(Evelyn's POV)
I can clearly remember that day as if it only happened yesterday. It was three months before my battle with the Vampire King. My army and I were deep in enemy territory, surrounded on all sides. To say the tension was high would be an understatement. It was a do-or-die situation.
Gathering every shred of mana I could muster at Stage Four, I reached further—drawing upon the atmosphere itself until my veins burned with strain. In that moment of desperation, I created a miniature sun.
It was barely the size of my thumb, but when I hurled it into the sky, it shone with the brilliance of dawn itself, burning away the darkness and annihilating the vampires in the vicinity.
It lasted only five seconds. Five seconds of salvation.
But when the light faded, it didn't simply vanish. Instead, I felt it—the crushing pull of something unnatural, as though the world itself was being devoured by the space where the sun once hung.
A gravitational collapse. A calamity born from my own hand.
I was lucky. If I hadn't thrown it high above, if I had been reckless enough to release it near the ground, I would have destroyed not just the enemy—but my army, my allies, myself. That day, I realized I had created not a spell, but a disaster. Something no mage should ever touch again.
And yet… I used it once more. Later, against the Vampire King's forces, when there was no other choice. I watched a castle crumble, not from the light of my sun, but from the void left when it collapsed. To this day, the memory chills me. Even I feared the thing I had created.
After that, I never dared call upon it again.
Even when I fought the Vampire King himself, I relied on my sword and will, not the false sun.
Now, in this peaceful world, I look around and feel… relief. There are still wars, I know, but compared to the endless slaughter of the vampires, it feels like another world entirely.
Mother is four months pregnant. Soon I will be a sister. That thought makes me nervous in ways the battlefield never did. Perhaps because it is so new, so ordinary.
Sometimes I wonder—was that really living? Or was I just a weapon wearing the skin of a man?
I was never allowed to be more than that. Not a son, not a brother, not a lover. The title of "First Hero" erased the man I was. My name was never written down, never remembered. All that endured was the image of a weapon that won a war.
But now… I am Evelyn. I have parents who love me, a brother who teases me, and friends who train beside me. I can laugh. I can make mistakes. I can live.
Perhaps this is the life I should have had back then, if not for the burden placed on my shoulders. Perhaps, at last, I am free to be something other than a weapon.
And yet… deep down, I feel a shadow pressing at the edges of this peace. A whisper that the world will not remain this quiet forever. That my past as the First Hero, or the enemies I once fought, will not let me rest so easily.
For now, I choose to live as Evelyn. But part of me knows—someday, the weapon will be called upon again.