Chapter 1
Scorchland Town lay beneath a bright spring sky that seemed almost unrelated to the land below. Above, clouds drifted peacefully; below, the ground was cracked, dry, and lifeless, as though it had forgotten how to grow anything at all. The Kingdom of Korgat kept its most unwanted people here, far from its wealthier regions, where survival itself felt like a quiet form of punishment.
Erick, fifteen, stood inside the small hut he shared with his family. The air was thick, warm, and stale. Outside, the land stretched in broken patches of dust and stone. He had learned to treat each day as routine, even when the routine carried weight that did not belong to a boy his age.
By midmorning, he was at the family field a mile away. The soil resisted everything. Still, yams, carrots, potatoes, and a lone mango tree survived stubbornly. Erick worked slowly, careful not to damage what little grew. When he finished, the harvest was enough to last a week. That was rare enough to feel like luck.
On the way back, he stopped at Arthur’s land. A simple exchange followed—food for a rabbit—no ceremony, just necessity. They walked together toward the market square, where voices usually gathered.
But today, the square was wrong.
It was quiet.
Royal guards stood in the center. A familiar figure lay before them: the butcher, a man known for fair trade and steady hands. Now he was on the ground, each strike of the whip breaking the silence like cracked stone. People nearby watched without stepping forward, as if distance could erase memory.
Erick stopped before he meant to. Arthur pulled him back behind a wall.
“Don’t stay here,” Arthur murmured.
Yet Erick looked again. The butcher tried to rise, failed, and steadied himself on shaking arms. The guards spoke casually, as if nothing unusual was happening. The crowd did not react, but their stillness felt strained, like something held too tightly.
Arthur’s voice stayed low. “We leave now.”
Erick followed, but slowly. The square seemed to tighten around them even as they moved. Every sound—the whip, the guards’ voices, the shifting dust—felt controlled, deliberate, part of something practiced.
A vendor’s stall sat abandoned, fruit spilling from crates, untouched. No one stepped forward to fix it. No one looked for long.
Arthur muttered, “It’s not random.”
Erick didn’t answer. He watched the butcher’s hands scrape the ground, searching for stability that wasn’t there.
A guard shifted position. The crowd adjusted instinctively, like a body reacting to pain before the mind names it. Erick realized then that nothing in the square was accidental. Even fear moved in patterns.
When they finally turned away, the sound followed them.
Only after reaching the broken outskirts did Arthur speak again. “They stopped warning people first.”
Erick frowned. “Then what now?”
Arthur looked at the ground. “Now they just show what happens.”
Wind moved through collapsed structures around them, carrying dust like memory refusing to settle. Erick glanced back once, though the square was gone from view.
“The butcher didn’t deserve that,” he said quietly.
Arthur replied, “Deserve has stopped being useful.”
They continued toward home. A group of boys near a ditch pretended to search the ground but watched them instead. No one spoke. Everyone understood something different, yet acted the same.
The farms reappeared in the distance—patches of stubborn survival against an unwilling land. Smoke rose thinly into the sky, vanishing before it could mean anything.
Erick adjusted his sack of food. “What happens next?” he asked.
Arthur didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, “People stop forgetting as quickly.”
Erick looked ahead. He did not fully understand, but he felt the shape of change settling into the space behind them, where the square no longer was but still existed in sound, in thought, in silence shared between two boys walking home.
Arthur and Erick walked the rest of the way in silence, but it was no longer the same kind of silence they were used to. Before, silence meant routine. Now it felt like something was listening back.
When they reached the fork where their paths split, Arthur paused. He looked at Erick for a moment longer than necessary, as if deciding whether words were worth the risk.
“They won’t stop at him,” Arthur said at last, voice flat.
Erick tightened his grip on the sack. “Who?”
Arthur did not answer directly. He glanced toward the direction of the square instead. “People like him. People people trust.”
Erick watched Arthur turn away, then stop again. “If nothing changes,” Arthur added, “it becomes normal. That’s the worst part.”
He left before Erick could respond.
Erick stood there longer than he should have, feeling the weight of the day settle into his shoulders. The wind moved through the fields, bending dry grass that barely qualified as living. Somewhere behind him, life in Scorchland continued as if nothing had shifted at all.
But Erick noticed small things now. How people avoided standing too close together. How conversations stopped when guards passed. How even the animals seemed quieter near the square.
When he finally reached home, his family was already outside. No one asked immediately about the harvest. Instead, they looked at him, searching his face for something he did not know how to describe.
He set the sack down.
Only then did someone ask what happened in town.
Erick hesitated. The words felt heavier than the events themselves. “The butcher,” he said simply.
No one spoke after that.
Inside the hut, the air felt even tighter than before. Erick sat near the doorway, staring out at the land that never seemed to change. Yet he knew something had already shifted. Not in the ground. In the people.
Far away, beyond the broken fields and dust, the square remained unseen. But it was not gone.
It stayed.
And somewhere in Scorchland Town, the memory of the whip began to spread quietly, carried by people who said nothing aloud but understood everything now without saying a word
