Whole world in my understanding of it, works on fear, without it we can't thrive, if you look at every emotion we feel is tied to fear, compassion is due to fear of being left alone in the end, lust is due to fear of not being able to thrive, rage is due to fear of losing someone or something, affection due to fear of being lost in this world alone, every emotion digs into fear to evolve into something, but once i knew i was immortal i just let go of fear and just like that i was empty…

  While I was grieving something happened to me, this incident in particular made me empty, so empty that I was never able to fill myself again…

  The chit burned in Lucius's hands—not with fire, but with purpose. A name. Gazer. The direction had been given, and with direction came something far more dangerous than unfocused rage: directed fury, burning with the precision of a blade aimed at a heart.

  Outside the tavern, the kingdom consumed itself.

  The war with Glain's conglomerate raged on, bleeding the land dry, draining resources and hope in equal measure. And above it all, King Primus struggled to maintain control—not just of his soldiers, but of his own people. Public executions had become the language of governance. Dissent was answered with the axe. Fear was the tool he wielded when diplomacy failed.

  The execution of the Brotherhood had come fast not because the kingdom wanted them dead, but because Primus was drowning. He could not fight Glain's forces and his own people simultaneously. So he had chosen to make an example. He had chosen to spill blood in the capital square, hoping that terror would silence the uprising that threatened to consume him from within.

  It had not worked.

  Lucius sat in the corner of the tavern, his drink untouched before him, his mind mapping paths of vengeance. How to reach Gazer. How to move through a kingdom that was tearing itself apart. How to become a ghost in a land already haunted by too many spirits.

  Then the door burst open.

  A guard—young, desperate, his uniform bearing the marks of a man who had been running—pushed into the tavern and began posting a flyer on the wall. His hands shook as he hammered it into place with trembling fingers. When he left, silence followed in his wake.

  The flyer read:

  Reward for the capture of Lucius, Second of the Brotherhood

  A castle. Gold beyond measure. The gratitude of the Crown.

  It was bait designed to turn the desperate into hunters.

  The common folk who gathered around the flyer read it with hollow eyes. They knew Primus. They had seen what he did to those who served him—even those who brought him gifts. After the execution in the square, after watching three men die for the sin of being too capable, too threatening, they understood the mathematics of reward and punishment. Taking Lucius to the king would not bring elevation. It would bring suspicion, then torture, then death.

  But not everyone read the flyer the same way.

  In the shadowed corners of the kingdom, in the hovels and hideouts of those who scraped by on the margins of civilization, the reward took on a different meaning. Local raiders. Grave robbers. Men and women who had never known stability, who lived hand-to-mouth, fighting for every copper and scrap of food. For them, the flyer was not a trap—it was a lottery ticket, a chance at something beyond their current misery.

  They did not know Lucius. They only knew what the whispers said: that Sable was dead, that Chyros was dead, that the Brotherhood had been broken. They knew that a swordsman was a swordsman, and even one with trembling hands could be subdued if you came at him with enough bodies, enough blades, enough desperation.

  One man—a raid captain with a scar that split his face like a canyon—gathered his crew in a cellar beneath the city. He unrolled the flyer on a table stained with blood and spilled ale.

  "This is it," he said, his voice carrying the accent of the southern wastes, thick and brutal. "This is the chance we been waitin' for. Second of the Brotherhood, they say. But the First is dead. The Third is dead. Just one man left, and his hands shake like a leaf in winter."

  His crew looked at the reward written on the parchment. A castle. Enough gold to buy ten kingdoms.

  "We take him," the raid captain continued, "we march him to the king, and we walk out rich. We don't gotta be good. We just gotta be fast and we gotta be many."

  In the tavern, Lucius did not see the flyer. But he felt it.

  A shift in the air. A change in the vibration of the room. The tavern girls whispered to each other. A few of the patrons glanced toward the corner where he sat, then quickly looked away. Something had changed. Something had been set in motion.

  He lifted his cup and drank the wine in a single swallow.

  Outside, the rain began to fall. And in the cellars and hideouts of desperate men, plans were being hatched. Plans to capture a ghost. Plans to deliver vengeance into the hands of a man called Gazer.

  Plans that would either make them rich or dead—and in a kingdom like this, the line between the two was rapidly disappearing.

  Lucius moved through the alleyways like a ghost—swift, silent, drawing no attention. The kingdom was changing around him. Hunters were being awakened. Every shadow now held a potential threat.

  But as he navigated the winding streets, a thought seized him: he did not know when he would be able to return to this kingdom again. This might be his last opportunity to pay respect to his fallen brothers. To stand before their graves one final time before disappearing into the wilderness.

  He changed his course toward the shrine of Kaelmos.

  The shrine stood on a hillside, ancient and weathered by centuries of wind and rain, yet it seemed to defy time itself. The structure was built from stone so old it had become almost translucent, worn smooth by the passage of countless pilgrims. Pillars rose like skeletal fingers supporting a roof carved with intricate spirals and symbols—the language of death and passage written in permanent form. Prayer flags, faded and torn, hung from eaves that seemed to lean inward, as if the shrine itself was bowing under the weight of all the souls it had guided. Behind the main temple, smaller structures—meditation halls, storage rooms, chambers for the priests—clustered like children sheltering against their mother.

  Outside the shrine entrance stood a single flagpole, and from it hung a banner bearing the symbol of Kaelmos: two wings, outstretched and magnificent, yet attached to nothing. They hung suspended in emptiness, a visual paradox—guidance without anchor, passage without origin.

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  Lucius began making his way toward the graveyard.

  Then the announcement came.

  A herald's voice cut through the city like a blade, announcing from multiple points simultaneously. The war was over. Glain had been captured. The conglomerate had been broken. Victory. Celebration. Rejoicing.

  And then: "The bounty on Lucius, Second of the Brotherhood, is now doubled. If proof of his death is brought to the crown—his head, his sword, any unmistakable evidence—the bounty is tripled."

  Tripled.

  It was a manhunt now. A kingdom-wide fever. Everyone wanted a piece of the reward. Every desperate soul, every ambitious mercenary, every common thief with aspirations of wealth—they would all be hunting him now.

  Lucius retreated his steps from the graveyard.

  Salutation to the dead could come later. If he survived. To respect the fallen, he first had to remain alive. His presence at their graves would only bring danger to sacred ground, would only invite violence to a place meant for peace.

  He kept moving through the night.

  The city gave way to the outskirts. Buildings became more sparse. The civilization that had seemed so dense and suffocating began to thin and fade. By dawn's first light, he found himself before a rundown church—abandoned, crumbling, its wooden door hanging from a single rusted hinge.

  He thought of hiding here for the night. In the morning, he would make for the Serpent Spine Mountain Valley. There, in that maze of ravines and peaks, he could disappear entirely. Become a legend again. Become a ghost.

  He pushed open the door.

  The church was not empty.

  Two children huddled near what had once been an altar. A boy and girl, siblings, their faces gaunt with hunger, their eyes holding the terrible wisdom that came from surviving things no child should survive. Their parents had died in the war—burned alive along with their house during one of Glain's raids. Now they lived in this abandoned church, scraping by on scraps, on whatever compassion the gods might offer.

  When they saw Lucius enter, they froze.

  He said nothing. He simply reached into his pack and withdrew what little food he had—bread, some dried meat, a few berries gathered from the road. He placed it before them.

  "Eat," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Then he moved to a corner and lay down to rest, his katana positioned within arm's reach.

  Sleep came, but it was shallow, fragmented by the constant awareness of danger that never left him now.

  He opened his eyes with sharp pain in his chest.

  The children were standing over him. In their small hands they held a crude knife—dull, rusted, but sharp enough. Tears streamed down their faces. They were crying, trembling, their small bodies shaking with the weight of what they were doing.

  This was their only way of survival.

  If they brought proof of Lucius's death to the crown, they would have enough gold to eat for years. To rebuild. To live. It was not cruelty that motivated them but desperation—the same desperation that had already taken their parents, their home, their childhood.

  Lucius did not move them aside.

  He did not reach for his sword. He simply lay there, looking at their tear-stained faces, at the trembling hands holding the inadequate blade. And he smiled.

  A genuine smile. Not mocking. Not cruel. But accepting.

  In this moment, he understood something: his death could still serve a purpose. His body, his life—they could be the currency that saved these children. They could be the sacrifice that meant survival for the innocent.

  "It's okay," he whispered. "Do what you must."

  And as the dull blade came down toward his chest, Lucius closed his eyes and accepted his death as a gift. At least in dying, he could finally be of use to someone.

  Being dead is a feeling in its own, its like having all the weight removed from your shoulders that you carried your entire lifetime, the more you carried the more hunched you became, but after death your spine comes to its natural position as all the weight is lifted, it felt great for that moment you know, being able to move on, leaving everything behind, but she… she made me realise that I hadn't been pardoned so easily. She was someone i cant forget no matter what happens, she is someone i cant leave behind, and someone with whom i can maybe face eternity.

  Consciousness began to slip away like sand through open fingers.

  But in that fading moment, Lucius's hand reached out. His trembling fingers found the hilt of his katana, and with the last reserves of strength that remained, he pulled it toward the children. Blood filled his mouth, pooling on his tongue, running down his chin.

  "Give this as proof," he whispered, each word a battle against the darkness closing in. "And bury me with my brothers."

  The siblings took the sword with shaking hands. Their tears fell onto the blade, mixing with his blood. They did not look back as they fled the church, leaving Lucius alone in the shadows.

  His eyes closed.

  And there was only darkness.

  He opened his eyes in a place that was not a place.

  He sat on a bed—or what resembled a bed—in absolute blackness. His body was naked, vulnerable, stripped of everything that defined him. Around him stretched nothing. No walls. No sky. No ground beneath his feet, only the sensation of sitting suspended in void.

  He hunched forward, trying to make sense of the unreality surrounding him.

  Then he felt it—a cold touch on his left cheek.

  He turned, and cold arms wrapped around his neck. A head rested on his left shoulder, and when he looked, he saw a woman. Pale as starlight. Her hair was long and black, falling like a curtain down her back. She wore an expression of perfect calm—emotionless, serene, beautiful in a way that transcended earthly understanding. She looked like moonlight made flesh, like the embodiment of night itself.

  She did not speak.

  But her blue eyes—blue as the deepest ocean—held his gaze with an intensity that felt like peace and devastation intertwined. Lucius found he did not mind her presence. In fact, he welcomed it. At least now, he thought, those children could leave peacefully. His death would be their salvation.

  The woman spoke, her voice like wind through empty halls: "What about the vengeance that burned in you?"

  Lucius considered this. "What vengeance?"

  "You wanted revenge for the execution of your comrades," she said, her pale fingers tracing patterns on his shoulder.

  Lucius felt something stir—a memory, perhaps, or the shadow of one. He frowned. "What comrades?"

  The woman tilted her head slightly. "Your brothers. Sable. Chyros. Lanze."

  The names meant nothing to him now. He reached for the memories, but they slipped away like water through clasped hands. "I... I don't remember."

  "Primus," the woman continued. "Gazer. The execution square."

  With each name she spoke, Lucius tried to hold onto the meaning. But it was dissolving. Fading. Like waking from a dream where all details evaporate the moment consciousness returns. The more he conversed with her, the more he kept forgetting. The execution. The Brotherhood. The rage that had burned so bright. Sable's final words. All of it bleeding away into nothingness.

  The woman raised one of her hands.

  She ran it gently across his right cheek, as if admiring something precious, something pure and untouched. Her touch was cold but not unpleasant—like snow falling on fevered skin. Her blue eyes held his, and in them lived something that might have been compassion or might have been hunger. It was impossible to tell.

  "Rest now," she whispered. "You have carried enough."

  And then—

  It all came flooding back.

  Black engulfed everything. Images crashed into his consciousness like waves against stone. Sable's face at the execution. The flyer with the bounty. The children with the dull blade. Gazer's name written on worn parchment. Chyros. Lanze. The sunflower field. The rain. The white mask. The rage. All of it, every moment, every loss, every promise unfulfilled—it all came rushing back in a torrent that threatened to drown him.

  I think this was the first time I felt that maybe dying isn't so bad and that with her in my death it is an acceptable fate. It was like that when I am with her I fear no one, I become empty.

  Take everything from me, but leave just one,

  Because if even that is gone, then I am no one.