When he opened his eyes, it felt like he had only blinked.
He sat up slowly, realising he was lying back on the dry, frozen grass of the lake's bank. He rubbed his itchy, blurry eyes and leaned over the water to wash his face.
He froze. The water was pure and calm, and his reflection was smooth and clear, as if there were two of him. He stared down at it in disbelief.
The dirty, oversized rags were entirely gone. In their place, he wore clean, heavy garments designed to block the biting wind. His face was washed, and his dark hair had been neatly braided away from his eyes.
In these clothes, he looked like a young nobleman, yet the transformation brought him no comfort.
He whipped his head around. The village of Kitegya had vanished. There was nothing now except a vast, empty lake stretching out to the horizon.
His memory of the place felt hazy, slipping away like a fading dream.
He clutched his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to force the recollections back. He knew he had just stood on those bone docks. After a few agonising moments of effort, a single, sharp image broke through the fog:
A woman smiling down at him, gently patting his head while he slept deeply.
She possessed the exact presence of the mother from the docks, but her face was entirely different. The children's faces had changed, too.
He sighed, stood, and found two paths diverging before him.
He realised these paths had not been there moments ago. Earlier, there had only been one way forward: the floating village.
He took a step toward the lake to inspect it.
Nothing unusual.
When he turned his gaze back, the world around him had shifted entirely. A different event had overtaken the landscape.
Crows materialised from nowhere, wheeling through the sky in a tight circle above a figure lying flat on his back, leaning against a tree.
The green man stood paralysed, watching in disbelief as a crow descended upon the prone man, communicating in a strange, guttural speech.
With another blink, the scene warped again into pure catastrophe.
Blood stained every surface, and fire consumed everything in sight. Screams echoed from all directions—behind him, far ahead, to his left, his right, and from above.
But he saw no one.
Assuming these were merely more phantom images like the ones before, the green-man stumbled backwards and collapsed onto the burning ground.
This time, it was not a memory.
It was real.
The flames caught him instantly, searing his flesh.
He screamed out in agony, losing his balance as he threw himself desperately into the lake.
The moment his body touched the water, the fire had already done its work.
As he squeezed his eyes shut against the searing pain, a lonely owl watched over him from a distant tree as the west devoured the last light.