After the gaze, there was no miracle.
No thunder tearing the heavens.
No divine voice rising from the dust.
Anor'Ven struck no one.
Saved nothing.
Judged nothing.
He remained a moment longer,
still,
anchored in the ruins of their belief.
Then he walked again.
**
But men —
men did not know how to stay silent.
Those who had recoiled gathered once more.
Those who had fled returned,
their faces marked not by faith,
but by calculation.
They spoke in hushed tones.
They schemed behind lowered eyes.
They spoke of the power in his step,
the terror in his gaze.
They spoke of forging a weapon from what they had found.
Of chains unseen.
Of leashes forged in iron and belief.
**
Whispers became meetings.
Meetings became plans.
Plans became knives hidden behind smiles.
Orders were founded —
not to worship,
but to command.
Armies were raised —
not to protect,
but to seize.
Priests invented laws in his name.
Kings drew banners bearing his image.
Scholars twisted his silence into commandments.
They built cities crowned with his myths.
Carved his face into stone altars.
And in the depths of those same cities,
they plotted to bind him.
**
He saw it all.
He walked through villages draped in black and silver,
his own name bleeding from every wall.
He crossed temples where children chanted hollow prayers to the sky.
He passed courts where judges wore iron masks and pronounced death "in his will."
He did not bless.
He did not condemn.
He did not speak.
He only walked.
**
And deep beneath the crumbling roots of this world,
in caverns where dust swallowed every sound,
other hands worked.
Smiths of flesh and spirit.
Forgers of chains unseen.
Sowers of snares made not of iron,
but of devotion, ambition, and desperation.
For if a being could not die,
then surely,
surely it could be made to kneel.
**
And while they plotted,
he,
Anor'Ven,
crossed a nameless desert,
the sun a fading ember at his back,
the shadow ahead.