I thought I had died.
Not the grand, tragic kind the epics worship—no martyrdom, no glory. I mean the quiet collapse. The kind where your heart quits before the body catches on. Where your soul folds inward, sodden and soft, like parchment left too long in the rain.
But my eyes opened.
And she was there.
Elena.
Valier's hand pierced through her abdomen like a stake through thawed soil. Her breath spilled out in broken, drowning gasps. Crimson bubbled at her lips—dark, unending, obscene. Her dress hung in shreds, clinging to her form like grief clings to memory—stained too deeply for redemption.
She stepped into death's path so I wouldn't have to.
Her silver eyes, once like moonlight on glass, found mine—not with terror. Not with agony. Just exhaustion. The kind no sleep could mend.
"Wh…why?" I croaked, my voice fractured, echoing everything inside me that was breaking.
She smiled.
A quiet, impossibly soft smile. Like the last warmth before frost overtakes the world.
"I couldn't watch you die," she murmured. "Not again. Not you. I've seen someone fall for me before… I couldn't live through that nightmare twice."
I couldn't understand it.
I didn't.
I had spent my whole life clawing to survive—and someone had just given up everything for that same goal. She had done what even I, in all my desperation to survive, couldn't fathom asking for.
She gave herself.
For me.
I wasn't thinking anymore. I wasn't even grieving. I was disintegrating.
THUMP.
Valier tore his arm free. The sound was obscene—like roots ripped from sacred earth. Then he grabbed her by the hair and hurled her aside. Like she was nothing. Like she'd never mattered.
"Useless insect," he spat. "You only delayed the inevitable—and added another corpse. There is no heaven for those who run. No afterlife awaits a coward."
"ELENA!"
Aelar's scream tore through the storm of battle. His veins bulged, mana convulsing inside him like a thunderstorm desperate to break—but he couldn't reach us. Not with the crogs swarming him and Virethiel.
Elif arrived with Calvin, panting. Her eyes found her mother.
"MOTHER!!"
The word shattered from her throat. She lunged forward, but Calvin held her back, arms clenched like chains.
"No—wait—don't—please—"
The world roared around me, but I wasn't part of it anymore.
I was caving in. A cathedral of bones, collapsing.
After all It was the first time anyone had died for me.
Not by accident. Not by duty.
By choice.
And my White Sense—my cursed awareness—let me feel it all. Her heart slowing, beat by beat. Her mana slipping away like warmth drawn from flesh by winter. Her soul, pulled toward that quiet, yawning abyss.
The voice whispered something in the back of my mind—
But I didn't hear it.
Or maybe I refused to.
This was the second time.
The second time, victory felt certain—until I realized it had cost me the one person who mattered most.
She was dying.
I was dying.
Valier lifted his arm again.
This time, to finish me for good.
But I didn't close my eyes.
I looked at her.
Elena's body—ruined, barely breathing—still had those eyes. Open. Locked onto mine.
They begged.
Run.
I couldn't move. But grief has a way of bending rules. I crawled—like something broken trying to reach warmth before it vanished.
Then:
FWOOM.
A blur exploded across the battlefield.
A colossal fist crashed into Valier's ribs, knocking him sideways like a storm cleaving through stone.
A jaguar—but not. A man sculpted from muscle and fur, from fury and silence.
Lonor.
He had returned.
He met my eyes—only once.
"Run."
Then he looked at her.
He bit his lip. His jaguar cheeks trembled.
"You're all the same," Valier snarled. "Another beast pretending this has meaning. You can't win now. Neither can I. Let me end the boy—and I'll leave."
He pointed at me like I was meat tossed to hounds.
Lonor stepped forward, voice like steel frozen in glaciers. "No. You've scorched everything you've touched. You will not touch what remains."
FWOOM.
Their battle began. The ground cracked beneath them.
Tessara. Eldrin. Floon. Soldiers stormed in, slicing through crogs to reach Aelar and Virethiel, but time bled too fast.
Aelar screamed again.
"ELENA!"
Virethiel's gaze narrowed. She whispered:
"Royal Blood Red: Rose Chapter Two—Active."
A storm of slashes—zircon tornadoes—tore the crogs apart. One breath later, she looked at Aelar.
"Go."
He vanished. Reappeared by Elena. Dropped to his knees.
"Please speak to me… please, my love."
Elena turned to him.
Eyes barely open. Glazed with pain, yet still hers.
"I have nothing left," Aelar gasped, voice cracking. "No mana. Nothing. This wound… it can't be healed with atmospheric mana spells. DAMN IT! Can anyone hear me? Please—SOMEONE—!"
And that's when I learned WAR HAS NO EARS.
So I crawled.
To her. To him. To the place where hope had already died.
I placed my palm over her wound.
Aelar looked at me, desperate. "Yes! Heal her—please!"
I whispered the spell. I poured everything into it.
Mana surged. Light bloomed.
Green, bright, almost holy—
And vanished.
"No."
No. No. No.
My body trembled. Fear roared through me. I couldn't find calm—couldn't even anchor myself with my purest desire. So the healing spell failed and Vital Surge—fueled by chaos—was meant only for the caster. Not for her.
"I need to calm down. I need to breathe. I need to heal her. I need to—"
A hand brushed my face—warm, trembling fingers.
"Don't," she whispered. "Please… just go."
Then she turned to Aelar.
"I don't want to see you so sorrowful in my last moments, dear… so please… just keep Elif… and Icariel… safe. And… thank you…"
"...Thank you for everything, my light in the longest night."
Her hand slipped from mine.
Her fingers fell away.
And the last warmth of her skin left me.
A scream ripped open the sky.
It came from Aelar—raw, broken, and buried in grief so deep it shattered the battlefield. His silver hair whipped around his face as his armor cracked down the middle, fractures blooming across it like sorrow turned solid. Tears streamed down his face, his body crumbling under the weight of a loss too enormous for words.
He kept screaming.
Crogs around him burst into flames, crumbling like paper under divine wrath. Tessara, Virethiel, Floon, Eldrin—even Lonor—fought on, their movements sharp and ruthless, but that scream? That scream cut through all of them. It wasn't a call for help. It was the wail of a soul being torn in half.
One of the greatest elves of the age was howling like a child who had just lost the world.
But when Calvin brought Elif to him—sobbing, screaming—he changed.
He wiped his tears. Just like that. Not because he was okay. But because he had to be.
He pulled her into his arms and whispered, "It'll be okay, Elif…"
I bit down until blood filled my mouth.
It was the worst day of my life.
And still…
That was the moment I knew.
I had to go.
I had to save myself.
The voice returned, calm and final:
"It's time. Leave now."
I wanted to stay. To fight. But survival—survival was the only truth I'd ever known.
Even as I turned, even as I walked away on legs that trembled like twigs in a storm, I healed myself with chaos. Vital Surge. Irony in every cell.
I said nothing.
I passed Aelar.
Passed Elif.
Passed her.
And then—
A voice called out behind me.
"Run with your head high."
Aelar.
Broken, but firm.
"You did more than anyone should've asked of you. More than most could. I'm proud of you. Truly. The time we shared—it felt like the son I never had had finally come home. And Elena…"
He paused.
"She thought of you that way too. She never said it aloud. But I know. She told me she tried cooking things you'd like—so you wouldn't need to go hunting alone outside of the tribe. She even considered breaking the meat taboo… just to make you happy."
I stopped walking.
"She cherished you. So thank you—for keeping your word. For protecting them. For surviving. Thank you, Icariel. Thank you… my son."
That word—
Son.
It broke me more than any death ever could.