much older than this war.
Much older than the name NAREZEN.
There was another name.
A name carried by something condemned to continue existing.
HOLAWAKA.
The Condemned Being.
Stories had once described Holawaka differently.
Some gave it wings.
Some imagined something that crossed the sky beside death.
Perhaps that was simply the closest shape people could give to something they did not understand.
Because Holawaka was no bird.
It did not truly belong to one shape at all.
It could wear flesh.
A human face.
Human hands.
A human voice.
It could stand beside you and look like someone who had always belonged there.
But the body was only a form.
Holawaka was something else.
Something deeply connected to death.
Long ago, it had been sent by...
?????????
Its purpose was not conquest.
Not war.
Not even death.
It had been sent to search for something.
REALITY BOOK
Not a country.
Not a world.
REALITY BOOK itself.
But something happened during that search.
The physical reality interfered.
Perhaps Holawaka was trapped by it.
Perhaps deceived by it.
Perhaps it made a choice it was never supposed to make.
Whatever happened, Holawaka failed.
And failure had a punishment.
A curse.
Death would no longer free it.
Whenever one life ended, another would eventually begin.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Reincarnation became its prison.
Different bodies.
Different lives.
Different names.
But something remained.
Memory.
Holawaka remembered.
And in this life, the condemned being had taken the name:
NAREZEN.
That was why NAREZEN remembered a future that had not yet happened.
Because to NAREZEN...
it had.
Safuu had already stood against it.
Odania had already burned.
People had already died.
And Safsan...
SEENEE stopped.
Somewhere impossibly far from the battlefield...
a page turned.
A young woman sat alone among more books than one person could read in a lifetime.
Books surrounded the walls.
Covered the desk.
Rested beside her chair.
But in her hands was one particular book.
She had been reading about a young man.
Safsan.
Her eyes moved slowly across the pages.
His dreams.
The endless road.
The other version of himself.
The black snake.
His father.
Odania.
Safuu.
The war.
Everything that had already happened.
Then she reached the conflict between Safuu and NAREZEN.
Her eyes stopped.
According to the book...
Safsan died there.
She remained silent.
Her fingers rested against the page.
Then she spoke.
“Safsan...”
The same voice.
The voice Safsan had heard before losing consciousness.
She continued reading.
Her expression slowly changed.
“You weren't supposed to survive.”
Then something happened.
The words on the page changed.
Ayla froze.
She stared at the book.
The sentence that said Safsan died was no longer the same.
Before she could continue—
“Ayla!”
Someone called her from outside the window.
She looked toward it.
Then back at the book.
“Ayla!”
She hesitated.
Finally, she placed the book on the table and walked toward the window.
The book remained open.
Its pages moved slightly.
SEENEE stared at it.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then—
“Wait.”
He looked closer.
“That isn't right.”
His expression changed.
“Why did Safsan's future change?”
Silence.
“He should die during this conflict.”
SEENEE looked toward Safuu and NAREZEN.
Then back toward the book.
“The conflict hasn't even truly begun yet.”
For once, SEENEE did not sound like someone telling a story.
He sounded confused.
He looked again.
At the open book.
At the words that had changed.
Then his eyes stopped on something else.
Something he had not expected to see.
SEENEE went completely silent.
“...What?”
His expression changed.
Not fear.
Not yet.
Something closer to disbelief.
He moved closer.
“No...”
A pause.
“That shouldn't be there.”
And somewhere between the story that had already been written...
and the reality that was now refusing to follow it...
a page turned by itself.