To tell you the truth, I'm just a guide in this story. Nothing more. The world is full of peace, but every peace has a price, and sometimes that price is the next generation's peace. This is the story of Zal Morgan. A boy destined to pay the debt of the generation before him.

  Let me tell you from the beginning.

  Zal was seven, playing in the small yard of his home. The morning fog covered everything, and the gas lamps flickered like faint stars. The scent of wet soil and fresh grass was comforting.

  "Ah, man... this scene again. History always repeats itself. A thin, fragile peace, right before the storm. People always call it 'normal life.'"

  He had found a piece of wood and was trying to shape it into a small ship. The cobblestone streets and dim alleys of the city, with their soft mist and light rain, felt like old London, every corner full of secrets. His grandfather was always there, playing with him, but Zal didn’t yet know that this calm would one day end.

  Zal was curious and couldn’t stop himself. Everything he saw, he touched, tested, and asked questions about. The sound of birds and the rustle of leaves under his feet made life feel vivid. The world was full of mysteries, and he wanted to understand them all.

  "This damn curiosity... it's like a beautiful little flame. I know it's that very flame that will later burn everything. But how can you tell a child to put out their own fire?"

  Days passed and Zal grew. His studies were never excellent, but his analytical mind and relentless curiosity were unmatched. He knew how to observe the world around him, how to listen to people, and understand it, even when others were confused. The rising prices, crises, and news from the radio all captured his attention, gradually giving him a real understanding of the world.

  Every night, lying on his bed, the wind whispering through the old windows and the faint glow of the city’s lights gave him both comfort and unease. But this understanding wasn’t always peaceful. The more he saw and comprehended, the heavier his mind became.

  "You see? Knowledge is a thin coat of paint brushed over fear. Zal was learning how the world worked, and that very learning was what stole sleep from his eyes. He was paying the price of knowing, without realizing it was only the first installment."

  By the time he was seventeen, he was a journalist. His first day at the "Chronicle" office. Evening was falling, but the light from the gas lamps was still getting lost in the dusk fog. It was cold. Zal sat at a desk tucked in a corner, giving him a view of the window while keeping people away.

  "He'd chosen that desk himself. He wanted to keep an eye on everything, as if the world would fall apart if he blinked. He didn't know yet he was right."

  His first task: writing a report on "the economic state of the black market." The words felt like broken glass in his mouth. From the window, he saw an old man sitting on the bench across the park. The man held a white handkerchief to his mouth and coughed. Dry coughs, one after another, like a broken engine. Once. Twice. Ten times. He lowered the handkerchief. In the middle of the white fabric was a yellow-brown stain, shaped like a hideous mushroom. Zal's breath caught. That stain... it was what he'd read about in confidential reports. "Early sign of pulmonary involvement."

  The man coughed again. This time, the sound was wet.

  Zal's pen slipped from his fingers. The scratch of the nib on the cobblestones was like an explosion in the quiet newsroom.

  "In that moment, something in Zal died. That boy who thought he could just 'understand' the world learned that some things shouldn't be understood. Because if you understand them, you can't forget them."

  From that day, Zal was no longer a boy. He became a "recorder." Every cough on the street, every terrified glance, every newspaper headline about the "normal situation"—he collected them all and turned them into statistics in his mind.

  "Fear, when it stops being a vague feeling and becomes an exact science, is torture. Zal was learning that the mortality rate had increased by three percent last week. He was learning which neighborhoods emptied out first. He could predict when it would be his family's turn."

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  The nights were worse. In the darkness of his room, the sounds grew louder. The neighbor's cough through the wall. An ambulance speeding down the empty street, its siren seeming to scream, "Too late... too late..."

  And then, their own sounds.

  Luna, his ten-year-old sister, starting to cough in the next room. Little dry coughs. His mother said, "It's nothing, just allergies."

  But Zal saw the fear in his mother's eyes. Fear mixed with a lie.

  "That's when he understood what the greatest betrayal is: not lying to others. But lying to yourself to protect someone you love. And Zal couldn't accept that lie."

  I remember one day... His father, who was always a solid man, came home and threw his bag in the corner. His face was gray. Zal asked, "What happened?"

  His father just looked at him and said, "It's over."

  Those three words were more terrifying than any report Zal had ever written.

  "People are like buildings. At first you see small cracks. Then one day you see the main pillar is broken. And there's nothing you can do."

  Zal started drawing maps. Not maps of geography. Maps of survival. Which pharmacy still had medicine. Which doctor was still seeing patients. His mind had become an algorithm of terror.

  Until Luna got a fever.

  Her fever was so high her little face was flushed and shiny. Her coughs weren't dry anymore... they gurgled. As if a small swamp had formed in her chest.

  His mother cried. His father sat motionless in a corner. His grandfather just stared at his hands, as if waiting for the skin to peel off.

  And Zal... Zal stood by the bed and counted. Counted how many times Luna coughed in a minute. Counted the seconds between each cough.

  "That night, Zal understood how love dies. Not with a bang. By turning into a list of numbers. When 'I love you' becomes 'Will you survive tonight?' and the answer grows weaker and more distant every night."

  The next day, the doctor came to the house. After the examination, as he was leaving, Zal blocked his path.

  "Tell me the truth."

  The doctor looked at him. A look that said, "You already know." But he said, "For the family, maybe two years. For you... because you're younger, maybe four."

  Zal didn't even blink.

  Liar.

  They didn't "give" the family two years. They sentenced them to two years. And sentenced Zal to four years of solitude.

  When the doctor left, Zal went into the backyard. The cold air trapped his breath in his chest. He stared at the gas lamp on the wall. At the blue flame burning steadily. And in that moment, something in his chest froze. Not his heart. Something else. An iron rod made of pure hatred. Cold and solid. From that moment on, that rod became his spine.

  "People think hatred is an emotion. A kind of fire. But no... real hatred is cold. It's ice. And from that night on, Zal lived in the cold of that hatred."

  Zal continued his life, until the War of Smoke began; a war that the Eastern nation started for power and expansion, supposedly to save humanity. Zal's own country did not survive intact.

  "'In the name of saving humanity.' How ridiculous, right? The bigger the crime, the more magnificent the cloak needed to hide it."

  The Eastern nation had created a weapon far more advanced than any previous chemical arms. It attacked the lungs directly, causing horrific cancers and prolonged suffering. Some died instantly, others endured years of excruciating pain.

  Zal tried everything but couldn’t escape with his family, and he became infected as well. Doctors said his family would likely die within two years, and he had four years left. The most painful part was that everyone would die before him, and there was nothing he could do.

  A year later, Zal’s nation was almost entirely wiped out. He spent his days with his family, sharing time, breathing, and last meetings. When the deaths of his loved ones began, he gathered them close one last time.

  "Suffering expressed in numbers—two years, four years—never tells the whole story. The real suffering lies in the space between those numbers. In the silence that replaces laughter."

  At nineteen, he decided to explore the world. He had nerves of steel and a deep hatred for the Eastern nation, yet with that same hatred, he began seeing the other half of the world. His first year of travel passed slowly, and he grew. He realized the world was far larger than he had imagined, full of nations and people of every kind. He made some friends along the way and experienced new things.

  "Hatred is a powerful engine. It can pull you to the ends of the earth, provided you wish to destroy everything your enemy holds dear. But sometimes on this journey, a strange thing happens: you forget who you are."

  During his travels, he heard about something called the Thread—a tool for the advancement of the world, being developed by the Eastern nation. Inspired by the Light Religion, it was said the world was woven from threads. Each thread led to eternity, but no one knew its end.

  Zal thought: “So there’s something even the greatest cannot reach… and maybe this Thread is what keeps the world together.”

  "Ah, the 'Thread.' They always give beautiful names to their weapons. They called this one the 'Thread of Existence.' But I know that any strand, if pulled too taut, will snap. And they were pulling on all of existence."

  Zal spent the last year of his life in the Light Religion. He understood all its teachings and went to the main church, where it was said a divine gift existed—a tiny fragment, the size of a hair, said to be part of the world’s Thread. But he discovered something terrifying: the church was collaborating with the Eastern nation to create the Thread.

  Zal carefully made a plan—to destroy the Thread and himself, so that even a small effect could alter the nation’s progress. The plan was set in motion. He held a knife, with a lighter ready, and had secretly poured oil.

  "This moment... the moment when vengeance, despair, and a mad hope mix together. I've stood at many such crossroads. This is where history changes not with grand ideas, but with the small sparks of hatred."

  A horrifying sound filled the air. Zal ran forward, grabbed the Thread, and set it ablaze. Everyone watched in shock. The Thread, burning, transformed into a massive tree that swallowed Zal and enveloped the entire church. Those around him perished under the weight of the trees, but Zal didn’t move. Surrounded by flames and crushing pressure, he felt suffocated, yet he remained steadfast.

  Zal fell asleep…

  "Sleep? No. This was not death. This was a molting. A world woven from threads that were now burning was forced to reveal another layer of itself."

  And when he opened his eyes, he found himself inside the trunk of a massive tree. Slowly, he stepped out and realized he was atop a very tall mountain, no longer in the church. The fresh air, the smell of soil and leaves, gave him a sense of new life, but he understood that something strange and different was flowing through the world.

  He thought to himself: “Everything has changed… I am still me, but nothing is like it used to be.”

  "And he was right. He was still Zal, with all his memories and wounds. But the rules of the game had changed. Now he stood not in the world he knew, but in a world born from his own sin."

  The horizon, clouds slowly moving, and sunlight on the peaks showed him that the real journey had just begun, and the mystery of the Thread was far from fully uncovered.

  "And the true journey begins. But remember, Zal Morgan: you are no longer just a survivor. You are now part of a myth you yourself created. And myths are far heavier than the memories of men."