The wind brought no scent.
Only dust.
Kanan crouched low, stick in hand, searching between cracked rocks for a beetle or anything desperate enough to move. Nothing. Not even a gnat.
His stomach didn't growl anymore. Hunger had turned to silence. The kind that waited with empty hands.
He stood, limbs aching, and walked home. The ground didn't remember his footsteps.
The village had no name.
It was a place death forgot. Or ignored.
Kanan passed a crumbling hut. A woman stirred grey water in a pot, her child beside her crying — not loud, just tired. She dipped bark into the water and handed it over.
Ash water. Again.
"It's the taste that feeds the mind," she murmured. "Not the body."
She didn't look at Kanan. He kept walking.
The shrine wasn't a shrine anymore. Just a broken arch and the elder who sat beneath it like a forgotten root.
"Found anything?" the old man asked, not looking.
Kanan shook his head.
The elder chuckled, dry and hollow.
"Even the bugs are starving."
Kanan sat beside him, bone on stone.
"Tell me again," he said. "What it tasted like."
The elder reached into his pouch and pulled out a withered leaf.
"This went with rice," he said.
He crumbled it in his palm. The scent was faint — earthy, almost gone.
"Rice was warm. Soft. It didn't fight you. It filled you."
"Where did it come from?" Kanan asked.
"From the east," the elder whispered. "Past the salt winds. Beyond the hills that hum."
Kanan's voice dropped.
"Why don't we go?"
The elder looked at him, one eye milky, one sharp.
"Because they made sure we wouldn't."
That night, the fire in the village barely flickered. Smoke drifted in from the west.
A group had gone searching for food in the next valley. They came back with nothing. Rika didn't come back at all.
Kanan found Nilo, his little brother, sitting alone, knees to chest, dragging a finger through the dirt.
"He didn't even want to go," Nilo said.
"I told him it was stupid. But he said starving was dumber."
Kanan said nothing.
He remembered Nilo's question that morning:
"If someone found food, do you think they'd share it?"
And his own answer, blunt and tired:
"No one shares. Not anymore."
He wished he'd lied.
That night, Kanan sat by the hut, watching Nilo sleep beneath a threadbare cloth.
Then — his chest stopped rising.
Kanan crawled closer.
Pressed a trembling hand to his mouth.
Nothing.
"Nilo," he whispered.
Stillness.
He shook him.
"Nilo—!"
A sudden gasp. Nilo's eyes fluttered open.
"…sorry," he mumbled. "Just tired."
He turned away.
Kanan didn't move.
Not fear — terror.
Not of death, but of how quiet it nearly was.
How it almost took Nilo without a sound.
At dawn, he returned to the elder.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," the old man said.
"No," Kanan murmured.
"I saw someone still alive.
And it felt like mourning."
The elder reached into his pouch. Pulled out the leaf again.
"This," he said, "went with rice."
Kanan stared at it.
This time, it didn't look like memory.
It looked like a warning.
He didn't speak again.
But inside —
Something cracked open.
Not a decision.
Not yet.
Just a countdown.
[To Be Continued…]