Eila had arrived.
He wore his usual armor, caked in the mud and gore of the northern front. He had ridden three horses to death, manipulated gravity until his mana circuits bled, the Paradox Debt.
He was ten seconds too late.
The air in the plaza grew heavy, dropping twenty degrees in an instant. An oppressive weight settled on everyone, making it hard to even breathe. It wasn't magic, it was the direct manifestation of two timelines warping, the emergence of Timeline 0.
Eila looked down at the execution block. He looked at his sister's body, and at her dark-brown hair stained with blood.
He did not scream. He did not cry.
The boy who used to wear lily crowns in the fields snapped. The righteous silver light that had defined his existence inverted. It collapsed inward, pulling his humanity, his empathy, and his hope into a singularity of absolute, crushing apathy.
He slowly dragged his gaze away from Emilia's body. He looked out at the thousands of terrified people, the same people who were cheering only a minute ago. He looked at the trembling Pope.
"Troublesome freaks..." Eila muttered.
His voice was a bare whisper, yet it bypassed their eardrums, ringing with razor sharp clarity directly in the minds of everyone present.
He tilted his head, his eyes catching the sunlight. The left bright blue iris was gone, replaced by entirely, utterly pitch black. A void.
"Why am I even saving you guys?"
The silence stretched, pulling like a bowstring about to snap.
"Today," Eila said, his voice devoid of all human emotion. "I shall not be the hero."
The Pope, finally breaking from his paralysis, pointed a trembling finger at Eila. "YOU INSOLENT PEST! YOU DARE! Guards! Seize the traitor! Kill him!"
Eila did not draw his rusted broadsword. He simply stared at the Pope.
The holy man opened his mouth to scream a prayer, but no words came out. Instead, white hot fire erupted from his very pores. The Pope collapsed backward, howling in unimaginable, agonizing pain as he writhed on the blood stained wood. His grand robes, his gold rings, his flesh. He was not dying. It seemed as if he kept burning and healing, trapped in a continuous cycle.
Eila did not even watch him burn. He raised a single, pale finger toward the sky.
A dome of impenetrable, suffocating black energy, the Ashen Veil, erupted from the edges of the plaza, shooting into the sky and enclosing the execution grounds like an inverted glass bowl. The midday sun was instantly blotted out, plunging the tens of thousands of trapped citizens into an unnatural, freezing twilight.
Panic, raw and animalistic, finally broke. The crowd surged toward the edges of the plaza, clawing frantically at the shadowy barrier, but the veil held firm. Knights dropped their swords and wept. Mothers begged.
Eila walked down the wooden steps of the scaffold, his boots leaving bloody footprints on the stone.
"Kill me, but look at him! He's just a child!" a mother pleaded, holding up her child.
"The Hero is Dead." whispered Eila. "And so is the mercy that came with it"
When the sun rose the next day, the black veil dissolved into ash, blowing away on the morning wind.
The Kingdom's Vanguard knights, who had spent the night desperately battering the barrier from the outside, finally poured into the plaza. What they found broke the minds of the strongest veterans. Several knights immediately fell to their knees, vomiting onto the cobblestones.
Not a single soul had been spared. But it was the way they had died that solidified Eila's new legacy.
This was not a battlefield. It was a showcase of pure malice.
Bodies were piled in grotesque, impossible formations. Knights in full plate armor lay with their chests compressed completely flat, crushed by an unseen, localized gravity, looking like stamped coins. Nobles and peasants alike were left with limbs shattered and spun like threads, their necks twisted at sickening, backward angles. Those who had watched the execution from the front row were found with their eyes gouged out.
It was a statement written in blood, spanning an entire city block: No one is safe.
Eila had vanished, along with the corpse of Emilia.
Three days later, deep within the volcanic, ash choked wastelands of the Demonic Territory, Malakor, the Demon Queen, sat upon her throne of obsidian. For years, she had planned for the day she would finally have to face the Kingdom's Hero in a battle that would shake the continents.
Instead, the heavy iron doors of her throne room simply flattened, pressing into the hot floor.
Her royal guard raised their halberds, but they instantly froze, trembling at an instinctive level as an oppressive, suffocating weight flooded the hall.
Eila walked straight up the obsidian steps. He ignored the bristling spears. He stopped before the Queen.
For the first time in a thousand years, Malakor felt a cold sweat prickle the back of her neck. The boy had a hollow, consuming darkness that dwarfed her own oppressive aura. It was as if he wasn't from this era, but an entity she was supposed to fear.
Eila reached into his blood stained cloak and tossed a crumbled piece of parchment on the floor, at her feet. It was a highly detailed, tactical map of Oakhaven, one of the Kingdom's largest, most prosperous fortress cities.
"The northern gates are heavily fortified, but the eastern wall has a blind spot in the mana warding network," Eila said, his voice dead and monotonous.
The Demon Queen looked at the map, then up at him, her crimson eyes narrowed in deep suspicion. "What is this, Hero? A trap?"
"It is a permission," Eila replied, turning his back on her and walking toward the ruined doors. "Do whatever you want to that city. Burn it. Eat them. I do not care."
He paused at the threshold, glancing over his shoulder. The black voids of his eyes seemed to swallow the light of the torches.
"Just make sure it hurts."
That night, Oakhaven burned. Rampage erupted as demonic hordes poured into the city, completely unopposed by the Kingdom's strongest asset. The sky turned metallic. The Demons enjoyed a hearty meal after so long. Their screams echoed for miles. The world watched in horror as the realization set in: They had not killed the Hero, they killed his reason.
The throne room of the capital, once a sanctuary of gold and blinding marble, now reeked of stale wine and terror.
King Aldous looked like a hollowed out corpse. His crown sat crookedly on thinning hair, his eyes darting at every shadow. At the center of the room stood Imara. She wore no armor, only a simple traveler's cloak, her wooden staff resting lightly against the polished floor. She was Eila's childhood friend. The girl who was an orphan, but closer than any to Eila and Emilia.
"You want me to talk to him," Imara repeated, her voice making it clear she had no intention of doing so.
"Imara, please," Aldous rasped, weeping openly on his throne. "He is destroying everything. Oakhaven is gone. The Vanguard is decimated. You are the only one he might listen to."
Imara let out a short, humorless laugh. "Listen to me? You took a boy who bled for your lands, and you dragged his sister onto a chopping block to appease an old fart? You slaughtered his reason. I hope he burns it all."
"Wait!" The King threw himself from his throne, crawling toward her on his knees. "I know we deserve his wrath. But the children, Imara. The people who did not know. Please... let me show you."
He motioned weakly to his guards. They wheeled in a sequence of silver carts, pulling back velvet sheets.
Imara's breath hitched.
These were the remains of the King's ministers. One had his ribcage inverted, his own ribs acting as a cage for his crushed skull. Another had been transfigured into a grotesque statue, his flesh fused flawlessly with the molten gold of his hoarded wealth.
Imara stared at the bodies, a cold dread settling in her stomach. If Eila had simply executed them, she would have let the world burn. But this level of deliberate, agonizing cruelty meant Eila was not just killing his enemies. He was drowning in an abyss, and soon, the boy she knew would be entirely gone, replaced by the effect of Paradox Debt.
"Help me find him, I shall talk," she whispered.
The Zenith Spire was the tallest structure in the Kingdom, piercing the clouds. The wind howled violently at this altitude, cold enough to freeze moisture in lungs.
Imara pushed open the heavy iron trapdoor. The pressure hit her immediately. The air was suffocating, thick with a dark, crackling energy.
Eila sat on the edge of the stone parapet, his legs dangling over the sheer drop, silhouetted against the night moon.
"I knew you'd come, and yet i say... leave, Imara," he croaked without turning around.
Imara stepped forward, forcing her way through the localized gravity that threatened to crush her ribs. She sat down on the ledge right next to him.
Eila looked at her, his eyes pitch black. "You are a fool, you know? Talking to me won't save the world."
"I did not come to save the world," Imara replied. "I came to save you. What you did to Oakhaven... it won't destroy the world...it will destroy Eila"
"The system isn't broken, Imara. It was functioning exactly as it was designed to," Eila snapped, his voice vibrating with rage. "The King watched. The Nobles clapped. The peasants cheered. A forest diseased to its roots cannot be pruned. It must be burned to the ash."
"And who gave you the right to be the fire?" Imara challenged, leaning toward him. "What of the children in Oakhaven who burned to death in their beds?"
"They were only innocent because they weren't grown up yet," Eila reasoned coldly. "I spared them the burden of becoming monsters."
"By becoming the ultimate monster yourself!" Imara shouted, slamming her hand onto the stone parapet, tears falling. "You are not doing this for Emilia! Do you think she would look at the mutilated corpses you leave behind and thank you for it?"
"She is not here to care!" Eila roared, dark energy blasting outward, shattering the gargoyles. "She is dead! She is in the cold ground!"
"But YOU are still here!" Imara yelled back, tears streaming down her face freely now, tipping to the ground. She reached out, pushing through the agonizing gravity, and placed her warm hand over his cold, pale one. "If you truly believe there is no good left in this world, then crush my chest. Prove to me that you are truly gone." She raised her arms to her sides.
Eila froze. He looked at the girl bearing the weight of a god's aura just to hold his hand. Slowly, agonizingly, the pitch black void in his right eye began to recede. A sliver of vibrant, heartbroken blue bled back into his iris.
"Imara..." Eila gasped, pulling his hand away, wrapping his arms around himself. "It hurts. Every time my heart beats, it feels like I am swallowing glass."
"I know," she whispered, sliding closer, pressing her shoulder against his. "I am not asking you to be their shield. Let the Kingdom fall on its own. But do not become the executioner. Walk away with me."
Eila sat in silence for a long time. The apathy was gone, replaced by the crushing weight of his own actions.
"I will go," Eila whispered.
In the distance, A sniper readied his gun. Upon King's orders, the Hero shall fall today, with the bullet infused with the mana of 500 elite mages.