---
The armor was lighter than Kaito expected, but still impossibly heavy.
Leather reinforced with metal plates at vital areas—chest, shoulders, forearms. A helmet that made his head feel like it weighed twice as much. Boots that actually fit despite no one measuring his feet. Magic again, probably.
He stood in the armory, watching attendants help the others gear up, and tried to control his breathing.
*In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.*
It wasn't working.
"First time's always terrifying," a voice said beside him.
Kaito turned to find Knight-Commander Gareth adjusting the straps on his armor. Up close, the man was even more intimidating—easily six-foot-three, built like someone who'd spent thirty years turning his body into a weapon.
"I've never even been in a fight," Kaito admitted quietly.
"I know. I can tell by how you hold yourself." Gareth didn't sound judgmental, just matter-of-fact. "You're a pacifist by nature. Nothing wrong with that."
"Then why let me come?"
"Because you volunteered. Because you felt responsible for those five hundred people despite never meeting them." Gareth secured the last strap and stepped back. "That's worth more than fighting skills. That's what makes a hero—not power, but the choice to use it for others."
"But I can't fight. I'll just be in the way."
"Maybe. Or maybe your empathy power will save lives in ways a sword never could." Gareth clapped him on the shoulder—gently for him, which still nearly knocked Kaito over. "Stick close to me during the battle. I'll keep you alive long enough to figure out what you're good for."
It wasn't reassuring, exactly. But it was honest.
The others were ready now. Ren looked surprisingly natural in armor, like he'd been born to wear it. Yuki kept adjusting her helmet, muttering about impaired peripheral vision. Daichi seemed comfortable, clearly no stranger to violence. Himari looked tiny and fragile, the armor somehow making her seem more vulnerable rather than less.
Twenty knights stood at attention in the courtyard—Gareth's best, he'd said. Veterans who'd survived battles with demons before. They looked at the five heroes with expressions ranging from skepticism to pity.
*They think we're going to die,* Kaito realized, his empathy picking up their collective doubt.
Seraphina appeared, still in her blue robes, looking every bit the ethereal priestess. But Kaito's empathy told a different story—beneath her composed exterior, she was radiating anxiety, guilt, and something else. Fear? Dread?
*She thinks we're going to die too.*
"Heroes," Seraphina said, her voice carrying across the courtyard. "May the gods protect you on this journey. May you return victorious, with the people of Millbrook safe."
*May you survive at all,* Kaito heard in her emotions beneath the words.
"We will," Ren said with more confidence than he felt—Kaito could sense the terror underneath. "We'll save them."
Seraphina approached each hero individually, placing her hand on their forehead in what was apparently a blessing ritual. When she reached Kaito, their eyes met.
"Use your gift wisely," she whispered, too quiet for others to hear. "See what others miss. Question what doesn't feel right."
Before he could respond, she moved on.
*What did that mean? Is she... is she telling me to investigate something?*
"Mount up!" Gareth called.
The horses were already saddled—massive warhorses for the knights, slightly smaller but still intimidating mounts for the heroes. Kaito had never ridden a horse in his life.
A stable hand helped him up, showing him how to hold the reins, where to put his feet. The horse—a gray mare named Mist, apparently—shifted beneath him, and Kaito's stomach dropped.
"Don't worry," the stable hand said. "Mist's gentle. Just hold on and she'll follow the others."
"Just hold on," Kaito repeated weakly. "Right."
Ren was already mounted, looking like he'd been riding horses his whole life. Yuki was having similar difficulties to Kaito but was approaching it like a physics problem—analyzing weight distribution and optimal posture. Daichi had somehow made friends with his horse, which made sense given his protective nature extending to animals. Himari looked ready to cry but was determinedly staying in the saddle.
"Two hours hard ride north!" Gareth shouted from his massive black stallion at the front of the formation. "We maintain formation! Knights will flank the heroes—protect them if engagement occurs en route. Heroes, your job is simple: don't die before we get there!"
Encouraging.
"RIDE OUT!"
The gates opened, and they surged forward.
---
Riding a horse at full gallop was nothing like Kaito had imagined.
It was terrifying, brutal, and felt like every bone in his body was being rattled loose. He clung to the reins and Mist's mane, trusting the horse to follow the group, trying not to fall off.
Around him, the knights rode in practiced formation—a moving shield protecting the heroes at the center. The landscape blurred past: the white city giving way to farmland, then to forest, then to rougher terrain.
Kaito's empathy sense was going haywire.
He could feel the knights' focused determination, their professional calm masking underlying tension. They'd done this before—ridden toward death with purpose. He felt Gareth's grim resignation, the commander already making tactical calculations about acceptable losses.
And the other heroes...
Ren was terrified but channeling it into fierce determination. *I have to save them. I have to prove I can protect people. I won't fail again.*
Yuki was analyzing everything despite her fear, her mind racing through scenarios and probabilities. *Seventeen percent chance of success based on current variables. Need more data. Need better planning. This is illogical but necessary.*
Daichi was eager, almost excited beneath his nerves. *Finally, a fight where I'm allowed to go all out. Where I can protect people without holding back.*
Himari was nearly paralyzed with fear but pushing through it. *I have healing magic. People will be hurt. I have to help them. I have to. Mom would want me to.*
And beneath all of it, threading through everyone's emotions like a dark current: the awareness that they might die. Again. Permanently this time.
After an hour of riding, Gareth called for a brief rest. The horses needed water, and the heroes needed to not fall off from exhaustion.
Kaito dismounted with help, his legs shaking. He'd never been athletic, and his body was protesting the abuse despite its hero-enhanced constitution.
"Five minutes!" Gareth announced. "Drink water, adjust your gear, then we continue!"
Kaito found himself next to one of the knights—a woman with short red hair and a scar across her cheek. She was checking her sword with practiced efficiency.
"First battle?" she asked without looking at him.
"That obvious?"
"You've got 'never seen combat' written all over you." She glanced up, and her expression wasn't unkind. "Name's Iris. Been with the commander for six years. Seen three demon incursions."
"Kaito. Been a hero for... about three hours."
That got a smile. "Honest, at least. Advice: when we hit the battle, don't think. Thinking gets you killed. React, trust your instincts, and if you get scared, look for me or the commander. We'll guide you."
"What if my instinct is to run away?"
"Then run toward the people who need protecting, not away from the danger." She sheathed her sword. "That's the difference between a coward and a hero—direction of the running."
Despite everything, Kaito almost laughed.
"They're not what I expected," another knight said—a young man, maybe twenty-five, with dark skin and kind eyes. "The heroes, I mean. The stories always make them sound... grander."
"Shut it, Marcus," Iris said, but not harshly.
"I'm just saying, they look like kids. That one—" he nodded at Himari "—looks ready to pass out."
"They volunteered," Iris said. "When they heard people needed help, they volunteered immediately. That counts for something."
"Or it counts for stupidity."
Kaito's empathy picked up Marcus's emotions beneath the cynicism: bitter disappointment. He'd expected saviors and got frightened teenagers instead.
*We're going to let them down,* Kaito realized. *Everyone's counting on us, and we have no idea what we're doing.*
"MOUNT UP!" Gareth's voice cut through the break.
They rode on.
---
The smell hit them first.
Smoke. Thick, acrid, carrying the unmistakable stench of burning wood and something worse. Burning flesh.
"We're close," Gareth said, his voice grim. "Millbrook is just beyond that ridge. Prepare for engagement!"
The knights drew weapons—swords hissing from sheaths, the creak of readied bows. The heroes tried to follow suit, though Kaito's hands shook so badly he nearly dropped his sword.
*I can't do this. I can't I can't I can't—*
Then they crested the ridge, and the village came into view.
Millbrook was burning.
Or rather, parts of it were. Fires raged through the western section while the eastern half seemed intact but under siege. Kaito could see the layout from their vantage point: a small village of maybe fifty buildings, surrounded by a low wooden palisade that was broken in multiple places.
And demons.
Kaito had been imagining Hollywood monsters—CGI creatures with horns and fangs. What he saw was worse in its mundane horror.
They looked like people. Mostly. Humanoid figures with gray-blue skin, some with horns, others with tails, others with additional limbs or eyes or features that marked them as other. But they moved like humans, fought like humans, bled like humans.
"Goblin raiders and orc war party," Gareth assessed quickly. "Maybe eighty total. Villagers have retreated to the town hall—that large building in the center. It's fortified, but they're surrounded."
"What's the plan?" Ren asked, his voice admirably steady.
"We hit them from behind. Knights form a wedge, punch through their lines. Heroes stay in the protected center. We make it to the town hall, extract the civilians, and retreat while we still can."
"What about the demons?" Daichi asked.
"We kill enough to break their formation, then we run. This isn't about winning, it's about saving lives."
Simple. Brutal. Honest.
"Heroes," Gareth said, meeting each of their eyes. "If you see an opening to use your powers, use them. Otherwise, stay alive and stay together. Understood?"
"Understood," Ren answered for them all.
Kaito wanted to ask what his power would even do in combat—knowing everyone's emotions didn't seem tactically useful—but there was no time.
"FORMATION!" Gareth roared. "CHARGE!"
They surged down the hill toward the burning village.
Kaito's empathy exploded with sensation as they closed the distance. The demons' battle-lust, their savage joy in destruction. The terrified villagers huddled in the town hall. The knights' disciplined fear. His fellow heroes' terror and determination.
And underneath it all, something else. Something that felt... wrong.
The demons weren't just killing randomly. They were organized, following orders, herding civilians specifically toward the town hall rather than slaughtering indiscriminately. This wasn't a random raid. This was tactical.
*Why?*
No time to think about it. They hit the demon lines.
The sound was overwhelming—metal on metal, screams of rage and pain, horses neighing, fire crackling. The knights smashed through the first wave of demons with brutal efficiency. These were veterans, and it showed. Iris decapitated a goblin with a casual backhand. Marcus's spear punched through an orc's chest. Gareth was a whirlwind of destruction, his massive sword cleaving through multiple enemies with each swing.
The heroes stayed in the protected center as ordered. Ren had his sword raised but hadn't had to use it yet. Yuki's eyes were darting everywhere, taking in data. Daichi looked frustrated at being kept from the fighting. Himari had her eyes squeezed shut, holding her reins with white-knuckled hands.
Kaito felt every death through his empathy.
The shock of a demon's life ending in an instant. The surprise, the pain, the sudden nothing. He felt it thirty times in thirty seconds, and it was overwhelming, nauseating, traumatizing.
*They're dying. They're all dying. Because of us. Because we came here.*
"HERO!" Someone was screaming. Iris. "WATCH OUT!"
Kaito looked up to see an orc had broken through the formation, charging directly at him. Eight feet tall, tusked, carrying a massive axe.
Time slowed.
Kaito should have moved. Should have raised his sword. Should have done something.
Instead, his empathy connected with the orc involuntarily, and he felt—
*Hunger. Exhaustion. Following orders. Must survive. Must bring food back to pups. Attack the soft human, quick kill, take supplies home—*
"NO!" Daichi appeared from nowhere, his enhanced strength allowing him to tackle the massive orc. They went down in a tangle of limbs.
The spell broke. Time resumed. Knights converged on the orc, finishing it quickly.
Daichi climbed to his feet, breathing hard. "PAY ATTENTION!"
"I—I'm sorry—"
"Sorry gets you killed! Focus!"
But Kaito couldn't stop thinking about what he'd felt. The orc had pups. Children. It wasn't attacking for fun—it was trying to feed its family.
*They're not monsters. They're people. Different people, but people.*
"PUSH FORWARD!" Gareth commanded.
They fought their way to the town hall. The building was impressive for a village—two stories, stone foundation, reinforced doors that were currently barricaded from inside. Demons surrounded it, trying to break in.
"CLEAR THEM!" Gareth roared.
The knights engaged, drawing the demons away from the building. It was working—they were creating an opening.
"Ren!" Gareth shouted. "This is your moment! Use your power!"
Ren looked confused. "On who? What do I—"
"The demons! Command them to stop! To flee! Whatever your instinct says!"
Ren's eyes widened with understanding. He raised his hand toward the mass of demons, his face contorting with concentration.
"STOP!"
The word echoed with unnatural force, carrying weight that made the air itself shudder.
And the demons stopped.
Not all of them. Maybe half. But those closest to Ren froze mid-motion, their faces going slack with confusion. Some dropped their weapons. Others just stood there, staring at nothing.
"It worked," Ren whispered in amazement. Then louder: "IT WORKED!"
"DON'T CELEBRATE, CAPITALIZE!" Gareth ordered. "Knights, secure the perimeter! Yuki, can you do something about that fire?"
Yuki was staring at the burning section of village with intense concentration. Her hands moved in complex gestures, and Kaito felt something shift in reality itself.
Code appeared in the air—visible lines of light forming symbols and patterns that made no sense but felt fundamentally true. Yuki was literally rewriting reality, Kaito realized. Telling the universe that the fire should stop burning.
The flames flickered and died as if someone had flipped a switch.
"Incredible," Yuki muttered, swaying slightly. "But the energy cost is—" She stumbled, and Marcus caught her.
"Easy! Don't push too hard!"
"The civilians!" Himari suddenly shouted. "The building—can you feel them? They're hurt! I can sense them!"
Gareth pounded on the town hall door. "OPEN UP! ROYAL KNIGHTS! WE'RE HERE TO EVACUATE YOU!"
Slowly, the barricade was pulled aside. The door opened.
The smell that wafted out made Kaito's stomach turn. Blood, infection, fear-sweat, and waste. Inside, packed into the ground floor, were hundreds of people. Women, children, elderly, men wounded from trying to defend their homes. They looked at the heroes and knights with desperate hope.
"We came," Ren said, his voice cracking slightly. "We came to help."
An old man—the village elder, Kaito guessed—pushed forward. "Thank the gods. We've been trapped here for six hours. The demons... they killed anyone who tried to run. Herded us like cattle."
"We need to evacuate immediately," Gareth said. "How many wounded?"
"At least fifty. Maybe more."
"Himari," Ren turned to her. "This is you. This is what you're here for."
Himari looked terrified, but she nodded and pushed into the building. Her voice rose—not speaking, but singing. A wordless melody that seemed to resonate in the chest, in the bones, in the soul.
Golden light spread from her like ripples in water. Where it touched the wounded, their injuries began to heal. Not instantly—this wasn't video game magic—but visibly. Bleeding slowed. Color returned to pale faces. People gasped in relief.
"Amazing," the elder breathed. "Truly, you are heroes."
Kaito felt Himari's power working through his empathy. It wasn't just healing bodies—it was easing emotional pain too. Terror becoming hope. Despair becoming determination. She was restoring more than flesh.
But he also felt the cost. Each person she healed drained something from her. She was burning her own life force to fuel the magic.
"Himari, stop!" Kaito called. "You're hurting yourself!"
"They need help," she said, her voice weak but determined. "I can do this. I have to."
"Pace yourself," Gareth ordered. "Heal the worst cases first. We need you functional for the evacuation."
Outside, the battle continued. Ren's command had bought them time, but demons unaffected by his power were regrouping. There were too many of them, and the knights were getting tired.
"We need to move NOW," Iris shouted through the door. "They're organizing a counterattack!"
"Civilians first!" Gareth commanded. "Able-bodied help the wounded! Knights form an escort! Heroes, stay with the civilians!"
The evacuation began—a chaotic mess of frightened people trying to move quickly while supporting injured neighbors. The knights created a protective corridor, fighting off demons trying to break through.
Kaito helped an elderly woman who could barely walk. His empathy was overwhelming him with input—hundreds of people's fear, pain, hope, gratitude, all washing over him in waves.
And then he felt it again. That wrongness.
The demons were falling back. Deliberately. Creating an opening for them to escape.
*They're letting us go. Why?*
"Gareth!" Kaito shouted. "Something's wrong! This is too easy!"
"Don't question good luck, boy! Keep moving!"
But Kaito's empathy was screaming at him. He focused, trying to sort through the overwhelming input, trying to understand what he was sensing.
There. At the edge of the battle. A demon unlike the others—taller, more human-looking, watching with intelligent eyes. And its emotions were wrong. Not battle-lust or hunger.
Calculation. Satisfaction. Like everything was going according to plan.
"TRAP!" Kaito screamed. "IT'S A TRAP!"
But his warning came too late.
From the forest surrounding the village, horns sounded. And from between the trees emerged an army—not raiders, but organized soldiers. Hundreds of them.
"AMBUSH!" Gareth roared. "DEFENSIVE FORMATION! PROTECT THE CIVILIANS!"
The knights immediately shifted, forming a shield wall between the civilians and the new threat. But there were only twenty of them against hundreds.
"We're outnumbered," Iris said flatly.
"Then we make them pay for every inch," Gareth responded.
The demon commander—the intelligent one Kaito had sensed—stepped forward. When it spoke, its voice was cultured, almost refined.
"Heroes of Elaria," it said. "How predictable. The moment civilians are threatened, you come running. The Demon King sends his regards."
"This whole thing was to draw us out," Ren realized. "The village, the attack—it was bait."
"Very good. Though I'm surprised they sent you so quickly. You've only just arrived, haven't you? Fresh meat for the grinder." The demon smiled, revealing pointed teeth. "I am Commander Vex. And I have orders to test the new heroes. See what you're capable of.And if you're not capable enough... well, there are always more summonings."
He knows, Kaito thought with horror. He knows about the summoning cycles. About previous heroes. He's fought them before.
"Kill the civilians," Vex ordered casually. "Leave the heroes alive if possible. The King wants to meet them."
The demon army surged forward.
"HOLD THE LINE!" Gareth commanded.
What followed was chaos. The knights fought with desperate skill, but they were overwhelmed. Demons broke through. Civilians screamed. Blood splattered on cobblestones.
Daichi finally unleashed his full power. His enhancement magic made him impossibly strong—he was throwing demons twice his size, punching through armor, moving with speed that defied physics. But even he couldn't be everywhere at once.
Ren tried using his command power again, but Vex countered it somehow, and the backlash sent Ren to his knees, blood pouring from his nose.
Yuki was attempting to code barriers into reality, but she was exhausted from putting out the fires earlier. Her constructs kept failing.
Himari was healing as fast as she could, but there were too many wounded, and she was barely staying conscious.
And Kaito... Kaito was drowning in emotions. Hundreds of people's terror and pain flooding his mind all at once. He couldn't think, couldn't move, could only stand there being crushed under the weight of everyone's suffering.
I'm useless. They're dying and I'm useless.
"KAITO!" Ren's voice, desperate. "Do something! Your power—use it!"
"I don't know how!"
"FIGURE IT OUT!"
Kaito looked around wildly. The battle was lost.
They were going to die here. All of them. The civilians, the knights, the heroes. And it was his fault for not warning them sooner, for not understanding what his empathy was telling him—
Wait.
His empathy.
He'd been trying to shield himself from it, trying to block out the overwhelming input. But what if he did the opposite? What if he embraced it? Used it?
If I can feel everyone's emotions... can I project them too?
There was only one way to find out.
Kaito dropped his sword and closed his eyes. He stopped fighting the empathic flood and instead dove into it. Felt every person on the battlefield—their fear, their determination, their love for those they were trying to protect.
And then he took all of it—every overwhelming emotion—and threw it outward.
A wave of pure feeling exploded from him like a bomb.
Every demon within fifty feet suddenly felt what the villagers felt. The terror of being hunted. The pain of watching loved ones die. The desperate need to protect children. The fundamental wrongness of what they were doing.
The demon army faltered.
Some stopped fighting entirely, confused by the sudden empathic assault. Others staggered, overwhelmed. A few actually dropped their weapons and fled.
Even Vex looked shaken, his composure cracking.
"What... what did you do?"
Kaito opened his eyes. He was exhausted, his nose bleeding like Ren's had, but the empathic attack had worked.
"I made you feel what they feel," he said quietly. "Is it worth it? This attack? Are your orders worth this suffering?"
For a moment—just a moment—Vex looked uncertain.
Then his expression hardened. "Impressive. The King will want you especially. But this changes nothing. REGROUP! ATTACK AGAIN!"
The demons who'd been affected shook it off, their training overriding the empathic echo. They advanced again.
But Kaito's attack had bought them precious seconds.
"EVERYONE, TO ME!" Gareth commanded. The knights and civilians formed a tight cluster. "Fighting retreat! Back toward the forest path! MOVE!"
They ran.
The demons pursued, but they were disorganized now, uncertain. Vex was shouting orders, trying to reform his forces, but the empathic attack had broken their momentum.
The group crashed through the forest, the demons in pursuit. Knights formed a rear guard, sacrificing themselves to buy time. Kaito felt each one fall—Marcus, young and kind. Iris, scarred and brave. Others whose names he'd never learned.
They're dying for us. Because we came here. Because we weren't ready.
They ran until their lungs burned, until their legs gave out, until the demon pursuit finally fell behind.
Finally, hours later, they collapsed in a clearing. Of the twenty knights who'd ridden out, only seven remained, including Gareth. Of the five hundred villagers, they'd saved approximately three hundred. Two hundred had died in the initial attack or during the evacuation.
Two hundred lives. Gone.
"We saved them," Ren said, trying to sound optimistic. "We saved three hundred people."
"We got two hundred killed," Daichi countered. "And seven knights."
"It was a trap," Yuki said quietly. "We were out-maneuvered. Tactically, we should have retreated the moment we saw the force size."
"And left the civilians?" Himari asked, tears streaming down her face.
No answer.
Gareth sat heavily against a tree, looking older than he had that morning. "You all fought well. Better than I expected for your first battle. But you need to understand something."
He looked at each hero in turn.
"This is war. People die in war. Even when you do everything right, even when you're strong and brave and clever. Sometimes the enemy is just stronger. And you have to live with that."
"How do you live with it?" Kaito asked.
"You remember the ones you saved. And you get better, so next time you can save more."
Silence fell over the group. The villagers huddled together, some crying, others staring at nothing. The surviving knights tended wounds. The heroes sat in their own circle, processing their first taste of combat.
"I felt them die," Kaito said suddenly. "Every demon we killed, I felt it. They weren't mindless monsters. They had families. Thoughts. Some were just following orders."
"So were the knights who died protecting us," Ren said. "So were the villagers. Everyone has a story, Kaito. But we still have to choose who to protect."
"I know. I just... I thought it would be simpler. Good versus evil. Heroes versus demons."
"Nothing's that simple," Gareth said. "Welcome to reality. It's messy, complicated, and full of impossible choices. Get used to it."
They rested for an hour, then continued the journey back to the capital. It took until dawn. By the time they reached the city gates, exhausted and bloody and traumatized, word of their "victory" had already spread.
Crowds cheered as they entered.
"THE HEROES RETURN!"
"THEY SAVED MILLBROOK!"
"WE'RE SAVED!"
The disconnect was jarring. These people saw a victory—three hundred saved. The heroes saw a defeat—two hundred lost, seven knights killed, and the realization that they were nowhere near strong enough for this war.
Seraphina met them at the palace, her face carefully composed.
"Heroes," she said. "I'm told you performed admirably. The kingdom thanks you for your service."
Her emotions, though. Kaito felt them. Guilt. Profound relief that they'd survived. And underneath, that same dread he'd felt before.
She knew. She knew it was a trap. She sent us anyway.
"High Priestess," Kaito said, his voice harder than he'd ever heard it. "We need to talk. All of us. About previous heroes. About what really happened to them."
Seraphina's mask cracked, just for a moment. Fear flashed across her face.
"Of course," she said softly. "Tomorrow, after you've rested. I'll tell you everything. I promise."
A promise from someone magically bound to service. Kaito wondered how much of "everything" she was actually capable of telling.
They were led to their rooms, cleaned up, given food and drink. The celebration continued outside, but the heroes didn't feel like celebrating.
In his room, alone finally, Kaito looked at his hands. They were shaking. Would probably keep shaking for days.
He'd killed people today. Used his power to disable demons, and knights had killed them while they were vulnerable. Their blood was on his hands as much as anyone's.
And he'd learned that this world wasn't a story. It was real, messy, complicated, and full of people on both sides just trying to survive.
What am I doing here? he wondered. I can't be a hero. Heroes are supposed to be strong, brave, certain. I'm none of those things.
But when he closed his eyes, he saw the faces of the villagers they'd saved. Three hundred people alive because they'd come.
Maybe that had to be enough.