The old man had nothing left. His family, his only companions, had all passed in their own time. His wife, long ago, to sickness. His sons, one to fever, the other to the blade of a wandering soldier. The land that they had worked, farmed, and bled for had withered, and he had nothing to show for it. The barn lay in ruin, the animals long dead, and the house now rotting under the weight of years. There was only the cold.
It was not the cold that unsettled him the most, though. It was the silence. A silence that now felt like a void, stretching on with no end. There was no one left to speak to, no reason to wake in the mornings. His bones were stiff, his hands trembled when he reached for his axe, but he still did. He still worked the land as if some faint hope might blossom from it. But it never did. He hacked at the dirt with a strength he did not know he had. And each time the soil gave way, he found himself more hollow.
It was in one of those moments, standing before the broken remnants of his once fertile garden, that the first crack appeared. At first, it was just a whisper in his mind, a fleeting thought like the rustle of dry leaves. But it grew. It became louder, pressing against his skull until it was all he could hear. "You are alone," it said, "and you will be alone forever."
The man's fingers tightened around his axe. He swung it into the ground with force, a thudding noise that seemed to echo longer than it should. The weeds broke apart under the steel edge, and something deep inside him broke with them.
The first night, he was visited by a figure. It was only a shadow, barely more than a blur, but he knew who it was. His wife. She stood there, silent, her eyes hollow, her mouth open but not speaking. She didn't have to. He knew what she wanted to say. He had failed them. All of them. There was no salvation.
He let out a sharp breath, clutching the axe tighter, and the figure was gone. But the weight, that unspoken command to do something, to feel, remained.
The man did not sleep that night. He couldn't. The silence pressed against him, the house groaned under the cold, and his bones ached for something he could not name. The whispers came back, louder now. They rattled his thoughts like chains in the wind. He could hear the voices of his family again, their laughter, their cries. And somewhere beneath it, there was something else. Something darker.
When dawn came, he felt something change in him. It wasn't a thought, not a decision. It was a pull, something that gripped his chest and filled him with a fire he had not known for years. He couldn't place it. The need to do something. To be something. Anything.
By midday, he was standing before the village, holding the axe, his hands shaking, not from age, but from something else, something that he could not hold back. He hadn't felt this strength in years. It was not his own. It was something else. The axe rose, falling down with a force that split the wood of a nearby fence.
The first man he encountered was a farmer, one who had never seen him before. He did not flinch when the old man's eyes locked onto his. Instead, the farmer only frowned, scratching his head at the strange sight. "Old man, what's going on with you?" he asked, but there was no answer. No words came.
The old man gripped the axe tighter, and in a single motion, he swung it. The axe connected with the man's chest with a sickening crack. The farmer's body flew back, crashing into the side of a barn. The force of the impact was so strong that part of the barn collapsed. The man's body was a twisted, broken heap. But the old man didn't stop. He couldn't. Something was pulling at him, an overwhelming rage, a hunger, one that could not be sated by a single death.
He moved through the village like a storm, though no one had time to see it coming. They didn't know what hit them. The villagers screamed, tried to flee, but he tore through their houses. Walls splintered as though they were nothing but paper, and limbs snapped as if they were twigs. The old man felt no pain, no fatigue. He felt nothing but the pull, that insistent drive to crush, to destroy.
The children cried for their mothers, their fathers, but the old man only moved faster. His hands had become monsters, tearing into everything around him. The ground seemed to shudder with each swing of his axe. Nothing could stop him. His skin felt like stone, his muscles like iron, and his breath was a ragged sound in the air as he struck again and again.
He felt powerful, unstoppable, as though something beyond his own mind was controlling him, pushing him forward, driving him further into madness.
It wasn't until the church bell rang that he stopped.
For a moment, the sound brought him back. His breath slowed, and his hands trembled again, but not from age. It was the first time in hours that he had felt his body. It was the first time he felt fear. The bell tolled again, and the memories returned—the memories of his wife and sons. Of a life that had been taken from him, piece by piece.
His hands fell to his sides. The axe dropped to the ground with a dull thud.
From the shadows, the village priest approached, his robes dark and wet with blood. The old man didn't move as the priest came closer, his feet slow and deliberate on the broken dirt. The priest stopped just a few feet away, and in his eyes, the old man saw something he had not seen in years—fear. Not fear of the old man, but fear of what he had become.
"You... you are not a man anymore," the priest whispered.
The old man stared at him. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He had no words left. No strength to reply. He could still hear the screams of the villagers in his head, still feel their bones breaking under his hands. His chest ached, and something inside him cracked again, deeper this time.
The priest stepped back slowly, raising his hands in front of him. "We must end this," he said, his voice trembling. "You are cursed."
The old man did not react. He could feel it. He had become something else, something terrible. But it did not matter anymore. The darkness had swallowed him whole.
It was then, as the priest turned to leave, that the old man felt the pull again. It was so strong, so consuming, that he couldn't ignore it. He raised his axe once more, but it was no longer an axe. It was a tool of destruction, and his hands were its vessel.
The priest turned, his eyes wide with horror, as the old man swung the weapon at him. The blow landed with such force that the priest's body splintered like a broken doll. The man was dead before his feet even hit the ground.
And still, the old man moved, his body a wreck of cracked bones and shredded skin. He moved toward the village square, toward the center of everything. It was no longer clear whether he was alive or dead. But he did not care.
As night fell, the last of the villagers lay dead. The streets were silent once again, save for the faint creaking of the wind against the ruined houses. The old man stood in the center of the town, his chest heaving, his breath shallow. His body ached, but there was no release. No end.
The weight of it all settled on him, and as the night closed in, the old man finally understood. He had become the very thing he had feared. The very thing that had taken everything from him.
He looked down at his hands, still trembling, still stained with the blood of those who had once been his neighbors. He felt nothing. No remorse. No guilt. Just emptiness.
It was then that the silence came. The same silence that had driven him to this madness. It was deafening. It was a void that would never be filled. And in that silence, the old man stood alone.
Alone forever.