The Hidden Retreat

The fire popped softly in the hearth, its glow painting Eliyas's knuckles amber where they curled around the compass. His calluses caught the light—rough from years of typing on corporate keypads, yet strangely at home here, where everything bore the marks of use. Across the room, the owner tended the flames with an iron poker, its tip blackened from decades of turning embers. The man's sleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing forearms corded with old muscle and a lattice of thin white scars that shimmered when he moved.

Eliyas shifted in the leather chair. It sighed under his weight, the scent of cured hide and woodsmoke rising as he leaned forward. His boots rested on the hearthstones, close enough that the heat seeped through the soles. 

"You've lived here long?" 

The owner didn't turn. A log split with a sound like cracking bone, sending up a shower of sparks that reflected in his dark eyes. "Many years." 

Eliyas's thumb traced the compass edge, the brass warmed by his palm. His scar itched, but he didn't scratch it. The question came out rougher than he intended: 

"…Why?" 

Firelight carved valleys across the owner's profile as he finally turned. Not old, not young—his face seemed to exist outside of time, like the strata of rock in a riverbed. One of his shirt buttons was mismatched, bone instead of brass. 

"I didn't leave anything." Ash dusted his fingertips as he closed the iron grate. "I left a lie." 

 Eliyas exhaled slowly, his breath stirring the dust motes that hung in the air. He thought of his apartment in Nova Helix—the sterile sheets, the fridge that hummed all night, the way his reflection in the blackened windows never quite looked back at him right. 

"You built this?" His voice was quieter now, the awe slipping through like moonlight through shutters. "All of this?" 

The owner's calloused hand brushed soot from his apron. "I had the time. And the will." He nodded toward the bookshelf where a frayed volume on timber framing sat beside a jar of rusted nails. "It doesn't require much to live—just what you need." 

Outside, the wind tested the shutters. Eliyas's shoulders tensed, the compass needle twitching in his grip. His next question tasted like the last sip of bitter tea: 

"Why haven't you gone back? The city… surely you left something behind." 

The fire dimmed as if the room itself held its breath.

The man's gaze turned, catching Elias's eyes for the briefest moment. There was a flicker of something there—a shadow, perhaps, or a reminder of another life, another time.

"I left behind everything that mattered," the owner replied. His voice was calm, but there was an edge to it, a depth of regret that reached beyond the words themselves. "And I won't go back until I know what I left was worth it."

Eliyas nodded slowly, unsure of what to say. There was something about this place that unsettled him and soothed him in the same breath. A part of him longed for it, yearned to feel that peace, that freedom. But another part of him feared it, feared the unknown that lay beyond the walls of the city.

He looked down at the compass again. It was still spinning, slowly, rhythmically. It felt like an anchor, but also a map, pointing to something hidden, something he could not yet see.

"Do you ever regret it?" Eliyas asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "Leaving everything behind?"

The owner's hands stilled for a moment, the firelight flickering across his face, casting deep shadows. His eyes, however, were unreadable.

"No," he said finally, his voice quiet but firm. "I regret only what I didn't leave sooner."

The words lingered in the air, heavy with meaning. Elias didn't speak for a long while, lost in the silence between them. The man had chosen a life of solitude, of purpose, and in doing so, he had found a peace that Elias couldn't even fathom yet. But there was something there—a thread he could follow if he was brave enough to pull it.

"I think…" Eliyas started, trailing off as the weight of his own thoughts tangled in his mind. "I think I understand. At least, a little."

The owner nodded slowly, as if that was all he could ask for.

They sat in the quiet for a while longer, the fire burning low, the night wrapping itself around the house like a soft blanket. The world outside felt far away, irrelevant. The city, the noise, the people—all of it seemed like a distant echo.

 Eliyas… for the first time in a long while, he felt at peace.