The fields beyond Kuzam lay fallow, stalks brittle under the chill wind. A lone cart creaked along the rutted road, its wheels groaning with every dip in the earth. At its reins walked Kwanza, shoulders stooped with the weight of the meager harvest behind him. At his side, his ten-year-old son, Jengo, matched his pace, his eyes taking in the dead landscape.
The city’s towers loomed faint on the horizon, blurred by dust and distance. Kwanza’s gaze was fixed on them, not with hope, but with the grim determination of a man walking toward a reckoning. The cart bore only a thin harvest—wilted greens, a sack of grain half the weight it should have been. Each mile toward Kuzam’s markets felt heavier, for he knew the city would measure his worth by what little lay in the wagon. Buyers would scowl, coins would be fewer, and the hungry mouths at home would wait on promises he could no longer keep.
The road bent low where an old bridge slumped over a dry gully. Once, water had run there in spring torrents, swelling with melted snows from the northern hills. Now the bed lay cracked and pale, weeds clutching at its stones as if to hide its emptiness. Kwanza paused, resting a hand on the cart’s edge.
Jengo looked down into the emptiness. “Did it ever have water, Father?”
Kwanza’s voice was a low gravel of memory. “They choked it,” he said. “The council. Diverted the headwaters into pipes for the palace fountains and the gardens of the high district. That was… ten summers past? The year the silt at the riverbed turned to dust.” He looked at the parched earth, a familiar bitterness in his eyes. “They said it was for the city’s beauty. Our wells turned shallow. The soil grew thirsty. Now, even when the snows melt, the water never finds its way here.”
Jengo peered down as though the gully might suddenly roar back to life. But the silence held. Only the wind moved.
“Was it always like this?” the boy asked, his voice small against the open land.
Kwanza shook his head. “No. The water ran high enough to drown a calf. We used to fear crossing here. Now there is nothing left to fear but the silence.” He tugged at the cart’s handles, urging it onward.
They walked in silence again, the wheels thudding into ruts carved long ago by heavier loads from better years. Jengo’s steps dragged, but he did not complain. Every mile closer to Kuzam seemed to press heavier, not lighter, as though the city’s weight bore down on them already.
Ahead, the skyline sharpened. Towers rose like spears, their shadows smudged by smoke from unseen fires. Traders moved along the road in twos and threes, carts piled higher than Kwanza’s, their drivers quick-eyed and wary. Some looked at his wagon and passed without greeting, as though scarcity itself might be catching.
Jengo noticed. “They look at us as if we carry nothing,” he muttered.
Kwanza’s jaw tightened. “Let them. Better that they do not count our grain.” He kept his eyes on the road.
It was near dusk when they reached the first of the city gates. The walls loomed vast, carved from stone blackened by time. Soldiers lounged beneath the arch, spears tipped in dull iron. One stepped forward, a scar along his cheek catching the fading light.
“What’s your load?” His voice carried no patience.
Kwanza gestured to the cart. “Grain. Greens. Nothing more.”
The soldier prodded the sack with his spear, watching the meager weight slump. His lips curled. “The markets will take less than you hope. Best not come too often with carts this light.” He waved them through, already turning to the next wagon.
Jengo let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “I thought—”
“Quiet,” Kwanza said. “Eyes forward.”
They passed under the arch. Inside, the air was different. Heavy, close. The streets swelled with bodies, voices clashing like waves against stone. Hawkers cried wares in desperate tones, their stalls thin, their baskets thinner. Smoke stung the nose. Hunger prowled openly here, just as it did in the fields.
Kwanza did his business in the market quarter, the exchanges swift and disheartening. Coins clinked, fewer than he had hoped. He handed over the sack without a word. Each exchange left the cart lighter, his shoulders heavier.
Around them the market swirled with the same pattern: goods thinning, tempers short, whispers rising. Men spoke of a council meeting behind closed doors. A fishmonger muttered that the towers would fall before the harvest returned. A cobbler laughed without humor, saying it would be better if they burned the whole city down and started fresh. The words carried on the air, never shouted, always near enough to hear. Kwanza listened, his face a stony mask, storing the dark energy of the place.
The journey home was undertaken in silence, the empty cart creaking a mournful tune. The sun was a bloody slit on the horizon, painting the barren fields in shades of rust and purple. The silence was heavier now, filled with what they had seen and heard.
It was Jengo’s voice that finally broke it, tentative in the growing dark.
“Father,” he began, his words careful. “In the market… people were talking in low voices. They said the council… that they want to tear it all down. The city. Everything. And start again.”
Kwanza did not answer at once. His gaze swept the barren rows as though the soil itself might give him words. The boy’s question hung in the air, giving voice to the dread Kwanza had felt coiling in the city’s heart.
At last he spoke, voice roughened by wind and work. “What they want, what they plan—it is not for us to know. We feel it here, though, same as them.” He stamped a foot lightly on the hard earth. “The ground is thinner, the air meaner. Something stirs, and even the stubborn earth knows it.”
He lifted his eyes to the skyline once more, the towers of Kuzam now jagged black teeth against the dusk behind them. The city fed on the labor of the fields, and when the fields starved, so too would the city.
Jengo said nothing further, but the question hung in the air all the same: if even the soil had turned against them, what walls could hold back what was coming? The memory of the stolen river water was a quiet, seething truth beneath it all, a reason for the ruin that made the rumors of a “Reset” feel less like a threat and more like a reckoning long overdue.