Snowlike ash drifted through the void—once crimson, now faintly silver. Fragments of bones, floating memories, shattered monoliths of time: these remained of the battlefield. But something new lingered in the air.
Soft sobbing.
The spirits of the cohort—Lilith, Tenshin, Necros, the others—hovered around Dylan. Ethereal figures, transparent and trembling. Their forms flickered, eyes glistening. They gathered near him, drawn not by loyalty, but by gratitude.
Lilith stepped forward, clutching her hands to her chest. "You… you freed me." Her voice was broken—unsteady as tears falling into ash. "You tore through the endless loop. You saved us from collapse."
Tenshin's figure shifted, fractured lines of temporal distortion flickering around him. "We were stuck in cycles of suffering," he whispered. "Obsessed, torn, lost." He reached out; his hand passed through Dylan's shoulder. Yet the emotion was real. "You changed everything."
Necros hovered on a throne of bone shards, tears trailing down his skeletal face. "I failed them every cycle… always failed. But you—" he paused, shifting in slow-motion memory, "you did not."
All of them—ghostly embodiments of sacrifice, of endless endings—bowed in unison. Their voices wove together into one final lament:
"Thank you, Dylan. For letting us rest at last."
Dylan stood silent. He could not muster words. The ache in his chest—the weight of victory, the pressure of being the final surviving echo—was almost unbearable. But he bowed too, once, deeply, in reverence.
Then their voices faded. Their bodies dissipated like smoke. The battlefield was empty again, but not silent. Dylan heard memory humming in the air—residual echoes of time broken and reformed.
Dylan turned.
The void—not yet calm—shivered.
Before him, a translucent mural of memory appeared. Floating images shaped themselves: a young boy in Moscow's grey slush, a modest school courtyard, dusty classrooms.
A twelve-year-old Alexander Mirov—before he became Zephyr—stood clutching a report card. His marks were middling. He was quiet, withdrawn. He tucked the paper away and walked home.
At home, warmth should have awaited.
But instead, his mother, Elena, lay slumped in the living room. The couch was stained. There was something broken in her eyes.
In the next memory, Alexander confronted his vice principal, a man named Gorkov. Gorkov demanded the boy be punished. Alexander held the accusation of poor performance like a shield.
"Your son is useless," Gorkov spat. "He disappoints you."
But it was not the marks that hurt deepest.
It was what followed.
Over the next weeks, Alexander watched in horror as his mother was brutally assaulted—over and over—by those paid to protect and educate. Gorkov justified it: "Less marks means less dignity."
With no witnesses (others were complicit or frightened), Elena was eventually sold into the slave trade, trafficked across borders. Alexander protested. He screamed. He tried to fight back.
Then—the frame.
Gorkov planted drugs in Alexander's backpack, wiped CCTV, bribed police. At fourteen, Alexander was arrested. Accused of heavy drug consumption. There was no evidence. No justice. He was shipped off to a juvenile penal colony.
For eight years, Alexander, Zephyr, decayed in the system. He was beaten, pressured, reconditioned. Letters from his mother for a time arrived—flickering pleas for freedom. Then stopped.
He was alone.
In memory, the boy grew into a hardened figure. He read forbidden texts on death. On time. On ritual. He carved runes into sawdust floors. He taught himself pain and control.
Then came the gate. The rift. He was pulled into darkness, and the boy died.
But this memory—the pain, the betrayal—lived forever inside Zephyr.
A bloodless tear ran down Alvin's cheek. Dylan watched, stunned.
No melodrama. No villainous justification—just raw, unrelenting sorrow.
In silence, Alexander's last words appeared:
"Let no one escape… because no one should survive the forgetting."
The mural shattered, as the void itself seemed to sigh under the weight of truth.
The world dissolved.
Not like death.
Like rewriting.
Colors drained. Light fractured. The battlefield cracked open at the horizon.
A dark portal formed—twisting galaxies of purple and obsidian. Space folded. A swirling cosmic eye.
Dylan looked at the abyss no longer with fear, but with recognition.
He felt drag.
Gravity snapped inward. Light collapsed.
He fell.
The journey through space was silent.
Dylan drifted through a violet realm—stars bleeding into void, constellations forming shapes then dissolving. He saw echoes of circuits. He heard a disembodied voice.
It was serene. Soft like glass shattering in slow motion.
"Congratulations, Dylan."
The voice filled the purple expanse. Warm and hollow.
"You have passed the test."
Dylan's legs—barely feeling real—shook. He looked down at faint starlight cracks on his skin.
"This realm exists outside cycles of destiny. Each soul here is broken and reborn."
The voice continued.
"You were forged in suffering. You endured betrayal. You conquered time."
Dylan's heart trembled—this was no salvation. It was … transformation.
Figures drifted behind him—statues formed from tears and shattered reality: Lilith, Tenshin, Necros, forged into cosmic angels.
"And so…" the voice echoed. "You shall be reborn."
The stars flared. A glow surrounded Dylan.
He screamed.
The world snapped.
Dylan's body convulsed. Light blossomed around him.
Then nothing.
He was gone.
A new form remained.
A child. A boy of perhaps age eight or nine. Hair copper-red, eyes silver with black rim. Small, trembling.
Not the demon. Not the wolf.
A child.
He looked down.
He was naked but unashamed.
He whispered:
"No… not again."
The void pulsed around him.
Behind, the cosmic eye blinked.
The stars whispered.
A final word reverberated:
"Begin."
And the purple realm faded to black.
TO BE CONTINUED…
END OF VOL 1….