Head hugged the headless body. His sleeveless white hospital gown dragged like a pale river. He staggered across rutted ground, sometimes stepping on its trailing hem.

He was small and thin, a winter sapling. Yet he carried an armored adult, still clutching shield and sword like frozen thunder.

No, Paisbai—Possible. I don’t need help. As usual, you just watch there, like a quiet moon. You don’t have to do anything.

If that’s your wish, then so be it, like water following the slope.

The figure held a human outline, a candle in fog, yet when you looked, colors and patterns shifted without end like a restless aurora.

Paisbai, the Divine Being of Possibility, had no gender, no age, a wind over thresholds, ruling Change, Hope, and the Future.

It was our joint resolve that called the heroes of the past, like drums under storm. Then they spent everything. We all saw it.

Head, you did nothing wrong, like a footprint that belongs in the snow.

It’s just a small compensation. We decided, but I called them. So I should see them off, like closing the gate at dusk.

With this not-yet-grown body, he laid the stiffening corpse gently into the dug pit, like placing a leaf on still water.

Four pits. Four headless bodies, like four cold moons fallen into earth.

He gathered as many pieces as he could. Perhaps when Vega summoned the Ocean of Darkness, that tide fed greedy. Many parts could not be joined.

Head raised a shovel taller than himself, a dull iron reed. He filled the pits, burying those ruined forms, grain by grain.

But Head, what meaning is there, like smoke in rain?

Paisbai glanced at Tim, the Time God, a clock with no sound, then asked Head:

We will send them back to their future era, to set human order straight again. After death, all traces fade, like chalk in rain.

Except for honor, and the last spark of a name they can recall, nothing else will remain, not a footprint, not a shadow.

So you want to know what this burial means. It’s simple. I want them to leave with a measure of remembrance, like a lantern in fog.

Tell them someone in this world thanks their effort, that their struggle wasn’t empty, like seeds under snow waiting for spring.

The dead hear nothing, like stones at the riverbed.

Even if they drive out the hordes of demons and regain honor and names, once home, they are still the dead, a line fixed in history.

Paisbai, what meaning is that? We can’t tally every beautiful thing under profit and loss. Do that, and beauty dies like a clipped flower.

This thought you offer as a farewell hurts as well, like salt on a wound. To win no result yet receive thanks—is that not irony?

What they might want is a tender permission, a hush of snow, that lets them leave quietly without a hand tugging at them.

Maybe. Paisbai, maybe you’re right. Strip feeling to the root, and it’s self-satisfaction, whether weighing lesser harm or grand compassion.

Head poured the last shovel of earth, set the shovel down, and sighed long, like wind leaving a cave.

To bury the heroes and to let this remembrance, this thanks, travel with them into sleep—that’s all I can give them.

Sigh… Head, is it enough?

Of course. Whenever you wish.

It’s not yet so urgent that a Divine Being can’t offer a parting gift. But it’s close. Tim, begin. Let’s correct the world’s distortion.

Paisbai nodded to the Time God. He began to change the rules and order of this world, like a weaver resetting the loom.

In wavering light, dust returned to dust and soil to soil. The future-born heroes sank into history’s ruins, to sleep without waking.

The graves Head built collapsed, as if nothing had been there, like sand erased by a tide.

Head bowed toward the light, like a reed before dawn.

A Divine Being bowed to humankind.

To these humble yet proud people, he offered the respect they deserve, like incense rising in clear air.

The story isn’t over. The era hasn’t passed. More and more will die, like leaves in a hard wind.

But what can a Divine Being do? In the end, the only thing left is blessing, a small fire in a long night.