My chest tightened as blood spilled over the grass, painting it crimson in uneven pools that shimmered under the dimming light.
The scent of iron hung thick in the air, sharp and suffocating, filling my lungs with the bitter reminder of mortality.
My legs trembled beneath me, muscles locking from pain and exhaustion, the weight of my armor dragging at my shoulders like penance.
I staggered forward, each step carving shallow footprints into the blood-soaked earth, and pressed my palm against a tree slick with mist to steady myself.
The bark bit into my hand, grounding me in pain.
"Fuck," I muttered, breath shallow, each word scraping against my throat. "These bastards are really persistent, aren't they?"
The forest around me was eerily still except for the faint crackle of embers and the distant clang of steel. Smoke drifted through the trees like dying ghosts.
They hunted me through that smoke, their shadows flickering between the trunks, men in gold, sent to exterminate what they feared to understand.
They hunted me like a rabid animal, like some curse to be purged from the world.
Maybe they were right. Maybe I was.
It was my fault, after all.
I had believed in something, something beyond weakness, beyond the fragile limits of human flesh, and that faith had damned me.
Humanity. We were supposed to be noble, radiant even, but we are born innocent only to corrupt ourselves with ideals we can never sustain.
I was no different. Every righteous act, every so-called mercy, was soaked in sin.
My sin cost lives. It cost the very humanity I had once sworn to protect.
How could I reject that truth? It was mine to bear.
My failure, my cowardice, my refusal to move forward, these were the chains that bound me, and I carried them willingly, like a martyr to my own delusion.
An arrow hissed past my cheek, slicing through the fog and grazing my skin with a line of fire. I flinched, then turned sharply, my eyes narrowing against the sting.
Through the thinning mist, I caught sight of them: a dozen men in black and gold armor surging toward me, their boots crushing the wet earth in unison.
Their armor gleamed beneath the dying sun, sigils glowing faintly like false divinity pressed into metal.
They moved with purpose, with zealotry in every step.
The Golden Authority.
The self-proclaimed arbiters of purity, drowning in sanctimonious filth.
They had turned Anstalionah into a corpse dressed in gold, its heart hollowed by devotion.
I spun, hair whipping across my face, just in time to duck beneath a swinging blade.
The wind from it sliced past my ear. I rolled through the mud, slick and cold beneath me, staining my tattered cloak darker.
I rose again, panting, as they circled me like wolves.
I laughed, the sound hollow. "It's the way you look at me that really gets me going. Like I'm the monster here."
Their leader stepped forward through the mist.
He removed his helm slowly, his expression calm but cold, his gaze dissecting me like a man studying a specimen. "Nothing," he said quietly. "It's the act of doing nothing I despise most."
He was tall, silver-haired, eyes black as ink, his aura heavy and suffocating, like a sermon turned to poison.
He drew his blade, slow and deliberate, letting the light run down its flawless edge. Handing his helm to another soldier, he took one steady step forward.
"And you, Nicholas…" His voice dripped with accusation. "You're the worst kind of monster. A man pretending to be a hero."
He pressed the blade to my throat, the chill of steel meeting the warmth of blood. His tone fell to a whisper, heavy with disdain. "Heaven will never accept you."
I smiled faintly, breath ragged, voice cracking beneath the strain. "Maybe it shouldn't."
Because he was right. I wasn't a savior. I wasn't even a man anymore. Just a fool trying to hold onto meaning long after it had rotted away.
Humans cherish life. We praise it as sacred, a miracle wrapped in flesh. But in the end, it always leads here, to the unraveling, to death.
We dress that truth in pageantry. We build nations, craft justice, ignite wars, glorify vengeance, romanticize love. We smother pain with ritual.
All to shield ourselves from the unblinking truth that death is not the opposite of life, it is its architect.
We are creatures of paradox. We injure to feel. We lie to endure.
We fabricate meaning like architects building towers on the sand, pretending the tide won't rise.
Me? I was the most delusional of them all. Because despite that truth, despite that inevitability... I continued.
Even after my parents' death, I found a way to gain control over my illness. I fought to become something more.
And now, here I was, in rags, drenched in mud and blood, coughing up what little life clung to me. Each breath felt like it was being pried from my chest with a knife.
The soldier before me sighed, lowering his gaze, his expression unreadable. "Nicholas, with that power, you could have been everything. You are something."
He hesitated, the name lingering on his tongue like regret. "Mirabel would have wanted better."
The sound of her name sent a shiver through me, soft, painful, almost reverent. The world seemed to narrow until all I could hear was that voice.
[His nightmare was finally beginning.]
A voice, ancient and familiar, rose from within the dark.
[He would soon come to realize he was nothing.]
The world tilted. My knees gave out. I fell forward, my vision collapsing inward as my head struck the wet grass.
The scent of blood filled the air again, and then the light of the world went out.
[Wake, O beacon of nothing. Your dream is over.]
For a moment, I thought it was silence. But silence implies the memory of sound. What I entered was beyond that.
It was the absence of thought, the complete erasure of the property of thinking itself.
My mind unraveled inward like a collapsing star.
My memories, my fears, my triumphs, all began to replay in perfect order, flickering across the void like dying film.
Every moment of my life passed before me, but not as recollection.
It was as if I were watching the idea of myself dissolve into a single, flickering pulse of consciousness.
Then even that faltered.
I tried to remember what it meant to try, and the concept of trying disintegrated. I forgot how to think, how to remember, how to exist.
There was no pain, no fear, no dream, just the soft peeling away of all things until even the awareness of absence was gone.
And when that final thread broke, I ceased.
I was not nothing. I was the vanishing of everything that could ever say I am.
Darkness swallowed me whole, yet within that abyss something stirred, a faint light, fragile and trembling, born from humility, pulsing softly in the void.
I drifted between life and death, suspended in a stillness that was both tomb and cradle.
In that silence, I could hear echoes of every sin, every name, every prayer I had ever ignored.
Then it happened.
My hair, long and black, began to shimmer with streaks of white, light seeping from the strands like dawn through smoke.
My skin hardened, bronze and bark-like, my veins glowing faintly beneath the surface. My eyes blank, colorless, infinite.
And from my back, wings erupted, black, smoldering, alive, each feather seething with light devoured by shadow.
I rose through the abyss, breaking through a vast sea of starlight and void.
Waves crashed as I surfaced, the world reforming around me like a dream retold in reverse.
The heavens split with light, pain flooding through me, sacred, searing pain, followed by the first desperate rush of breath.
Then came silence. Clarity.
I was no longer sinking. No longer lost.
The sound of water faded, replaced by the crack of wood, the murmur of wind, and the faint whistle of air. My hand tightened around a wooden sword.
"Nicholas! I told you, stop daydreaming and keep your stance tight!"
A bright blue sky hung above me. The scent of bread, the clang of steel, the rhythm of soldiers training filled the air.
I stood on sunbaked earth surrounded by guards clad in white armor, each marked by black roses upon their chestplates.
And before me, her.
Mirabel. Silver-red hair cascading down her shoulder, ruby eyes sharp as tempered glass. Her black shirt clung to her frame, boots pressed into the dirt as she scowled at me.
A face I had seen in every state, alive, broken, divine.
I blinked, dazed, a faint smile twitching on my lips. Then came the taste of iron, blood, warm and real, filling my mouth.
"Nicholas, you're bleeding again!" she shouted, rushing forward, wrapping a towel around my mouth. Her hands trembled slightly as she pressed harder, frustration edging her voice.
"You're going to tear the wound open again! Why aren't you saying anything?"
The soldiers nearby watched silently, some with pity, others with unease.
But I was breathing. Alive. Whole.
So it worked. I died... and came back.
It was my Regalia, my divine inheritance, the mark of my return.
I placed a hand on Mirabel's shoulder, meeting her eyes.
"Let's keep going," I said quietly. "Next time, don't go easy on me. I'm going to be king. I need to be strong enough to carry that weight."
She hesitated, blinking, then nodded slowly.
We stepped back into position, wooden swords raised beneath the afternoon sun.
The air shimmered, heat warping the space between us, and for the first time, I felt it, something deeper than life.
This was it.
My resurrection. My victory.