For every man, his father is the first idol. Before kings. Before gods. Before the world teaches him what strength is allowed to look like. A father is the first measure. The shape a boy silently compares himself against, even when he pretends indifference. The voice that lingers long after it falls quiet. The standard that never needs to announce itself, yet quietly governs everything. Imann had grown beneath that standard without ever naming it. His father never called himself great. He never demanded awe or obedience. He worked with steel and wood, patience earned through ten thousand repetitions. He forged swords for men who would later sing their own songs, then came home with scarred, steady hands. Content to sharpen tools, mend what was broken, sit in silence by the fire. A sword-maker. A warrior. A man who stood when others bent. And now that man was gone. --- Imann's eyes fixed on the place where the world had split open. The shape was wrong. The stillness was wrong. Reality felt misaligned, as though something vital had been torn out without explanation. His breath caught once. Then stopped. Warmth touched his cheek. Fleeting, meaningless. He felt it without understanding, like a memory from someone else's life. His vision tunneled. The edges of everything folded inward, darkness swallowing from behind his own eyes. It was not unconsciousness. It was absence.
Every sound vanished at once. The battlefield. The screams, the iron clashing, the wet rip of flesh. All of it fell silent as though it had never been. In its place came memory, sharp and uninvited. A smaller Imann beside the forge, blinking through smoke. A large hand closing over his, correcting his grip. A low voice: "Steel does not answer anger. It answers patience." The memories arrived faster, overlapping, spilling over one another. His father's quiet laugh at something no one else noticed. His father stepping between him and danger without drama, without hesitation. The steady thump of his father's heartbeat under his palm during a storm long ago. Granite. Unbreakable. And then --- The ground shuddered. The vibration cut through the haze like a blade. Hooves. Heavy. Coming fast. Imann lifted his head slowly. An enemy rider had turned back. The horse charged across the torn field, neck low, nostrils flaring steam into the cold. The rider leaned forward, committed. Sword already raised in a high, diagonal arc meant to split helm and skull in one clean stroke. Imann was still on his knees. The world narrowed to twenty paces. Fifteen. Ten. There was no fear. No calculation. Something inside him simply shifted.
He stood. Not hurried. Not frantic. The movement was calm, inevitable, as though his body had only been waiting for permission it no longer required. The horse closed. Five paces. Imann stepped left. Inside the charging line. Raised his sword in a single, rising arc. Steel met steel with a clean, ringing crack. He angled the parry outward, letting the enemy's momentum carry the blade harmlessly past his shoulder instead of fighting its force. The rider overextended. His upper body lurched forward. Imann was already turning. Hips snapping, he continued the circle. Blade traveling low to high, catching the horse's front right cannon bone just above the hoof. The cut was precise: deep enough to sever tendon and nick bone, not so deep it would lodge. The horse shrieked. Its leg folded mid-stride. Momentum became betrayal. The animal pitched forward, neck stretched, hindquarters still driving. Rider and mount cartwheeled together. Iron clanging, limbs thrashing, a violent tumble of muscle and armor. They crashed into the mud with bone-breaking force. The horse rolled over its ruined leg. The rider was pinned half beneath the thrashing bulk, gasping wetly. The air was thick with the reek of opened bowels and hot iron, of blood cooling fast in the cold air. Imann did not rush. He walked forward three measured steps. Mud sucked at his boots. The rider clawed at the earth with gauntleted hands, trying to drag himself free. Breath came in panicked, ragged bursts beneath the weight. Imann reached up with his left hand and drew his helmet down. The steel settled over his face with a soft metallic click. Sealing away the last traces of the boy who had knelt there moments before. The rider looked up. Saw only a dark visor and the smoke-choked sky behind it. Imann raised his sword in both hands.
No flourish. No words. He stepped once. Into distance. The blade fell in a clean vertical line. It entered just above the collarbone, drove through mail and padding, and stopped only when the crossguard kissed steel. The rider's body jerked once. Sharp, final. Then went slack. Imann withdrew the sword with a slow, practiced pull. Blood ran down the fuller in dark channels. He stood motionless. The battlefield kept roaring. Indifferent, endless. But inside Imann a door had closed with absolute quiet. No tears. No roar. No trembling. Only one thing remained, carved deep and wordless: Kill. --- The grief had not left him. It had simply changed shape. Hardened into something colder, more permanent. And the war. The real war. Had only just begun inside him.