I needed to pause reading for a moment when he began to describe the destruction that occurred in Astar.
They were the words Eleton had never been able to write until he felt the final moments of his life approaching.
And it felt like his diary had swalled me, directly into his dreadful memories...
On the day it all happened, Eleton was returning from a trip to a not-so-distant village, where he had done business buying, trading, and selling.
He had a great curiosity to see other parts of the world, which was why he liked to travel as the city's official merchant to come into contact with other beings, cultures, and peoples.
As he approached Astar, he heard the screams.
By instinct, he abandoned his cargo and hid among the trees surrounding the city. That was when he smelled the burning and saw the smoke rising to the sky.
The closer he got, the stronger the smell became and the worse the screams were.
It didn't take long for the horror to enter his field of vision.
Thousands of knights from the Tiélvian Union were attacking the city, running people, animals, and children through with their blades.
Their horses' hooves trampling arms, legs, chests, backs, and heads.
They were led by the great hero of that era himself, Elliot, the one blessed by the grand gods Theus and Ágedes.
Many Astarians resisted, whether mages or martial artists, but they had been caught off guard in the middle of the night, not to mention that their numbers were vastly inferior.
Most of the houses were catching fire and several bonfires had been lit inside the city. The smoke was suffocating.
"Burn the heretics! Perhaps Ágedes's fire will purify these filthy creatures!" The hero shouted from atop his horse, sword raised and flames reflected in his silver armor. Eleton described him as the personification of disaster.
People were then dragged to the bonfires.
The soldiers waited for them to beg for their lives and offered them a chance to survive if they converted to their gods.
It made no difference, however, whether the people accepted or refused the proposal; they were all thrown into the fire and watched burn to death by executioners who laughed at their pain.
Eleton was paralyzed for a moment, but then began trying to devise a strategy.
He was, however, neither a fighter nor a talented mage. He applied himself to seeking knowledge about other regions, commerce, and production, so he wasn't capable of actually fighting.
Therefore, he remained hidden in the forest as he made his way to his house, which was the closest building to the Temple of the Knowledge, located in the center of the city.
As he was approaching his house, at the border between the forest trees and the city, he saw, in the distance, a familiar face for a brief moment, before the girl was thrown into the bonfire.
"Alana!" Eleton shouted, running out from among the trees upon witnessing his seven-year-old niece, his older sister's daughter, agonizing as she was consumed by the flames.
A pair of arms stopped his advance towards the soldiers, and as he struggled and turned around, he realized it was his friend Igun, who was a magic apprentice with his father.
"It's already too late! There's no way to save them anymore!" Igun said.
Upon hearing these words, Eleton's gaze turned to the bonfire, where another body had already been completely burned by the flames.
"Leti!" He said with a hoarse voice. "That's not Leti, is it?"
Igun's silence was answer enough.
"Your father said to take all those who can't protect themselves to the Temple." Igun was pulling him.
The soldiers who had murdered Eleton's sister and niece had already noticed his and Igun's presence and were now advancing towards them with swords raised. Their armor was spattered with red blood, already dry in some parts from the proximity they had been to the fire.
Igun cast a stunning spell to delay them. With that, Eleton and his friend managed to evade their pursuers and hide behind a house that was not yet on fire.
While they were hiding, a group of soldiers passed in front of the house. A part of their conversation could be overheard.
"So, which ones are we supposed to take again?" One of them asked.
"The ones that talk and walk and look like they can manage on their own, the ones that look like they're over three or four years old. The ones over ten or eleven are no good anymore." Another replied. "And well, if there's any rebel who refuses to convert, you know what to do. If they show any resistance, throw them in the bonfire."
Eleton clenched his fists.
It was obvious what the knights were talking about. His mind was taken over by the image of Alana, of her firm gaze before being thrown into a bonfire. Clearly, she had been a little rebel, and among the options, perhaps that fate had been the least painful.
"We need to rescue the children!" Eleton said to Igun.
Igun was silent for a while before answering.
"I'll take you to the hidden entrance at the back of the Temple. When you're safe there, I'll save the children and bring them to you."
"But..." Eleton began to argue, but was quickly interrupted.
"I don't mean to offend you, Eleton. But you don't stand a chance against the soldiers. You're not a fighter and you're not a mage. You don't even know defense or healing magic. But you know how to make potions. You're more useful being safe inside the Temple."
Against Igun's logic, Eleton was powerless. He truly wouldn't be useful on the battlefield or in a rescue mission, and would only end up delaying his friend and perhaps causing both their deaths.
So, he allowed himself to be led to the Temple.
When they were already at the secret entrance, Igun said goodbye to him.
"I'll go after the children and Ramona too. As soon as I rescue them, I'll bring them here and you take good care of them."
Eleton nodded.
"Eleton..." Igun stopped the sentence before finishing it.
"What is it?" Eleton asked.
Igun smiled.
"I'll tell you when I get back."
"Come back!" Eleton said. "Come back with them, don't make any noble sacrifice. If you die they'll die too, and your death will have no value."
"Alright. As long as there is someone for me to protect, even if it's just one little Astarian child, I'll stay alive to bring them to you."
After saying that, Igun slipped away through the shadows and disappeared from view.
Eleton then entered the Temple and went in search of healing potions for the refugees who would arrive with his friend.
Eleton didn't know how much time had passed, but he had a sense that it had been far too long.
He had managed to separate all the healing potions in the Temple and had even gathered the ingredients to make more. He had set up makeshift beds with what he found inside and had also prepared snacks and water.
But Igun did not return.
"I will never forget the last time he smiled and the secret he never told me, nor the children he never managed to rescue. Igun never returned. Not a single Astarian child was rescued by him, or by anyone else."
After what seemed like hours, explosions were heard right next to the Temple. Eleton grabbed an extendable ladder and climbed up to peek through the window.
He could see a handful of mages gathering around the Temple, in a perfect circle. Among them, Eleton recognized his father, his mother, and Ramona, Igun's twin sister.
Eleton was not a mage nor a magic researcher, but even so, it didn't take him long to realize what was unfolding. He managed to recognize that what they were casting was a forbidden magic, whose price was the lives of those who cast it.
He wanted to scream for them to stop, but what was the purpose?
He wouldn't be heard, and even if he were, those people were already determined to give up their lives to protect something greater, and nothing would change that.
After a few seconds, the sound of a great explosion was heard, and then, more than a dozen bodies fell lifeless to the ground. The spell was complete.
It didn't take long for Eleton to discover what they had traded their lives for.
"I could feel their will burning through the walls, in every part of the Temple's foundation. They had given their lives to protect this place, to protect its knowledge, and I understood their true desire. It is the same one I have today."
The magic had made the Temple of the Knowledge indestructible, while at the same time the illusion spell Igun had been working on with Eleton's father was enhanced.
Previously, it was just a perception enchantment to prevent sound and light from leaking from inside the Temple to the outside, but now it was much more complex than that, an illusion extremely difficult to see through, showing ruins in its place, the fruits of a fictitious explosion.
In the following days, Eleton did not leave the Temple. He feared that soldiers might still be around, even though he had peeked through the windows and seen the army leave the morning after the attack.
If he left the Temple and someone saw him, the illusion could be discovered. This was his only fear, for death was no longer a fear of his.
During this time, he began to study magic, spells, and area protection enchantments. He made progress little by little.
Four days after the attack, Eleton began to bury the bodies and remains of his compatriots, his family, and his friends.
Igun was in the middle of a street, in the northern part of the city, where the army had invaded and departed from. His face down on the ground, his ribcage crushed, one arm fallen beside him, roughly separated from his body.
He still bore a sword cut that went through his abdomen and ended in his back. His blood had already dried beneath him and some insects were flying around him.
It was evident that after being murdered, the soldiers had their horses trample over his body.
With all tenderness, Eleton carried his friend in his arms to the other side of the city, where the bodies were to find their eternal rest beneath the earth.
Although it was more practical, Eleton refused to cremate the bodies. That would be giving the damned who killed them what they wanted.
Cursed be Ágedes's fire, cursed be Theus's blades, cursed be the gods of Télvia!
The vast majority of his compatriots had no body to bury because they had been burned in Ágedes's fire, and this was also the case for his niece and his sister. Eleton hoped, however, that the wind had blown their ashes to a place with a beautiful view, far from the destruction of Astar.
Over the years, he improved the protective spells around the Astar area. He also cleaned the area, removing the debris that remained even after the city had been swallowed by flames. Little by little, the forest took over the space.
Eleton never left the area again. He protected the space from beastials and any other possible threat. He mastered magic and specialized mainly in mental spells and magical barriers. He dedicated forty years of his life to protecting the legacy of Astar.
"My dream of seeing the world transformed into that of protecting the memory of my world, of everything that was a reminder of what was important to me and to my people.
Finally, I leave a request and a hope. If you are reading this, it means you are a worthy, just person, who shares the ideals and values of us Astarians. The request I make of you is also charged with the will of those who lost their lives before me: please, guide the rebirth of Astar. Allow these lands to be occupied by joyful and kind people, so that knowledge may be nourished and may nourish.
And I also leave here a warning, that if you have the opportunity to speak with the dragon as I and my father did, he will repeat: do not trust the gods, they are the path of destruction, they are the enemies of all species, of all Mundus."
When I realized it, tears were streaming down my face and soaking my lap. Anger was also clenching my teeth.
Eleton's writing was sensitive enough and laden with so much emotion, so much sorrow, so much pain, and so much hope, that it was as if I had lived alongside him everything he narrated in his diary.
I already knew that I would not sleep well that night, nor in the next ones, because of another event I would not dare share with my parents.