The Silent Village
Our footsteps kept carrying us north. Ahead of us stretched an endless wasteland.
The ground had cracked open as though the parched earth were screaming of its thirst, and the wind, hauling sand along with it, slowly erased the footprints the two of us left behind.
Look in any direction and there was nothing to see. No trees — not even bandits. Not a single trace that anyone had ever lived here.
Then again, in this ruined world, that was scenery as ordinary as it came.
Lebetri walked on without rest, her eyes fixed on one direction and one direction only: north.
Time passed in nothing but footsteps. Only the crunch of our steps filled the vast wasteland. And somewhere in that silence, a strange thought flickered across my mind.
Wait a second.
Watching Lebetri's back, one question occurred to me. Does this girl actually know the way?
She had told me exactly one thing since we set out.
'North.'
That was all. She'd said the lab was in the north — nothing about where it was, how long it would take, or what might be waiting along the way. Not a word.
Unease crawled up my spine. What if. Just what if... she knew nothing more than the word itself?
I peered into the future at once.
At first, it looked exactly like the present. Walking across the wasteland. And walking more. When the sun set, we walked again. Our food dwindled a little at a time, and a few days on, all that remained was a bottle filled with rainwater.
Lebetri said nothing at all. She simply kept walking north.
The me of that future tried to lighten the mood with a joke, but all that left my mouth was a dry swallow instead of laughter.
Another day. Another day.
Our legs began to give out. Vision buckled, lips split, throats burning away to nothing. And then Lebetri collapsed.
The me of that future shook her, over and over. Nothing happened.
Come back from that future, I couldn't manage a single word. Cold sweat was sliding down my spine.
'What the hell is this?'
It was too pathetic for words. The grand goal she'd spoken of — revenge — was going to end with her starving to death. That was it.
I dragged a hand down my face and let out a long sigh.
"Hahh..."
Lebetri glanced back over her shoulder.
"What?"
Doing my best impression of a man completely at ease, I asked:
"Heading north is fine and all, but..."
She said nothing.
"Can we actually make it to the lab with the food we've got?"
Lebetri blinked, as if she had no idea what I meant.
"Food?"
"Yeah. Food."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?"
A laugh nearly escaped me at the sheer absurdity.
"Because we have to eat to live!"
"Oh...."
Lebetri mulled it over for a second, then answered as if it were nothing at all.
"The answer'll come if we just keep walking."
Delivered in the tone of someone remarking that the sky was blue.
For a moment, nothing came out of my mouth. Then:
"Hold on..."
I stared at her, dead in the eye.
"Don't tell me..."
"What?"
"You didn't pack any food?"
"Nope. It's heavy."
So brazen about it. No — was that innocence? It landed in the same register as, 'Hehe, the sky's so blue today.'
I stood there with a hand clamped over my mouth, and Lebetri, of all things, tilted her head and asked me right back:
"Why?"
"You mean that seriously?"
"Yep."
"..."
I pressed a palm to my forehead. This girl is going to drive me insane.
Of course I had food on me. Just nowhere near enough for a long-distance journey.
The future resurfaced in my head. Starving to death. And in the most pointless way imaginable.
I steadied my breath and spoke.
"As things stand right now, we can't make it."
"Okay?"
"I'm stating the obvious here."
"Then is there a way?"
"That's what I'm about to start thinking ab—"
Lebetri studied me for a moment.
"Useless."
"Hah?"
"You just said there's no way, as of right now."
She turned and kept walking. I froze on the spot.
It was an offhand remark. But for me, it was an enormously important one.
To Lebetri, I was a man who shot well. Nothing more, nothing less.
To get back to Utopia, I needed her — absolutely. But she didn't need me. Without me, she could simply go save some other person.
Which meant... the answer was to become necessary. To become someone who couldn't be replaced.
I closed my eyes. Countless futures and streams of information began pouring through my mind, snapping into place like puzzle pieces.
Then a single scene caught my eye. And the instant I saw it, my eyes opened.
"There's a small village around here somewhere."
Lebetri's steps stopped.
"So?"
"We get food there."
"..."
"And whatever else we'll need for a long trip."
"You sure?"
I shrugged.
"Information."
Tapping a finger against my temple, I went on.
"I know more about this world than anyone else in it."
"...Then lead the way."
With that, I changed course. Not north. My direction.
That village wasn't the closest one around, no. It wasn't the biggest, either. Nor the safest.
But I knew the answer to one question: which path gained the most and lost the least.
The power to see the future doesn't exist so you can fell strong enemies. It exists so you can cross the worst options off the list, one by one.
And so we started down our very first detour.
How long did we follow Sapi? At the far edge of the endless wasteland, a high wall rose into view.
It had been built of packed earth and stone, layer upon layer. Years of sand-laden wind had gnawed its surface rough, but there wasn't a single collapse or break anywhere on it.
Beyond the wall, buildings big and small stood packed shoulder to shoulder. A village where people lived — clearly.
"There really is a village."
"Well... yeah."
Sapi took a beat before admitting it. In all our crossing of the wasteland, he had never once checked our direction. With no signposts and no roads, he had simply turned without a flicker of hesitation — and arrived here, precisely.
I stared at the back of his head with open suspicion.
"You been here before?"
"No."
"Then how did you know the way?"
"Told you already, didn't I?"
Sapi tapped a finger against his temple.
"I know a lot of things."
"That's not an explanation."
"Yeah. It means I can't be bothered to explain."
He flashed an easy, slippery grin and started toward the village. My face must have made my displeasure plain, but in the end I followed after him.
The closer we got, the more oddities surfaced, one by one. A watchtower stood atop the wall — the kind sentries would use.
No one was up there.
No guards patrolled the wall. No shout of warning rang out at the sight of strangers. The only thing moving up there was a tattered old flag, fluttering forlornly in the wind.
We stopped and looked around.
"Something's wrong."
"Hm? Like what?"
Sapi, playing dumb as ever.
"I don't see a single person."
"Maybe they're all asleep?"
"The entire village?"
At the doubt written plainly across my face, Sapi drew a pistol from his coat and raised it toward the sky.
BANG!!!!
He fired.
"Sapi, what are you doing?"
"Checking."
Pistol in hand, he crossed his arms and simply watched the top of the wall. Time crawled past. Nobody came.
"Yep. Just like you said — there's not a soul here."
"Then... did a monster attack it?"
Sapi heard me out.
"Unlikely."
"Why?"
He pointed at the wall.
"A monster strong enough to wipe out an entire village would have smashed through a flimsy barrier of dirt and stone like this."
"Then did they run off for some reason?"
"Hm... could be."
He walked to the main gate and pushed it open as he spoke.
"Only one way to find out. We go in and check."
"Wait!"
I grabbed his arm.
"What is it, Lebetri?"
"We're really just going to walk in?"
"We came all this way for food — you'd rather stand at the gate and sightsee?"
"We don't know what's in there."
"Which is exactly why we check."
And with that, Sapi began walking into the village. I hesitated for a moment — then marked this spot as my save point and followed him in.
Contrary to every expectation, the village was clean. Most of the buildings lining the streets looked perfectly sound. Not one broken window; not one burned house in sight.
Goods still sat on display outside the shops — withered vegetables, worn clothes, tools furred with dust. In front of a house, scraps of cloth that had been washed and dried stiff still hung from the clothesline.
Nothing about it suggested people fleeing in a panic. It was as if everyone had simply vanished, between one heartbeat and the next.
"So quiet."
I said it under my breath. Sapi didn't answer.
He was staring down at the street. Unlike the parched waste outside, the ground within the village had hardened to mud in patches. It must have rained not long ago — and pressed into that baked mud were countless footprints.
Hundreds of traces, all converging toward the center of the village.
"Looks like the people all gathered in one place."
Sapi said.
"A festival or something?"
"Doesn't something feel off, though — for a festival that just ended?"
We followed the footprints toward the heart of the village. The deeper we went, the more the air thickened with an unpleasant smell. I scrunched my face.
"This smell..."
At the center of the village lay a wide plaza. And across the middle of it, people had fallen in droves.
"......!"
I stopped dead where I stood.
Bodies were strewn across the entire plaza. Men and women. The old and the young.
But they bore nothing like the marks of an ordinary fight. Nearly all of them had legs twisted grotesquely out of shape. Knees and ankles wrecked, as if they'd been driven far past their limits for hours on end. Dark red residue crusted onto their feet.
I took in the sight and opened my mouth slowly.
"These people..."
I couldn't finish the sentence. It looked as though every last one of them had repeated the same motion, right up until the moment they died.
Sapi walked slowly toward the center of the plaza. He crouched beside a corpse and examined its legs.
"They died moving."
"Moving?"
"And not for an hour or two, either."
He swept a hand across the ground. In the plaza's mud, footprints lay layered so thickly they were beyond counting.
They were not tracks of forward progress. They were prints of the same ground stepped on, circled, and stepped on again.
Layer upon layer: the traces of dozens of villagers moving in circles inside this plaza.
Sapi looked out across the whole of it.
"These people... they were moving. Right here. The entire time."
"Why?"
"No idea why — but it doesn't look like it was their own will."
A sword hung at the waist of a man who must have been a town guard. It had never left its sheath.
It was the same for the others. The one carrying a gun showed no sign of a single spent round.
"Either they couldn't even think to fight..."
Sapi said,
"...or their bodies wouldn't let them."
I looked at a corpse whose arms had stiffened up at an awkward angle.
"It's almost like... they were dancing."
"...."
Sapi didn't answer. But the traces left in the plaza were answer enough.
Mud baked hard. Footprints layered beyond counting. Ruined legs. People felled mid-dance.
Whatever the reason, they had kept on dancing.
For a day. Maybe two. Until their bodies could endure not one step more.
I looked at them, scattered across the plaza, and said what I felt.
"It's revolting..."
Whether I said it or not, Sapi was already walking off somewhere.
Toward a corpse dressed in cloth finer than the rest — several rings on its fingers, and at its chest an ornament that looked to be the emblem of the village.
"The chief, maybe?"
Lying close to the man's hand was a single hammer with a black handle. Too strangely shaped to pass for an ordinary tool.
Sapi lifted it.
"It's an artifact."
I came closer.
"These 'artifacts' of yours... is there a way to tell them apart?"
"There is. Though not what they can do."
Sapi turned the hammer over this way and that. On one side of its head was a dark red stain of old blood, as if it had been brought down hard on something, long ago.
He paid it no mind — just slipped the hammer into his coat and rose to his feet.
"You're taking that?"
"Dead men can't use it, can they?"
"Hm... fair enough."
"Right then — let's go find food and the rest of it. Valuables too, while we're at it."
"Well, we've gathered just about everything we need. Enough supplies to reach the next village with room to spare."
With that, Sapi made to leave the plaza.
I turned to follow him out — and then, without quite meaning to, looked back over my shoulder. The old cloths strung around the plaza swayed left, then right.
And somehow, the movement looked exactly like a woman dancing all alone. Quietly. Sadly.
"What is it?"
Sapi asked. I watched the plaza a moment longer, then shook my head.
"It's nothing."
And I followed behind him.