The morning sun hung low above the barony walls, dull and pale, yet it burned him all the same.
He sat with the other old beggars near the cracked stone road, wrapped in rags that no longer felt like clothing but mere strings of fabric at the end of its stick.
The sun touched his skin and it stung—not sharply, not enough to cry out, but enough to make him shrink inward, shoulders curling as if he could fold himself smaller.
He hated the sun.
It made his skin crawl, made his head throb, made the world feel too loud and too bright. The others grumbled about the cold nights and aching bones, but he said nothing. Talking scraped his throat. His voice, when it came out, sounded wrong—too rough, too broken, like gravel dragged across stone.
One of the beggars laughed weakly, gums bare. "Maybe you've got amnesia," the old man said, waving a hand.
"They say it makes you forget things. Whole lives, even."
Amnesia. The word stuck.
The man mulled over it slowly, turning it in his head like a foreign coin. Forgetting everything that would explain it, wouldn't it?
He could remember only two months, nothing before that. No childhood, no family, no name worth keeping.
Just hunger, cold stone, and the certainty that he had always been like this—an old beggar rotting where he sat.
That must be it, he decided. Amnesia. What else could it be?
He looked down at his hands. They were thin, skin clinging to bone, veins dark and sharp beneath the surface. Old hands. Hands that should have stopped moving years ago.
When he caught his reflection once in a puddle, he had flinched. Sunken eyes, ashen skin and his beard, long, filthy, tangled like dead grass. Hair almost none and needlessly long if any. He hated it.
He hated the dirt ground into his skin no matter how much rain washed over him.
He hated the smell of himself. He hated the way people looked away too quickly—or stared too long.
Most of all, he hated that he was still alive. Yet he was too old, too tired, too worn down to understand why his body refused to give up.
When the sun began to dip, the light softening into something less cruel, he stood.
His legs protested, joints screaming, but he ignored them. No one noticed him leaving. Beggars came and went. Some never came back.
He walked past the barony walls, through the gates where guards barely spared him a glance, and into the quiet stretch of land beyond. The air cooled. The sky darkened.
With every step, his breathing grew steadier, calmer—almost relieved. The forest waited ahead.
This is fine, he thought.
If he was going to die, he wanted it to be somewhere quiet. Somewhere clean. Somewhere he could lie down and not feel like filth all around.
He found a small clearing, grass flattened by time and wind. Above him, the stars were beginning to appear. They felt cold, distant, yet beautiful to him.
He lay down slowly, staring upward. The breeze brushed against his face in a gentle, almost kind manner. For the first time that day, he did not feel the sun burning him.
"Maybe the next life will be better," he murmured, voice barely more than breath. His eyes closed. And the world held its breath with him.
He lay beneath the sky, half-buried in the soft grass. The stars shimmered faintly, scattered like dust over the infinitly vast cosmic marble, and the moon watched him from high above.
He wanted to sleep, not not wake again. Yet as his eyes closed, he noticed something… strange.The pain was easing.
The throbbing in his knees, the ache in his spine, the burning sensations in his joints felt like they were fading. Not gone, but lighter, gentler. His hands didn't tremble as much as they did under the sun. His breathing came easier.
He let out a quiet laugh that sounded more like a sigh. So it's the sun then, he thought. Never did suit me.
He rolled slightly onto his side, the cool air brushing against his face. It was the first time in what he could remember that rest didn't feel like punishment. The sound of wind through leaves lulled him into a strange calm, and before long, he drifted into sleep.
***
As the night slipped away, morning came, and with it returned the pain and the burns.
He had been sleeping peacefully, but the world did not want him comfortable. The sun rose into the sky, and a loud growl from his twisting stomach, mixed with the familiar pain, woke him in a not-so-pleasant manner.
He never liked the day.
He had once considered living as a creature of the night, but the nights in the barony were dangerous, and sleeping beneath the sun was worse. Anyone who saw him lying still would think him dead. Thin, filthy, unmoving—he already looked like a corpse.
He wanted to die, not be buried alive. So he forced himself to endure the pain of the day instead of living nocturnally. He gathered what little strength remained in his body and stood up. Whether he liked it or not, he was still alive.
His stomach curled in protest. His throat was dry. Though water never truly relieved his thirst, it was enough to remind him that his throat still existed. And so, out of habit, he made his way toward the estate's entry. The guards paid him no mind.
They were already tired, even though the day had only just begun. A walking corpse of a beggar entering or leaving the estate was beneath their concern. They were paid enough not to care.
As he walked toward the well used by beggars—isolated deep within the slum area, thoroughly neglected by the lord of the estate, as nobles tended to do—the pain from yesterday returned all at once.
His joints screamed with every movement, dpeaking hurt his throat, even his muscles cramped. The sun made his skin crawl, as if it rejected him outright. Even the shade offered little relief.
He had accepted this fate already, or so he believed.
He endured the pain silently, treating it as a normal part of life, because for him, as far back as he could remember, pain was normal. And his memories did not reach very far.
And so we counitued towards the well...