On the distance

He looks like a man. The kind you pass at the market or see walking calmly past the church after Sunday mass. Your uncle swears they served together in the army. Your cousin’s friend says he once closed a deal with a sultan overseas. He is sophisticated. Charming. Equally fluent in science and scripture, in poetry and war. But he is not a man, though he wears the shape of one.

He has crossed deserts on foot and slipped over mountains in silence. He has walked frozen lakes where no wind speaks, and through jungles that swallowed whole armies. He has passed through towns so forgotten, even time stopped saying their names.

He has worn the skin of judges and generals. Of whores and priests.
He has passed through jails without chains, through courts without names.

With his knowledge, he elevates those who deal with him; he promises them endless riches, dominion over life and death, and the illusion of total control.

He helps build vast empires, uncover forbidden truths, raise temples that touch the sky; only to watch their rulers burn it all down, brick by brick, until nothing remains but ash and rivers of blood.

Some say he fought in every war.

Others say he started all of them.

He is no mere destroyer. The ground he scorches does not stay barren. Out of the ashes, men discover new hungers, and with their hungers, inventions. He whispers of fire, and from fire they learn iron. He speaks of absence, and in absence they imagine gods. He shows them ruin, and from ruin they draw law.

He gives freely, yet nothing he gives is without a price. For each revelation there is a silence, for each tool a wound, for each truth a burden no soul was meant to bear. He teaches not to comfort, but to sharpen. He elevates, but he does not save.

And sometimes I wonder if he wonders too; whether his purpose is only to unmake. For he has witnessed the flowers that grow in the cracks of his calamities. He has seen empires rise on the bones he left behind. Creation is not his aim, yet creation follows him as surely as carrion follows war. Perhaps that is why he smiles, on those rare occasions he loses. For in loss he is not ended, but multiplied.

He reveals the unknown but takes everything in return. He speaks in riddles or not at all.

There are whispers of him in every language spoken by men. He has no home yet feels familiar wherever he appears.

Some seek him out, but he is not to be summoned, not to be found.
Wherever men speak of revenge, conquest, gold, or glory; he is already there.

He takes no pride in his admirers, nor pleasure in their devotion.
But he thrives in the slow, unseen undoing of those who believe they stand apart.
He is not interested in loyalty, only in influence.
A silent partner. A patient investor.

He slips past judgment. He feeds on ambiguity.

I have seen him.
And I know you have too.

He changes faces like the wind shifts in the dusk.
So do not speak his name:
it is never the one he’ll use tomorrow.