SILENCE AFTER THE GODS

Chapter 11 – The desert has no end

They had resumed the march afterwards.

Always to the north.

Always straight ahead.

But the more they advanced, the more Ken asked himself a simple, brutal, unanswered question:

Does this desert... have an end?

There was only sand.

Dry winds.

Burning illusions.

Every day, they thought they were distinguishing a new horizon line.

And every night, she disappeared like a lie.

Ashen Ryū said nothing.

He was walking.

Silent.

Unshakeable.

As if he had always lived here.

In truth... it was almost the case.

—

During this crossing, Ken learned.

He learned to listen to the sand.

To spot edible insects under the stones.

To feel a storm coming even before the wind turns.

Ashen had transmitted everything to him.

He, the perfect weapon of the Black Orphanage.

He, designed to survive everything the world wanted to break.

And Ken admires the survival skills that Ashen existed. Ken never had a sheltered sense

—

Then, one day, everything changed.

The wind is silent.

The sand became harder. Compact. Almost stony.

And in the distance...

Three silhouettes.

Walking against the wind.

Blurred.

Then clearer.

—

The first was a woman.

Large. Beautiful. Bewitching.

Pink, long and straight hair. An almost human look.

She wore clothes from their world. Clean. Treated.

Too clean.

Not a trace of sand.

Not a drop of sweat.

Not a hitch.

In this cursed desert, she alone defied logic.

—

By his side walked a little girl.

Nine... maybe eleven years.

Purple hair. Purple eyes.

A strangeness in the look.

An absence.

As if she didn't belong to this world...

And yet, everything in her said the opposite.

His clothes, his light step, his way of walking...

She seemed to have been born here.

And it was she who showed the way.

With a finger stretched to the north, whispering words that Ken did not hear.

—

And finally, there was a third.

A young man.

A being too perfect to be real.

Black hair.

Eyes of a supernatural blue.

Silhouette sculpted by silence.

He walked as if he knew exactly where he was going.

And then...

He turned his head.

Even miles away...

He looked at Ken.

—

Ken stopped.

Breathless.

Ashen also stopped.

Eyes fixed.

The young man's gaze expressed neither fear nor surprise.

Only...

Determination.

A cold, deep resolution.

Protect these girls.

Counter all danger.

Without warning, he leams.

A lightning movement, but human.

Just a pure instinct: to protect.

—

Ken felt something vibrate in him.

A fear.

That of reliving... death.

An echo.

The memory of Zian.

But this memory did not go back up.

Only a silence.

And a thought, like an inner armour:

At the end of the account, only me remains.

—

The woman with pink hair stopped.

She too turned her head towards the jumping young man.

The little violet girl, too, had looked up.

—

But Ken is experiencing something else.

He saw Ashen Ryū.

And in his eyes...

Anger.

A silent, rare fury.

Ken had never seen it like this.

He also stared at the woman with pink hair.

And in that look...

Something like a past.

Something personal.

But Ken did not dare to ask a question.

Not yet.

—

End of Chapter 11