Two figures stood beneath a grey sky, determining the outcome of the war one enveloped in white fire, the other in black. Their swords hummed beside them, ready not just for an attack, but for the path they would choose. Sora stood tall, his rune glowing a mix of red and white all over his body, shining like a dazzling light. Before him, the enemy commander, an avatar of dark destruction, gripped his blade tightly, a black aura filled with darkness swirling from his form like the absolute blackness of night. It was light against darkness, justice against cruelty, and a final hope against despair.

  Then, their swords began to clash, sharp and fast. The enemy commander attacked first with a wide swing meant to split the earth itself, along with Sora. But Sora parried it with ease, his sword catching the attack and dispersing it with a counter-blow. With steady breaths, Sora began to step forward with his now-solidified speed and determination. He launched a series of fast, precise, and relentless attacks, each one hitting its mark on the enemy commander, and each thrust that pierced his enemy began to reveal weaknesses at several of his vital points. The enemy commander felt cornered by his current situation; sparks of black fire slowly flew from his armor, causing it to erode, and his blood finally became visible around his body. The enemy commander began to growl in disbelief, the taste of misfortune so foreign on his tongue. “How can this be?” But Sora continued his assault, wounding him from below until Sora launched an attack that stabbed into his opponent's chest area, cracking the armor and creating a hole. Sora managed to push him back with ease until the commander gathered all his remaining strength and activated his rune again, but this time it ignited with an unnatural power. His black fire began to burn fiercely, wrapping around his arm, making the ground around him tremble, and his eyes now shone with hatred and greed. The enemy commander launched a counter-attack, rushing towards Sora with a storm of unexpected attacks filled with magic that was dark, cruel, and layered with a decaying aura.

  However, Sora moved like water in its current. He avoided every attack not with panic, but because he saw each one so clearly, allowing him to predict where every launched attack would go next. It was as if Sora had seen all of his attacks before they were made, and now... Sora saw all of his weak points. Then, in a single opening seen in the enemy commander's attack, Sora moved as fast as the wind and launched his counter-attack by punching the enemy commander. His fist, wreathed in his red-and-white fire, collided with the enemy commander's helm. The punch, containing the power of his rune, shattered the iron helm like breaking glass, and the fragments exploded in all directions, sending the commander staggering back, his face covered in wounds and blood flowing from his temple. Their fight paused for a moment as Sora saw his face a twisted noble sneer with an old scar on his sunken cheek, and his eyes showing an implied ego and hatred. A face Sora had seen in the flames that devoured his village and Eyla so long ago. In his mind, a name resurfaced because he clearly remembered the people who destroyed his village and killed Eyla calling him by that name. “Teyrion…” He was the leader of the Black Maw mercenary army, the man who had destroyed his village and cruelly killed Eyla Varn. Teyrion was the creator of the vengeance Sora had carried since his village was destroyed.

  And when his helm was shattered, Teyrion's face, as he looked at Sora, contorted into an explosive rage as blood dripped from his lips. “How dare you! How dare you humiliate me like this, huh?!” Teyrion began to roar, and as his anger became uncontrollable, his rune pulsed violently, more like an unwanted catastrophe than an unholy and wild fire. Teyrion’s power surged, making the aura around him crackle with an energy born of darkness. But Sora was not intimidated; he stood like a pillar of fire, his purpose clear, his grip on his sword tightening, and his eyes locked on the figure of Teyrion who had made him suffer in the past. The battlefield once again trembled violently under their feet. Now, there were no more masks and no more hiding behind anything but the truth that revealed everything from behind its veil. The war would be decided by the hand of a fire's guardian whose flame never dies, even when the world around him grows dark, fighting against one who has been consumed by darkness itself, his black fire shrouded in shadow.

  The sky trembled above them, filled with cracks of light and shadow, and in the middle of it all, Teyrion, once a man, was now a vessel of his own destruction, screaming loudly as the dark rune completely devoured what was left of him. The marks all over his body were now controlled by his dark power, which pulsed with a wild black fire. His eyes had been replaced by voids of emptiness that depicted his greed in using his power and a madness that squeezed his sanity as a human. What was left of him now was no longer human. Sora narrowed his eyes and gripped his sword tighter. This was no longer a battle for revenge; it was a battle against a hatred and darkness that absorbed all remnants of human life. Finally, Teyrion attacked, moving quickly towards Sora, brutally and blindly, and they clashed once more. The ground that served as their footing shattered beneath their feet as they met, the blades of their swords touching with the sound of a breaking world. They stared at each other, their breaths different one human, and the other having abandoned his sanity as a human. One held back destruction with a calm purpose, his fire his strength, while the other bore all the chaotic power of darkness by devouring his human soul for the horror of absolute dark power. One fought for a better life, and the other fought to destroy every life that existed.

  Teyrion growled, releasing a barrage of crazed, wild, brutal, and relentless slashes at Sora. His power surged drastically like a raging storm with every attack, bending space and time between them, his range slashing the rocks and earth around him. Sora parried all his attacks with the sword he held. His body moved leisurely to position his movements, not moving carelessly, and Sora let every movement flow like a calmly flowing river. However, every attack from Teyrion had to be paid with a heavy price, as the dark rune began to eat away the remnants of his soul, turning him into a true monster. Each time he used his power, more of his flesh began to blacken, not from being burned, but from being controlled by his own power, his form already looking like a monster and like a human destroyed in his own despair.

  And finally, after one last attack, Teyrion's weakness began to show as he grew tired. He was visibly trying to control his power, fighting against the will of the force that was slowly devouring him, until he finally stumbled while launching another attack. His own power was too great for his body to bear after the attacks he had sustained, leaving him severely wounded. Teyrion knelt, the blade of his sword falling from his hand, and his aura became uncontrolled, thundering through every inch of his body to overpower his physical form and what sanity remained. He was the perfect shadow, a monster formed by the manifestation of his rune's power.

  Sora did not let the opportunity before him go to waste. He stepped forward, his white fire aura soaring around him. When Sora was close to the still-kneeling Teyrion, who then fell to the ground, Sora raised his sword high and the tip of his blade instantly pierced Teyrion's chest to end the source of this war's chaos. Teyrion's black fire slowly faded, followed by the end of everything that had ever happened. But, after successfully executing Teyrion, a portal appeared in front of Sora, making him suspicious of what was inside and of its appearance. The portal revealed a dark hole framed with symbols that were not of any magic Sora knew, nor from this world. From within, someone stepped forward, a humanoid figure shrouded in a dark robe with strange silver symbols as adornments. The figure's face was not visible, hidden by a mask made not of metal or steel, but of some unknowable material. But the figure's presence put Sora on guard; it was more terrifying than Teyrion, so powerful, from a place not of this world, and so cruel with its aura of destruction. The figure had not even been seen in this war before and had just emerged from a portal that could make Sora's skin crawl, something he could not fight.

  Teyrion, who had been executed by Sora, was surprisingly not completely dead after being stabbed through the heart. However, the figure did not look at him; it stared directly at Sora. Then, the figure simply raised one hand, which confused and alerted Sora at the same time. With just the raising of its hand, an immense and invisible force struck Sora with great and brutal power. It was not magic, but a force far greater and unknown, attacking Sora with an assault invisible to the eye. Sora was thrown and his body flew across the battlefield, so far that he slammed into the cracked earth, carving a long trail as his body slid and rolled through rock and soil. The fallen Sora began to look towards the figure, blood coming from his mouth, and the fire around him started to dim, its power limited. The horror made Sora even more wary of the figure because of its unknown power. As the dust began to settle around Sora's area, the figure looked up at the sky and saw the kingdom it desired still standing, untouched by the army commanded by Teyrion. Sora, wounded and dazed, realized something: this figure... was not summoned. This figure did not come to serve Teyrion; this figure came because it had been watching the entire battlefield all along, because the war in Elarion was the beginning of its plan.

  And at that moment, the war for Elarion had turned into something much larger, making the world fall silent at the horror of the threat to come. The wind, which was once heavy with fire and blood, now blew with a horror that made the remaining humans in this world feel unsafe, and far worse. Ash fell like snow, slowly descending under a grey sky whose sunlight did not reach the surface below, not because the sun had set, but as if the sky itself was holding its breath at the threat it saw, hiding itself before becoming the next victim. The figure from another world, shrouded in darkness, turned its gaze to Teyrion, whose body was now so destroyed and not as it had hoped, leaving Teyrion, one of its pawns, dying on the ground. The figure raised its hand, and Teyrion was lifted from the ground to be taken by it into the portal from which the figure had emerged, a claim of ownership over Teyrion's soul. The figure held Teyrion's body, now emptier than flesh and bone, carrying him as if he were weightless. Then, the dark portal began to react, and the figure entered it with the floating Teyrion. Teyrion disappeared along with the figure, and the portal instantly vanished from there as if nothing had ever happened.

  Sora, still lying on the ground and gazing at the grey sky, stared at the spot where the figure had stood before it slowly vanished into the portal it had created. His sword lay on the ground after he was thrown so far, his breathing was irregular after receiving the attack, which had caused many new injuries and worsened his already wounded condition, and blood slowly began to flow from his wounds, covering his now-helpless body. His body could no longer move, with some of his bones crushed and several fractured, and the wounds Sora received had pushed his body beyond the exhaustion of using his power on such a large scale. However, more than just the pain and exhaustion, Sora felt a fear for the figure who had taken Teyrion. The figure did not come to fight, but to observe, its presence a warning of the real danger that could appear at any time. Whatever came out of that portal, danger continued to circle this world, and the real war was not over. Not for Sora, not for Elarion, and perhaps not for this world.

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  Sora's rune had dimmed, and the red and white light faded instantly like an ember extinguished by rain. His power faded and left him. Right before the world went dark from Sora's vision, he saw Vael running towards him, with several Elarion soldiers at his side, shouting his name. Their armor was blackened from their struggle, and their faces were marked by battle and the many horrors they had seen. Vael shouted his name, but Sora could no longer hear the words. He only saw a half-conscious Vael shouting as he ran towards him, reaching for him in a hurry, desperate upon seeing the helpless Sora, before Sora closed both his eyes, his consciousness and unimaginable exhaustion making him faint as blood began to flow profusely from his wound-covered body. And that marked the end of the war for Elarion, and its result was that Elarion still stood tall, not in the euphoria of victory, but in silence.

  The fire that had threatened to devour it was extinguished at a great cost, and the grey sky above no longer wept or sang. Because although the war had been won by Elarion, the price remained: Solhen Merach, the Architect of Silence who had summoned Bahamuth and the wind, had sacrificed his life in a battle he did not need to join. He was gone. And many others had also fallen in this war, some of whom would be remembered as heroes, and some of whom would be buried with no name on their headstones. And others... would never return at all. The kingdom's bells tolled in mourning in the face of a victory that felt real, yet brought no joy, only a profound sadness. Only silence came after the storm as the world remembered them, and history began to write their names in its book with black ink. And in that history book, a quiet, broken boy who was still alive, marked by new wounds, now had a path that pointed towards a darkness even deeper than the hell of the war he had just passed through.

  But for now… the silent young man rested with his wounds, having helped the kingdom from its threat and protected what others called home. The sun had risen and set three times since the war for Elarion had ended, and Sora's condition after the war's end was still unconscious since he had fainted three days ago, his entire body covered in bandages. The room was silent except for the gentle breeze through the open window and the faint echo of bells still tolling in mourning from behind the fortress walls, still commemorating those who fought in the war. Kaelith, who had been sitting beside him, gently held Sora’s hand, her own palms also wrapped in several bandages from endlessly drawing her bowstring until her fingers were wounded. Kaelith’s hand now trembled as she stroked Sora's unresponsive hand. Kaelith bowed her head as she looked at Sora's face and his body, which was covered in bandages from the wounds he had received, even his old wounds having reopened from fighting to his limit. Kaelith did not speak, but she hoped for something in a silence that was louder than any prayer she had ever uttered in her life. “Please... not this time. Don't you die and leave us now. You always fight, and you always give your best for others. You shouldn't have to bear all this alone, at least.” She gently pressed her forehead to the back of Sora’s hand, and a tear fell onto his wrist like a raindrop on a stone. She wiped it away quickly, ashamed if someone were to see her crying over him, even in silence.

  Vael stood in the corner of the room with his arms crossed and his back against the wall. However, his eyes were not on Sora, but were staring at the ceiling, recalling the memory of fighting his own brother, who had been raised from his grave to become part of the undead army. Vael had won the fight, but at what cost? Only the memory of Thelan's smile as an undead being remained, and the sword of his brother, who had sworn an oath to its first owner, had turned against him when he was reunited with Thelan. Vael’s fingers began to trace the hilt of his sword, then he relaxed his grip. The war was over, but his internal battle was still ongoing. His gaze now shifted to the bed where the unconscious Sora lay, and even the tough knight of Borreal felt something stirring in his weary silence as he looked at Sora, who had fought so hard and could bear a burden he had never felt. The knight of Borreal considered his own burden to be smaller than Sora’s now.

  Namien sat slumped in a chair near the fireplace, holding a long-cold cup of tea. He hadn't spoken for hours, his head resting in one hand, his fingers constantly running through his hair until it was tangled. His other hand held a folded cloth, inside which were several torn notes written by Solhen. The paper was now worn from being opened repeatedly by Namien, who kept remembering his mentor's teachings. Solhen's voice still echoed in his head, from the riddles he was given, to the lessons and materials he provided, and his final sacrifice. Namien could only let out a soft, bitter chuckle as he remembered it all and said, “You would say something like: ‘A spark will dies when got forgotten.’ Isn't that right, old man?” Then his voice softened as he continued, “Well… I haven’t forgotten till now, and he is still here right now.” His eyes shifted to Sora, hinting at what Solhen had meant at that time.

  And then, a movement came from Sora's hand. Kaelith felt the movement in her palm which she had been holding. Sora’s fingers slowly moved and weakly stroked Kaelith’s hand. Kaelith, noticing this reaction, sat up straight, her eyes wide open as she saw it, blinking to clear the tears still welling in the corners. “Vael… Namien!” Kaelith said to the two men in the room, and both turned towards her, realizing what she meant. Vael stepped forward slowly and controlled, his footsteps silent, and Namien rose quickly, placing the parchment he had been holding on a nearby table as he got up from his seat. All eyes were on the one person who had brought them back together, now waking up after three days. And Sora’s eyes were seen slowly opening, which made the room fall silent for a moment at his awakening. Kaelith began to lean close to him, and her voice broke in the middle of the silence. “Hey… How long are you going to keep sleeping…” Her lips said something different from what she had wanted to say from her heart before, and her words trembled as they were heard.

  Although Sora could not speak and hear what Kaelith had said, his weary eyes began to look around him. Sora looked at Kaelith, Vael, and Namien who were surrounding him, as he did not know where he was after the war had ended. However, just in his gaze, they saw someone filled with pain, exhaustion, and a quiet recognition. They knew that they were looking at the boy who was Sora, and he was still with them for now, and that was enough for them to see him alive. When Sora’s eyes opened wide and he was fully conscious, he felt as if the entire weight of the world was pressing down on his chest. Every limb felt heavy, and on top of that, his aching body had to be bandaged due to the many wounds he had received. Every breath he took felt like it was pulling on his bones from everything that was left inside his body. Kaelith, sitting near him, noticed how Sora's eyes blinked slower than usual and his quiet struggle just to remain present. Kaelith leaned closer again gently and whispered to Sora, "Do you want to sit up?" Sora heard Kaelith’s words and gave a small nod. "Alright, just a moment," she whispered. Carefully, as if holding a fragile glass, Kaelith slipped her arm behind Sora's back and supported his weight. Her hand calmed the back of his neck as she gently helped him from a lying position to a sitting one, placing a pillow behind him as a backrest on his bed. Kaelith’s gaze met Sora's, and in his quiet gaze, a thousand words from Sora were spoken to her, even as Sora nodded slowly to Kaelith as his way of thanking her.

  Namien, with his arms crossed by the window, looked at Sora and gave him a crooked smile. “So, how did it feel… facing the final boss?” he said casually, which made Sora look at him and hear Namien’s words wearily. Then Sora just responded with a slow nod, and Namien could only snort softly. “I figured as much. I guess the blow was pretty hard for you to take.” Sora nodded slowly again. “However, I still can’t believe I saw your rune burn like that. Whatever you awakened… it wasn’t just a fire that became your power, but it was also tied to your memory in awakening your rune’s power before, and I saw you carry it, didn’t I?” Namien’s voice softened as he made that statement to Sora. Sora took a slow breath, and a faint smile formed on his face.

  Vael had not spoken at all since Sora had woken up. He stood near the wall, his shadow stretching beside him like a friend who could only be silent but still cared. His eyes observed Sora, not just his wounds or his bandages, but something deeper, from the way his hands moved to endure the pain he received to the way he got his scars, like armor full of scratches, holes, and cracks that no one would ever want to wear. Vael clenched his jaw and bowed his head slightly. “He fights like someone who knows what must be done in a situation like this,” he murmured so softly that no one heard him. At that moment, calmly and in Vael's heart, he uttered his new oath, not abandoning the one he had made long ago, without the name Borreal in it, but to forge something newly born from the ashes and from what he had endured on his journey: an oath to walk beside the fire, wherever it may lead, Vael would always follow.

  Not long after Sora had regained consciousness, the door to the room creaked open and the figure of King Aetheryn stepped inside, alone, wearing no crown on his head and no silk robe as a form of his honor. He was just a tired man and a ruler marked by the guilt of involving others not bound to his kingdom, who had to fight and sacrifice their lives on the battlefield because of his selfish request. King Aetheryn’s eyes immediately found Sora, who was now sitting up in his bed, still weak. For a few moments, the king did not speak; instead, he first observed Sora’s condition, seeing a young boy with a fire in his heart that pulsed in his veins. A warrior without a voice, yet Sora led his companions without having to declare an oath upon himself or beg them to follow him. And Sora was also the one who bore the price of the victory won in a war that Sora should never have had to fight.

  King Aetheryn began to step forward slowly and said to Sora, “You saved us all.” He said in a soft voice, then paused for a moment and continued. “I was the one who dragged you into my problems, my pride, and my fear, which made me seek salvation in others while I sat on my throne. And strangely, you answered the call.” The king began to bow his head, reflecting on what had brought him to this, and said faintly, “And for that… I thank you, and I am sorry for this selfishness of mine, for hoping too much from people like you.” He lifted his head high and offered a smile colored with the sadness visible on his face. “But I also hold regret, Silent One. Not just gratitude after all of this is over. Because peace… came after your sacrifice and Solhen Merach’s as well.”

  Sora looked at the figure of King Aetheryn, then he looked at Kaelith, Namien, and Vael. Although Sora could not speak and his voice would never be heard to fill the room with his words, there was something in his eyes that answered them all. Then he gestured to Kaelith to get a pen and paper for him to write. When the writing tools reached Sora’s hand, he wrote: “This was never about a king who begged me, but about the people who live within. And I would do it again if something like before happened, even if it breaks me and makes me bleed until death takes me. I will keep rising again for those who still want to defend what is called home.” After he finished writing, he gave it to King Aetheryn, who then read it. And at that moment, everyone knew why the mute boy was worthy of being the leader of their traveling group.