The revelation about abilities floated in the air like a cold poison: gifts born with blood, that unleashed one hundred percent of body and soul. The demi-humans inherited them as legacies of doom; humans, cursed to be mere flesh, could not touch them. In that world, power was a line that divided races and fates. We, however, did not stand in the land of hope: we stood in the rift of wrath.
Draekon began to stretch with animal slowness, like one awakening only to find his hunger still unsatisfied. I stepped back to retrieve my sword; my right hand, which only moments ago was gone, had already begun to regenerate. I felt the tingling of new flesh. When I turned, Aiko lay in the dust: his torso, once cleaved in two, was closing as if death itself had refused to claim him tonight. Our eyes met for a few seconds. That was enough. We knew we could still fight.
Without ceremony, we hurled ourselves once more into the furnace of steel and smoke. Iko, gravely wounded, endured; his arm dangled, held together only by tendons that groaned with every move. Draekon pinned him, eyes of iron fixed upon him. He seemed like eternity forged into a bandaged figure.
It was then—in a gesture reeking of desperation and pride—that Iko seized his sword with his good hand, shut his eyes, and with a gasp that was both plea and blasphemy, severed his own wounded arm. The cut was a scream in slow motion; the blood sang as it fell like rain upon the earth. He dropped to his knees, trembling, his mouth open in a broken laugh. It was not clean heroism: it was survival, tearing from the flesh what the flesh refused to surrender. His gaze pierced me, ordered me not to look, and still I could not turn away.
Draekon smiled—a grimace that did not belong to human laughter. It was the smile of one who has rediscovered the scent of true combat.
—It's been a long time since anyone made me activate my special ability —he muttered, his voice wet with blood.
Aiko, battered yet burning with rage, spat back with a sharpened tongue:
—Why should I care, you damned fool?!
His words were a stone hurled into the beast's calm. Aiko lunged, aiming to sever Draekon's legs. He did it with the precision of one who still believes that a well-placed strike can twist the thread of fate. Draekon, however, blocked it as though his body were a forge: Aiko's blade clashed against something not flesh but moving metal. When I struck from behind, seeking to carve his neck, my sword shattered into three splinters—as though my steel had struck the bone of the world itself.
The sound of breaking steel was like a stone laughter: the metal fractured, and a part of me fractured with it. Helplessness clung to my throat.
—Now this will be easy —Draekon mocked, without a trace of pity.
Aiko, panting, half his torso still stitching itself back together in an act that seemed like sorcery, gritted his teeth.
—Hey… what's your name? —he asked, voice wavering between fury and fatigue.
—I… am Draekon. The man who will kill all three of you.
The title fell like a verdict, not a threat: he knew he spoke the precise word to turn us into numbers. In the distance, a partial victory unfolded: our brothers had defeated the dragon, but the victory reeked of ash. More than half of humanity's soldiers had fallen. Fewer than a hundred still breathed; most bore wounds that mapped pain across their skin.
Only we remained standing, the Twelve Heroes—names spoken by the people like a broken prayer. Hope, if it had ever been a pillar, was now rubble in human shape.
Yet the battle was not the only note in this symphony of ruin: the battlefield trembled like a beast that knew its own name. The enemies suddenly began to retreat, as though driven by an unknown wind. We looked at one another, the question clinging to our lips. Silence bit at us.
Draekon's expression shifted. His mask of disdain cracked, and for a second something else shone beneath it: cruel respect, yes, but also surprise—and then, a dark fury that promised catastrophe.
—At last you've come… Thalor, God of War —he said, his words a metronome marking the rhythm of the end.
A presence settled in the sky, as though someone had lit a lantern above our heads to show us how small we truly were. At first, we saw nothing; then, like a white wound in the night, the armor appeared. It was Thalor: majestic, merciless, a colossus clad in white plates belonging to no known kingdom. His wings—two sails of steel—kept him aloft; his figure radiated the authority of one who answers to no human oath.
He descended slowly, with the solemnity of one who crushes planets with every step. He gazed upon us with contempt, not even deigning to measure us as opponents: we were insects daring to move our legs across his path.
—You call yourselves heroes? —his voice was a hammer that did not need to strike to wound—. Do you truly believe you will save humanity? What a pitiful illusion… You haven't even managed to defeat Draekon. And still you dream of changing destiny. What a pathetic dream.
His pause was a knife. Then he completed the sentence:
—That is why I, Thalor, God of War, will put an end to your existence. Here and now.
No further display was needed: he dove, hammer raised like judgment itself. The impact with the earth shattered the ground; a rift appeared, not just torn soil but reality itself split asunder. The abyss opened with a roar, a mouth that swallowed light. The earth split into twin tongues, the fissure spewing smoke and thick shadows.
—This rift will swallow you all! You will die here, in the most painful way! —Thalor's voice thundered, resonating in our chests more than in our ears.
We scattered with everything we had. We leapt, clustered, dodged like shadows seeking their last refuge. The rift grew, hungry for legends. Thalor did not come to fight for honor: he came to wipe the board clean.
He struck us with precision not of arms but of inevitability. Each hammer blow not only knocked us down but warped the weight of the earth, bent gravity at his whim. Many of our comrades, even the most advanced in their gifts, fell unconscious—or burst apart in grotesque symmetry of destruction.
Draekon, who until then had reveled in sadistic delight, ceased smiling. Fury now spilled uncontrollably from him: his eyes became embers. It was the rage of a hound shown its master, denied its bone. He lunged at Thalor with the blade he now wielded—the Sword of the Four Elements, that weapon born of blood and oath—and the air around him erupted in flames, winds, currents, and dancing stones. The sword sang with the voices of earth, fire, water, and wind: a curse shaped into a weapon.
The entire war became a canvas of divine spasms. I, with my bleeding stump still throbbing, knew this was the crossroads where destiny would split in two: either we stayed to be forgotten, or we stayed to strike one final blow into the very chest of the world.
I looked at my brothers: Aiko, half his torso still repairing, clenched his fists; Iko, half-dismembered, breathed with the rhythm of an ancestral drum; Hana and Daichi held on with faces of stone. I took a step—I didn't know if it was to advance or to accept the fall.
—Listen —I said, my voice cut by dust—. We weren't born to kneel. We were born to clutch the edge of the night and pull until something gives.
It was not the courage of the ignorant. It was the resolve of those who know nothing will ever be the same again. Thalor descended once more, Draekon roared with his blade aloft, and the rift stared at us like a hungry eye. And time, that faceless judge, counted the breaths remaining: one, two, three.
The battle to come would not be for bodies. It would be for the right to remain in history.