Generations grew up without fear of walking at night.
Without prayers whispered desperately into the dark.
Without stories of endless hunger stalking the soul.
Children still feared monsters, but only the ones invented for bedtime stories. They did not inherit ancestral terror etched into bone.
This frightened some elders.
Peace, they warned, bred complacency.
They were not entirely wrong.
But it also bred curiosity.
And curiosity, unlike fear, could look outward without breaking.