Chapter 31 The Virtue of Patience
I submitted to my arrest.
And that was everything that happened in Ishval… at least, everything worth telling out loud.
The rest, you must already know.
Thus ended his account. Not with a guilt-laden confession nor a plea for leniency, but with an unsettling, almost elegant serenity. Solf J. Kimblee remained seated on the other side of the iron table, his hands calmly folded, his back straight despite the years of confinement. The yellowish light of the hanging lamp cast irregular shadows across his angular face, accentuating a smile that never quite fully formed.
The general closed the folder with a sharp sound.
"The stone was lost after that," Kimblee continued, as if the silence made him uncomfortable. "They took it. And it no longer exists."
There was no trace of regret in his voice. Saying it was, to him, as simple as stating a historical fact—like mentioning the fall of an empire or the death of a distant star. The general watched him closely, searching his gestures for any sign of deception, any crack in that polished façade of absolute conviction. He found none.
"Disappointing," the officer finally murmured, more to himself than to his prisoner. "I was expecting something more… concrete."
Kimblee tilted his head, amused.
"Disappointment is a natural consequence of expectations, General. It always has been."
The general sighed and stood up. He adjusted his uniform with a mechanical gesture and picked up his cap from the table.
"I'll return another day, Kimblee. Perhaps then you can offer me more details. For now… this is all I need to know."
He paused for a moment before leaving, looking at him one last time.
"I'll be taking my leave, Mr. Kimblee. I'll be visiting you."
The metal door slammed shut behind him with a crash that echoed down the corridor. Moments later, the bars of the cell opened just enough to allow Kimblee to return to his usual confinement. The guard avoided meeting his eyes. No one enjoyed remaining too long near Solf J. Kimblee—not even those trained to watch monsters.
That night, the prison's silence was thicker than usual. Only the distant echo of footsteps and the persistent dripping of some broken pipe kept Kimblee company in his cell. He sat on the cot, resting his elbows on his knees, and from within his clothes he withdrew a small object wrapped in cloth.
The Philosopher's Stone.
It no longer shone as it once had. Its deep red seemed dimmed, almost asleep, like a weary heart that still refuses to stop beating. Kimblee held it between his fingers with an almost reverent delicacy, turning it slowly to watch how the scant light filtered into its interior.
"How ironic," he whispered. "So much power reduced to a memory."
He closed his eyes for a moment, and in his mind the images returned with cruel clarity: explosions tearing open the skies of Ishval, screams blending with the roar of fire, bodies falling like poorly placed pieces on a chessboard. The war had been a perfect symphony of destruction—and he, its most devoted conductor.
He longed for that again.
Not the war itself, but what it represented: the honest clash of wills, the naked truth that only emerges when all that is superfluous has been reduced to ashes. Destruction was not chaos; it was revelation. And Kimblee knew, with absolute certainty, that the world had not yet finished revealing itself.
He looked at the stone once more and smiled.
He knew that if he remained there, something greater would come. It always did. The world cannot tolerate vacuums for long, and when balance tips too far to one side, inevitable forces are set in motion to correct it. He had been one of those forces… and he would be again.
Escaping would be simple. Even in that state, even without the stone at full power, Kimblee had the ability and the intelligence to do it. But what would be the point? To flee meant to be hunted, and pursuit lacked elegance. Being chased was not fun; it was predictable.
No—remaining there was far more interesting.
If he escaped, they would never stop looking for him. They would turn his name into a file, his face into a poster, his existence into an administrative nuisance to be eliminated as quickly as possible. Instead, imprisoned, occasionally forgotten, tolerated out of necessity… he became an anomaly. A latent problem. An unexploded bomb.
And bombs, Kimblee thought with satisfaction, were always most beautiful when they exploded at the right moment.
He put the stone away again, carefully concealing it. He lay back on the cot, folding his hands behind his head, staring at the cracked ceiling of the cell. Each fissure looked like an incomplete map, a promise of paths yet to be walked.
"Sometimes," he murmured to himself, "one must be patient."
He closed his eyes, and for the first time in a long while, he did not dream of explosions. He dreamed of the silence before the blast—that perfect, suspended instant in which everything is still possible.
(End of the chapter)