May DWC 2025 Day 3 - Linger, Gaze Warnings: Death, implied child death
~ Years Ago ~
He wandered south one morning, driven not by instinct, but by a pull in his core that had no name. It had been months since Gaebral breathed false life into him. Months of observing, months of listening, months of waiting. He had lingered at the edge of ruins reclaimed by moss and shadow, he had studied mortals in cities, drifting among them silent and unnoticed.
But today was different.
There was a weight inside him; not grief, not joy, not even hunger, something that writhed beneath this flesh. He did not know what to call it, only that it stirred when he looked too long at the horizon.
The small village was well out of the way of any big city, soft and unguarded in the early morning haze, flanked by thick trees and tall grass. There was no gate, no guard, just life. Children shrieked with laughter as they chased one another around low wooden fences, a husband and wife leaned close in the frame of a doorway, a vendor argued with a farmer over the price of his produce. The air smelled of hearth smoke, pine sap, and bread. Ideal, lovely, perfect.
It should have been a place to observe, but something more awoke in him as he stepped into the square. Something deep, something old. The villagers noticed him, of course, people always did when he showed himself. They did not whisper or run, they lingered. Their gazes caught on his face and held fast, not from fear but something closer to awe. There was something in his stillness, something in his gaze. His beauty was unearthly, but more than that, he exuded a strange, soft gravity. A presence that called to them.
He tried to smile. The motion was slow and mechanical, muscles responding to studied mimicry rather than feeling. It did not reach his eyes, but it was enough.
A boy ran up to him, grinning. “Are you an elf?”
“I do not know,” C replied, voice serene.
The boy laughed, delighted. “You talk funny.”
“So do you.”
The boy’s mother called him back, but smiled at C with a look so gentle it might have been trust. He moved deeper into the village. A baker handed him a loaf of bread with no expectation, a seamstress pressed an embroidered handkerchief into his hands, even a dog followed at his side without prompting, tail wagging. He nodded, tried the smile again. Still hollow, still not right.
But they loved it anyway.
Then an old woman stepped into his path. Her eyes were dark and clear, her expression unreadable. She looked at him too long as though she knew. “You’re wrong.”
He tilted his head. “Wrong?”
“You were never meant to be here. Not like this.” Her voice trembled, not with fear, but understanding, perhaps recognition.
He reached for her. Not to harm, but to know. She did not flinch, but her eyes welled with something like grief.
And then everything slowed.
A hush fell. Birds froze mid-flight, leaves hung in the air, unmoving, the villagers’ laughter stopped in their throats, the wind stilled. He took a breath, and the world tore.
There was no scream, no blaze, no violent shatter, just absence. A sudden silence that erased what had once existed. Where life had been, there was now only emptiness. A scar of ash that floated weightless in the still air, and C stood at the center of it.
The woman, the people - gone. The trees, the houses, the laughter. All gone.
No grief stirred in him, no regret, no confusion. Only fascination. He looked down at his own hands, they did not tremble, they simply existed; pale, perfect, untouched by the annihilation they had birthed. Ash clung to his shoulders, it moved like snow, yet did not fall, it drifted and refused to touch the earth. He closed his eyes. He had done this, he had unmade. Not by intention, not by knowledge, but by will. Raw, shapeless, blooming within him like a second heartbeat.
When he opened them, Gaebral was there, silent, regal, and watching. His cloak did not stir and his face held neither scorn nor praise. “You felt it,” He said, voice low and cold. “Didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“What did it feel like?”
C’s lips twitched. Not quite a smile, not quite a smirk. “Like remembering something I was never taught.”
Gaebral stepped beside him, surveying the ashen emptiness where life once stood. “They trusted you.”
“Yes.”
“And you destroyed them.”
“Yes.”
A long pause, then Gaebral nodded once. “Good.”
The Construct looked up at him, not with yearning, but with a quiet, fierce devotion. He wanted to hear that word again over and over: ‘Good’. He wanted his creator to see what he could become. “I want to learn more,” he said. “Show me how to do it again.”
Gaebral’s eyes gleamed like twin moons. “In time.”
Ash still hovered, caught in the same moment of death. C lifted a hand and watched it spin around his fingers like dust caught in orbit.
It was not grief he felt. It was wonder. This was power. This was purpose.
And one day, he would give the world to Gaebral, stripped of breath, stripped of defiance, its bones clean and ready for the dead to reign. He would smile again, too. Maybe next time, it would even reach his eyes.
@gaebral @daily-writing-challenge
