The ground was dry as burnt paper, and it stank. Not of flowers or hay or anything that could remind one of life, but of iron, dryness, and ancient death. A subtle stench that clung to the bones and never left.
Even the water, when it could be found, carried that metallic aftertaste, as if the well were digging into the very heart of rust.
When the wind blew, it lifted a fine, golden dust that got everywhere: under the nails, between the teeth, in the breath. The sun, high and merciless, split both skin and soil cracks in the same way.
Owen lifted the bucket and felt his shoulders give way. It was empty. Or almost. Two fingers of water at the bottom. More sand than liquid. Damned well.
His hand trembled. Not from exhaustion, not this time, but from cramps. It had happened before, and more frequently each time. The village doctor — an old man with more missing fingers than teeth — had told him it was probably his liver. Or his nerves. Or perhaps his soul. But Owen had no soul.
Or, if he ever had one, it had long since rotted away.
Once he had been something. No one had ever said “well done,” “thank you,” or “you’re welcome.” But he had made a name for himself out there. Before ending up in this hole of a village. Before deciding to become a “new man.” Before pretending to want to be better.
He had slit throats for a bottle. He had set fire to an inn with three people inside just to avoid paying the bill. He had taken what he wanted, when he wanted, and no one dared stop him. He had been more beast than man. But that beast, over time, had lost its teeth. Or so he thought.
He bent down, poured the last drops of water onto the wheat roots, and watched the soil drink like a drunk taking his last shot. A useless gesture. The wheat had been dead for days. But pretending helped him not to remember.
In the silence of the field, memories screamed.
He dragged himself toward the field with slow, tired steps, careful not to spill a single drop. The clods were hard, cracked, dotted only with sparse tufts of sandy wheat, the only thing that could grow in the central region. A land forgotten by rain, trapped between arid hills and rocky plateaus. No one contested it. No one really wanted it.
Sitting in the shade of the shed later, as the sun barely began to dip, Owen stared at the horizon with the gaze of someone who had already crossed it a thousand times in his mind. He held an old map, worn and faded. It wasn’t even accurate. The borders were blurred, the names wrong. But the name written large to the west, with curved, proud letters, was enough: New World
He thought about it every day.
The “New World.” That’s what he needed. A new name. A land without a past. A continent where no one knew what he had done. What he was. A place where evil could walk under a different sun and perhaps seem… different.
Far from here. Far from this field where crops died before even growing, where every season was a challenge and every spring a broken promise.
In the New World, there were forests as tall as the capital’s towers, animals unafraid of humans, lands yet to be charted, understood. Even the darkest tales — missing ships, monsters, shifting coasts — were not enough to quell his desire. For Owen, danger was not an obstacle. It was a call.
It was proof that there, at least, things moved.
Sometimes merchants arrived, loaded with strange spices or furs unlike anything known. They told stories in exchange for bread or a hot meal. Confused stories, halfway between truth and invention. But Owen kept them all, like one keeps a lantern in the desert.
Once, an old man had shown him a fragment of shining metal. “Found it there,” he said. “No one knows what it is. It doesn’t bend, it doesn’t break. And if you leave it in the sun, it burns like fire.”
Owen had touched it. And he had believed.
When the sun had sunk enough to tint everything orange, Owen took the hoe and returned to the field. There were no schedules there. Only light and hunger.
He dug and dreamed, with the same patience.
Every swing of the hoe was a step.
Every drop of sweat, a distant thought.
Every grain of sand, a different future to build with bare hands.
And under that vast sky, in the heart of the driest soil in the kingdom, a landless farmer continued to believe that, one day, even for him, there would be a ship.
The field was small. Just a strip of earth carved between sandy rocks, bordered by a few spindly trees struggling against the dry wind of the inland continent. The soil here was stubborn, like those who inhabited it. But Owen did not complain. Not out loud.
Blows of the hoe, deep breaths, the creak of the bucket at the well. The work had its own peace, made of repeated gestures and silences. Yet, inside, Owen boiled.
He had not been born for this. Everyone in the village knew it.
This life was strangling him. He had chosen it to survive, yes, but now it was slowly consuming him. He had become a respectable man. But he had never felt truly… free.
That desert was a prison with invisible walls.
He picked up a stone and threw it far. It rolled a few meters, then stopped. Like everything here.
“One day,” he murmured. “One day, I’ll leave.”
And as the sun burned his skin, Owen returned to work, but his eyes always looked slightly beyond the edge of the field.
The sun sank slowly, crawling across the horizon like a wounded animal. Shadows stretched among the dry rows of crops, caressing the furrows with shadowed fingers, while Owen kept working.
The day’s heat had faded, but the earth still retained that subtle warmth, rising from below. Owen drove the hoe with mechanical rhythm, sweat streaming down his back, every muscle seeming to give a little more with each motion. No one spoke to him. No one stopped in the neighboring fields. Some nodded in passing, others changed course.
He returned home when the sky was already violet, the wind whispering between the window bricks. A wooden cabin reinforced with stones, built by himself with rough hands and stolen days of sleep. Dinner was silent: hard bread, dry cheese, and a bowl of rainwater. Nothing else.
Owen ate slowly, chewing without enthusiasm. His gaze fixed on the void. As if something waited for him behind the silence.
After brushing away the crumbs, he lay on the straw mattress, wrapped in blankets that smelled of earth and sweat. He closed his eyes effortlessly. He was exhausted. But the sleep that came was no friend.
It was an abyss.
He dreamed of screams. Not his own. Others’.
Faces he didn’t recognize stared at him in the dark, mouths agape, hands twisted. Streets on fire, blood on stone.
He dreamed of black water, so deep it took his breath away. And eyes. Huge eyes watching from below.
And a shadow.
Immense, with arms too long, moving silently, but every step seemed to crack the earth.
He woke abruptly, soaked in sweat, mouth dry as sand. His heart pounded.
And then he heard it.
A voice. Outside the door.
“Owen.”
Thin. But clear. Masculine. Not young.
It was as if someone were whispering his name not with a voice, but with something the skin recognized before the ear.
“Oooweeenn..”
The chill paralyzed him.
He dared not move.
His heart was a mad beast in his chest.
The voice didn’t knock. Didn’t shout. But it was there. Two meters away.
And the worst part…
was that it knew.
Whoever was out there knew how terrified he was.
And found it… amusing.
A pure, childlike, ancestral terror slithered down his spine. Owen felt tears rise, but he did not let them fall. He stayed there. Motionless. Staring at the cabin ceiling, praying the silence would return.
But the silence did not return.
Only the voice.
Once again.
“Open, Owen.”
Then only the wind.
And a smile.
He couldn’t see it…
but he felt it.
Owen rose and fell to his knees on the floor, hands trembling, palms dirty with dust that had risen when Kan had kicked the door open. He shook like a trapped rat, eyes glossy and swollen, breathing in jerks.
Kan was there, in the center of the room, motionless like a dark obelisk, the smile on his face too wide to be human. All those teeth, white, perfect, too perfect, like fangs polished with blood. The black eyes — not dark, black, like fissures in time — fixed on Owen with the patience of a predator enjoying the dying.
And then, he laughed.
Not a chuckle.
A laugh exploded like a grenade, violent, distorted, so strong it made the wooden walls of the small house vibrate.
“AAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! Pig! You’re such a filthy pig! A pig with kingly dreams! And you want to get dirty again, huh? To crawl in manure, fuck, and lick the bottoms of barrels! AHAHAHAHAH!”
Owen covered his ears, but the laughter seeped into his bones, dug behind his eyes, pissed in his soul. He cried, yes, but nodded. Because inside… he knew it was true.
He wanted to run. He wanted to return to a life of vices, theft, brothels, and alcohol.
The truth crushed him more than fear.
Kan stopped laughing. As if he had flipped a switch.
“I knew it,” he whispered, low. “Do you know how I know?”
He stepped forward. His shadow seemed to stretch beyond the hearth’s light.
“Because I know you. I am what you are under the skin.
Hunger. Desire. Instinct.”
He made a gesture with his hand.
“I have a gift for you, but like any gift… it has a price.”
Owen didn’t speak anymore. He was finished. Broken.
Everything he had been — thief, farmer, man — had been reduced to dust and fear.
“I have great plans for us, Owen.
You will be my second. The witness. The armed hand.”
He smiled again.
“I know what you want, but do you know what the New World is, Owen? It’s not just a place on a map. It’s a promise. Of new air. Of land without memories. Of freedom.”
He paused. Then leaned toward him, the mouth too wide for that ever-changing face.
“It’s where men become gods, Owen. Where the past is buried beneath new sins. And there, believe me… you can finally be yourself. Not what you pretend to be in these fields. Not the mangy dog digging soil seeking forgiveness. But what you have always been.”
He touched his forehead. The finger was cold, like black glass.
And then Owen saw.
He saw a land red as blood, with rivers of gold and cities burning like torches at sunset. He saw men kneeling, women desiring him, loot never seen, bodies on the ground, distant screams, and freedom that smelled of smoke and hot iron. He saw himself on a ship, hands scarred by broken chains. He saw an empire.
Tears filled his eyes.
“I… I want to go there,” he whispered. “I want… to start over. Begin again.”
Kan nodded slowly. Like a judge. Like a father. Like a god.
“The world will burn, and you will hold the torch.
Because this world deserves nothing but fire.
Order is an illusion. Laws are lies written by weak men.
Only those ready to take everything deserve to survive.”
He paused. The fireplace crackled softly.
“So…”
The black eyes narrowed.
“What do we want to do, Owen?”
Owen swallowed. His heart seemed about to escape his chest.
“I want… to follow you.”
He whispered.
“What must I do?”
Kan extended his hand.
Not violently. Not angrily.
Gently. Affectionately. Paternally.
He drew a thin knife from his belt. The blade curved, dark as burned bones. It seemed… alive. Hungry.
“Everyone wants to remember who made them.
You will remember me.”
With a swift motion, he took Owen’s hand. He gripped it tightly. Owen tried to pull back, but it was like moving a mountain.
Kan cut his palm slowly. It wasn’t a clean slice.
It was a cruel caress.
Blood spurted, warm and dark. But Owen did not scream. It was worse.
He couldn’t even shout.
“This pain,” Kan whispered, the knife still wet, “will not go away.
Ever.
It will be my voice inside you.
A wound that never closes.
A reminder.
You chose me.”
Owen fell to his knees. His hand burned, but it was not only physical pain. It was as if something was entering through it, as if the wound were an open door to something nameless.
Kan laughed again. Softer this time. A subtle laugh, like blades scraping against each other.
“You know, Owen… people spend their lives looking for purpose, meaning, redemption, morals. But they haven’t understood one thing.”
Kan turned. His face was now a mix of those Owen had killed. The cart driver. The caravan girl. The old man with a cane. All together, fused like wax under a flame.
“In life… the important thing is to have fun.”
And then he laughed.
A laugh that did not seem human. It sounded like breaking bones, nails on glass, crying children, and screaming rats underground. A long, deep, empty laugh, seeming to come from a thousand mouths. A laugh that never ended, and lodged in Owen’s eardrums like a runaway splinter.
“AH… AH… AH… AH… AH—AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!”
Owen collapsed to his knees. Hands over his ears. But the laughter was inside, not outside. Vibrations under the skin. A grip along the spine.
When it finally stopped, Owen trembled like a child in the snow. He looked at the wound. He could already hear his voice inside. A whisper telling him where to go. What to do. Who to kill.
“Prepare yourself, Owen,” said Kan, “Out there waits an entire world… to devour.”
Outside, the wind rose.