The world did not rejoice.
It didn't sing, didn't cheer. There were no horns, no banners, no gods descending in light.
There was only silence.
The Gate had fallen. The sky no longer bled. The Eater of Worlds was gone — pulled into an abyss deeper than death itself. But the cost…
Too many had fallen. Too much was lost.
In the heart of the smoldering wasteland, Lidow knelt beside the ashes of a broken world. Valaria's light had scorched the land clean, and Shadow's final chains still smoldered like black iron under molten coals. Nothing moved, except for the soft flutter of Lidow's torn cloak in the breeze.
He clutched his father's sword.
A weapon too heavy now. Not in weight — but in meaning.
The world was free.
But Lidow… was not.
Three days passed.
Lidow wandered the ruins alone.
He barely spoke. Barely ate. His left arm, shattered during the battle, had turned black from the rot. The healers who found him — surviving knights from the border realms — tried to carry him to safety.
He refused.
Until he collapsed.
When he awoke, he was in a temple. One of the old ones. Broken marble, half the roof missing, sunlight leaking through vine-covered stone. His arm was gone — amputated. Wrapped in clean bandages. He didn't care.
What haunted him most wasn't the pain.
It was the absence.
A voice came to him that night.
Not in dreams.
Not in madness.
Just a voice.
"You are not him, Lidow. But his fire burns in you."
He sat up.
The shadows moved.
From the dark, a figure stepped forward. A tall woman, pale-skinned, wrapped in grey and deep blue robes. Her hair shimmered like moonlight, and her eyes… were blind.
Yet they saw everything.
"Who are you?" Lidow asked, throat dry.
"I am the Chronicler," she replied. "I write the end of kings. And the beginning of those who rise after."
"I don't want to rise."
"You will."
He looked down.
"I couldn't save them."
"No," she said gently. "You couldn't."
Silence.
Then, she stepped closer and touched the hilt of Shadow's sword.
"Do you know what this is?"
"My father's."
"No," she whispered. "It is your name now."
She let go.
And walked away.
Lidow left the temple the next morning.
He didn't tell the others.
He didn't say goodbye.
He simply took the sword, wrapped the last piece of his mother's cloak around the handle, and vanished into the wildlands of the South.
Where no gods dared walk.
Where no fire burned.
Where the last king's son disappeared.
Five Years Later
The world remembered Shadow in whispers.
In songs sung around fires. In war prayers etched on black stone. In the silence left behind by his absence.
But Lidow… was a myth.
Some said he died with his parents. Others claimed he had wandered into the deep forests to become a spirit of vengeance. A few whispered that he'd gone mad and lived among ghosts, speaking only to the sword he carried.
None of them were right.
But they weren't wrong either.
Lidow had changed.
His right arm had grown stronger, his eyes colder, sharper. His voice, rarely used, held authority. The boy who once bled light and shadow now wielded neither with recklessness.
He was precise.
He was alone.
And he waited.
Not for peace.
But for something else.
For what always comes after peace.
The next fire.
One night, under a blood moon, a rider approached the campfire where Lidow sat.
She was armored in steel and silk. A survivor of the ruined Eastern Kingdoms. Her name: Reyna. A former knight. One of the few who remembered the Great War with clear eyes.
"You're him," she said.
Lidow didn't look up. "No."
"You are."
"I buried him."
She didn't argue.
Instead, she knelt beside the fire.
"There's something coming," she said.
"There always is."
"No," Reyna whispered. "This… is different."
She tossed something into the flames.
A skull.
But not a human one.
It hissed as it cracked in the heat. Long teeth. Obsidian bone. Marked with a symbol Lidow hadn't seen in five years:
A crowned eye. Carved into the forehead.
His eyes narrowed.
"…No one was left."
"I thought the same," Reyna said. "Until this started showing up on corpses. On walls. On old temples. And then…"
She leaned closer.
"…people started disappearing."
Lidow didn't sleep that night.
He stared at the fire until it died.
And then, before dawn, he stood — strapped his father's sword to his back — and looked east.
"I'm not him," he said softly.
But the wind answered differently.
You are what remains.
The East burned.
Not with hellfire. Not with light.
But with something ancient.
Something older than gods.
They called it the Silence.
Cities crumbled without screams. Armies vanished without blood. Wherever it passed, not even bones remained — just dust, drifting in windless air.
And behind it stood a man.
No name. No face. No voice.
He wore the Mark of the Crowned Eye.
Not etched. Not painted.
Burned into his skin — as if it had grown there.
The Dead Saint had returned.
But this was no resurrection.
This was infection.
A voice inside the wind. A hunger beyond death.
It did not want to rule.
It wanted nothing to remain.
The Call
Lidow stood atop the cliffs of Serren Vale, watching the black fog roll over the eastern valleys. Behind him stood the last survivors of the War of Realms: exiled kings, half-trained sorcerers, tired generals, and the remnants of Shadow's broken legions.
Valaria was gone. Her grave marked only by a single flame that never died.
Shadow was gone. Not even a grave remained.
But Lidow…
He still stood.
With one arm.
With the sword.
With fire.
Reyna approached.
"They say this is suicide," she said.
"They're right," Lidow replied.
"They say you'll die."
He looked at her.
"I died already."
Then he turned to the others.
And spoke.
The Final War
It didn't take long.
The East fell in a week.
The South was consumed in three days.
But the North — the shattered remains of kingdoms that had once bowed to Shadow — stood longer.
Because Lidow stood there.
At the Gates of Ul'darak, where the Void first broke through, Lidow made his stand.
Ten thousand stood behind him.
They fell.
One by one.
One hour at a time.
Until only he remained.
The final King of Shadow.
The Saint stepped forward.
Its face was a mask of ash.
Its eyes were endless.
Its voice… was not heard, but felt.
"You are his blood," it whispered into Lidow's bones.
"But you are still a child."
Lidow didn't answer.
He simply drew the sword.
His father's.
And his mother's cloak still wrapped around the hilt.
"I am what's left," Lidow said.
Then he charged.
The Last Duel
No one saw the battle.
No bard would ever sing of it.
Because there were no witnesses.
Only echoes.
Sword against silence.
Fire against shadow.
And for the first time in centuries… both bled.
The Saint's mask cracked.
Lidow's chest was pierced.
But neither stopped.
Until, in a final scream — Lidow gave everything.
Every memory.
Every light.
Every piece of his soul.
To strike one final time.
And end it.
The Aftermath
The silence stopped.
The sky turned blue again.
No more gods.
No more monsters.
The crowned eye was erased from the world.
And Lidow…
…was gone.
No body. No ashes.
Only the sword, buried in the roots of the oldest tree in the world.
And a stone.
One word on it:
"Remember."
What Happened to the World
Without gods, magic began to fade.
The Hells no longer opened.
The heavens no longer spoke.
But life remained.
Cities were rebuilt.
New kings rose — not born of fire, but of mercy.
And they ruled not from thrones of bone, but from halls of quiet stone.
Peace lasted.
Not forever.
But long enough.
The Line of Shadow
No heir came.
No bloodline survived.
No child of Lidow was ever born.
But his story…
His story never died.
Children told it around lanterns.
Warriors carved his name into blades.
And once a year — when the moon turned blood-red — a fire was lit beside the Tree.
Where the sword still rests.
Waiting.
The world did not end.
It changed.
And in that change, something rare bloomed: silence without fear, stillness without death.
Generations passed.
The ash washed away.
The war was remembered, not relived.
But beneath the oldest tree in the world — where its black roots coiled deep into the bones of the earth — the sword remained.
Still buried.
Still warm.
Children came there sometimes.
Not to pray.
Not to conquer.
Just to listen.
They'd sit at the roots and press their palms to the stone that marked the place.
A stone carved with a single word.
"Remember."
They didn't know why it mattered.
But they felt something.
A whisper in the leaves. A warmth in the breeze.
A weight in the sky, not heavy but… watching.
Once, a boy asked the question.
"Who was Shadow?"
His grandmother smiled — tired and kind and full of fire that had never quite left her bones.
"Shadow was the end of gods."
"Was he evil?"
"No," she whispered, brushing a silver hair behind his ear. "He was angry. And he was hurt. And sometimes… that's more dangerous."
The boy blinked. "But he saved us, right?"
She looked out across the hill, where the tree reached up toward the stars.
"Yes," she said. "And no."
Some say the sword is cursed.
Others say it's sacred.
But no one touches it.
Because in the quiet hours before dawn, when the wind carries no dust, and the night is still and full of memory…
You can feel something beside the tree.
Like someone still standing watch.
Not guarding.
Just… being.
A man, maybe.
Or a shadow.
Or the echo of both.
Sometimes the tree blooms.
Only once a year.
Black blossoms, like feathers dipped in ink.
No one knows why.
But the villagers gather anyway.
They leave offerings.
Small things: letters, drawings, stones painted by children.
One year, a sword.
Another year, a crown made of woven grass.
And always, someone whispers the name.
Just once.
So the world doesn't forget.
Shadow.
Valaria.
Lidow.
Names worn down by time.
Smoothed into legend.
They don't walk the world anymore.
But they don't need to.
They already burned it clean.
They already bled the sky.
They already ended the war that began before memory.
And all they asked in return…
Was to be remembered.
End.