By the time Johan was five, he had mastered the art of silence. Most children his age spoke in fragmented sentences, their voices filled with wonder, curiosity, or frustration. They whined when they didn’t get their way, they asked questions they already knew the answers to, they laughed at the smallest things. Johan was different. He did not babble. He did not chatter needlessly. Every word he spoke had weight, as though he had carefully considered its purpose before uttering it. But it was not just his words that unsettled those around him. It was his eyes. The way he would watch someone without blinking, his gaze steady and unwavering. It was as though he could see right through them. Past their words, past their expressions, past their defenses. Children who once tried to play with him soon learned to keep their distance. "Why don’t you talk much?” one boy had asked him once. Johan had only smiled, tilting his head slightly. "Why do you talk so much?” he replied. The boy had hesitated, as if the question had never occurred to him before. And then, without another word, he turned and walked away, his face scrunched in confusion. That was how it always began. Johan did not argue. He did not fight. He simply planted a thought. A small, quiet thought. And then he watched it grow. Věra Černá had never been a particularly affectionate mother. She had cared for Johan in the way one cares for a fragile thing—not out of love, but out of obligation. But even she could sense that something was… wrong. It was not something she could explain, not something tangible that she could point to. It was in the way Johan carried himself. The way he spoke to people—so softly, yet with an underlying weight that seemed far beyond his years. She noticed it in the way the villagers interacted with him, the fleeting glances they gave him when they thought he wasn’t looking. The way the other children moved out of his path, as though obeying an unspoken rule. Johan was changing. No, she thought. He had already changed. One evening, she confronted him. "Where have you been?” she asked as he walked into their small home, his blond hair barely ruffled, his clothes clean and untouched. "Playing,” Johan answered. Věra’s fingers tightened around the edge of the table. "With who?” Johan blinked at her, tilting his head slightly. Then, in a voice almost too soft to hear, he murmured: “I don’t think you’d know them.” Something about the way he said it sent a chill down her spine. She wanted to press him further, but she didn’t. Because deep down, she was afraid of the answer. The first child disappeared in late autumn. A boy named Matthias, six years old, with dark hair and a timid smile. His family had left suddenly. No warning, no explanation. The house they had lived in for years was abandoned overnight, the doors locked, the windows covered. No one knew why. But Věra noticed that Johan did not seem surprised. And she was not the only one. "She was so happy here,” the baker’s wife murmured as she kneaded dough, speaking of Matthias’s mother. "Why would she leave without saying goodbye?” “I don’t know,” her husband replied, his voice uneasy. "But I heard… I heard their boy was acting strange before they left.” “Strange how?” The baker hesitated. "He wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t sleep. He kept muttering something about a friend, but when they asked him who, he refused to say.” The baker’s wife frowned. A moment of silence passed between them before she glanced out the window, toward the path that led to the village square. And there, standing at a distance, was a small blond-haired boy, watching. Johan had learned something fascinating about people. They were fragile. Not in the way children were fragile, like if they had been hurt by scraped knees or bruised arms. But in their minds. Their thoughts. It did not take much to make them question themselves. A single word, a glance, a perfectly placed silence. "Are you sure?” he had whispered to Matthias one afternoon. They had been playing by the river, the autumn leaves drifting down around them. Matthias had frowned. "Sure about what?” Johan had smiled then, his eyes half-lidded, his voice soft as the breeze. "Sure that you’re awake.” Matthias had laughed at first. But later, when the sun had set, when he was lying in bed in his small house, Johan’s words returned to him. What if he wasn’t awake? What if everything around him was just a dream? And from that night on, Matthias could not sleep. And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, he was gone. His family too. Gone as if they had never been there at all. More strange things began to happen. A young girl in the village fell ill. Her parents said she refused to eat and sleep. She became paranoid, jumping at shadows, claiming she could hear whispers in the night. Another child became withdrawn, refusing to speak, staring into the distance as if caught in an invisible trance. The villagers did not know what to make of it. But when Johan passed by, they lowered their voices. When he looked at them, they looked away. They did not know why they feared him. They only knew that they did. Věra could no longer pretend. Her son was a stranger to her now. She watched him from across the room, searching for any trace of the boy she had once known. But there was nothing. He did not look at her with love. He did not look at her with hatred. He did not look at her with anything at all. He was empty. One night, as she lay in bed, she tried to remember the last time he had reached for her. The last time he had asked for comfort. The last time he felt true sadness. And she realized he never had. Not once. Not since the day he was born. A tear slipped down her cheek. She did not know if it was for herself. Or for the monster she had brought into the world. Johan had never truly felt attached to his mother. She was just another person. Just another mind. And like all minds, she too could be broken. But she was of no interest to him. She was weak. Her thoughts were predictable, fragile. And so, he let her fade into the background, just as he had with so many others. For Johan, the world was a game. And he had already learned the most important rule. He did not need to make people do things. He only needed to give them the slightest push. And they would destroy themselves.