The journey back was a silent pilgrimage through a world that had lost its meaning. The walls of Uruk, once a symbol of invincible power, now looked thin, almost flimsy, compared to the cyclopean works of Egypt.
Lulal entered alone. Gilgamesh remained with his stones, his new, grim purpose.
The city was quiet. The sterile silence had been replaced by the quiet of exhaustion. The plague had burned out, leaving a city of ghosts. He went straight to his family's compound. The door was sealed with the king's mark.
He broke the seal and pushed the door open.
The air inside was still and thick with dust. His father's tools lay in a neat row, a half-finished carving of a lion on the workbench. His mother's loom held a blanket, only half-woven. A small, painted clay doll belonging to his youngest sister sat on a sleeping pallet.
They were gone. Not just dead, but erased. The Triad's cosmic perspective curdled in his stomach. This was not "noise." This was his world, turned to dust. He was a variable grieving for deleted data.
He stumbled back into the street, blind with a grief so total it was a physical nausea. He had crossed deserts and faced gods, all for this. To confirm what he had known in his soul the day he left.