Echoes of Oblivion

Leo found them.

He knew the forest better than anyone else. He followed tracks that no one else had noticed. He found them in the ravine. Alive. Scared. But not alone.

There was a man sitting next to them. Not the Purifier with the torch. He was a young man, not much older than Leo himself, dressed in the same simple clothes as the people of the Fort. He was calming the children, telling them a story.

– They got lost,” the boy said as Leo came up with his axe at the ready. – I found them and built a fire to keep them warm.

The guy was one of the Children of Oblivion. He played his part perfectly. He was brought to the Fort as a hero. He told them he’d run away from the Purifiers because he couldn’t stand their cruelty. He was believed. He was fed and kept in the community.

And at night he did what Jonah had sent him to do. He found Leo.

– I hear you’re interested in the old world,” he said when they were alone. – They tell you stories about going to the moon and all that crap. Do you want me to tell you the truth?

He told Leo another story. The story Jonah had concocted. That the old world was a world of pain, where people were slaves to machines, where children were taken from their parents and forced to stare into screens that burned out their souls. About how the Disconnect wasn’t a curse, but salvation.

– That man, Ezra, and his librarian friends. they’re not saving knowledge. They want to bring back the old prison. They want to put the digital shackles back on all of us,” he whispered. – And the Prophet Jonah wants only one thing: for us to be free. For children to grow up on the land, not on the net.

Saying that, Caleb almost believed his own words. He hated the old world with all his heart. But looking into Leo’s clear, trusting eyes, he felt a prick of something like conscience. Here in this Fort, for the first time in many months, he slept peacefully without fear of the raiders. He ate the hot chowder Anna Stone held out to him without asking who he was. He watched David, a man from the world of numbers that Caleb despised, with calluses on his hands fix a generator not for himself but for everyone. In Jonah’s world, there was righteous fury and iron discipline. But here there was… care. And that simple, uncomplicated care frightened him more than any sermon. It made him doubt. But he chased those thoughts away. Doubt was a luxury he could not afford. He was a soldier. And he had orders.

– Look for yourself,” Caleb nodded toward the square where the adults were arguing. – That light… did it bring you joy? Or quarrel? Ezra talks about the stars, but he’s building a car that makes the neighbors at each other’s throats. He speaks of knowledge, but his knowledge brings war to your walls. The prophet teaches us that some knowledge is like poison. They look beautiful, but they kill from the inside out. Don’t you see that? It has already begun.

The words were like poison to Leo’s soul. He was a child of the new world. He didn’t know the old one. And this terrible but simple and understandable story resonated with him. He remembered his grandfather Matvey saying that the old world was rotten. He’d seen adults arguing over a windmill. Maybe this guy was right. Maybe the light isn’t hope, but a trap?

The next day, when Ezra came to him with a new homemade book on which he had drawn the planets of the solar system, for the first time Leo showed no interest. He simply nodded and walked away, citing business. Ezra was left standing alone, clutching the book in his hands. He felt cold. Not from the wind. From the boy’s gaze. For the first time, he realized that the war they were fighting was not just outside, but here, for this child’s soul. And he might be losing.

That night Leo could not sleep. He sat on the roof of the barn, looking up at the stars and at the lone lamp burning in the square. The light, which only yesterday had seemed like a miracle to him, now looked like the warden’s eye. He remembered Caleb’s words. And he remembered the words of his grandfather, Matvey, who had often said, “Every chain begins with one, the shiniest link.” He didn’t know who to believe. But he realized one thing: the adults, in their struggle for the “right” future, forgot to ask him, a child of this new world, what kind of future he himself wanted. And he decided that would no longer just listen. He would watch. And draw his own conclusions. The war for his soul had indeed begun. But now he was going to become not an object in it, but an independent player.

In the soul of a twelve-year-old boy, his own, most terrible war had begun. A war between Ezra’s tale of the wonders of science and a stranger’s whisper of freedom from them. A war between loyalty to his grandfather and a new, frightening truth.

Jonah got what he wanted. He didn’t just lay siege to Stone Fort. He had laid siege to the soul of its future leader.