Chapter 65 : One of the Numbers
Long before the Sanctuary.
Long before the world knew the name Axel—there was only the Village.
Tucked deep into the forest, hidden from the chaos of the world, it was more than a safe haven. It was a forge. And Axel was its fire.
He handpicked ten. Not the strongest. Not the smartest. Not the youngest.
The right ones.
Silas was one of them.
They called them The Numbers.
Axel didn't ask for loyalty. He ripped it from them.
He didn't ask for strength. He dragged it out of them.
Day after day. Bone after bone. Until they weren't people anymore.
They were sharpened blades.
And Silas—Silas was the sharpest.
He remembered the cold nights.
The silence of training. The weight of Axel's shadow over every breath.
He remembered the way Axel would watch him—not with pride, not with affection—just calculation.
And he remembered the last time he saw him.
Axel had left after the war with Alice. No goodbyes. No command.
No reason.
Just... gone.
The village survived, but Silas didn't.
Not truly.
He rotted in his wrath, marinated in it until it became the only thing keeping him human.
And when he heard whispers—of Axel, alive, thriving in a place called the Sanctuary—something inside him snapped into place.
"You don't abandon your weapons, Axel," Silas whispered to himself now, staring into the firelight of a lone camp he'd made miles from Alexandria.
His hands were scarred. His body bore Axel's lessons like tattoos etched in blood.
"You left me."
That's why he joined Rick.
Not for justice.
Not for peace.
Not even for war.
But for the only thing Axel had ever denied him—closure.
The chance to look his old commander in the eye and ask the only question that ever mattered:
"Why?"
---
Silas moved through the Sanctuary like a ghost in familiar halls.
He knew how to blend in—Axel had taught him that. He wore the face of another forgotten man, helped fix a fence, lifted crates, nodded when spoken to. Silent. Invisible.
No one looked twice.
But his eyes—they never stopped searching.
Until they found him.
Axel.
He wasn't the same. Older, leaner, colder—but still moved with that same animal grace. Still carried that look like he didn't belong to this world. Like he was carved out of pain and flame.
Silas stood there in the shadows, heart hammering in his ribs.
He didn't draw his blade. He didn't whisper his name.
He just... watched.
Because Silas didn't come to kill Axel. Not yet.
He came for answers.
For truth.
For the reason the man he called lord, the man who built him from blood and broken bone, had left him behind.
Without Axel, Silas had no direction.
No meaning.
No soul.
And for days, he waited. Kept his head down. Ate with the others. Watched.
Until finally, one morning, Axel walked out alone.
No words. No guards. No Negan.
Just a cigarette between his lips and a silence around him that felt too heavy for the world to carry.
Silas followed.
Quiet as the wind.
Axel climbed the small hill outside the Sanctuary. A place above it all. A spot that overlooked the ruins of the land they ruled. Where ash from the past still clung to the trees like ghosts.
He sat. Smoking. Not moving.
Just... staring.
And Silas stood at the bottom of the hill, hand on his blade, chest tight.
This was it.
Not for vengeance. Not for wrath.
But for the question that had kept him awake for years.
He climbed.
And Axel didn't turn. Not yet.
The wind carried the soft crunch of Silas's boots as he moved closer.
Until he stood behind him.
Close enough to strike.
Close enough to speak.
His voice was cracked, trembling, a whisper of a man unmade:
"Why did you leave me, Lord Axel?"
Axel's hand stilled.
The cigarette burned at the edge of his fingers.
And after a long, still moment, he finally said—
"Silas..."
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