—As I told you, when we kill one of those so-called "heroes," we find that in his heart there was one of those gems that contain the essence of the goddess Vitae. —The god's voice rang in the hall like a cold bell; each word fell with the weight of a sentence.
—Could it be that... they are...? —a doubt that was no longer curiosity: it was fear in disguise.
—When we split one of them in two, he fully regenerated. But when we tore out his heart... he could not. —The sentence was clinical and simple; a way to explain the clause of their own cruelty.
—That means he died.
—I see... then we must kill them by attacking the heart directly, or simply ripping it out.
A metallic murmur rose. Ideas scattered like splinters.
—I won't soil my sweet hands with that disgusting blood... but I would love to watch them suffer. —A god, with a sharp little laugh, took pleasure in another's pain; the hall trembled at his sadistic glee.
—The easiest would be to burn them until their bones turn to dust. That way they could never regenerate or stand in our way again. —Another voice, pragmatic, like a scythe.
—No... best would be to turn them to stone for all eternity. What do you think? —A cold, aesthetic, final suggestion.
—I will only do what's best for my people. I will not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, who started that foolish civil war and almost dragged us to ruin. —Words of justification wrapped in the costume of prudence.
—Calm down, god of wind. We, the first founders, will not make those mistakes. —Condescending tones from those who remember their own sins as distant tales.
—Make whatever decision you want. Any choice seems perfect to me. Why? Because I am the god of luck! Luck smiles on me! Hahahaha! —A laugh trying to break the tension; the hall accepted it as another discordant note.
Silence fell, a pause like the beat before a blow. At last the voice that always carried command spoke, without theatrics, with the edge of duty:
—I, as leader, make the final decision: we will finish off those heroes. We will hunt them.
We cannot underestimate them. They are powerful, so we, the leaders, will kill them personally.
Find each one of them. Kill them as quickly as possible.
With that sentence, the ten gods occupying the circle of light rose. They stood up like shadows stepping away from the fire; they left with no further words. Those figures vanished down the hallways as if the very air swallowed them.
Below, the earth remained stone and blood. Above, at the limit of the divine, the decision had been made. The hunt was born from a table of hands that would never see the cold nights nor the graves their mandates would open.
---
The first time I opened my eyes it was because of a sound: a scream that tore sleep and consciousness from me like a scab being ripped off.
—Bro... brother! What happened to you? Why won't you wake, brother?! What did they do to you?! Brother!! —The voice trembled with a raggedness that pierced me.
I opened my eyes. The world arrived with the lag of a broken film: light, blurred shapes, the metallic smell of blood and something sharper—the brine of despair. I lay on cold grass. My fingers touched leaves; the touch anchored me to reality with a sting. I tried to lift my head and the emptiness in my memory hit me again, but there was another, now more concrete absence: Iko.
And I saw him.
Ken was holding Iko tightly, sobs wrenching his voice. His hands were claws in the dead man's clothing, an improbable first bulwark against truth. Iko didn't respond. Iko was a weight, too real for Ken to let go.
Aiko was nearby too, her face exhausted and folded into a cry that tried, in vain, to recompose the irretrievable. Draekon, who until recently did nothing but fight, now stood motionless, looking with a mixture of horror and guilt.
—Iko! Why did you stay to fight? Why didn't you jump with us...? —the accusation didn't demand judgment; it demanded meaning among the ruin.
Ken didn't want to let go. His grip was iron. Draekon tried to pry him away; the cruel logic of the field said "separate the body to confirm death," but Ken didn't obey logic. He obeyed the last impulse that kept his brother alive: denial.
—Leave him, Ken... he can't answer you. —a voice, off-key with pain—. He... he's not coming back. Please... no more...
It was useless. No one could accept it. The silence that followed fell like a tarp over everything we were. Iko... had died.
Tears were rivers; mouths, some screams. Hands, useless. Bodies curled like ships that lost their rudder. Everyone cried. Everything hurt with the same intensity.
---
Soon after came the rite that any human recognizes, even if roughly learned: the farewell. Daichi didn't speak much. He walked alone toward the city, back straight and face creased by fury and exhaustion. He returned with emptier eyes still, and told us we had to leave the Human Kingdom. It wasn't a command; it was the truth that had to be accepted.
That afternoon we climbed a hill overlooking the Kingdom in flames: houses humbled by fire, figures moving like shadows through columns of smoke, the city vomiting its own agony. In front of an old tree that seemed to spit history, Daichi dug with his bare hands. The earth did not refuse; it accepted. The shovel we lacked he replaced with his own fist until it bled.
We placed Iko's body inside. His weight was more than flesh; it was the sum of laughter, quarrels, a whole life compressed into a hollow that would soon be only dirt. We laid him gently, as one places a child in its proper cradle. There was a murmur, a clumsy prayer, names repeated.
Daichi closed the grave. He drove a sword into the ground in front of it, hilt pointing to the sky, vertical and mute. It was a mark: stone and steel that vowed to remember. He knelt. He broke into weeping. He shouted his name to the heavens until the air returned no sound. His cry was the token that forced us all to rise at once.
—Brothers... —he said, and his voice trembled like a bow about to snap—. I know we can die at any moment. This war must end. No one else must die. No one else must suffer.
Iko's death will not be in vain.
His words were a lash of fire. We trembled. We felt in our nails the same rage that had opened the wound.
—Maybe another of us will fall... —he continued—. But this will be our tomb. The tomb of our family. Even if our bodies do not rest here... this sword will be the symbol of each one of us.
In that instant something in us changed shape. What had been fear turned into purpose. What had been flight turned into oath.
We all shouted with one voice until the echo of the hill returned to us a sound like contained thunder:
—YES!!!
The promise was visceral; the word was driven into the earth like a pact more real than any divine sentence. We swore to end the absurd war that had taken Iko from us. We swore that, even if it cost us our lives, we would continue. Not for glory, but for the laughter we would never hear again. Not for empty vengeance, but for the urgency that no one else sink into the darkness where he fell.
Daichi stood. He looked at the sword he had planted and shouldered it like both cross and banner. His eyes held ice and fire. He had chosen exile from the kingdom or war against the heavens; the name mattered little. The decision had been made.
Night closed its hands around us. The Kingdom's city burned like a map being torn apart. We left with pain glued to our souls and the promise coursing through our veins.
We walked in single file, directionless, but with a clarity we had not known before: one of us had gone, and now history demanded that no more follow. Iko would become memory, and that memory would be either knife or shield.
As the Kingdom's flame flickered behind us, we vowed in silence that the war would not end until truth had been paid with justice. And in that promise there was a destiny: to rise, to fight, to find, and to leave no heart intact that could rise up against us again.
The sword planted beside the grave shone for an instant with its own light, a tiny beacon in the night. What we did was bury it as much as we buried a piece of ourselves.
And as we left the hill, the wind seemed to carry a name.
It was an oath and an accusation. It was the last laugh we had left.