LUCIUS
"C–come here… kiddo…"
His voice reached me from beyond the thicket—low, broken, trembling like a thread about to snap. Just hearing it made my chest tighten. There was pain in that voice. Not just pain. Finality.
I peeked out from behind the tree Lady Sia had told me to stay hidden against. My heart lurched. Something inside me twisted, because I could feel it—really feel it—in that voice… something was beyond wrong.
I hesitated for a second.
Lady Sia's order echoed in my mind like a warning bell: "Stay here. No matter what."
But my feet moved anyway, and so did I, in agreement, despite something in me, not wanting to witness what I was about to...
One slow step at first, then another. My hands brushed past branches and rough bark, weaving through the foliage like I was stepping out of a dream and into a nightmare I couldn't unsee.
The forest went too quiet for a while, as lightning had ceased exploding through the skies...
No birds. No rough breeze. Only the distant, thunderous shocks that pulsed through the trees—reminders that the Ghost Bear and Lady Sia were still locked in a clash somewhere deeper in the woods, a few hundred meters away from our position. But all of that faded behind the growing sound of my own footsteps and the pounding in my ears.
And then I saw him.
Mr. Ragnar.
He was lying there, not like a man who had fallen, but like something had dropped him from the heavens. The earth itself had cradled his impact. A crater of broken grass and torn soil spread around him, soaking up everything he no longer had the strength to hold inside.
His sword—his massive, shimmering bluish sword—was thrown aside, a few meters behind him, right next to the tree I had thought about hiding behind. It lay there like a relic. Now-forgotten. Silent, and no longer the weapon that symbolised safety and protectiveness it once did in the hands of a man that now lay before me...
The grass beneath him had lost its colour. The lush green was drowned in crimson and not splattered—soaked. Like someone had painted the earth in blood. The patch beneath his body wasn't just stained; it was a pool, still growing, still warm.
He was breathing.
Barely.
Each inhale came out as a sound, not a breath. A grunt. A whisper. The kind of noise that didn't feel alive, only desperate, painfully so, as if death itself had delayed its arrival to let this man suffer more during his final moments. And his chest… his chest wasn't rising anymore. It just lay still. Like the breath had decided there was no point in trying again.
Then I saw them.
Four.
Four massive, hollowed-out holes in his chest—clean, surgical, like something monstrous had pierced straight through him with unrelenting precision. Not ragged wounds. No. These were too… exact. Like something had meant every inch of damage. The flesh around them was gone, torn away. Bones—ribs, maybe more—shattered, missing. Organs? I didn't know where they'd gone. Maybe nowhere. Maybe they'd just… stopped existing.
Blood poured from those holes. Not dripped. Poured. So much of it.
It spilled out from his mouth, too. From his nose. From the corners of his eyes, where I couldn't even tell anymore if it was blood or just some twisted version of tears.
My legs trembled. My heart kicked wildly inside me, like it wanted to escape. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't look.
But I didn't look away.
No matter how much my body screamed at me to turn around—to run, to hide, to pretend this wasn't real—my eyes refused to move. They stayed locked on him.
In the aftermath of a warrior who fought, and lost.
On a man who wasn't supposed to fall. Not him. Not Ragnar.
There was something about seeing him like that—reduced like that—that clawed at something deep in me. My mind kept trying to make sense of it, trying to understand how someone so massive and powerful could end up like this. But there were no answers.
Only silence. And the slow, horrific realisation that this was the other side of the battle.
The side no one told stories about.
Not the shining rise of a victor, standing above their enemy.
But the silence that follows when the ground decides you are the one it will claim.
And in that silence, something inside me broke a little. Or maybe… changed.
Because as I stood there, helpless and shaking, a thought wrapped its cold hands around my chest and whispered:
'One day… this could be you...' That thought, that damned, invasive thought..
"…Am I really looking that bad?"
Ragnar's voice broke the silence, not cracked or coughing, not wheezing through blood, but calm. Steady. Like he'd chosen that one line to carry all the weight he had left.
I had no answer. None that felt right, anyway.
So I just nodded. Once. Small. Honest.
Ragnar stared at me for a moment—his gaze sharp despite everything, like he was looking through me, searching for something unspoken. But he didn't reply right away. Instead, he turned his eyes downward and tried to lift his right arm.
It shook.
Even that tiny movement looked like it stole something from him. I stepped forward instinctively, close enough now that only one step separated us—but he stopped me with a slight gesture. Weak, but firm.
He glanced back up at me and offered the faintest hint of a smile—half-pained, half-determined. Like he was trying to keep up the act. As if he could hide all this behind a grin. Then, with a slow breath, he pushed himself upright.
He lifted himself. All by himself.
I didn't know what it proved. Maybe nothing. But it mattered to him. Maybe that was enough.
"…I know you're small," he muttered, his voice almost teasing. "And probably weak… But can you manage to fetch that sword of mine for me, please?"
He tried to laugh. But instead, he coughed—a sharp, violent jolt of blood that spilled down his chin. Behind him, the wounds in his chest gaped wider. I could see through him. Like his body had become a frame around emptiness.
I nodded. This time, faster.
Then I ran.
Crimson Ultima—the name echoed in my mind as I sprinted the thirty or so meters to where his weapon lay half-buried in churned-up earth. Even from here, it looked like it didn't belong in this world. A blade made not to cut flesh, but fate.
I reached it.
Tried to lift it.
Failed.
It was too big. Too heavy. Too much.
But I didn't stop.
If I couldn't lift it, I'd drag it. I shifted the hilt's angle, pushed it forward. When that didn't work, I flipped the blade's direction again, pulled with all I had. Slowly, painfully, the weapon moved—inch by inch.
Behind me, Ragnar had crawled to a nearby tree. A fresh trail of blood marked every spot he touched.
I don't know when he moved.
Or how.
But he was watching me now, face pale, jaw clenched, eyes dim but not empty. Just… tired.
Then the earth trembled again, harder this time. An explosion shook the very air, louder and deeper than any before. The shockwave hit me from behind, pushed me and the sword forward, and knocked dust into my lungs and grit into my eyes.
But I didn't stop.
If anything, it helped.
"…No offence, but, sir…" I began as I finally pulled the hilt close to him, "…how are you still alive?"
I wasn't being dramatic.