The battlefield was dead.
Wind dragged the smell of iron and ash across the cliffside, hissing through the burnt grass like a whisper of the souls that had fallen there. The corpses of men, beasts, elves, and abominations lay scattered across the torn earth—bodies twisted in the shapes of their last moments. Armor cracked, blood darkened the stones, and silence pressed down like a shroud.
Bayo Diallo stood among them, breathing hard. His body was covered in cuts and dust, his hands trembling from exhaustion. The faint glow running through his veins pulsed with every heartbeat, a reminder of the thing he carried inside—the thing that made him different, and the reason so many had died tonight.
Ryat stood across from him. Her cloak was torn, her blade stained with the same blood that slicked the ground between them. The wind tugged her hair across her face, hiding her eyes.
For a long time, neither spoke. The war around them had ended, but not the tension between them.
Bayo's voice came out rough.
"It's over, Ryat. We won."
Her lips trembled, but she didn't look at him. "No, Bayo," she said quietly. "We didn't."
He frowned, confused. The sound of her voice—soft, shaking—cut deeper than any wound he'd taken.
She lifted her gaze. The tears in her eyes looked wrong in this ruined place. "You should have never awakened," she whispered. "You weren't meant to exist like this."
He took a step forward. "What are you talking about?"
Her hand tightened around the sword. "They said if I didn't do it… this world would end."
"Ryat." His voice cracked. "Tell me you're lying."
"I'm sorry."
The blade slid into him before he could move. Cold, sudden, absolute. His breath caught as the steel pierced through his chest, the sound echoing sharp against the stone. His knees buckled, and the world tilted.
He looked down at the wound, then at her face—the one face he had trusted after everything. The one he'd fought for.
He didn't scream. He couldn't.
There was only the sound of wind and his own heartbeat slowing to a crawl.
He stumbled backward, the edge of the cliff catching his heel. Her hand reached out, shaking, but too late. The world slipped away beneath him, and he fell.
For a moment, there was nothing but the sky. Endless and broken, filled with a thousand fragments of dead light.
As he fell, time blurred.
Memories flickered—the faces of his parents and sister, gone long ago; the laughter he'd shared with Ryat on nights when the stars still meant something; the years they'd spent surviving in a dying world. Every smile, every battle, every promise—all crumbling away like dust.
He thought she would be the one person who never betrayed him.
The wind tore at his body. The rift opened below, a crack of glowing void twisting through the air like a wound in reality. The force pulled him in, dragging him into its heart.
Then came the anger.
It wasn't the blind rage of hate—it was something deeper. Ancient. Heavy. It rose from inside his chest like fire meeting ice, spreading through his veins in light and shadow.
The sky itself trembled.
The energy burned outward, warping the air, shaking the earth above. The corpses on the battlefield lifted from the ground, drawn into the spiraling rift of power that followed him down. Even the silence broke, replaced by a low hum that vibrated through the bones of the world.
Within the rift, darkness and light collided. Fragments of stars spun around him, burning and fading, reflecting in his wide, furious eyes. His thoughts blurred into instinct—pain, betrayal, survival.
He hit the bottom. Or maybe the bottom hit him.
A roar rose around him—abominations twisting through the shadows, drawn to the energy spilling from his fall. They surrounded him, crawling from cracks in the earth, their forms half-solid, half-spectral. Eyes glowing red, mouths dripping void.
He pushed himself to his feet, blood dripping down his arm. His chest still burned where the sword had entered, but the light around the wound pulsed brighter than ever, refusing to die.
He looked up at the creatures circling him. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Their claws scraped the ground, their growls vibrating through the dust.
Something in him snapped.
The fear, the grief, the betrayal—it all melted into a cold, perfect stillness. His hand lifted slowly, trembling at first, then steady.
The air stilled.
Then came the sound.
A deep, resonant hum that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The space around his raised hand shimmered, bending light itself. A thin line of radiance stretched outward, brighter and sharper than steel.
He exhaled.
And the world split.
The abominations screamed as the energy erupted—a wave of blinding brilliance wrapped in shadow, cutting through everything in its path. In an instant, the creatures were gone, their forms dissolving into ash and light. The ground cracked, the cliffs shuddered, and the sky flickered between night and something beyond night.
When the glow faded, silence returned. Only the wind moved.
Bayo stood at the center of the ruin, his breath shallow, his clothes scorched, his eyes burning faintly with the echo of what had just happened.
Above him, the rift began to close, the world stitching itself back together.
He looked up once, toward the distant cliff where she had stood. Even from here, he could almost see her—small against the horizon, blade still trembling in her hand.
He wanted to hate her.
He wanted to understand.
But most of all, he wanted to know why.
The light dimmed. His body finally gave out.
He fell to his knees, surrounded by the ashes of the creatures he had destroyed, the faint glow of his veins fading into darkness.
The world was quiet again. But beneath that silence, something vast and ancient stirred—something that had been waiting for this very moment.
And as the last flicker of light left his eyes, the dawn that would change everything began to rise.
******