There was once a watchman who survived an assassin.
The man came through his window in the dead of night, carrying a knife.
The watchman woke before the blade reached him.
He fought, wrestled the weapon free, and drove it into his attacker.
By morning, the village called him fortunate.
He knew better.
Fortune had been sleeping. Fear had saved him.
From that night forward, he slept with a knife beneath his pillow.
He barred his windows. He memorized every footstep outside his home.
When the wind moved through the trees, he listened.
When a stranger approached, he watched.
When someone knocked after sunset, he reached for the knife.
Years passed.
Then one winter evening, his son returned from a distant journey.
The young man found the door barred. He called for his father, but received no answer.
Remembering the window he had climbed through as a boy, he tried it again.
The watchman heard someone entering.
He struck before the figure reached the floor.
His son survived.
But he never came home again.
Breathe. Slowly.
Mars.
Death has followed you through the Wastes.
You learned to sleep with one eye open. To distrust a quiet room. To recognize danger before it announces itself.
I will not mock those instincts.
They have kept you alive.
I have watched you confront things that would have swallowed lesser men. Even when reality twisted around you, you adapted. You fought. You endured.
You have every reason to believe the world is dangerous.
It is.
But I wonder what happens when danger becomes the only thing you recognize.
When every unfamiliar face deserves suspicion.
When every silence conceals an ambush.
When the hand approaching your shoulder might belong to someone who means you no harm.
I do not know whether your vigilance has cost you someone, Mars.
Perhaps it never has.
Perhaps every suspicion has been justified.
But would you recognize the difference if one day it wasn't?
I knew a different world once.
Trumpets sounded. Crowds gathered. A bull entered the sand, and I believed I understood the distance between its horns and my heart.
Then I died.
I remember that moment, Mars.
Not the cheering.
The silence afterward.
Death took everything I believed I controlled.
And when it returned me to the Temple, I carried the bull within me. The fallen followed, their voices gathering in my mist.
I have never been free of death.
Neither have you.
But there is a difference between remembering what nearly killed you and allowing it to decide what deserves to live.
When we meet, I will not mistake your vigilance for cowardice.
I know what survival demands.
I only wonder whether you can recognize a moment when it demands nothing.
The watchman survived the assassin.
His son survived the knife.
And every night afterward, the old man slept beside a door that no longer opened.
Tell me, Mars.
If someone came to your door without a weapon...
Would you recognize them before you reached for yours?
Let's see what remains.