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.

The climb began before dawn.

The man moved through the forest like a shadow that had forgotten how to be human. Frost clung to the branches though it was early autumn, and each breath he exhaled drifted upward in thin, ghostly ribbons. The scent of ozone grew stronger the higher he went, threading through the pines like a warning.

By midday, he reached the foothills. The path was little more than a scar carved into the stone by pilgrims who had long since stopped returning. At the base of the trail stood a shrine—collapsed, overgrown, and half-buried under fallen rock. A single offering bowl remained intact, filled with rainwater and dead leaves.

He tipped it over with the end of his scythe.

The water spilled across the ground, steaming as it touched the earth.

A voice rose from behind him. “You shouldn’t do that.”

He turned.

A girl stood there—no older than fifteen, wrapped in a cloak too big for her, clutching a bundle of herbs and dried roots. Her eyes were steady, though her hands trembled.

“That shrine is for safe passage,” she said. “The mountain is alive. It listens.”

“The mountain can listen,” he replied, “but it won’t speak for the god who lives above it.”

She swallowed. “You’re the one they’re whispering about. The farmer who lost everything.”

He didn’t answer. He simply adjusted the scythe on his back and began walking.

But the girl followed.

“You’re going to die up there,” she said. “Everyone does. The priests say the god’s temple is a place where only the worthy can stand.”

He stopped.

“Then I will stand,” he said, “or I will make the temple fall.”

The girl hesitated, then stepped in front of him, blocking the path with all the courage her thin frame could muster.

“My brother went up there,” she said. “He never came back. If you’re going to face a god, then… then take this.”

She held out a small charm woven from mountain grass and twine. A simple thing. Fragile.

He stared at it for a long moment.

“I don’t need protection,” he said.

“It’s not protection,” she replied. “It’s a reminder. That someone is waiting for you to come back.”

He almost told her that no one was waiting for him. That the only thing left in his life was the cold, and the cold did not wait.

Instead, he took the charm and tied it to the steel handle of his scythe. It looked absurd there—soft against the black metal—but he didn’t remove it.

The girl stepped aside.

He continued up the mountain.

As the sun dipped behind the peaks, the air grew thin and electric. The clouds above him churned in slow, deliberate spirals, as though stirred by an unseen hand. The stone under his boots vibrated with a low hum, like the heartbeat of something vast and ancient.

And then he saw it.

The Golden City.

It clung to the highest ridge like a crown hammered into the mountain’s skull. Its towers glowed with a light that wasn’t sunlight, and its gates shimmered with the same color as lightning trapped in amber.

A god lived there.

A god who had walked through his fields without looking down.

The man tightened his grip on the scythe.

The charm rustled in the wind.

And for the first time since the fire, he felt something other than rage.

He felt purpose.

He stepped forward.

The mountain trembled in response.