\herosection{The Shepherd of Souls}{chapters/2025.10.23-TheShepherdOfSouls/image/the-shepherd-of-souls.jpg}

\DROPCAP{../../dropcap_c/dropO.png}nce upon a time \\
there was a shepherd named Lior,\\
who lived happily in the mountains\\
with his wife and young son.

Their life was simple and hard.\\
Yet they had each other,\\
and their sheep,\\
and the mountains and valleys \\
were so beautiful\\
that words failed.

One day Lior came home after grazing their flock,\\
only to discover there had been an avalanche.\\
Where his cottage had stood\\
now lay a gash of rocks and debris.

His home and family were gone \\
without a trace — \\
swallowed by the mountainside.\\
All that was left \\
was a newborn lamb,\\
whom his wife and son had been caring for,\\
who had somehow survived.\\
He named her Flower.

After that, \\
Lior lived as one half-alive.\\
He cared for Flower and his sheep,\\
spoke little,\\
and slept by a fire \\
that burned low\\
in a simple hut he built\\
near where his cottage had been.

The villagers left him food \\
but no questions.\\
``He's already part ghost,'' \\
they whispered.

One clear winter's night,\\
Lior was foraging for firewood\\
when a blizzard took him by surprise.\\
Snow whirled so thick\\
that Up and Down traded places.

Disoriented, \\
he stumbled and fell into a drift,\\
and the cold overcame him quickly.\\
His heartbeat quieted, \\
faltering.

In that stillness,\\
he saw two figures \\
in the blinding whiteness — \\
his wife and son — \\
smiling, patient.\\
They didn't beckon him closer;\\
they simply waited as if to say not yet.\\
Their peace startled him awake.

At dawn, \\
he crawled out of the snowdrift — \\
alive and aching.\\
Near him, \\
wedged between stones,\\
lay an old shepherd's flute\\
carved of mountain ash, \\
crusted with ice.

He didn't know who had left it there,\\
only that it felt at home in his hands.

At first, \\
he couldn't make a sound with it.\\
Eventually, \\
notes came out, \\
cracked and faltering.\\
Over the long days of watching his sheep,\\
he let the flute slowly show him \\
what it wanted to sing.\\
Sometimes he wondered \\
who was playing whom.

The villagers noticed\\
the shepherd who had never smiled\\
now played in the twilight — \\
and the sheep gathered close\\
as if listening to prayer.

He played through sun and rain,\\
through silence so wide\\
the echoes seemed to open into forever.\\
The sheep learned to follow the sound;\\
the birds grew unafraid.\\
And in time,\\
his own heart began to keep time\\
with the Otherworldly Music.

When the fever came to the village,\\
Lior came, carrying herbs and his flute.

``Sometimes compassion \\
is the only medicine left,'' he said.

He played for the sick,\\
for the frightened,\\
for the dying.\\
His songs sang of tender sorrow,\\
and a strange, \\
fierce joy.

Some who heard them survived.\\
Those who didn't, \\
passed away loved.

When Flower too fell ill,\\
he played through the night.\\
The flute's tone raw — \\
human, pleading.

When at last her small body stilled,\\
the wind rose \\
and carried the fading melody\\
down the valley like a benediction.

At dawn, \\
he carried Flower\\
to where his family had died,\\
and laid her to rest\\
in a small grave adorned with stones.

Weeks later, \\
the fever took Lior.\\
On his last evening,\\
he asked the villagers \\
to open the window,\\
so the wind could find him.

They buried him next to Flower,\\
his flute resting on his chest.

That spring,\\
when storms swept down the valley,\\
the wind carried music — \\
faint, but unmistakable.

It was never quite the same tune twice.

The villagers called it Lior's Song.\\
And when someone died, \\
they would say,

``Listen — Lior has come to carry them home.''
