Kai remembers the day he realized that people aren’t real.

It had looked like a woman. Tits, torn free from a ripped shirt, covered in mud, spit and blood from the face of the thing he thought was a real person. Legs, torn and scraped and leaking carmine, atop feet that seemed like pieces of torn meat more than anything human.

It made noises, and for a while, Kai was sure it was a person. When they clamped the irons around her wrists, he thought it was a person. When she sobbed and screamed and begged, he thought it was a person. When the edge of a spear was pressed against the back of her neck, forcing her to her knees upon the stage, he was sure that the thing which cried tears onto the floor was a person.

It looked like a person. Smelled like one, even through the smell of powder and lightning and blood that washed in from the fields. It reminded him of his mother, in that distant sort of way that anything shaped like a woman and bleeding, crying, dying reminded him of his mother.

Then he heard the crowd begin to grow louder, and he turned from the not-person to wonder at what they were saying.

He saw the not-person on stage behind the shackled thing speak words, words which now elude him. Some drivel about honor and righteousness, about the evil of some faction or other. All meaningless, really, even in retrospect. But the crowd of people around him were yelling and waving and cheering, so, in his mind, it must have meant something. They were bigger than him, and stronger, as he only came up to their waists, so they must have understood more than him.

And then the things in armor began passing around the stones.

Big baskets of them, carried effortlessly by things that were only as tall as the people around him. They shone in the sunset light, the glint of the sun setting in the west, bedecked in steel and bronze and gold, and they smiled and cheered alongside the crowd of people he was lost in.

And when the people picked up the rocks, and began to throw them, Kai began to understand.

It wasn’t really crying, up there. It’s… sort of like a plant. When you hit it, it breaks, and that means that sometimes it withers, but it’s not real, not like a person is. Every time one of the stones hit the ground or the chains near the not-person, it would flinch like it was trying to be real, and when the rocks hit, it made sounds like a person, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

Kai remembers looking up at the face of one of the armored things that had a basket of rocks. It had walked up to his part of the crowd, and it smiled encouragingly down at him, its eyes gentle.

But it wasn’t a person.

He could see the fat of its lips shifting to the time of words. The jelly of its eyes glistening. The hairs sprouting up from wet, soft flesh, shaping its contours, partially distracting from the enamel-glint of its teeth, like grave markers in a cavity of soft, moist movement.

It said something, and it looked and sounded and seemed like a person.

But it offered him a rock.

He remembers smiling with understanding as he picked up the stone. As he looked around at all the things that he thought were people, all throwing their own stones until the thing on stage is more red than sun-kissed, more mangled than formed. He remembers smiling as he threw his own rock, at how wetly and harshly it landed on the not-person’s ribs.

And it was ok, because she wasn’t a person.

None of them are.

They’re throwing the rocks because they’re empty. Pretend-things, things that aren’t real, because none of them are real.

He remembers how he turned to his sister, eyes wide. She’d been standing perfectly still, as if existing somewhere else. The crowd moved and swirled, the not-people screamed and said words that don’t matter, and she stood as an anchor amidst the waves.

He remembers telling her what he had discovered. He remembers her face shifting, just a bit, into a shape like a not-person, before her smile came back, bringing life to her eyes. He remembers her patting him on the head, and telling him how smart he was.

He remembers how proud he was at figuring it out.

The field of bodies they’d walked through was ok, because they weren’t people bodies. The thing dying on stage, pissing itself and making little breathy noises and dripping crimson everywhere, isn’t a person, so it’s ok. The things around them, standing and cheering and throwing stones still, aren’t people, so they’re ok.

He remembers how sad his sister looked when she thought he couldn’t see her. How empty she seemed for a moment.

That was the first time he realized it, but he was still young. He hadn’t really internalized it yet. It was just those things that weren’t people, just the ones that he could see and touch and confirm and understand. There were other people in the world. There were other things that lived and were a person, surely, since it couldn’t all be like the place where the things that pretended to be villagers did all that to the thing pretending to be a captured person.

The second time he realized it, when it went deeper, he learned what he already knew.

People aren’t real.

He remembers the smell. Blood and feces and steel, draped over wet earth and baking in the light of the sun, bright yellow and warm and calm. Sometimes, he thinks that the smell has found its way into memories that didn’t have it before, but it’s in so many already that it’s no real concern.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He remembers his sister, standing ahead of him, staring down a dozen armed men. He knew she’d win. She always won. He remembers how proud he was of her, even though he worried at how she always looked so tired.

He was so happy when she asked him to help her. She’d been fighting so long, and he’d gotten strong specifically so he could protect her. It was about time she let him help.

He remembers how the meat felt as he tore it open. As his knives glided across it, pulling it apart like a flower, each layer another petal until the whole thing unravels. He remembers the screaming, and the crying, and the pain, and the sounds of dying things.

He remembers staring at the face of one of the dying things. It had looked like a person, its mouth open and gaping, begging for air that wouldn’t come. It was crying.

But it wasn’t a person. He could see the twitches of the meat, the way the jelly played across twitching muscle, the way it begged not to die just as it had bragged about what it would do to him and his sister when it won.

It wasn’t real. Just pre-programmed responses, twitches and movements of a thing shaped to tug at heartstrings. It was born just like a person, and acted just like a person, so what was the difference?

He looked at his sister, and he understood.

She was real. She was herself, a full being, and she loved him, and he would do anything for her.

So it wasn’t the shape that was wrong. Or the words. Or the bleeding, the pleading, the way that he could hear their dull little skulls flickering with emotion.

It was people.

His sister isn’t a person, she’s his sister. He’s not a person, he’s Kai.

People aren’t real.

They’re just meat, shaped like someone that isn’t real, that doesn’t matter.

He remembers the third time he learned the lesson.

He remembers the battlefield, full of that same smell. It was richer that day, the mud saturated with blood for weeks, the shit long infested by flies and the steel coated in rust. He remembers the man, standing atop a sword that floated in the air, exuding a weight like nothing he’d ever felt.

Kai had pulled himself from the meat around him. It had cringed and become afraid, had stopped kissing and touching him and making sure his sword was well oiled, so it didn’t matter anymore. He remembered how he smiled, bright and warm and so fucking happy that someone else existed, even just for a moment.

He remembers feeling fear, for the first time in so long, when his sister didn’t understand.

But that was ok too. It was. When the battlefield was remade, and all the meat was made into corpses, and his steel was shattered like glass, and he saw her body there, lying still, spread across a hillside in red and brown and white, it was ok.

She was just a person. Just meat. It wasn’t his sister.

So it was ok. His sister was gone, and that was sad, but the thing he was staring at was just more meat, just more pre-programmed responses waiting to die, pretending it was ever alive as more than just an animal.

And when he died, that would be ok too. Because then he wouldn’t be Kai. Kai isn’t a dead thing. Kai isn’t a person. Kai is Kai. The dead thing is a dead thing.

He’d tried explaining the concept once or twice. He could tell when the things were only pretending to get it, trying to make him feel better so he wouldn’t kill them. Sometimes they’d even get it right enough that he’d wait a little while.

Never forever, though. In the end, all the things that weren’t real got boring. He’d run through all the pre-programmed responses, all the ways their meat could twitch, their thoughts could run, their beliefs could shape, and then the only fun left in them was in making them come apart and stop moving. And that is quite fun.

In the end, it’s all just people. People aren’t real. People don’t make choices. People are just things that react until they stop moving.

None of them seemed to get that, though. Which makes sense, really- if they could understand how they’re not real, then they’d be real. Maybe. He never really bothered to confirm that thought.

But that’s ok. Kai had fun. Kai was alive. Kai was real.

Kai remembers when he met the fourth real thing in the world.

First, himself. Then, his sister. Then, the being that killed his sister.

Then the being that was all people.

Kai understood, then. He understood why people weren’t real. It’s because they were too small. They were all just little pieces of the bigger thing that was real. The thing with the crown. The thing that glowed golden and touched the whole world and that smiled at him in a way that hurt, really deep.

He was in love instantly.

And then his love gave him a sword, and taught him about the realest thing of all. The thing so real that its weight defines every other thing that is, was, and could be.

DIVISION.

He understood it so perfectly, the moment it was explained. He’d known for so long, just like he’d known about the people.

Some things are real. And some things aren’t.

DIVISION.

Kai sighs, wondering what’s gotten him so nostalgic.

Probably the smell. Blood and shit and steel, all wrapped around each other and the sounds of dying.

He takes a long drink of something, one of the people behind him always ready with a fresh pitcher, even as he swishes it in his mouth like water and spits it out. He watches it arc down, down, down, falling apart into little rain droplets which eventually land on the bodies of a dozen struggling figures.

He listens to them scream as the rain cuts through them, and takes another long drink.

Far below him, the Wall is breached. A cut on the skin of his love, gaped open and torn apart, letting the pretend-things from outside squirm into the lands beyond. It’s quite beautiful, really, like a torn-open wound against unblemished skin.

One of the people asks him a question, its voice petulant, confused. He feels some part of his awareness extend back over it, just long enough for it to fall into severed slices.

He’s enjoying the moment. The meat should know better than to interrupt his enjoyment.

He chuckles as he watches one of the things of the Feng clan dart and scuttle about. It’s always cute when they get big enough to do interesting things. He watches it activate its Halo, playing with some little Daemon-thing (and Kai makes sure to mark that down- the Daemon things don’t even pretend to be real, and make for rather refreshing conversation). And then he watches it dart off, heading out into the wider world in a way that’s just a little bit tricky to track.

So cute, how they all like to do that. He loves the look they get when they realize he can still see them. Can still reach out and touch them. Can still unravel them like-

Ah. Getting carried away again. It’s all the smell. Proper nostalgia rearing its beautiful head.

He sighs, long and slow.

Ah well. His love told him to kill at least part of the problem, and he’s not one to shy away from those sorts of requests. Usually when he shows up, something interesting happens, so that’s something to look forward to. Some hundred-year-old superweapon waiting to lock on to his arrival somewhere, or an ancient wraith of something he killed a while back, or some brand new invention that someone thinks is just right to kill a Blade. All in good fun.

He waves at the meat behind him and says the word-prompts that’ll get them moving. It’s all rather boring, and his love is always ever so busy nowadays, but frankly, it’s nice to get some exercise now and again.

It’s a good thing no one and nothing down there is real. That would be exhausting. Much easier to kill things that are just people.

People Aren’t Real.