It had been nearly twenty summers since Callum first took up the Ark, though it was getting harder to tell one season from the next.

  His steps were slower now, his face weathered and lean, but his back was still strong beneath the burden. The path had carried him farther than any map the learned men had knew to chart, past ghost towns, through salt winds along the desolate coasts and across lands too still to be called alive.

  To Callum's surprise, one morning, the path once again turned soft beneath his feet. Grass, thin but living. Trees that still bore some leaves. The smell of smoke but not from war, instead a hearth.

  Callum blinked against the light poking from beyond the clouds, the air warmer here than it had been in weeks. A vast plain stretched before him, home to a simple cabin sticking out amongst the landscape. Around it stood old fencing, barely holding in a few restless chickens. A narrow garden stretched alongside the porch, sprouting stubborn greens.

  He saw a skinny, young boy of maybe eight summers chopping wood with an axe simply too large for him. A woman, slight of build with hair the color of charcoal mixed with streaks of silver, stringing herbs along the outside of the cabin to dry.

  They saw him coming and yet did not flinch. He reached the fence with slow, careful steps. The boy looked to the older woman, nervously. The woman, older than Callum but not by much judging by the wrinkles breaking up her otherwise soft expression, set down her woven basket of herbs and called gently, “You’re a long way from the road, stranger.”

  “That may be, but my path has brought me here all the same,” Callum said flatly.

  She nodded once with a slight grin, confused by his matter of fact attitude and odd way of speaking. "Well, it would be rude not to offer you something for your travels. Iason, go put the kettle on for our guest."

  Inside, the house was warm. They gave him tea, bread and a seat by the fire. Callum hated to admit it to himself, but the fire's warmth felt wonderful on his old bones. He stared at his legs for a bit, seeing the tell tale signs of age on himself, but then pushed those thoughts aside.

  The road had been long. The path, unkind. But he still had a purpose and so long as he bore the Ark, he would endure.

  She sat in a chair beside him, and they talked while Iason listened intently. Her name was Amara. Her husband had passed some winters ago. She hadn’t seen a traveler in almost as many, especially one as odd looking as Callum with his Ark. As such, they knew little of the outside world. They didn’t know the names of the Four Nations. Didn’t know about the war that raged for centuries. Didn’t know who the gods were, let alone that they were gone.

  Stolen story; please report.

  They only knew the crops had grown weaker. That the stars seemed dimmer. That traders didn’t come from the mountains anymore.

  “What happened?” she asked him, when the fire crackled low and Iason had fallen asleep beside it, snuggled into his patchwork blanket.

  Callum told her - gently. Not every horrid detail, not every loss. That with the death of the gods came the death of magic. Without magic, the world began to unravel around them. And that the burden he bore was somehow the only remaining hope, but that no one - not even the learned men of old knew what that hope meant.

  When he spoke of the Ark, Amara stared at it like it was something sacred, reverent yet with a somewhat fearful gaze. Some relic from a world of magic that they never knew. “And what kind of gods,” she cried softly, “would let the world end like this?”

  Callum shook his head, for he had no answer. He only looked into the fire and let the warmth wash over his tired bones.

  Before dawn, he rose as he felt the Ark's call to continue the path. He knew the feeling well by now: the tightening beneath his ribs, his breath that came heavier than it should. The slow ache in his shoulders, throbbing under the strain of the leather straps. It was how the Ark reminded him - Move, the path awaited.

  He stepped outside and paused at the gate, surprised to find Iason already there. The boy stood barefoot in the dew, wrapped in his father’s old cloak.

  Iason, eying Callum with wonder and admiration, asked plainly, "Are you a hero?"

  Callum knelt beside him. “No. Just someone who bears a burden.”

  The boy hesitated. “Can you fix it? The world, I mean. I... overheard you and Mama talkin' last night.”

  Callum gave a small, tired smile. “And here we thought you were fast asleep.”

  He looked toward the horizon, then back at the boy. “The world… I don’t know. But I’ll follow the path to its end. And wherever the Ark is meant to go - I’ll see it there. That much, I can promise.”

  Iason smiled and pressed something into his hand - a small hunk of bread. His own portion from the previous night’s meal.

  Callum’s heart sank.

  These people had so little. No wealth, no safety. And yet, they gave freely to a stranger - because it felt right. They had no understanding of the gods nor the sins or arrogance of the Four Nations. And yet, they would suffer the same fate as those that destroyed this world. It wasn’t fair. The Ark tugged at his back, insistent. But for the first time in years, Callum resisted. He stayed.

  He cleared the rot from their well. Helped weed the garden of vines and thorns. Mended the sagging fence and rebuilt the chickens’ roost. The Ark’s pull only grew heavier each day, its demands louder. Still, Callum endured - gritting through the pain in his joints, through the creeping sense of guilt and the whispering fear that he was straying from the path.

  He endured until he could no longer.

  With a quiet, bitter breath, he told Amara and Iason that it was time. The path waited. It had been only a month, but one that he would remember for years to come.

  Amara and Iason stood at the edge of the field and watched Callum disappear over the horizon. They couldn’t call out, knowing his purpose.

  He couldn’t look back, knowing his path.

  But his heart remained, buried deep in the earth of that quiet homestead - where the world, for a little while, had still felt alive.