"They burned everything… my child—what did you do, you bastard?!" For half an hour, she hurled curses at the young man. His body was thin and brittle, more like a dry branch than flesh, yet he did nothing to resist. "I don't know…" he muttered weakly, his hollow eyes fixed on the woman clutching a baby in her arms. The baby did not cry, did not move, yet its silence pressed harder than any scream, as if demanding a confession in the middle of a market that had already been reduced to ash.
The wind drifted through torn laundry, moving gently, but something about it felt wrong. It should have been cool, yet instead it burned against the skin. Perhaps even the air had changed after the looters came—after they took everything, set the village ablaze, and left nothing behind but the remains of a dead place.
"My child! You burned him! My husband! My home!" she screamed, kicking the young man's head as he slumped against the shattered remains of what used to be her stall wall. His ribs were visible beneath his skin, fragile and exposed, and the impact forced a broken sound from him before blood spilled from his mouth. Then, as if something inside her shifted, her voice softened in a way that did not belong to the moment. "My child… my child? Are you… are you alright, dear?"
"Mother… why did you burn our house?" His voice trembled, unsteady. "Why did you hit your own child? Why did you let my brother become food for the palace?" He paused, searching for something within himself that no longer felt whole. "I don't understand… but father—you burned him too, didn't you? Wasn't he the one who helped you sell me… for ten pieces of silver?"
"No… no, that's not true…" Her face turned pale. "Your father would never do that. He was a good man. I'm a good mother. You… you ran away, didn't you?" Her words clung desperately to a reality that no longer existed.
The young man turned his gaze away. What remained of the trees were nothing more than charred trunks and splintered branches. Even birds refused to land there, as if life itself rejected what humans had once nurtured so carefully. They said the kings had fled, that the continent had split in two, and that something had come with the light. Since then, even hunger had changed. Children starved, and those meant to protect them had begun to devour them instead.
After a long stretch of silence, the woman suddenly pulled him into an embrace. "My child… your name… what is your name? My name… who am I? Who am I?" She froze, her gaze falling upon the baby in her arms. Its face had been burned beyond recognition, soft flesh exposed, one eye gone, its breathing long since ceased. "I'm… the mother? You're my child? I'm still… alive?"
"Mother… why are you confused?" he let out a weak, broken laugh. "I'm your child… I've never been sad, Mother… now I'm your child… your child… looking for his mother…" His voice twisted as he spoke, slipping further with each word. Soon, everything became "mother" to him—even the corpse lying beside him.
Tears streamed down the woman's face as she stared at him—at something she could no longer recognize. She questioned herself, while he searched for a mother that no longer had a form. Then, all at once, others began to rise from beneath the rubble and from the edges of the ruined market. They looked around in confusion, their voices overlapping in fragments. "Who am I…?" "Where is my child…?" "Where are we?"
A voice suddenly cut through the chaos. "We are family!" A man rushed toward a random child, embracing them tightly and pressing a kiss onto their mud-stained forehead. Others followed, clinging to one another. Some smiled, some cried, and some began to strike others, mistaking them for the ones who had taken their "family." Others simply stood still, watching the madness unfold.
A child stepped forward, shouting with hollow authority, claiming himself to be a king. He cursed anyone who denied him, but no one argued for long. He was dragged away, thrown into the fire, and soon the smell of burning flesh spread quietly through the air. No one questioned it.
After the king was gone, the chaos did not stop. Then came the light from the west—blinding, overwhelming. Hunger deepened, thirst sharpened, animals rotted where they stood, and plants withered in an instant. The harvest turned to poison, and in the end, there was nothing left to rely on… except themselves.