The house was silent, save for the settling of old timber and the faint, rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock somewhere on the ground floor.
Ruben woke before he opened his eyes. It was a habit from the streets, and before that, a habit from a home where heavy footsteps meant trouble. He lay still for a moment, listening to the soft, whistling breath of Oscar in the bed next to him. The kid was finally asleep, deep and dreamless, exhausted by the tears.
Ruben slid out from under the heavy quilt, the morning air biting at his skin. He pulled on his boots but left the laces loose, moving to the window. The sky outside was a bruised purple, the heavy fog of Brumália turning the early dawn into a thick, diffusing gray.
He needed water. His throat felt like he'd swallowed a handful of sand.
He eased the door open and stepped into the hallway. It was darker here, the shadows stretching long and thin. He walked past Corbin's door, which was shut tight, and headed for the stairs.
"You are light on your feet."
Ruben didn't jump, but his hand instinctively went up, ready to block and attack. He stopped and looked up.
Konrad Bach was standing at the end of the hall, near the landing. He was dressed fully, despite the hour, pressed slacks, a fresh cardigan, and those square spectacles catching the meagre light. He looked like he had been standing there for hours, just waiting for the house to wake up.
"I hear everything in this house," Konrad said, his voice a low rumble. "Why are you up so early?"
Ruben relaxed his posture, leaning slightly against the banister. "Just a habit. I wake up early. Didn't mean to creep."
Konrad studied him for a moment, his expression unreadable behind the lenses. Then, he gave a curt nod. "Since you are awake, you may as well make yourself useful. Or at least, stop looming in the corridor. Come. I am making tea."
He turned and descended the stairs. Ruben followed, his eyes scanning the walls as they went down.
The house was massive, a labyrinth of high ceilings and mahogany wainscoting, but it was hollow. There were no pictures on the walls. No trinkets on the side tables. No coats on the rack other than Konrad's own. It oddly didn't look very lived in, it was more like a stage before a play. It was a house that had been scrubbed clean of a past.
In the kitchen, the sterility continued. The counters were bare marble. A single copper kettle sat on the stove, whistling low.
"Sit," Konrad commanded gently, gesturing to a stool at the island.
Ruben sat, resting his elbows on the cold stone. He watched Konrad move. He poured the water, steeped the leaves, and placed a cup in front of Ruben without spilling a drop.
"Earl Grey," Konrad said. "Drink."
Ruben wrapped his hands around the warm ceramic, he knew 'earl grey' must have been a tea blend, but he didn't know much about that stuff. "Thanks."
He took a sip. It was good. Bitter and hot.
"You know," Ruben said, glancing around the empty kitchen again. "For a guy who hates disturbances, letting three fugitives sleep in your guest rooms is a weird play. Most people would have called the cops the second they saw the mud on our boots."
Konrad took his own cup and leaned back against the counter, blowing on the steam. "It is odd, yes. But as I told you last night, Mr. Rayo, I dislike noise. If I called the police, there would be sirens. Flashing lights. Questions. My neighbours would come out to gawk. They would knock on my door for weeks, asking for gossip."
He took a sip. "I prefer the quiet of a secret to the noise of a scandal."
Ruben smirked. "You're very straightforward, aren't you?"
"I have no energy for riddles," Konrad replied. He lowered his cup. "Why are you on the run? And do not lie. If you do not wish to answer, simply say so."
Ruben traced the rim of his cup. "I don't wish to answer."
Konrad nodded, accepting this instantly. "Fair enough."
"Do you watch the news?" Ruben asked, testing him.
"Sometimes," Konrad said, looking out the kitchen window at the fog pressing against the glass. "But not regularly. I find it... repetitive. I get what I need to know from the neighbours. Mrs. Green tells me when it is going to rain or when the prices of bread go up. That is usually sufficient."
Ruben raised an eyebrow. "You rely on neighbours? You don't strike me as the type to have many interactions with people. You seem like you want to build a moat around this place."
"I am not," Konrad admitted. "I do not speak to many people. I prefer it that way."
Ruben looked at the old man, standing alone in his empty kitchen, in his empty house, with no photos of family and no news of the outside world.
"That seems like such a sad life," Ruben said, his voice flat.
He didn't mean it as an insult, just an observation, but he saw Konrad's jaw tighten. A flicker of something, pain, perhaps, or irritation, crossed the old man's face, but he forced it down instantly, smoothing his expression back into neutrality.
Konrad reached into his pocket and slid a small box across the counter.
"If you need a tissue for your weeping heart, you may take one," Konrad said dryly.
Ruben let out a short, surprised snort of laughter. "Touché. Thanks."
He took another sip of tea. "So, how do you pay for all this? The house, the tea, the silence. Do you have a job? Or are you retired?"
"I am not employed currently," Konrad said. "The only time I truly had a job in direct service to the people was when I was a young man. I worked part-time in a restaurant. Scraped plates and washed dishes."
Ruben frowned slightly. "In service to the people? That's a weird way to talk about being a busboy."
"It is honest work," Konrad said defensively.
"You must have come from a rich family then," Ruben pressed. "If you went from washing dishes to buying a mansion."
"I did not," Konrad corrected. "When I got older, I served in the military. When I was done with my service, I was... let us say, one of many who received a significant payout. A pension, of sorts. I have always known how to manage my coin."
Ruben nodded slowly, piecing it together. "Ah. A military man. That explains the posture. And the bed-making."
"Yes," Konrad said.
"I don't want to be insensitive," Ruben started, leaning forward, "but..."
"Yes, I have killed before," Konrad cut him off, his voice dropping an octave. He stared into his tea as if reading the leaves. "And I have fought in a civil war... if you can call it that."
He paused, his eyes glazing over slightly. "It happened a good seventeen years ago now. A messy business."
"Wait," Ruben interrupted.
Konrad looked up.
"Seventeen years ago?" Ruben frowned, craning his neck as he looked up at the ceiling, doing the mental math. "There wasn't a civil war in Ostara seventeen years ago. The last major conflict here was border skirmishes, but nothing domestic."
Ruben made a low hmmm sound, tapping his finger against his chin. "Actually, there wasn't a civil war big enough to be called that anywhere on the Flat Earth in that timeframe. The geopolitical landscape has been stable for two decades."
Ruben's eyes snapped back to Konrad, his gaze sharpening.
"The only nation to have a recorded civil war seventeen years ago," Ruben said slowly, "is the Sky Nation. Zuberia."
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating.
Konrad looked at Ruben. For the first time, the stone-faced composure cracked. His eyes widened just a fraction, and a look of profound guilt, and perhaps fear, washed over his features. He looked like a man who had just realized he had walked into a trap of his own making.
Konrad didn't answer. instead, he lifted his cup to his lips with a trembling hand and took a long, desperate sip of tea, the loud gulp echoing awkwardly in the silent kitchen.
The kitchen felt suddenly smaller, the high ceilings of the house doing nothing to alleviate the suffocating weight of the history Konrad had just accidentally placed on the counter between them. The old man's hand shook as he lowered the teacup softly against the saucer.
"I do not wish to exhume the past, Mr. Rayo," Konrad said, his voice tight, eyes fixed on the steam rising from his cup. "Some graves are best left undisturbed."
Ruben watched him over the rim of his own mug. He didn't know much about the geopolitical history of the Sky Nation, his education was halted due to the current situation, but also he was always so shocked and stumbled when people referred to the fact that the world was flat.
But he knew enough about human nature to know when a man was holding back a flood. And Ruben wanted to know who this man was. He needed to know if the "solitary old man" act was a penance or a cover.
"Why?" Ruben asked, his voice calm but piercing. "If it was seventeen years ago, surely the statute of limitations on guilt has run out. Unless..." Ruben paused, tilting his head. "Do you regret it? Is it the people you killed that keeps you up? Or is it something else?"
Konrad's grip on the counter tightened until his knuckles turned the colour of old parchment. He snapped.
"It is not just the killing, boy! God, do you think it is so simple?" Konrad hissed, the sudden venom in his voice startling in the quiet kitchen. "It is because we were never supposed to be there. We had no right."
He pulled his hand away from the cup and ran it through his gray hair, dislodging the perfect combing he had done earlier. He looked haggard, the mask of the stoic homeowner slipping to reveal a man eaten hollow by memory.
"I was... lost," Konrad began, his voice dropping to a jagged whisper. "Back then, in Albion, I was a man without a rudder. I was weak. I looked for a tribe. I looked for a brotherhood because I did not like the man I saw in the mirror."
He stared at the marble countertop as if he could see the map of the past etched into the stone.
"The military was the easiest door to walk through. They promised purpose. They promised order. My wife, Martha... Lord have mercy on her soul... she begged me not to go. My daughter, Stephanie, she was already a young woman then, sharp as a tack. She told me I was joining a gang of thugs dressed in medals. But I didn't listen. Jesus, I never listened."
Konrad let out a bitter, dry laugh. "I absorbed them, you see? I took their personalities. I took their traits. I swallowed their silly, hateful ideologies like it was communion wine."
He looked up at Ruben, his eyes wet behind the square frames.
"Zuberia... it is a proud nation. A Black nation in the sky, untouched, closer to God than we ever were. But we... the Southern Nation of Albion... we were envious. Greedy. And we found an opportunity to settle." Konrad's face twisted in self-disgust. "We found our way in. Old treaties that should have been burned, loopholes in the trade agreements. King Edmund..." He spat the name like a curse. "...he had plotted an entire overtake of the continental capital. He wanted the jewel of the sky for himself. And we followed him like sheep. Like damn fools following a King Fish into the net."
Ruben sat silently, his tea going cold. He was listening to the confession of a colonizer. A man who had marched into someone else's home and tried to take it because his King told him he deserved it.
"We succeeded," Konrad whispered, the word sounding like a defeat. "Technically. We took the capital. We held it, and we still hold it."
He paused, his gaze drifting to the empty doorway of the kitchen, as if expecting someone to walk in.
"When it was done... when the blood was dried and the medals were pinned... I came home. I thought I would be welcomed. I thought I was a hero of Albion." Konrad shook his head slowly. "But the house was empty. Stephanie was in her early twenties. She had waited just long enough to see if I would come back alive, and when she knew I had... she left. Her mother followed after her, and they vanished. No note. No forwarding address. Just... gone."
Konrad looked at his hands, the hands of a soldier, now just the hands of a lonely old man.
"I was wrong," he murmured. "My entire life, the life I fought for, was a delusion. I thought if I stuck with my group, if I parroted their words and hated who they hated, that I would be safe. That I would be strong. But it was a lie. The community I sought... it dissolved like the image of the ouroboros. It ate itself. And all I was left with was a payout and now I'm just in a house so big my own footsteps echo like judgments."
Ruben looked at him. He saw the man clearly now.
Konrad Bach was a monster. But now he was more like the husk of one. He was a man who had traded his humanity for belonging, and in the process, lost the only people who actually loved him. He had been a racist, an imperialist, a follower of "isms" and "sects" that preached superiority, and now he was just an old man drinking tea alone in the foggy city.
Ruben felt a strange sensation in his chest. It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't quite anger, either. It was pity. But a cold kind of pity. The kind you feel for a rabid dog that has bitten its own leg off in a trap after it had been chasing you with bad intentions.
He's scum, Ruben thought dispassionately. Or he was. Now? He's too weak to be dangerous. He's just... a nations dried up leftovers.
"That's a lot to carry," Ruben said finally, his voice devoid of warmth but lacking the judgment Konrad probably expected.
Konrad didn't argue. He looked at the half-finished tea, the Earl Grey now tepid and dark. With a sudden, jerky motion, he stood up and poured the contents into the sink. The brown liquid swirled down the drain, vanishing instantly.
He turned on the tap, rinsing the cup with aggressive precision, his back to Ruben.
"I do not expect you to understand," Konrad said over the rushing water. "And I do not want your sympathy. I just... I answered your question."
"You did," Ruben said, standing up. He pushed the stool back. "Thanks for sharing, Konrad."
Ruben lingered for a second, watching the old man scrub a clean cup.
"We won't be here long," Ruben added softly. "We'll be out of your hair soon enough."