He Who Watches Time Burn

Long before the fires, before the clocks started counting down, there was Everfield—a flower farm just past the city limits, filled with rolling hills of violet and gold.

Michael could not quite remember the sound of his parents' voices. Not really. But he remembered how the sun had felt on his skin the day before everything ended. He remembered the wind carrying lavender and laughter, as if both belonged to the land.

They had taken him to the fields that day—his mother wearing a yellow dress that moved like sunlight, his father lifting him onto his shoulders and pointing out shapes in the clouds. There had been no warning and no dark cloud on the horizon. There was only warmth and peace—brief, golden, and real.

He had been too young to hold onto much else. Faces had blurred into shapes. Voices had faded into static. But the warmth had stayed with him. The scent of flowers clung to his memory. His father's smile lingered—calm and certain, as if it had said, "You're safe."

That night, the world changed.

The screams came first.

Then came the light—flickering and wrong, orange and violent, pouring through the windows as if it were searching for something. The wood cracked. The shadows moved with weight, stretching and reaching across the room. They spilled into the house with the sound of tearing fabric, like ink dropped into water.

And then the creatures appeared.

They had wings shaped like blades and voices that scraped like broken glass dragged across tile. Their faces shifted constantly, refusing to stay still. Their forms defied understanding, as though reality itself resisted describing them. Michael saw them, but he could not comprehend what he was seeing. Only fragments remained. His mother pushing him in the closet he was hiding trying not to make any noise, his father gripping a broken chair leg like a weapon, the warmth leaving the room. Then a final scream cut short in the middle of a breath followed by a silence so deep it felt unnatural.

When morning arrived, he was still sitting there.

Two bodies lay beside him—unrecognizable, but unmistakably his parents. The walls were blackened. Smoke still curled from the beams. The house stood half in ruin and half in memory.

Then a voice reached him.

The voice was low and careful. It did not carry open pity, but it contained something close to compassion.

"Hey, kiddo… you alright?"

A man crouched beside him, dressed in a police uniform. His frame was broad and his face lined with age and grief. His eyes held the kind of understanding that comes only through loss. He did not reach out right away. Instead, he waited. When he finally placed a hand on Michael's back, the motion was slow and deliberate, like someone who knew how to handle fragile things.

The badge on his chest read Graves. Michael never remembered his first name. What stayed with him was the quiet strength of the man's presence. He remembered the warmth of the blanket Officer Graves had wrapped around his shoulders. In a world that had gone cold and hollow, that single gesture had become an anchor.

Michael was terrified. He sat frozen in place, unable to move, overwhelmed by a fear he could not name. The memories of the night before surged through him like a wave. He saw the flames. He heard the screams. He remembered the shadows moving with intent, like living things. His chest grew tight. His breaths became shallow. Panic took hold of him before he could stop it.

No one around him reacted.

The officers inside the station moved with practiced calm. A few glanced in his direction, their expressions unreadable. Their eyes held something that might have been sympathy, but to Michael, it felt distant and cold. Their faces seemed subtly wrong, as if something about them did not fully belong. The room felt disconnected. The lights buzzed overhead. Phones rang. Voices drifted in and out, muffled by the fog in his mind. Nothing seemed real.

Someone handed him a paper cup filled with water, but he did not drink it. A wool blanket was draped over his shoulders. It scratched his skin and trapped a heat that made his nausea worse. He sat on a hard plastic chair in the corner of the room, his legs dangling off the edge. His shoes were still stained with soot.

Officer Graves remained close. He did not hover or speak without cause. Instead, he stayed nearby and steady while being quiet and present. When he eventually knelt beside Michael again, he spoke with a voice that was calm and gentle.

"You don't have to talk," he said. "Not until you're ready."

Michael did not respond. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. He did not lift his head or meet the officer's gaze. Even so, something in the man's voice broke through the haze. It did not sound like duty, it sounded like compassion. It sounded like someone who had endured something similar and had survived.

Around them, the station continued its work. Phones rang in the distance. Printers hummed and officers filed reports or talked into radios. Someone mentioned placing the boy in temporary care. A file opened. Footsteps echoed across the tile floor.

The world did not pause for grief, and it did not wait for healing.

Yet something inside Michael shifted. The change was small—almost imperceptible—but it was real.

In the days that followed, Michael did not speak. He said nothing to the doctors, or to the social workers who insisted he would recover with time. But something deeper had taken root. He began to notice things that others missed. A raindrop suspended in midair. A hallway light that flickered only when he walked beneath it. Dreams that lingered too long, filled with faces he did not know.

That was how it began.

The story of the boy who would one day be called a savior.

But at the start, he was only a child, quiet and alone, burdened with the unspoken.