The morning stretched pale over the village of Kanar. The overcast sky hung like a formless omen.
A mist crept over the ground, mixing with the faint smoke from the morning fires that were still burning. The sound of burning wood was the only noise amid the silence that enveloped the village - a silence not of peace, but of resignation.
And even in this silence, there was something different that day.
The leaves were shaking in an unusual wind. Not cold, not hot - just... ancient. As if it carried echoes of a forgotten era.
The Kanar tribe, shrunken over generations, barely numbered a hundred members. Men with calloused hands and deep-set eyes. Women with bent shoulders and pale hope. Children used to running without smiling.
They lived among hidden mountains, isolated not by choice, but by rejection.
Ancient empires branded them savages. Distant lords stole their young men into the ranks of other people's wars. Even the healers of the plains refused to treat their wounded.
And yet, the Kanar remained.
Deep roots can withstand the worst storms - even if they stop flourishing.
In the center of the village, Ankar sat in his hand-carved chair. His fingers trembled discreetly. His eyes stared at the horizon without seeing - not out of blindness, but out of habit.
It was there, at that point in the village, that he awaited each new omen. The first crow. The first evening star. Or... the end.
But that day, it wasn't an omen that arrived - it was change itself.
A gentle pressure fell on the world.
The air grew thicker. The flames of the fires hesitated, as if revering something invisible. Even the animals fell silent: the birds, the dogs, the crickets. They all stopped.
And then it appeared.
Floating - not like some exotic sorcerer, but like a pillar that the sky itself seemed to support. A being from another world, another time.
His hair, long and red like living blood, danced like fire in the wind. His eyes - two seas frozen in light - hovered over the village with a serene intensity that was impossible to ignore.
The people stopped. Some fell to their knees. Others hid. Many just froze, not knowing whether to run or scream.
The younger ones had never felt anything like it: a presence that didn't just take up space, but imprinted reality on the surroundings.
It wasn't fear - it was awe mixed with insecurity.
Their world had been small, predictable. Now, that man transformed even the air they breathed.
"Who... is he?" murmured Elenor, one of the hunters, her hand instinctively resting on the dagger attached to her belt.
"A force," replied Ankar, without taking his eyes off Orion - "or perhaps... the end."
The man didn't speak immediately. He felt it. He felt the pain of those people as if it had been entrusted to him.
Every scar unseen. Every seed never harvested. Every child who left and never returned.
Time seemed to tell him stories directly.
『DING』
『Target found: Kanar tribe
Collective emotional state: fear, tension, contained expectation』
With a slight nod, Orion answered.
His aura, hitherto contained, expanded gently. Not like an explosion. Not like a demonstration. But like an invisible embrace.
The pressure disappeared. The air became clear. The fear... subsided.
Little by little, the suspicious eyes of the tribe began to fix on him with something new: curiosity.
Orion landed on the ground with a slight whisper of wind. The grass sprouted under his bare feet.
"Are you the Kanar Tribe?" he asked, his deep voice reverberating effortlessly, as if every rock around him echoed it.
Silence answered before Ankar could gather his strength.
"Yes... we are," his voice was hoarse but firm, "and you... are you a god?"
Orion walked slowly towards him. Each step seemed more human than the last. When he stopped in front of the old leader, there was no superiority in his gaze - only respect.
"No. I'm not a god. But I am someone who listened to them"
That simple sentence made the elders choke. The children stopped hiding.
Orion raised his hand and with it invoked the vision of the Eternal Empire.
Not an illusion, but a glimpse of the real thing. Palaces, immortal fields, celestial arenas, cosmic portals, academies of wisdom and power.
The tribe watched in sacred silence.
"That," said Orion, calmly, "is what I built. An empire where hunger will not win. Where the little ones will not be crushed. A place where you can start again"
Ankar dropped his staff. Not out of disrespect but because, for the first time in decades, he didn't need it to stand.
"Why us?"
Orion tilted his head, like someone admiring an old monument still standing after a thousand storms.
"Because empires aren't built with victors. They are built with those who survived"
The words penetrated deeply. Like a seed in the desert that, on hearing the rain, decides to germinate.
A child was the first to approach.
Then another.
And then Elenor released her grip on the dagger and took two steps. Her eyes were no longer filled with doubt - they were filled with something much more dangerous: hope.
The sun filtered through the mountain clouds with unusual softness. It was as if the sky itself was blessing the final moments of that forgotten village.
A time of farewell had begun, not with tears, but with busy hands and awakened hearts.
The Kanar Tribe, accustomed to the weight of scarcity, now moved with rhythm and purpose.
Where before the steps were dragged and the gestures resigned, now there was spirit.
The dry wooden huts began to be dismantled. Ropes were cut, utensils packed, tools retrieved from the bottom of the sheds. Children carried baskets; women organized supplies with a zeal they had never experienced before.
There was no hurry, but there was no hesitation either.
Orion stood in the center of the village, like a living statue of contained light. He watched in silence, as if waiting for the exact moment when fate would allow a new beginning.
Next to him, Ankar walked with slow but steady steps.
"They're moving..." said the old man, his voice hoarse but clear of despair "For the first time in years, they're moving... without fear"
"Fear is the toughest of prisons," Orion replied softly, "but when the spirit recognizes a new horizon, it begins to move... even before the body realizes it."
Ankar looked at him with watery eyes."I... almost gave up. I almost accepted that this generation would be the last. But then you came along. How do we know it's real?"
Orion stared at the sky for a moment. "You'll know because there are no more chains on your feet. Because your people begin to dream without having to ask permission."
The words penetrated deep into the old man. It was true. The air, the village, the sounds themselves - everything had changed. The invisible chains that suffocated his tribe had been broken.
On the other side of the square, a young man with black hair, Rikan, was gathering his mother's and sister's belongings.
His eyes were fixed not on the ground but on the horizon, on the path where Orion's golden portal would begin to form.
"Mom, did you see?" she said, almost in a whisper, "We're leaving all this. We're going to live in a place where no one calls us trash... where no one comes for us with chains. We'll be... free?"
Mom just nodded. She still couldn't speak. The lump in her throat was the same as when someone witnesses a miracle and fears waking up.
Orion approached them with the lightness of someone who respects the ground he walks on.
"Your name is Rikan?" he asked.
The boy turned around, startled by the proximity, but didn't run away.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you believe what you saw?"
"I... want to believe it. It's so big it looks like a lie."
Orion smiled with understanding.
"Then believe what you feel. Because sometimes the truth is bigger than any of us can explain."
Rikan nodded, his eyes now steady. He went back to work, with an energy that didn't come from his muscles, but from his heart.
Hours later, when the sun was hanging low in the sky, the portal finally opened.
It formed in front of the village's large wooden gate, now almost dismantled.
It was like a living window to another world: a golden arch of pure energy, surrounded by runes that danced like calm flames. The sound it emanated was quiet but deep - like the echo of a cosmic bell being rung on another plane of existence.
Orion stretched out his arm, leading the way "It's time"
Everyone gathered in front of the portal. Eyes wide. Hands interlocked. Even the most skeptical warriors were silent.
Ankar was the first to walk through.
He carried only his staff - now, no longer out of weakness, but as a symbol of transition.
As he passed through the portal, he felt something subtle. As if the weight of centuries had been lifted. His soul... was reborn.
"It's real," he murmured on the other side, tears flowing shamelessly
Rikan followed, holding his little sister's hand. She stopped for a moment, looked at Orion and said.
"Let's make this work. Let's honor her faith"
Orion just nodded.
One by one, the villagers crossed over.
Each carried their memories, but left behind the pain that had defined them for so long.
Tired-eyed women, men scarred by unjust battles, children who for the first time smiled without fear - all crossed the veil between a cruel world and a possible future.
When the last Kanar had passed, only Orion remained.
He took a slow step forward, looking at what had once been the village. Just shadows and empty structures. But also memories. Stories that had now found another home.
He raised a hand.
And with a simple gesture, the village dissolved into light, being absorbed into the earth with dignity.
"May the world remember where they came from"
And then he crossed the portal.
The golden arch disappeared like a breath of wind.
The valley returned to silence.