Night had fallen over the camp with a silence too deep to be natural. The campfires, reduced to orange embers, cast a faint glow that barely pushed the darkness back toward the edges of the forest. Beyond that boundary, the shadows seemed to breathe.
Lusian moved along the narrow path that circled the camp, one hand resting near the hilt of his sword. He wasn't patrolling—not really. It was only an attempt to ease the weight pressing against his chest since they had set out for the Empire. Since the moment he realized that Elizabeth… that she was walking straight into the trap of the gods.
The night wind carried a strange murmur with it, a subtle fracture in the stillness. Lusian stopped. He didn't need to look back.
The shadow folded in on itself, as if the world had suddenly drawn in a breath. Then, between the trees, Kheris took shape.
He did not walk.He did not float.
He simply existed, as though he had always been there.
"Alone again," murmured the fallen god, his voice echoing like a whisper within another whisper. "You're starting to make a dangerous habit of this, Lusian Douglas."
Lusian didn't flinch. He no longer did.
"I needed air," he replied, without fully turning around.
Kheris stepped forward, and the night seemed to bend around him.
"You keep drifting farther from the camp," he said quietly, without open fury… but with an unbearable edge beneath the calm. "As if distance could hide what you're thinking."
Lusian continued walking.He did not answer.
Kheris watched him take a few more steps before speaking again, this time with a calm that wasn't peace—but restraint.
"You will die if you keep heading toward the capital."
Lusian stopped then, not out of obedience—simply because there was no more forest ahead.
"Probably," he answered, in a dry whisper.
Kheris drew closer. The shadow that formed him seemed unstable, as if even the night itself resisted containing him.
"And you still walk in that direction?"
Lusian finally looked at him.
There was no challenge in his expression.No fear.
Only a bitter acceptance—the look of someone who had already lost too much.
"What did you expect?" he asked, his voice more tired than hostile. "I didn't ask to be here. I didn't ask to come to this world. I didn't ask to live through a war. Or to fight just to survive."
Silence followed.
The kind even a god did not know how to fill.
"You murdered me," Lusian continued, without raising his voice. "You tore me out of my world. And now you want me to hide so you can protect your 'advantage.' None of this was my choice."
"If the Heralds discover my soul… I die," he repeated, almost as a reminder to himself rather than a complaint.
"Yes," said Kheris. "The Heralds are not mere warriors. They are heroes taken from other worlds, bodies worn down by centuries of divine power. Their mana cores are fragile; a direct clash could shatter them and kill them. But if they discover what you are… they will not hesitate. They will die with you before allowing your anomaly to continue."
"If I return to the duchy, if I hide… I live."
"Yes."
Kheris's form tightened. The shadows around him recoiled with a faint, nearly imperceptible tremor.
"Lusian… if you go to the Empire, the Heralds will see you. They will not fight you.They will execute you.Immediately."
Lusian turned his gaze toward the darkness of the forest.
"I know."
"Then why?" Kheris whispered, and for the first time he sounded… tired. "Why walk toward a fate that does not belong to you?"
The young man tightened his grip on the hilt of his weapon—not as a threat, but as an anchor.
"Because Elizabeth was my choice."
A faint tremor passed through Kheris's voice. Not anger.
Pain.
"You are choosing her over your life."
"My life stopped being mine the day you tore me out of my world," Lusian murmured. "But her… her I chose. She is the only thing I've chosen of my own will since I arrived in this world."
Kheris stepped forward.
The shadow around his form quivered—not with fury, but with something far more unsettling: helplessness.
"She is not worth your life. Go back!" Kheris commanded.
"I'm not obeying when I don't even know what I'm obeying for," Lusian said. "I didn't come to this world by choice. I didn't choose to be part of your war. I didn't choose to be an anomaly the gods want erased.
"But I did choose to protect her."
The shadow shrank.
It grew smaller.
More… human, in an impossible way.
Kheris closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the darkness around him shifted, wrapping around Lusian like an invisible veil. It was not a wall of power, but a silent seal of concealment. If anyone looked from the capital, the Heralds would not perceive his essence.
"I cannot allow you to die," Kheris said, as though the truth itself tore at him.
Lusian inclined his head with a gesture that was almost compassionate—but not gentle.
"You can't stop me. I can't lose any more," he said without resentment. "I've already lost everything. Except this."
A breath.
A fracture.
A god breaking without ceasing to be one.
Kheris stepped back.
Not out of fear.
Out of defeat.
Almost in a whisper, he said:
"If you die… everything… disappears. My struggle, my fall, my rage…All of it."
Lusian turned slightly, preparing to return to the camp.
"Then learn to live with the possibility of losing," he said, his tone not cruel—only honest. "After all… that's how I've lived since the day I arrived in your world."
There was no explosion of shadows. No shouts. No threats.
Only a devastated silence.
Kheris vanished without a sound, as if the night itself had swallowed him.
Lusian returned to the camp without feeling victory.Without relief.
Only the bitter certainty that, for the first time since arriving in this world…
he was walking a path that was entirely his own choice.