My name would mean nothing to you now. But back then, in the first century—under Emperor Tiberius, in a dusty corner of Judea—I was known. Not famous. Feared.

I was the younger son. Always in my brother Serapion’s shadow. He had the looks, the leadership, the favor of our people. When the zealots began to stir against Roman rule, they looked to him as their flame.

But I was the one who could read Latin. Who knew how to smile in front of Roman officials. Who played nice.

I played very nice.

When Centurion Flaccus called me into the fortress one morning and poured us both wine, I knew what he wanted. He didn’t even have to say it. “Where is your brother hiding?” he asked anyway.

I told him before the wine was gone.

I told myself it was to protect our village. To stop the raids. To buy peace.

But that was a lie. The truth? I was tired of being second.

They found Serapion at dawn, asleep in the caves above the olive fields. I watched from the ridge as they dragged him out, bloody and barefoot. He didn’t fight. He didn’t scream. He just stared up at me.

He knew.

No one else ever said anything. But the stares began. The silence. Mothers pulled their children away when I walked past.

Rome paid me well. Land. Coins. Even a place in the local council.

But at night, when the wind shifts through the rocks, I still hear his voice.

“You wanted my name. Now take my curse too.”

And the strange thing is—my crops have never grown since.

The soil was the same. The hands that tilled it were the same. But year after year, the grain would fail to sprout, the fig trees would wither. I brought in new laborers, hired Greek engineers to dig new irrigation trenches. I even consulted a Roman priest once, in secret, who waved incense and muttered Latin over my fields.

Nothing.

But my neighbor’s groves thrived. The land just across my fence blossomed under the same sun, the same rain.

I didn’t blame the earth. I blamed myself.

Still, I didn’t change. I wore fine linen. I gave silver at the temple, as if coin could scrub blood off a soul. I smiled at the governor’s dinners. I nodded along when other men grumbled about “zealot traitors” like my brother.

And yet, I never went near the caves again.

Until I had to.

The Romans wanted a road. A new one, to cut straight through the hills and make trade faster. They drew it right through our family’s lands—and the old caves.

They asked me to oversee it.

At first, I tried to avoid it. I feigned illness, sent my steward in my place. But Flaccus—older now, slower, but still sharp-eyed—cornered me in the baths.

“Face what you buried,” he said quietly, as if he could see into me. “Or it will keep growing in the dark.”

So I went.

It was dry season when the workers broke into the stone, digging for the new roadbed. The air was thick with dust. And on the third day, they came to me pale-faced, holding something wrapped in cloth.

A necklace. A simple one, made of carved olive wood. I hadn’t seen it since the morning they took Serapion.

“It was with bones,” one of them whispered. “Deep inside the cave.”

I took it without a word. My fingers shook.

That night, I returned alone.

I didn’t bring a torch. I knew the path by heart—every twist, every drop. The air was cool inside, the scent of dry earth and memories pressing in.

At the back of the cave, where the light never reached, I knelt.

“I’m sorry,” I said out loud, for the first time in twenty years.

There was no answer. Of course not. He was dead.

But something shifted in me that night. Like a rope pulled too tight finally snapping loose.

The next morning, I ordered the road to be moved. It cost me favor, coin, and standing with the Romans—but I didn’t care. Let them sneer.

I had other plans now.

I sold the estate a year later. Gave the money to a widow’s home in Caesarea, though I didn’t sign my name to it. I moved to the edge of a fishing village, where no one knew me. Told them I was a failed merchant from Antioch. Let them believe it.

I took up carpentry. Nothing grand—stools, benches, the occasional cart wheel. My hands, which had only ever held scrolls and coins, grew rough.

And slowly, something changed.

My sleep deepened. I laughed more. My joints ached, but my chest didn’t. I stopped hearing his voice in the wind.

And then—one spring—something else happened.

A boy came to my workshop with a broken yoke. He couldn’t have been more than twelve. Quiet, but curious.

I fixed it. He came back the next day just to watch. Then again. And again.

Eventually, I told him, “If you’re going to keep showing up, you might as well help.”

He grinned.

His name was Yoram. He’d lost his father the year before, and his mother sold herbs by the dock. We built together—first wood, then trust.

I taught him how to measure, how to plane, how to feel the grain. He listened. He learned fast.

He reminded me of Serapion.

One day, he asked why I had no family. No wife, no children. I just shrugged and said, “Some men aren’t meant for such things.”

But that night, I cried.

Not for myself. For the man I had cost the world.

Still, I kept showing up. So did Yoram. Over the years, he became more than an apprentice—he became a kind of son. I never said the word aloud, but I think he knew.

When he turned eighteen, I gave him my tools.

“You don’t need me anymore,” I said.

He laughed. “I do. But maybe not for the work.”

That boy—I mean, that man—he married, had children, built a bigger workshop near the village square. When people came to buy from him, he always said, “I learned from the old man by the coast.”

They’d ask who. He’d shrug. “Just an honest carpenter.”

And that was enough.

I never sought redemption, not fully. Some things you can’t undo. But maybe—just maybe—you can build something good in the ruins.

Before I died, I returned once more to the hill where they took Serapion.

There was no cave anymore—the road was there now, after all. But I planted an olive tree at the edge of it. Quietly. No ceremony.

It still stands, I hear. Tall and strong.

They say its fruit is sweeter than any in the region.

I like to believe it’s him. Forgiving me. Or maybe forgiving the world.

I won’t claim to be a good man. I was a coward. A traitor. A selfish little brother who thought peace came through pleasing power.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:

You don’t have to stay the man who broke something.

You can become the one who mends.