The sky wept.
Dark clouds blanketed the heavens as if mourning the soul that wandered beneath them.
Ethan trudged through the endless wasteland, his feet raw and blistered, his body wrapped in a tattered cloak stolen from a corpse days ago. The cold wind sliced through the fabric, whispering cruel lullabies in his ears, but he didn't flinch. Pain had become familiar. Comfortable. Even necessary.
The world had moved on without him.
And he hated it for that.
The path ahead was no path at all — just dirt and bones, ruins and memories. Every step was heavy. But not from exhaustion. From reminders.
He passed what used to be a village.
No name.No survivors.Just echoes.
Crumbling walls marked with claw marks. Blood dried into the earth. Half a doll's face, melted by fire, stared up at him from the mud. A child had died here. Long ago. Forgotten.
"They didn't deserve this…"
His voice was hoarse, like it hadn't been used in weeks. Because it hadn't.
And still — no one answered.
Except the voice inside him.
"No one cares who dies if the world keeps spinning."
"You were supposed to protect them. But they turned their backs on you first."
He collapsed onto the ground, his knees sinking into the dirt. It began to rain harder.
For a while, he just sat there — letting it drown him.Letting the sky do what his heart could no longer summon: cry.
Flashback
He remembered the moment everything shattered.
The battle in the frozen valley.The blood on the snow.The beast that broke his arm and nearly tore out his spine.
He remembered screaming for help —And no one coming.
They stood back.They watched.Irelia, his closest friend… no, his everything… stood still. Her eyes wide. Her lips trembling.
But she did nothing.
When the beast retreated, when it was finally slain, and he lay in the dirt—
They left him there.
"He's too injured," said one of them."He'll slow us down.""We can't afford dead weight."
Dead weight.
That's what he had become.After saving them dozens of times.After bleeding for them, smiling through pain, enduring it all.
When he needed them most — they walked away.
Like he had never mattered.
Back in the present, Ethan stared at his hands.The rain washed the dirt away, revealing the veins beneath his skin — blackened, pulsing unnaturally.
He coughed, violently.Black mist spilled from his mouth. It didn't hurt. Not anymore.
It felt right.
"The world broke you.""Now let that brokenness become your strength."
He stood slowly, trembling not from weakness, but from something else:
The beginning of resolve.
He walked.
He didn't know where. Only forward. Because behind him was betrayal — and ahead?
Maybe answers.Maybe death.
But maybe, just maybe… revenge.
He came upon a shrine, shattered and moss-covered. An old altar to the Goddess of Light — the same one his comrades worshipped. The same one they said he was "blessed by" as a child.
He remembered praying there with Irelia. They were 10. She had grabbed his hand, told him the Goddess loved the "kind ones" most.
"I'm not kind anymore," Ethan whispered.
He spat blood on the altar.Then he carved a name into the stone with a jagged piece of bone.
Irelia.
He stared at it until the blood mixed with the rain.
"You killed me before the beast ever touched me."
Suddenly, the rain stopped.
Not because the clouds cleared — but because something unnatural had descended.
He looked up.
A man cloaked in black feathers stood behind the shrine. His eyes gleamed with otherworldly silver, and his presence warped the air like heat over fire.
Ethan staggered back, hand instinctively reaching for his dagger. But the man raised a hand, and the blade in Ethan's grip dissolved into ash.
"You're the one with the mark," the man said quietly. "The Broken Flame."
Ethan said nothing.
"You were meant to die," the man continued, stepping forward. "But you didn't. The Goddess abandoned you. The people discarded you. And still… you live. That makes you dangerous."
He knelt before Ethan, not in reverence — but in study.
"Do you want vengeance, Ethan Vale?"
The name stung. He hadn't heard it in so long. It felt foreign.
He clenched his jaw.
"I don't want vengeance," Ethan said, his voice low.
"I want understanding.""I want to know why kindness is weakness.""Why betrayal is so easy.""And I want them to feel… every inch of pain they left me with."
The man smiled.Not kindly. Not cruelly.Just knowingly.
"Then let me show you the path."
In the mud, Ethan knelt again — but this time, not in despair.
He picked up the melted doll from the ruined village and cradled it to his chest.
And he whispered:
"No one else will be forgotten. Not while I'm alive."
Somewhere, far away, Irelia stood in a golden hall, laughing with nobles, basking in glory.
She thought Ethan was dead.She wore his sacrifice like a medal.She never looked back.
But soon…
She would.
Soon, they all would.