It had been many years since he'd been home. Since he'd sat down with his brother in the evenings.

But yet he walked.

So long ago was the past. So much pain it held.

And so he walked, and walked, and walked into the sunset.

He was a farmer at heart. He had loved his crops, more than he loved his brother, more than he loved his god. He loved his wheat, and his barley, and his orchard, they were all he cared for. Not anymore.

His brother was dead, and so were his crops, everything near and dear to him, gone in the blink of the eyes.

Now he roamed the paths of the world searching for a new home, or companions to aid him in his new calling, he was not sure.

He slowly became a living legend, a passing rumor. Of a man who survived a god's wrath. And now he was going to kill that god.

That night, he didn't seek an inn. He sat at the edge of the village, where the cultivated fields met the wild, untamed forest. He unwrapped the canvas on his back. The iron underneath wasn't a sword; it was his old scythe, but the wooden handle had been replaced with cold, black steel, and the blade had been tempered in the very fires that had consumed his home.

He began to sharpen it. Whirr. Scrape. Whirr.

A group of local men approached him, led by a village elder. They carried lanterns and looked at him with a desperate sort of hope.

"We heard the rumors," the elder said, keeping a respectful distance. "We heard of the farmer who saw a god descend and didn't kneel. We have suffered here, too. The blights, the sudden frosts... if you are truly going to the Golden City, take our grievances with you."

The man stopped sharpening. He looked up, his eyes reflecting the lantern light like cracked glass.

"Grievances are for the living to argue," he said. "I am not going there to talk. A god who tramples a field doesn't care about the quality of the soil. He only understands when the soil stops yielding."

"Then what are you?" the elder asked, a shiver running through him.

"I am the winter," the man replied, standing up and shouldering his steel scythe. "The long, silent winter that comes when the sun fails to do its job."

He turned away from the lanterns and walked back into the dark. He wasn't searching for companions anymore. He was following the scent of ozone and incense that drifted down from the peaks of the highest mountains—the scent of a god who thought himself untouchable.