Running.

No one remembered what started it.

Perhaps it had been a stolen loaf of bread. Perhaps a cruel nickname spoken once too often. Whatever the reason, by the time the sun hung low above the fields beyond the village, a dozen children were chasing only one.

They laughed as they ran.

The lone boy never looked back.

Past the last fence post.

Past the grazing sheep.

Past the old standing stones that every mother warned her children never to approach.

He stopped only when there was nowhere left to run.

The others spread out around him, breathing hard, grinning at their victory.

Someone stooped and picked up a stone.

Then another.

The first flew.

The boy raised a hand.

The stone stopped.

Not struck.

Not caught.

It simply… remained.

Hanging motionless between them.

The laughter faded.

One of the older boys cursed and hurled his own stone.

It joined the first.

Then another.

Then another.

A ring of motionless stones floated around the silent child, as though the air itself had forgotten how to let them fall.

Only then did the boy lower his gaze to the object clutched against his chest.

It was small.

Dark.

Impossible to remember clearly afterward.

Some claimed it looked like polished obsidian.

Others swore it was made of bone.

One old traveler insisted it had no shape at all, only the feeling that something ancient had opened its eyes.

The boy whispered something.

No one ever agreed on the words.

The stones moved.

Not back toward the children.

Through them.

Each stone passed as though flesh were no more substantial than fog.

The field fell silent.

One by one the children collapsed where they stood, their bodies untouched, their eyes wide with the terror of someone watching themselves disappear.

The last to fall was the boy who had thrown the first stone.

He reached toward the child in the center of the field, as though begging forgiveness.

Or offering it.

No one knew.

By morning the field was empty.

No bodies.

No footprints.

No blood.

Only a perfect circle of smooth stones resting quietly in the grass.

The children were never found.

Neither was the boy.

To this day, travelers crossing lonely fields are warned never to throw the first stone.

For there are relics in the world that do not distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.

They remember only who began the violence.