Feed

Malach had lived a life where every time he managed to build something worth keeping, it vanished. A home became ashes. Friendships rotted into silence. Love slipped through his fingers like rain through dead leaves. Every victory was followed by another loss so perfectly timed that it stopped feeling like bad luck and started feeling like someone unseen was watching, waiting for the exact moment hope took root before ripping it out. The forests around his home seemed to know his name, and every gust of wind sounded like laughter muffled behind ancient trees.
One storm-ridden evening, with thunder crawling across the sky like a wounded beast, Malach wandered into the woods. He reached a clearing where the trees formed a perfect circle, their trunks twisted inward as if staring at him. There, exhausted beyond anger, he fell to his knees. His voice cracked as he shouted into the darkness, "Why? Why do You keep taking everything from me? What did I do?" The woods answered only with the groan of branches bending where there was no wind.
Then every sound in the forest died. The insects stopped. The frogs fell silent. Even the rain seemed afraid to fall. From somewhere that wasn't above, below, or around him—but everywhere at once—a presence awoke. It was older than mountains and heavier than the sky. The trees creaked as though they were bowing before it, and Malach felt his heartbeat slow against his will.
The voice finally came. It was not spoken. It was forced into his bones with the weight of a collapsing world. "BECAUSE YOU KEEP BUILDING ON WHAT MUST FALL!" The earth trembled beneath him. The bark split from the surrounding trees. "I DID NOT TAKE YOUR LIFE TO PUNISH YOU. I TORE IT APART BECAUSE EACH TIME YOU BUILT IT WRONG." The words struck harder than lightning. "BUILD IT RIGHT THIS TIME!" The command echoed again and again until it no longer sounded like a voice, but like the forest itself screaming through every leaf and root.
When the silence returned, Malach was alone. The clearing looked untouched, yet every tree now leaned slightly toward him, as if waiting to see what he would do next. As he stumbled back toward home, he noticed something that chilled him more than the voice ever could. Every footprint he left behind filled itself in, erased the moment he took another step, as though the woods were reminding him that the past was gone forever—and that whatever came next had to be built from nothing.