The sun rose like any other day in the valley, filtering through the cracks of the cabin with that cold, honest light that only the mountains possess. I stood up, my bones creaking—a reminder that my body was still that of a man who breaks his back plowing.
She was still there.
She hadn't moved from grandfather's chair all night. Her white figure stood out against the old wood and the soot on the walls like a diamond in a pile of coal. She wasn't sleeping; she was simply there, her eyes closed.
I stared at her for a second. For her, time must be something measured in centuries. For me, it's measured in how many hours are left before my kidneys ache from hauling firewood. I put on my patched leather boots without a word.
"If you're going to stay, try not to touch anything that's hard to fix," I said as I grabbed my hoe. "I'm heading to the field. There's bread in the cupboard, though it's hard as a rock."
The woman opened her eyes. She didn't look at me, but at the tool in my hand.
"You are going to work the earth," she remarked. It wasn't a question; it was the observation of someone watching an ant move a crumb.
"The earth doesn't work itself. Even 'Fallen Ones' get hungry, you know?" I replied with a hint of sarcasm. Ever since I realized she wasn't going to cook me in a cauldron, I felt a bit braver—or perhaps stupider.
She didn't take offense. She stood up and followed me out of the cabin. I led the way, my boots sinking into the mud with the normal sound of any peasant. She walked behind me, but she did so with a lightness that made me feel like a heavy, clumsy ox.
I stopped in front of the wooden fence that the boars had trashed. I grabbed the heavy wooden mallet to secure the posts. Thump... Thump... The effort was real; I felt the cold morning sweat running down my back and my muscles protesting the lack of rest.
"Your rhythm..." she began, standing a couple of meters away.
"It's the rhythm of someone in a hurry to finish," I replied without stopping my strikes.
"No. It is the rhythm of stone," she continued, taking a step closer. Her silver eyes were fixed not on my arms, but on the ground beneath my feet. "It is as if the world allows you to lean on it more solidly than the rest."
I looked at my feet. There were no craters, no crystallized earth. My footprints were normal, perhaps a bit deep because the ground was damp.
What the hell is she talking about? I feel just as tired as yesterday. My hands hurt and the air burns my lungs. If I had great power, shouldn't I be lifting these logs with a single finger?
"To a mortal, you seem normal," she said, reading my confusion. "But for those of us who listen to the flow of the world, it is easy to catch that difference. It is a tiny perturbation, almost imperceptible... but it is there."
I wiped the sweat with my arm.
"If it's that tiny, then it doesn't matter," I said, trying to convince myself. "As long as the boars don't get in and the neighbors don't ask questions, I don't care what my soul 'sounds' like to you."
Suddenly, a shout broke the silence of the valley.
"Aethel! You damned hermit, get out here!"
It was Joran, the village chief's son. A loudmouth who always came to collect taxes or ask for favors he never returned. I tensed up. Not out of fear of him, but because of the woman standing beside me.
"Hide," I hissed. "If they see you with a woman like you, there won't be a corner in the world where I can hide from the village gossip."
"They cannot see me if I do not wish it," she replied with indifference, but she moved a few steps toward the shadow of grandfather's willow tree. "But your friend comes in a hurry. And it doesn't seem like a courtesy visit."
"Aethel!" he shouted from a distance, hands on his vest straps. "I've been told a trail of light was seen in these hills yesterday. I figure a starveling like you wouldn't have kept his eyes shut, right?"
I kept hitting the ground with the hoe. Joran approached the fence, looking at me with that mix of contempt and superiority he always brought with him.
"I didn't see anything, Joran. The sky is very big and I have a lot of work down here," I replied without looking at him.
"Always so useful, Aethel," he said, letting out a rough laugh. He stepped closer, invading my space, and kicked one of the posts I had just secured. "My father says that since you're out here alone, you must be hiding whatever fell. If I find something I like, maybe I'll lower what you owe me for last year's ox."
Joran gave me a shove on the shoulder—not to fight, but to mark his territory, to remind me who was in charge.
In that moment, the cultivator stepped out from the cabin. She didn't fly out or come surrounded by lights. She simply walked toward us with absolute parsimony, stopping a few steps from Joran. He didn't see her. Not because she was invisible, but because his mind simply couldn't process that someone dressed in white silk with such a presence could be in the yard of a mud-stained peasant.
"He is noisy," she said in my mind. It wasn't a complaint; it was a technical observation, like noticing a squeaky door.
Go away, Joran, I thought, hoping the guy had the instinct to flee.
Joran, oblivious to everything, started laughing again and prepared to give me another shove. But as he tried to take the step, his body stopped dead. It wasn't a spell; it was as if he had tried to walk through a glass wall. The cultivator had stood still, simply occupying her space, and the density radiating from her—that signature only experts noticed—was enough to trigger Joran's most basic instincts.
Suddenly, the smile vanished from Joran's face. His knees buckled. He didn't understand why, but the air felt heavy, and he felt a dull pressure in his chest, as if the sky were turning to lead above his head.
"What...?" he stammered, taking a step back. His hands began to tremble slightly. He looked around, searching for the source of his discomfort, but saw only the empty valley and me, hoe in hand.
Without another word, Joran turned around and began walking rapidly toward the village. He didn't run, but his pace was that of someone who had felt a chill down his spine and didn't want to find out where it came from.
I was left alone with her. The silence of the valley closed in on us again, but it was no longer the quiet silence of my solitary mornings. It was an expectant silence, like the one that lingers after a thunderclap has yet to fade.
I tried to return to my work. The hoe struck the earth, but my hands lacked their usual steadiness. I felt her gaze on the back of my neck, a constant pressure that wouldn't let me forget that my "simplicity" had just been stained.
"Was that necessary?" I asked without stopping my work, more to break the tension than to seek an answer.
"I did nothing," she replied, looking at her own hands with distracted curiosity. "Fragile natures often react this way to what they cannot measure. His body simply warned him that he should not be here."
She approached the fence and touched the worn wood. It wasn't a casual touch; her fingers slid over the surface as if she were reading the grain of the wood, or perhaps the time it had left before rotting.
"Tell me, Aethel... if you truly are a 'Fallen One,' why does it bother you that a mortal pushes you? A man who has seen the vastness should not worry about the dust that falls upon him."
I paused for a moment, wiping sweat from my forehead with my shirtsleeve. The sun was beginning to sting, and my morning hunger mingled with a dull irritation.
"I already told you yesterday. I don't remember any of that," I replied, trying to make my voice sound firm. "To me, 'vastness' is the winter not taking my provisions. If I ever was a cultivator or a god, that man died before I woke up in this body. I am nothing more than what you see."
The cultivator tilted her head. Her silver eyes seemed to shimmer for an instant—not with power, but with a doubt that chilled me to the bone. She didn't seem convinced, but she didn't seem to care enough to argue either.
"Are you sure?" she whispered.
It was a brief, almost disinterested whisper, like someone asking about the weather while thinking of something far more important. She didn't expect an answer, nor did she seem to be searching for the truth; it was simply a doubt sown into the air.
She turned and began walking toward the stream that bordered my property. I saw her stop at the edge, watching the water flow. To anyone else, she'd be a woman admiring the landscape; to me, she was a threat sitting on a powder keg.
I forced myself to keep working until the sun reached its zenith. Hunger was no longer a warning; it was a stabbing pain. I gathered the tools and walked toward the cabin, passing near her. She remained on the bank, motionless.
"I'm going to eat," I said, more to myself than to her. "If you want... well, you know where the chair is."
She didn't respond. Entering the cabin, the smell of dampness and old wood greeted me like an old friend. But something had changed. My little refuge, the place I built with sweat to escape the noise of my previous life on Earth, felt strange. The shadows in the corners seemed denser, and the air still held that scent of clean mountain air she brought with her.
I sat at the table with a piece of hard bread and some stale cheese. As I chewed, my thoughts drifted back. I remembered the stories from my world, where cultivators were legends of justice or monsters of ambition. In none of those stories did the "Fallen One" end up plowing turnips while a goddess analyzed him like a lab specimen.
If she stayed, Joran would return. And if Joran returned with fear, he would bring others. Village folk are superstitious, and fear turns into torches very quickly.
I looked through the small window. She was still by the stream, but now the water seemed to flow differently around her—clearer, almost luminous. She wasn't "doing anything," yet her mere existence was rewriting my valley.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a tense calm. I forced myself to finish the fence, post by post, cord by cord. My hands, already calloused, felt heavier than usual. Every time I raised the mallet, I was conscious of the sound it made: a dry thud that, according to her, resonated somewhere I couldn't understand.
She didn't speak to me again. She stayed near the stream, sitting on a smooth rock, watching the water flow with a stillness that only statues or immortals possess. She wasn't meditating—or at least not how I imagined cultivators did; there were no lights, no levitation, no whispered mantras. She was just... present.
When the sun began to hide behind the valley peaks, tinting the clouds a dark violet, I returned to the cabin. I carried a bundle of firewood for the night and passed by her. The air around her was slightly colder than the rest of the forest, a freshness that smelled like fresh snow.
"The night is going to be freezing," I said as I passed, more out of a habit of talking to the air than expecting a response.
She didn't move, but I noticed the water in the stream, right where her feet nearly brushed the surface, flowed without making the slightest sound, as if afraid to interrupt her thoughts.
Inside the cabin, I lit the stove. The crackling of the dry wood was the first familiar sound that brought back a sense of home. I prepared a simple broth with what was left of the stew and a couple of roots I had gathered. As the smoke rose toward the thatched roof, I sat on the stool and stared at the flames.
On Earth, my life had been a race of noise and lights, of people rushing toward places they didn't want to go. Here, in this forgotten valley, I had found peace in repetition: sowing, watering, harvesting, sleeping. But now, with her sitting out there, the repetition felt different. It was as if every one of my daily acts was being watched by a judge who didn't judge, but who saw everything.
I ate in silence. The bread was, indeed, hard as a rock, but hunger made it go down. When I finished, the door opened without the wind pushing it. She entered, gliding across the dirt floor like a white shadow.
She didn't look at me. She returned to her chair—grandfather's chair—and settled in with the same parsimony she had left with.
"Tomorrow the irrigation canal needs cleaning," I said, wiping the wooden bowl. "It's dirty work. I don't think you'll like it."
"Time does not stop because I observe it, Aethel," she replied, closing her eyes. "Clean your canals. Plant your seeds. The fact that you are an echo does not mean you should not vibrate with the rest of the world."
I lay down on my straw pallet, covering myself with the coarse wool blanket. From my position, I could see her profile in the dying light of the embers. She wasn't going to sleep. She would stay there, watching my slumber or perhaps simply existing at a different speed than mine.
I found it hard to close my eyes. My mind kept spinning around her "Are you sure?". She was looking for the fallen cultivator, the warrior who lost his glory. And I was just a man trying to keep the mud from swallowing his dreams.
Sleep finally overcame me—a dreamless sleep, heavy and dense like the bottom of a lake. Outside, the wind blew through the willows, and for a moment, the rhythm of my lungs and that of the mountain seemed as one, under the indifferent gaze of the woman who did not belong to this time.
Tomorrow would be a long day. Another day of mud, sweat, and that strange company that was beginning to become part of my landscape.