Third-Person Perspective
Night had devoured the entire sky. No trace of sunlight remained, only a pale crescent moon casting its cold, silver gaze upon a torn-apart world. The giant tree—a hundred meters of ancient wood—stood as a silent witness, its shadow stretching across the battlefield like a dark prophecy.
And at its roots stood Leina, Queen of the Elves, her white robes now stained with mud and dust.
"How dramatic," Leina murmured, wiping what might have been a tear—or perhaps just rain—from the corner of her eye. Her voice carried the weight of someone who had lived three and a half centuries, who had seen territories rise and fall, who understood that tragedy was merely the universe's favorite dramatist.
Opposite her, separated by thirty meters of scorched earth and dying grass, stood Alicia von Velzy. The seventeen-year-old girl's chest heaved with exhaustion, her dark brown hair plastered to her face by rain and sweat. There should have been blood and a dozen wounds on her body, but thanks to Clara's healing, that had been restored.
"Do you truly believe you can defeat me?" Leina asked, and there was no mockery in her voice. Only pure curiosity, the kind an ancient being reserves for a youth daring to challenge fate itself.
"Yes." Alicia's answer was quick, absolute.
"On what basis?" Leina tilted her head, and for a moment, she looked almost motherly—a mother trying to understand why her child insisted on touching a hot stove.
Alicia adjusted her grip on her sword, positioning it in front of her chest in a defensive stance that spoke of countless hours of academy training. Her bright brown eyes met Leina's hazel gaze without flinching.
"Simple," Alicia said, and despite her exhaustion, despite the terror that must have been clawing at her heart, her voice was steady. "I am a graduate of the Ostrivien Grand Academy—and I was in Class A. Do you know what that means?"
---
The Ostrivien Grand Academy wasn't just the best academy in human territory. It was the crucible where legends were forged, where the name 'graduate' carried more weight than most noble titles.
The academy had four classes: S, A, B, and C.
Class C students were competent—destined to be respectable knights or court mages.
Class B students were talented—future commanders and war mages who would defend their empires with honor.
Class A students were geniuses—individuals who would reshape the world through innovation, strategy, and sheer force of will.
And Class S... Class S was reserved for prodigies so rare that the class only opened once in a generation. Children touched by something beyond mere talent. Children like Arthur von Stellaris.
Alicia von Velzy was in Class A. Not the highest, but high enough to know exactly how much power flowed through her veins, how far her limits could be pushed, and what price she was willing to pay.
Leina's eyes narrowed slightly—the first real emotion she had shown since the battle began. "Class A," she repeated, as if tasting the words. "Impressive. But do you know who I am, child?"
"A queen who has lived three hundred and fifty years," Alicia answered. "A Sage who has mastered countless spells. Someone who, by all logical measures, should be able to kill me with a single blow."
"Then why—"
"Because I don't need to be stronger than you." Alicia's grip tightened until her knuckles turned white. "I just need to last long enough."
And with those words, Alicia closed her eyes.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I don't need to defeat her, just launch an attack until this body and soul fall. Feel the sky flame affinity course through your veins, the inherited gift from the Velzy bloodline.
This technique... Professor Thane only taught it to me last year. He made me swear to never use it unless my life—or something more precious than it—depended on it.
"It's called Soul Ignition," he had said, his aged face grave. "It converts your life energy into power. Thirty minutes of strength that surpasses your natural limits. But the cost..."
The cost is everything.
Thirty minutes. In that time, I must kill her. After that...
After that doesn't matter. Althair and Clara will be safe. Carsel will reach Heartwood. That's all that matters.
I'm sorry, Mother. I'm sorry, Father. Your daughter isn't coming home.
Alicia's eyes snapped open.
And she began to change.
A soft golden light bloomed from her chest—not the harsh glare of combat magic, but something softer, warmer. The light of a candle before it gutters. It spread across her body like water, seeping into every pore, every cell, every molecule of her being.
Her long, dark brown hair began to transform, the ends taking on a silver sheen as if touched by moonlight. It moved despite the rain, levitating upwards against gravity, each strand crackling with an almost unbearable energy.
When her eyes opened fully, they glowed with a reddish-yellow light—the color of ancient fire, of a phoenix rising from the ashes, of the last sunset before a long winter's night.
Steam rose from her shoulders. The rain that touched her skin vaporized instantly, creating a personal aurora around her body.
"Thirty minutes," Alicia thought, feeling the technique settle into her bones like a comfortable weight. "Make them count."
The Elf Queen had seen much in her long life. She had seen mountains crumble, rivers change course, dueled with vampires and werewolves.
But this...
"Interesting," Leina breathed, and for the first time in decades, she felt something almost forgotten stir in her chest.
Fear? No. Respect.
The girl before her had been fighting since the fall of the Stellaris Empire. And now she intended to fight again—as a swordswoman, Queen Leina saluted her.
Alicia's golden light wasn't power—it was life itself, burning bright and fast. A human candle turned into a bonfire, destined to consume itself in minutes.
And yet she smiled.
"I want to feel it," Leina continued, summoning her staff once more. The ancient wood—carved from the First Tree that stood at the dawn of the world—hummed with power. "The full strength of a Class A genius. Show me, child. Show me what humanity's best can do when pushed to the brink."
Roots erupted from the ground. Tree golems pulled themselves from the earth, their wooden forms looming ten meters tall. Vines whipped through the air like serpents. The tree behind Leina groaned and shifted, its branches bending to create an army of wooden soldiers.
"Kill her," Leina commanded, though her voice held no malice. This was just a duty. Just a war.
The wooden army advanced like a tsunami of nature's wrath.
And Alicia moved.
She didn't run—she exploded forward.
One moment she was thirty meters away. The next, she was among the tree golems, her sword a blur of silver-flame. Her blade, incandescent with her life force, transformed into something that could cut through anything.
A horizontal slash.
A tree golem's torso separated from its legs, the cut so clean it took a moment for the wooden giant to realize it was already dead.
A vertical strike.
Vines attempting to snare her wrists fell away in burning pieces.
A diagonal cut from top-right to bottom-left.
Three wooden soldiers collapsed, their cores split before they could even raise their weapons.
Alicia was a dancer in a ballroom of death. Every movement was precise, economical, beautiful in its efficiency. The golden aura around her intensified with every kill, as if feeding on the destruction she wrought.
But Leina watched with narrowed eyes. "She's not aiming randomly," the Queen realized. "Every kill brings her five meters closer to me. She's creating a path."
And indeed, Alicia was cutting a straight line through the wooden army, like Moses parting the Red Sea. In her wake, defeated golems and severed vines collapsed into useless piles of timber.
Leina raised her staff higher. "If you want me so badly—"
Roots burst upwards from the ground directly beneath Alicia's feet, trying to impale her from below.
"—then dance for me a little longer!"
But Alicia was already in motion. She leaped, twisting her body in mid-air in a corkscrew maneuver impossible without her enhanced state. The roots closed on empty space, smashing together with enough force to shatter stone.
As Alicia landed, she didn't stop. She lunged forward, and this time there was no elegance—only raw, desperate speed.
Twenty meters.
A wooden spear lanced at her face. She tilted her head, feeling the projectile graze her cheek, drawing blood. Ignored it.
Fifteen meters.
Vines wrapped around her left ankle. She swung her sword down, severing them without breaking stride.
Ten meters.
A tree golem's fist hammered toward her skull. She raised her sword horizontally above her head, parrying the blow. The impact drove her three centimeters into the mud, but she held.
And then she did something unexpected.
She let go of her sword.
"Huh??"
For the first time in the battle, Queen Leina's calm expression cracked. Her eyes widened slightly—for an ancient being, it was the equivalent of a shocked scream.
"She dropped her weapon? Has the technique driven her mad—"
The thought died as Alicia's free hands shot out, grabbing the descending arm of the tree golem. And pulling.
The enhanced strength from the Soul Ignition wasn't just an aura—it had transformed her physical capabilities. Muscles that should have torn, held. Bones that should have shattered, remained firm.
Alicia used the golem's own momentum against it, swinging the ten-meter-tall construct around like a farmer swinging a scythe. The golem's body became a battering ram, smashing through three of its comrades before Alicia released it, sending the mass of timber careening through the wooden army like a boulder down a mountainside.
In the chaos, Alicia dove forward, rolling through the mud and leaves, scooping up her fallen sword.
Five meters.
She was close enough now to see the fine details of Leina's face—the small worry lines at the corners of her eyes, the tension around her mouth, the way her hazel irises reflected the golden light.
Close enough to strike.
Alicia raised her sword high, preparing for the vertical cleave that would split the Elf Queen from crown to pelvis.
But Leina was three hundred and fifty years old. She hadn't survived this long by being slow.
"Viridi Carcere." (Green Prison)
The words were spoken softly, almost kindly. But the effect was immediate and absolute.
Roots exploded from the ground directly beneath Alicia—not thin vines, but massive pillars of wood as thick as tree trunks. They erupted with such force that Alicia was launched fifteen meters straight up, her sword flying from her grasp.
And before she could even process what had happened, the roots curved inward, forming a cage around her suspended body. The prison contracted, wooden bars pressing against her arms, legs, torso—pinning her completely.
Alicia struggled, the golden light flaring brighter as she tried to burn through her bonds. But for every root she incinerated, two more grew to take its place.
"Impressive," Leina said, approaching slowly. She dismissed her staff—this battle was over, and they both knew it. "Truly impressive. In my long life, I have rarely seen such will from one so young."
The Elf Queen looked up at the trapped girl, and there was genuine respect in her gaze. "But will alone does not win wars, child. Experience does. Patience does. The wisdom to know when fighting will only lead to a more painful death."
Alicia's only response was to struggle harder, the wooden bars groaning under the pressure of her enhanced strength.
Leina sighed. "Very well. If you insist on dying in battle—"
"Then I will die trying."
The voice was almost a whisper, forced through gritted teeth. But it carried clearly in the rain-soaked air.
Leina stopped. Looked closer.
The golden light around Alicia was beginning to crack. Like glass under too much stress, fine fissures of normal flesh-tone were visible through the radiance. The thirty-minute limit of the Soul Ignition wasn't just a timer—it was a countdown to total cellular breakdown.
And Alicia knew it. She could feel her body starting to fail, muscles tearing, bones developing micro-fractures, organs beginning to bleed internally.
Ten minutes had passed. She had twenty left.
But she was trapped.
"I'm sorry," Alicia thought, and for the first time since activating the technique, despair touched her heart. "Althair. Clara. I tried. I really tried. But I'm not strong enough—"
Distant Thunder
BOOM.
The sound wasn't close. Ten kilometers away, maybe more. But it was so loud it made the ground vibrate, made the rain stop falling for a split second as if the sky itself was in shock.
Both Alicia and Leina snapped their heads to the north, where the sky had changed.
What should have been night clouds had become something else entirely—a swirling vortex of pitch-black storm clouds, illuminated from within by searing blue-white lightning. But this was no natural lightning. It was too regular, too focused, like the pulse of a dying star.
"Rio..." Alicia whispered, and despite her situation, despite her pain, hope flickered in her chest.
Leina's expression had gone blank. She recognized the phenomenon. She had seen it once before, in the Twilight War, from a man of the Vandelur family. The man had made one cataclysmic strike using his life energy. One strike that could topple mountains, that celebrated 1000 warriors.
"That boy... Ah, now I remember. He's a Vandelur. Rio von Vandelur." Leina sighed. "He's using that technique. Against my husband."
The Elf Queen stood frozen, caught between her enemy before her and a distant battle that might be claiming the life of her love.
Calm down. Elkarl cannot possibly lose.
"Rio is using it," Alicia thought, and suddenly her situation crystallized with perfect clarity. "He's using the Death Technique. Which means Alex probably did too. Both of them..."
Dead. Or dying.
They had sacrificed themselves to buy time. To wound King Elkarl badly enough that he couldn't pursue. To clear the path for Althair and Clara to escape.
And now it was Alicia's turn.
She had accepted this the moment she activated Soul Ignition. Accepted it when she charged forward alone. Accepted it when she told Althair she loved him, knowing he couldn't love her back.
But accepting death and facing it are two very different things.
"I'm scared," she admitted to herself, tears mixing with the rain on her face. "I'm so scared. I don't want to die. I'm only seventeen. I had so many plans. So many dreams."
"I wanted to travel. To see the Crystal Falls in the Eastern Mountains. To taste the famous honey-cakes from the Sunstone Empire. To fall in love properly—not a rushed, desperate confession in the middle of a war."
"I wanted to make my parents proud. To see them smile and say 'our daughter became someone amazing.' To give them grandchildren one day. To live long enough to become someone worth remembering."
"I wanted..."
A sob escaped her throat, ugly and raw.
"I wanted to live."
The Elf Queen looked at the trapped girl—this child burning up her own life—and felt something twist in her chest.
Three hundred and fifty years. She had killed before. Many times. In war, in duels, in defense of her people. She had ended lives younger than this girl's. Done it without hesitation when it was necessary.
But this...
"Why?" Leina asked, and her voice had lost its certainty. "Why do you fight for a baby you've never met? For an empire that has already fallen? What reason could possibly justify throwing your life away so recklessly?"
Alicia's glowing, reddish-yellow eyes met Leina's hazel ones. And through her tears, through her terror, through the pain of her body destroying itself—she smiled.
"Because he is the son of Arthur von Stellaris," Alicia said simply. "And I know—I believe—that he will become someone great. Someone who can make this sacrifice mean something."
"That's it?" Leina's voice rose. "You're dying for a belief? For a hope? Child, hope doesn't pay debts. It doesn't raise the dead. It doesn't—"
"Then what do we have?" Alicia interrupted, and now her voice was stronger. "If we can't die for hope, then what's the point of any of this? What's the point of living if we only live for ourselves?"
The wooden prison creaked as Alicia renewed her struggle, the golden light flaring brighter even as the cracks spread through it.
"You're three hundred and fifty years old," Alicia continued. "You've probably forgotten what it's like to be young. To believe that your actions can change the world. To think that maybe, just maybe, if you try hard enough, sacrifice enough, love enough—things can get better."
"You call it naivety. I call it being human."
Leina stood perfectly still, the rain washing over her face.
"Hahaha..." A laugh escaped the Queen's lips—bitter, sad, and strangely nostalgic. "You're right. I have forgotten. Or perhaps I chose to forget, because remembering hurts too much."
She raised her hand, and the wooden prison began to constrict.
"But child," Leina said softly, "that's a bad answer. A very bad answer."
The roots pressed tighter. Alicia gasped, feeling ribs begin to crack.
"Sometimes I forget," Leina continued, her voice barely audible over the rain, "that you are all still children. Playing at war. Playing at sacrifice. Believing that grand gestures and noble deaths will somehow fix a broken world."
Leina drew a sword from thin air—pure mana crystallized into a blade. It shone with a soft, green light, beautiful and deadly.
"I am sorry," the Elf Queen said, and she meant it. "I like you. In another life, another time, perhaps I would have taken you as my personal student. Perhaps..."
She shook her head, dismissing the useless thoughts.
"But this is war. And in war, even children die."
The sword descended.
AlicIA closed her eyes, thinking of home. Her parents' faces. Rio's stupid jokes. Alex's gentle encouragement. Clara's quiet support.
Althair's gray eyes, looking at her one last time with something she chose to believe was love.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be stronger," she thought. "I'm sorry I'm leaving you all. I'm sorry—"
SRETT.
---
Transition to Althair
Althair von Kaelvros stood in the rain, his gray eyes staring north at the storm Rio had created. His body was motionless, but inside, his mind was a tempest.
"That lightning signature... That's death technique, isn't it? Slightly different from Alicia's. Rio uses the death technique and Alicia uses soul ignition. He never told me he had learned it. When did he... No, it doesn't matter when. What matters is that he's using it now, which means..."
The conclusion was inescapable.
"Alex is probably already dead. Rio will be dead in minutes. And Alicia..."
Althair's fists clenched so tightly his nails drew blood from his palms.
"I left them. I took the easy path—protecting Carsel and Clara—and I let my friends die."
"Althair."
Clara's voice, soft and worried, came from behind him. She stood holding the sleeping baby, rain plastering her hair to her face, mixing with what might have been tears.
"We have to keep moving," she said gently. "Every moment we waste is a moment they bought for us with their lives."
Logically, Althair knew she was right. The mission was clear: get Carsel to safety. That was the priority. It was what Emperor Arthur had commanded. It was what his dying friends were fighting for.
But logic and emotion are two very different things.
"I know," he said, his voice hollow. "I know what we need to do."
He turned away from the lightning storm, from the distant battlefield where his friends were fighting their final battle.
"But if I'm being honest, Clara..." He paused, struggling with words he'd never spoken. "I don't know if I can ever forgive myself for surviving when they didn't."
Clara stepped forward, shifting Carsel to one arm so she could reach out with the other. She took Althair's hand—cold, trembling, clenched—and squeezed it.
"Then don't forgive yourself," she said simply. "Not yet. Not until Carsel is safe. Not until we've made their deaths mean something. Hate yourself later, Althair. Grieve later. Break down later."
Her hazel eyes met his gray ones, and in them, he saw the same pain, the same guilt, the same desperate resolve.
"But right now," Clara continued, "we have to keep moving. Because if we stop, if we go down, if we let this destroy us—then they died for nothing."
Althair looked at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"You're right." His voice was steadier now, though no less pained. "Let's go."
The lightning was beginning to fade now, the storm subsiding.
"Rest well, my friends," he thought. "I will carry your memory. I will protect what you died for. And one day, somehow..."
"I will make sure the world remembers your names."
Back to the Battlefield
Alicia's Final Moments
The sword descended.
But it did not meet flesh.
Instead, it met empty space—because Alicia was no longer there.
Leina blinked in confusion, her sword passing through the spot the girl's neck had been half a heartbeat ago. The wooden prison was empty, its roots still holding the impression of a body that had vanished.
"What—"
A flash of light. A teleportation signature.
"No. That's impossible. She was bound. The roots were blocking all mana flow. She couldn't possibly—ah hell, I forgot that swordsmen don't have mana." Leina could only blame herself for her carelessness.
The golden light wasn't just Soul Ignition. In her final moment, Alicia had unleashed every last remnant of her technique—converting her entire body into pure energy for one instant. Not to attack. Not to defend.
But to escape.
200 Meters Away
Alicia reappeared, collapsing to the ground in a heap. The golden light was gone, snuffed out like a candle in a storm. Her hair was back to its normal dark brown. Her eyes had lost their reddish-yellow glow.
And her body...
She couldn't feel her legs. Her arms barely responded. Blood leaked from her eyes, nose, and ears—the price of forcing a teleport through that cursed prison.
"Twenty-two minutes," some detached part of her mind calculated. "I have eight minutes left before total cellular breakdown."
She tried to crawl. Managed to move maybe half a meter before her arms gave out.
"So this is it," she thought with strange clarity. "Not dying in a blaze of glory. Not falling in battle. Just... fading out in the mud."
The rain kept falling, cold and indifferent.
From a distance, she could hear Leina's voice calling, probably organizing a search. The Elf Queen would find her soon. And this time, there would be no escape.
Alicia closed her eyes.
"I tried," she thought. "Mother, Father... friends... Althair... I really tried."
"I hope it was enough."
And in the darkness behind her eyelids, she began to see something. A warm light. Soft and golden, like a sunset.
"Is this... death?"
No. Not death.
A fire.
A campfire, blazing in an endless void.
And sitting around it, two familiar faces smiled at her.
"Took you long enough," said Rio, smirking—and his appearance... He looked good, not like someone who had been fighting for hours.
"We saved you a spot," added Alex, patting the ground beside them. His smile was sincere.
AlicIA—or rather, her soul, her consciousness, whatever part of her existed beyond the flesh—walked toward them. Sat beside her friends.
"So this is..." she began.
"The afterlife? Maybe," Rio shrugged. "Or maybe just where we go while our bodies finish dying. Honestly, I stopped trying to figure it out. Made my head hurt."
"Typical," Alicia said, and found herself smiling. "Even in death, you're an idiot."
"Hey!"
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the fire dance.
"What about the others?" Alex asked Alicia.
"They went to 'The Veil'," she answered softly.
"Good." Alex breathed a sigh of relief.
"Not good for Clara, really. This incident will be forever etched in her and Althair's memory," Rio added.
"Yeah, you're right," Alex nodded. "But there's nothing we can do. We can only pray from here and watch over them."
"Hey, if you think about it, being a kid before the age of 17 was better, huh," said Rio, changing the subject.
"Of course," Alicia replied spontaneously.
"The days when we could play as much as we wanted, the days when we could still make mistakes and erase them just by apologizing," Rio began to reminisce.
"My parents once told me, 'Enjoy your youth to the fullest, make unforgettable memories, and build strong relationships'."
"I only replied 'yes' half-heartedly. I was still stubborn, thinking being an adult was better," Rio recounted, his hands moving in the air.
"Because we're free to do anything, free to buy anything with our own money, and free to go anywhere."
"It turns out the adult world is much harder than when we were young."
Alicia and Alex just listened; they both agreed with his thoughts.
I have many regrets in this life. I made many mistakes, and I want to fix them. But the world won't give us a second chance, Alicia monologued.
"Now we are free too. We have obtained freedom," Alicia said to Rio and Alex, looking at them in turn.
"Freedom does not mean death, but death is certainly freedom."
And the three friends sat together in the void, waiting for whatever came next, knowing that whatever it was, at least they wouldn't face it alone.
Meanwhile - King Elkarl's Location
10 Kilometers North
The Elf King stood in the center of a crater one hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep. His armor—crafted by dwarven masters, said to be indestructible—hung in charred ribbons from its frame. The left side of his face was a mass of third-degree burns, one eye swollen shut. His right arm trembled uncontrollably, its nerves damaged beyond immediate repair.
But he was alive.
Barely.
Before him lay what remained of Rio and Alex.
Rio's body had been burned to a crisp by his own technique, skin blackened, hair gone, eyes empty. The Death Technique had consumed him from the inside out—a fitting name for a move that guaranteed death.
Alex lay a few meters away, his large frame finally still. Blood pooled beneath him from a dozen critical wounds. His sword—or what was left of it—was still clutched in his right hand, its blade shattered halfway down.
Elkarl staggered, nearly falling, steadying himself on a piece of broken earth.
"Children," he thought, the word bitter in his mind. "They were just children. Seventeen. And they almost killed me."
His pride as the Elf King, as a Tier 1 Sword King, lay in ruins along with his body. This was supposed to be an easy kill. Tier 3 Swordsmen against a Tier 1? It should have been a slaughter in his favor.
Instead, he had barely survived.
"Is this the future of humanity?" Elkarl wondered, staring at the dead boys. "If their children are this strong, this determined, this willing to die..."
"What does that make us? We, who have lived for centuries and still cling so desperately to life?"
A cough wracked his body. Blood—his own this time—splattered onto the ground.
"Leina," he thought, turning his ruined gaze to the south. "Please be safe. I can't... I can't lose you too."
He began to walk, every step an agony, toward where he sensed his wife's mana signature.
Behind him, two young men lay—young men who had sacrificed their lives with full awareness, young men who somehow felt responsible for the life of someone else's baby.