Location: Narn, Great Narn War
Year: 5999 NY
The end had come not like a blade, but like a storm — long-seen, long-felt, and still… unstoppable.
The very air hung heavy with blood and ash. It clung to every breath, coated the tongue, settled in the fur like a second skin of soot and sorrow. The scent was thick and metallic, almost oily, as if the earth itself were weeping iron. Beneath it, the battlefield groaned — a graveyard in the making, paved with shattered bones and broken stone. Ancient pillars lay snapped like twigs, monuments reduced to rubble. The land, once proud and wild, now trembled beneath the weight of war.
The sky loomed low — swollen with black clouds that churned as if the heavens themselves had joined the fight. Lightning licked the edges of the horizon, silver teeth flashing in the dark. It illuminated the landscape in momentary, jagged fragments: swords raised, bodies fallen, smoke rising like prayers never answered.
And in the heart of it all stood a single figure.
Tall. Still.
A sentinel in the chaos.
His fur -now completely covered in soot-, blacker than the sky above, shimmered faintly with the wetness of rain and blood. His mane, once regal, was streaked with ash and flame. But his eyes — those eyes still burned. Twin orbs of molten gold that saw too much and revealed too little.
Orin.
He did not speak. He did not need to. The ground itself seemed to fall quiet around him, if only for a breath, as though the storm respected what it could not break.
He stood at the threshold of ruin — the last wall, the final roar — and he knew.
Knew it was over.
Knew they had lost.
Knew that history would end today — and the telling of it might not survive the silence that followed.
A figure moved through the smoke — fast, desperate, familiar.
Another Tracient. Lean. Bloodied. His once-sleek coat now matted with dirt and grief. His movements were quick, but not graceful — the kind of speed that comes only from panic.
He knelt before Orin, chest heaving.
"Lord Orin," the soldier rasped, barely more than a breath beneath the storm. "We are cornered. There is no escape. The enemy… they're preparing their final assault."
His voice cracked on the word final.
Orin did not blink. He had expected this. He had seen it in the erosion of their lines, in the fatigue painted on every face, in the silence between each clash of blades. The invaders had attacked them when they least expect it. The end had been circling them for days. Today, it landed.
Yet his gaze didn't linger on the messenger.
It dropped instead — gently, slowly — to the small shape nestled against his leg.
A cub.
Barely past his first seasons.
A tiger-child, with orange and black fur only less darkened by the war and eyes like mirrors — the kind of eyes that reflected everything, even the things one tried to hide. There was blood on his cheek — not his own — and his small claws dug anxiously into Orin's leg, though he tried to hide it. He had not cried. Not since the siege began. Not once.
Kon.
His son.
Orin stared down at the boy, and for the first time in the long day, his composure faltered.
He shouldn't be here.
Not in this hell, not in this moment.
He should be racing through the forests of Térandor, laughing in the wind. He should be falling asleep beside a fire, warm and safe and dreaming of hero-tales. Not standing in the shadow of extinction.
The ache that bloomed in Orin's chest was not sharp. It was slow, dull, and total — the kind of ache that grinds. That takes root in silence and grows louder every time you try to speak.
He reached down with one large, scarred hand and gently touched the boy's head. The motion was almost clumsy, as though he feared that to touch Kon too strongly might leave a mark — not on the body, but on the soul.
Kon looked up.
Eyes too wide. Too young.
They held no understanding of war, only the shape of fear — the sense that something was wrong, and no one was saying it. They were the eyes of a child trying to believe a parent's silence still meant safety.
"Papa," Kon whispered, his voice trembling. "Why are the stars gone?"
Orin's breath caught.
There were no stars. Hadn't been for nights now. Smoke choked the skies. Light had vanished from the world, and even the moon no longer dared look down.
"They're just… hiding," Orin murmured, the lie gentle, as lies must be.
Kon blinked.
Orin turned his gaze outward again — to the distant ridge, where shadows gathered. The enemy. They were many. Too many. Shapes moved like a tide rising to swallow them. Steel flashed. Wings beat. Marching thundered through the mist. Their final hour approached — not as a mercy, but as a statement.
There would be no dawn here.
Not for them.
But perhaps…
Perhaps for him.
Orin's jaw clenched. He felt the weight of a thousand choices pressing against his spine. He had made peace with death. He had made peace with loss. But he could not — would not — make peace with letting his son die beneath the same sky.
Not today.
Let the Lion curse me if He must, he thought, but my son will live.
____________________________________
The child looked up.
He was small — still caught in that strange middle place between cub and youth, where the body had begun to grow but the heart still beat with wonder. His fur, sleek and golden-striped like his father's, trembled in the cold wind. His eyes — wide, bright, honest — looked to Orin with all the trust that only a son could give.
And in them, Orin saw what he had most tried to protect.
Innocence.
But the war had found him anyway.
Orin's heart twisted in his chest, quiet and cruel. There was no time for grief now, and yet it came — not as a sob, but as a heaviness that rooted deep in his ribs. He had known this moment was coming. He had known the war would leave him with only one thing to give: a choice.
Still, knowing didn't make it easier.
He knelt — the proud, battle-worn general lowering himself until he was eye to eye with his son, the storm behind him momentarily forgotten. The earth rumbled faintly beneath his paws, but he ignored it. There were more important things than armies now.
His large paw came to rest gently on Kon's shoulder, claws withdrawn, touch soft.
"Kon," Orin said, and his voice — usually thunderous, a voice that had rallied warriors — was gentle now, like the hush before rain.
The boy blinked, searching his father's eyes. The dark lines across his face were still stained with ash and soot, but the golden gleam in his irises burned bright. It was a look Kon would remember for the rest of his life — long after the noise was gone. A look that said everything words couldn't.
"I need you to listen to me carefully," Orin said. "What is about to happen… it will be frightening."
Kon's small hands tightened into his father's fur, fingers curling like roots in the dark. "Father, I'm scared…"
And how those words broke him.
Not because they were weak — no. But because they were true.
Orin smiled, though it cracked at the edges.
"It's okay to be scared, my son," he whispered. "It means you still feel. It means your heart is alive." He leaned in closer, nuzzling the child's forehead. "But you must be brave. For me. For our people. You must not let fear become your master."
The sky answered him with a sound — a rumble. Deep and low and growing. Like the throat of the world clearing itself.
The messenger — the bloodied Tracient who had brought the news — turned sharply, eyes widening as he looked over his shoulder. He saw it first.
The glow.
It was not light as it ought to be — not golden or white, not gentle. It was burning light. A searing, all-consuming brilliance that surged along the horizon like a second sun fallen from grace.
It swallowed everything it touched.
And it was coming for them.
Kon turned to it, trembling. His breath hitched. "Father… what do we do?"
Orin did not answer with strategy. There were no more tactics. No maps. No reinforcements. This was not war.
This was finality.
He wrapped his arms around the boy and drew him close. Kon's small frame folded into his chest, tucked beneath the armor, beneath the scars, beneath the tiger's weight of command. Orin's body formed a shield — the last, most ancient kind of shield a father can offer: himself.
He leaned in, his breath warm against his son's ear.
And then — he spoke.
Just one thing.
A word.
Not in the language of war, but in the language of blood. In the language passed down not from scrolls, but from soul to soul — father to son — in a world that still remembered magic.
Kon heard it.
The boy's eyes widened as the word sank in — not just into his mind, but deep into his spirit. It unfolded inside him like a story half-remembered, one that had waited patiently in silence for someone to speak its name again.
"Father… no…" he whimpered.
Orin pulled back enough to meet his gaze.
And what Kon saw in his father's eyes was not fear.
It was love.
And a kind of peace that looked very much like sorrow.
"INTERIUM," Orin said.
The word rang like a bell in the stillness that followed. Not loudly. But clearly.
Like it had always been waiting to be spoken.
And then — time unraveled.
The light struck.
And the world ended.
It did not crash. It drowned. A wave of fire, heat, force — white-hot power cascading across the battlefield like a star weeping its final breath. The frozen air ignited. The mountains recoiled. Stone became vapor.
The sound was not sound. It was every sound. The roar of creation breaking its own laws. The sky itself was torn, and the earth cracked open to make room for the grief.
And then — nothing.
No birds. No voices. No clash of steel.
Only silence.
Not peaceful silence — but vacancy. A hush so absolute it felt like the whole world had exhaled… and forgotten to breathe back in.
The field where Orin had knelt was empty.
The final stand was over.
______________________________________
Kon gasped.
His body jerked upward as though wrenched from drowning. Air filled his lungs too fast, too sharp, and he nearly choked on the breath. His heart pounded in his chest, not with fear, but with memory. The kind that leaves a tremor in the bones, long after the moment has passed.
He was no longer there.
No longer a cub pressed against his father's chest, the world falling to light and fire around him. No longer on the battlefield at the end of all things. But the dream had clung to him like smoke. No—not a dream. Not truly. A memory. A buried ember in the dark, suddenly sparked back to flame.
And for a moment—just a moment—he could still feel it.
The heat.
The grip.
The final word whispered into his ear, one that lived now in the marrow of his being.
"Interuim…"
Kon shivered.
The cave around him was silent, save for the quiet drip of moisture from some unseen crevice. The air was thick with damp and mildew, cool against his fur, but it did little to ground him. He sat there, chest heaving, eyes wide, as the vision slowly peeled away from his senses like the skin of a dream refusing to let go.
Then, breath by breath, he began to see.
His vision cleared—shadows took shape. Cracked walls of grey stone, jagged at the edges. A floor of cold, uneven earth. A pile of rubble in the corner. No light but what flickered faintly from the mouth of the cave. And beside him—something glowed.
He stilled.
There, half-buried in the dirt, was a ring.
It was small—golden, dim in the gloom, but unmistakably radiant. Not with fire or heat, but with presence. As though it knew it was being seen.
Kon blinked.
His paw moved on its own, reaching out, brushing the dust away. As his fingers closed around it, he felt the smallest flicker—like a pulse. Not warmth, exactly. Recognition. The ring was cold, yes, but it did not feel foreign. It felt… remembered.
And yet, he could not recall where.
He turned it in his palm. The band was inscribed with delicate, curling symbols—too fine to read in this dim light, but their artistry spoke of old hands, of reverent craft. Not something made for war. Something made for legacy.
He frowned.
Was this Adam's? he thought, eyes narrowing. Or… Razik's?
The latter possibility made his fur bristle. But no—Razik, for all his hunger and menace, did not seem the type to carry beauty. His power was brutal, ugly, suffocating. This ring—whatever it was—belonged. Not to dominance. But to memory. To a vow.
Still, Kon could not linger on it.
Adam.
The name alone brought a surge of urgency back into his limbs. The ring—whatever it was—could wait. He tucked it into the inner fold of his cloak and slowly rose, joints protesting with the ache of battle. His body remembered what his mind had not yet caught up to—the gravity slam, the explosion, the flight. He had been unconscious.
Too long.
He staggered slightly, placing one paw against the wall to steady himself. But it passed.
And when it did, he stood straighter.
Taller.
The vision still whispered in his ears. He could hear it now—his father's voice, not lost, not broken, but echoing. Carried across time.
Be brave. For me. For our people. You must not let fear become your master.
His breath stilled.
Orin had died not as a warrior alone, but as a father. His sacrifice had not been made of swords, but of love. Of hope sealed in a single word. Interuim.
What had he meant?
What power could live in a word whispered across death?
Kon didn't know. Not yet.
But he would find out.
He cinched his cloak, adjusted the blade on his back, and stepped into the tunnel's mouth. Light filtered in dimly—morning, perhaps. Or dusk. It didn't matter. Time was no longer a luxury.
The world outside was quiet, but not still. The wind rolled over the horizon like a watchful sentinel, ruffling the grass in slow waves. The forest lay beyond, and beyond that—somewhere—Razik.
And Adam.
Kon narrowed his eyes.
The storm that had once raged inside him—that had howled and clawed and begged for direction—had stilled. Not vanished. Not gone. But gathered. Like a river no longer meandering, but rushing with purpose.
I am no longer the child who watched the sky fall.
His thoughts were no longer frantic. They were forged.
I am the fire it left behind.
He moved forward, each step measured, the ring pressing gently against his chest.
Somewhere ahead, darkness stirred.
But so too did something else.
Something ancient.
Something born in flame and sacrifice.
And this time, Kon would not run from it.