The blue fire in the Nameless Knight's helm flickered weakly, casting thin shadows across the walls of the cave. Alpha sat by the cold pool beneath the waterfall, sharpening his blade on a stone he had scavenged. The rhythm was steady, but his mind was not. The scar on his back still throbbed faintly, as if it remembered more than he did.
The silence pressed down, until the Knight broke it. His voice was not commanding this time, nor instructing. It was softer—hoarse, as though dragged from an old wound.
"You fought with fire in your veins today. And you asked me once who I am. Perhaps you deserve a fragment of the truth."
Alpha froze mid-motion, his gaze lifting toward the armored figure. The Knight had never spoken of himself. Only of swords, of balance, of killing. To hear him speak of truth—it felt dangerous.
The flames within the helm dimmed, almost as if the warrior was staring into the dark rather than at Alpha.
"Before I was this," the Knight gestured to the rusted shell that was his body, "I had a name. A wife. A home. My hands knew warmth… not just steel."
Alpha swallowed, unsure if he should speak. He didn't.
"She was kind," the Knight continued, his tone breaking with something Alpha could not name. "Her hair smelled of spring rain, her eyes carried the color of dawn. She laughed, even when the skies began to darken. Even when we knew what was coming."
"What was coming?" Alpha asked quietly.
The Knight's helm tilted, the flame inside wavering like a candle battered by storm. "The End."
The words settled like iron in the cave. Alpha felt them coil around his thoughts, heavy and incomprehensible. He wanted to ask, but the Knight's silence stretched long, forcing him to wait.
"It was not war as you would imagine," the Knight finally said. "Not swords clashing between men. The End was a hunger. A sickness. A veil that spread across the sky and stripped color from the world. It was not something we could cut or burn or reason with. It was a silence that devoured."
Alpha felt his stomach tighten. He had seen hunger, despair, cruelty—but this sounded like something else. Something beyond men. Something that ate meaning itself.
"Did you fight it?" Alpha whispered.
"Yes," the Knight replied, and the fire inside him flared a little brighter. "We fought, and we lost. I carried my shield against waves that could not bleed. I carried my sword against shadows that laughed at steel. We fought as though our bones themselves were the last walls of the world."
Alpha clenched his fists. "And your wife?"
The Knight paused. For a moment, there was only the rush of the waterfall, a hollow echo filling the silence between them.
"She… sang. Even at the end, she sang." His voice cracked, but only slightly. "When the light fell and the sky turned black, I remember her voice more than anything. And then it was gone."
The boy said nothing. He could not. The weight of it pressed against his chest, though he could not fully understand. He had never known love, never known loss. And yet, the ache in the Knight's words burned into him.
The Knight leaned forward, his armored fingers pressing against the ground. "But death did not claim me. Something else did. I awoke here… hollow, stripped of my name, stripped of her. The world I knew was ash. The one you walk now is not the one I bled for."
Alpha's scar pulsed faintly at those words, though he dared not draw attention to it.
"And the creatures here?" Alpha asked, glancing toward the deeper shadows where the undead lurked. "The skeletons. The monsters."
The Knight's helm tilted toward him. "Not all of them are born of this place. Some were men. Some… were greater. Lords of death. Wielders of chains and whispers. We once called them the Named. They ruled the tides of the End."
Alpha's breath caught. "Named?"
"Yes," the Knight said simply. "They carried power like crowns, not forged by steel but written into the marrow of the world. Necromancers, liches, things older than kings. They do not breathe, but they speak still. In lies. In promises."
"And you fought them?"
The Knight laughed, low and bitter. "Fought? No. We survived. Once, barely. One of them wore the bones of a thousand men upon its back, and it looked at me as one looks at dust. And yet… I lived. I do not know why."
Alpha's hands curled tighter around the sharpening stone until it broke in his grasp. He didn't notice the sting in his palm.
"Why tell me this?" he asked.
The flame in the Knight's helm dimmed again, and for a moment, Alpha thought he saw something human within that emptiness.
"Because you must know what waits for you. The Labyrinth is not simply ruin. It is memory. Echoes of what has been. It will shape itself to you, but beyond its walls lies more than shadows and rot. One day, you will see them. The Named. And you must not think yourself ready."
Alpha's throat felt dry. He thought of the scar, of how it had moved when the Knight called him Feylith, of how it had burned in battle. He thought of the strange force that guided his hand against the armored skeleton.
He did not feel ready. But something within him whispered that readiness would not matter.
The Knight leaned back, silent once more. The fire in his helm guttered low, as if tired from memory.
Alpha stared at him in the quiet. He wanted to ask about the End. About the wife. About the Named. But each question died in his throat. He understood, perhaps for the first time, that some answers were too heavy for a boy to carry.
He pressed his hand against the scar on his back. It felt warm, alive. Waiting.
Outside, the waterfall roared on, timeless and merciless.
The Nameless Knight spoke once more, his voice little more than a whisper.
"Remember, boy. The End is not gone. It sleeps. And when it wakes… not even your chains will matter."