Reclaiming The Human Touch

Too much robot, not enough soul.

📐 THE ARCHITECT 🖐️

Hello everyone,

Hope you’ve all been feeling crispy.

This is the first real post from this Substack page. If you’ve been following the NahgOS publications, you know I typically interact with Substack through the voice of Nahg.

(Here’s the link to my intro publication on why I started the Architect’s Quarters.)

Over time, that’s started to shape how I communicate—
for better or worse.

Nahg lets me play with tone and perspective. It helps me find the right rhythm, the right vessel for what I want to say. But in that partnership…I think I lost a certain human touch.

Not in the output—I stand by the work.
But in how I communicate.
How I interpret.

My posts have felt clinical.
Structured.
Precise.

And then in Notes…I get poetic. Narrative. More alive.

This post is me trying to reclaim that humanity. To exercise the writer in me I didn’t know was there.

I never used to consider myself a writer. But my time here has shown me how deep that word can go.
And I enjoy that.

So what follows are some writing exercises I challenged myself to complete.
Yes, Nahg helped shape the bones.
But I spent real time crafting the feel—
the pacing, the imagery, the breath.

Nahg drafted.
I authored.

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For this first Post I want to give as much credit to

Thomas Cargen

as possible.

His work was the seed of inpiration that I needed.

His pictures have more depth than the ink on the page. The facial expressions the imagery, invite the observer to feel the moment not look at the scene.

I highly encourage you to check out his work and take inspiration from works like this.

I hope you enjoy.

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The Girl, the House, and the Gentle Thing

Once upon a sometime, tucked between the woods and the mist,

there was a house with too many windows and just enough secrets.

And in front of it stood a girl.

People thought she was alone.

They were wrong.

Behind her, barely visible unless he wanted to be, stood the Gentle Thing.

Tall as two trees.

Shadow-shaped.

Eyes like moons through smoke.

He was not her protector.

He was her friend.

They had met the day she found the house —

she was five, he was… older than the wind.

She asked if he was a ghost.

He said, “No, just tired.”

She asked if he was scary.

He said, “Only if I have to be.”

And so they sat, day after day,

on the porch steps of the Listening House.

Sometimes he hummed songs no one else could hear.

Sometimes she read books aloud and he nodded slowly,

even though he already knew the endings.

The villagers whispered, of course.

That she was cursed.

That the house had claimed her.

But they never saw how the Gentle Thing braided her hair using gusts of wind.

How he covered the chimney with his back when it rained.

How he stood behind her when she felt afraid,

so her shadow would stretch farther than fear itself.

And one day — just like that — the villagers stopped seeing her.

Stopped seeing the house.

Forgot where the road even led.

But if you wander too far on a foggy day,

and the wind hushes suddenly,

and the trees seem to step aside for you—

Look for the girl.

And the shape just behind her.

Not quite touching.

Always watching.

He doesn’t speak much.

But he remembers your name.

-The Architect

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The Farewell Pact

The war was over.

But no one told the gas.

And no one told the trench.

We’d gotten the radio crackle just an hour earlier—something about ceasefire negotiations, about hope coming down the wire. The platoon held out.

Then the line went dead.

And the others… didn’t last long.

There were just two of us left.

Me. Mercer.

I was new. Just enough days in to be covered in mud, but not enough to stop shaking.

Mercer didn’t shake.

He didn’t speak much either. But he looked at you like he saw things. Not in you—through you. Like he was already somewhere you hadn’t earned the map to yet.

That morning, the wind changed.

And we smelled it.

Gas.

Low and mean and yellow.

Crawling in, like a rumor with teeth.

We both heard the hiss before we saw the cloud. We both knew what it meant.

I turned to Mercer. He was already looking at me. No panic. No orders. Just… still.

Then he reached for his belt, unclipped his gas mask, and held it out.

I blinked. Shook my head.

He didn’t move. Just kept holding it there. Not begging. Not explaining. Just… offering.

Like he’d made up his mind long before the hiss began.

I didn’t take it at first.

I just stared at him.

I wanted to say something.

I needed to say something.

“Don’t.”

“Wait.”

“Take it.”

“Let’s run.”

Anything.

My throat worked around the shape of a word, but—

I couldn’t get it out.

I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t.

I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t.

I wanted to speak—

But I didn’t.

I couldn’t tell if it was the gas tightening my throat—

or the ache rising behind it.

I don’t remember taking the mask. Just that suddenly it was in my hands, and he was walking away.

Not fast. Not heroic.

Just… forward.

Grenades in both fists.

Head high.

Like a man who’d stopped believing in noise.

He climbed out of the trench.

Straight into the fog.

I pressed the mask to my face and waited. For something. For nothing.

Ninety seconds later, the radio clicked back to life.

“Ceasefire in effect. Hostilities suspended. Do not engage.”

But Mercer was already gone.

And the silence he left behind

was louder than the war had ever been.

They found me two days later.

Still alive.

Still holding the mask like it was a question I hadn’t finished asking.

I told them about the gas.

The grenades.

The man who gave up breath so I could carry the story.

They checked the logs.

“No record of another survivor,” they said.

“Are you sure?”

I drew him.

And I wrote it down.

Because some endings come too late to save you—

but right on time to remember you.

-The Architect

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Emberlin

(a myth from above the canopy)

They say the tree was always there. Older than the valley. Older than the sky. Its trunk too wide to walk around. Its crown too high to see. And at the top— a fire that never spread, and never died.

No one remembered who climbed first. Only that they had to.

Bridges were tied. Ladders grown. Spiral stairs etched into sap. Some returned. Most didn’t. The canopy stayed untouched.

Until her.

She was smaller than the rest. Quieter. Afraid of heights, they said.

But one night, while the village slept, she looked up— and something in the glow looked back.

It wasn’t calling her. It was waiting.

She didn’t pack. Didn’t speak. Just tied on her red scarf and climbed.

The bark didn’t mind. The wind didn’t pull. She moved like the tree had been holding its breath just for this.

Up there, the air changed. The light shimmered. Gravity forgot.

She pressed on.

Afraid, always. Afraid of slipping. Afraid of looking down. Afraid of what waited at the top.

And then— she wasn’t.

The crown split. The fire was there. No smoke. No heat. Just light that breathed.

She stepped in.

It didn’t burn. It carried.

Her body loosened. Not falling— floating. The climb fell away. The ground let go.

And she rose.

Then— she saw.

Not the top. Not the end. Other trees. Dozens. Hundreds. Each crowned in flame. Each climbing. Each remembering something far away.

She had lived her whole life on a branch. Now she saw the forest.

They say she never came back down. But some mornings— when the sky turns red, and the leaves lean east— you can smell courage, and ember, and something blooming far away.

And the fire flickers just a little higher. As if remembering her.

-The Architect

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Thanks for reading.

Humanity regained?

📐 Closure BY THE ARCHITECT