Chapter 1 – Prologue
Erynd dropped to his knees but kept his body upright, his gaze fixed on the horizon where comrades and enemies blurred together into one endless carpet of corpses. The battlefield stretched so far that the dead seemed to spill off the edge of the world.
Blood ran down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and stared at the dark stain on his palm.
"I failed again," he muttered.
"How many times has it been already…?"
"How many times…"
His hand moved to his chest, fingers digging into the fabric over his heart. It was beyond hopeless. He had seen this scene too often. The same bodies. The same silence. The same feeling of arriving just a little too late.
Before the first tear could fall, he heard something familiar.
"Erynd… are you there?"
He froze.
That voice.
He turned, eyes scanning the forest of bodies. Someone he never expected to hear again. Someone who shouldn't have survived the constant fighting.
"…Wyni?"
He forced himself to stand. His legs trembled. One hand pressed down on the deep cut in his shoulder as he staggered toward the sound. Fresh corpses lay everywhere—some burned, some torn in half, some so ruined no description could give them justice. Broken armor, shattered weapons, and twisted limbs formed a jagged landscape he had to climb.
"Erynd, please… please say something…" The voice came again, weaker, desperate.
He moved faster.
He shoved past bodies, stumbled, fell, then kept going. When his legs failed, he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled. Scrrkk. Clink. The sound of his movement over armor, bone, and dirt echoed around him.
He made it.
"W–Wyni…?" he rasped, forcing the sound out as he dragged himself closer to the source of the voice.
She lay there, nearly at death's door.
Her blonde hair, once bright, was now stained a dull, sticky red. Her green eyes were bloodshot, fine red lines spiderwebbing through the cornea. Her strong, trained body was pinned to the ground by four spears piercing her white armor—two through her legs, one driven into the carpus of her wrist, and the last buried deep into her left hip.
She shouldn't even have been able to speak.
"Erynd," she whispered, lips trembling. "We… did it right?"
He stopped beside her, breath shaking. He didn't need to check. He had seen this amount of blood too many times. He already knew how close she was to the end. There was nothing he could do now except soothe her in her final moments.
With a pain that felt like his chest was being crushed from the inside, he forced a small smile.
"Yeah," he said softly. "We did it, Wyni."
"Yeah… then I can rest now…" Her lips curled into the faintest smile. Her expression looked… exultant? No. It looked fulfilled.
"Haha… it's over. Thank yo—"
Her last thanks never finished.
Her body went stiff. Her mouth froze mid-word. Her eyes lost their light. Everything stopped at once.
Erynd swallowed hard.
Slowly, he dragged himself closer until he was right at her side. His hands slipped on blood and loose armor as he pulled himself forward—scrrkk, clink—each tiny sound far too loud in the dead silence of the battlefield.
After a while, he finally reached her. Exhausted. Mana spent. His whole body burned and throbbed, but none of it mattered. There was nothing he could do to save her. All he could do was be there.
With trembling fingers, he gently closed her eyes.
"Fate…" he whispered.
"This damn fate."
He murmured the words to himself, because he knew this scene too well. He had been through it countless times. The same failure, over and over, like the world itself refused to change.
His strength was gone. Blood loss made his thoughts sluggish, his vision hazy. He let himself sink down beside her, his whole body flattening against the cold ground. His arm slipped away from his wounded shoulder; he no longer had the strength to hold it.
He lay there next to Wyni, staring up at the sky.
Smoke still curled into the air, but here and there, gaps in the clouds revealed a few faint stars watching from far above, uncaring and distant.
"So tired…" he thought.
His eyelids grew heavy. The smell of iron, ash, and burned flesh faded into a dull blur. Even the pain seemed far away now, like it belonged to someone else.
But one thought remained crystal clear in his mind, cutting through the haze.
"I'll have to try again."
He closed his eyes peacefully, accepting the familiar darkness as it rose up to swallow him. He knew one thing for certain:
This wasn't the first time he had failed.
And it wouldn't be the last time he tried.