in the deepest corners of his mind, creeping into the recesses long since buried.

 "Will these endlessly fertile and safe lands ever be enough to rid you of violence?"

Seeking an answer, memories surged forth, dragging the man into the murky corridors of his past. He saw himself, a starving child, humiliated by a world that had no place for him. The first crack of bone beneath his fist, the broken nose of a boy no different from himself, the rush of power that had flooded him—these moments, twisted and dark, replayed in his mind with agonizing clarity.

The loneliness of standing over his father’s nameless grave, a solitude that had birthed a hunger more terrible than the one that had gnawed at his belly, filled the void left by the presence that should have guided the...

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