"Get your a** up, Crowe! Now's not the time to be lazing about on the battlefield," the towering man barked, his blade cleaving a monstrous beast in two with terrifying ease.
Struggling to his feet, Crowe brushed slick, pungent black blood from his battered body. The ground was slick and treacherous beneath him, soaked through with carnage. Keeping your footing was proving to be just as difficult as the fighting.
Standing tall above the chaos, he cut an imposing figure on the battlefield. His jet-black hair framed a young face marked well above his years by the rigors of combat, and his body—lean but powerfully muscular—revealed years of relentless training and experience. The light grey of his eyes held no spark of life or joy, only a cold, unwavering focus.
He surveyed the carnage around him with the intensity of a predator, every movement calculated, every glance searching for the next threat to eliminate.
A beast resembling a lion—though no larger than your average wolf—pounced toward him from behind the mountain of corpses it had been stalking him from. Its wicked claws dripped with a corrosive green acid that could eat through flesh and armor alike.
Crowe reacted in a blur: his midnight black bastard sword sliced through the air, severing the creature's chest and dissolving the acid before it had a chance to reach him.
Exhaustion clawed at Crowe's every muscle. He had been fighting for what felt like an eternity, his body so battered and strained that he barely stood apart from the corpses piled around him, except for the fact that he still moved.
His chest heaved as he struggled for breath; the training he thought to be hellish before paled in comparison to the struggle he was facing now.
For a fleeting moment, his thoughts drifted to his friends manning the rear guard, hoping they were safe. But there was no time to dwell—another beast, monstrous and four-armed with jagged mandibles and armored hide, lunged at him, pincers aimed to kill. Crowe barely dodged and, with a desperate slash, separated the deadly appendage from its host.
The man from before was now nowhere to be seen. Crowe was alone on the battlefield, continuing this battle with no one to cover for him if he made a mistake.
This harrowing cycle continued, hour after hour, until Crowe finally collapsed. Beneath the ruined moonlit courtyard—once his school's pride, now a battleground—he lay among the fallen, shielded by the bodies from the chaos beyond. For the briefest moment, he could breathe.
Footsteps crunched nearby. Crowe's grip tightened on his sword's hilt, though he was too weak to swing it. If he was going down, he'd at least draw blood from whatever monster dared approach.
To his shock, a human figure clambered over the carnage into view. The man's silver armor shone brilliantly in the moonlight, its luster undulled by blood and gore. He surveyed the battlefield, finally locking eyes with Crowe before sliding down the heap and planting his radiant blade into the dirt beside him.
"Time to move, kid. The vanguard's in retreat, and we need to fall back before we're overrun," the man said, his voice ragged but resolute.
"Altair, the Hero of Brilliance himself. Didn't think I was worth such a rescue," Crowe managed, voice weak but laced with dry humor.
Altair grinned—a dazzling smile amid the carnage. "When Mentz told me my foolish little brother was stuck out here alone, I couldn't let you become monster food. We can't be poisoning the local wildlife with your nasty flesh," Altair said with a chuckle.
"I'm not dead yet. And stop calling me kid—I turn eighteen in a couple weeks," Crowe replied dryly.
Altair reached out his hand to help Crowe up, to which he scoffed and struggled to his feet on his own with prideful indignation. Surprisingly, his older brother just smiled at his foolish pride and returned his hand to the hilt of his sword.
Crowe attempted to take a step, but his exhausted body betrayed him, causing him to stumble. Altair was quick to catch his brother by the arm, preventing him from collapsing again. Despite his efforts, Crowe was clearly beyond the limits of his strength.
"We need to get to the cathedral. Saint Sarah's making her last stand there—the place is heavily fortified," Altair rasped, each word punctuated by a hacking cough that betrayed his exhaustion.
Crowe, drained beyond words, simply nodded. Together, they trudged forward, every step a monumental effort, moving through the twisted remains of what was once the most illustrious swordsmanship academy in the kingdom. The silence between them was absolute, broken only by their ragged, desperate breaths as the battered silhouette of the cathedral loomed through the smoke and starlight. The makeshift barricades at its entrance bristled with frantic defenders and the flicker of torchlight, and scattered across the approach lay the broken bodies of man and monster alike.
As they drew closer, Altair, trying to lighten the oppressive air, chuckled softly. "This takes me back—you remember when you were twelve and decided to swing at that drunkard knight from the village?"
Crowe mustered a scowl, the memory stinging even now. "Glad you found that funny. That bastard nearly caved my skull in for it."
Altair's eyes danced with mischief as he laughed. "That he did. I'll never forget the look on his face. They found him the next day, didn't they? Beaten bloody in some alley—something about owing the wrong people money? Seems like karma's got a sense of humor."
But Crowe remembered the truth behind the rumor: everyone knew it had been Altair who'd dished out that vengeance, but the villagers had simply chosen to let it rest, believing the Hero of Brilliance had delivered justice where the law would not. Altair, ever oblivious, wore the tale like a fond old joke.
"And you scolded me the whole way home," Crowe added with a faint smirk. "Made me wish the bastard had finished the job."
Altair's laughter rang out—a warm, golden sound strangely out of place amid the carnage and ruin around them.
As the cathedral drew near, a sentinel's sharp voice called out, and a woman emerged from the shadows. She was striking—towering above the others in battered breastplate and nothing on her arms but swirling blue dragon tattoos. Her Amazonian frame radiated power; she was at least six and a half feet tall, her piercing blue eyes sparking like lightning as she moved with authoritative grace among the chaos.
"If I had to handle every wayward soul that stumbled in here, I'd be out basking in the sun with my—" she paused, eyes widening as she finally saw the two brothers staggering toward her. Relief swept across her face, softening her features. "Thank the heavens you're back, Altair. I told you to wait—we would have sent a rescue team for your brother. But you and that stubborn, overprotective streak…"
Her eyes narrowed to icy slits as she commanded the field medics with a voice that brooked no delay, urgency rippling through the ranks like a spell cast across the battlefield. The medics descended upon the two battered warriors—Crowe and Altair—whose return had been nothing short of miraculous. Both men collapsed with the gracelessness of felled trees, hitting the scorched earth hard, the sheer force of their exhaustion evident in every ragged, gasping breath. Oxygen, in that moment, felt like the last magic keeping their souls tethered to the realm of the living.
Crowe's limbs trembled, powerless to move, his body sinking deeper into the ground as if the world itself sought to claim him. He craned his neck, vision swimming, to glimpse his brother beside him—Altair looked equally ruined, his legendary fortitude spent like the final coin in a gambler's purse. Crowe's eyelids fluttered, heavy as iron gates, longing for the oblivion of sleep to swallow him whole, to grant him some scrap of peace amid the chaos.
Yet something gnawed at the edges of his fading consciousness—a restless sense that unfinished business still shackled him to waking pain. Often, such premonitions heralded the charge of some demonic beast or the collapse of flames and ruin, disasters that marked his life with scars and stories. But now, silence reigned. No monster stalked the shadows. No calamity thundered from the heavens.
Instead, a glint—a brief, vivid flash of crimson—caught Crowe's weary gaze. Another droplet followed, and then another, each bead of blood landing in the dust mere inches from his hand, stark and bright against the soot-stained ground. Crowe's heart lurched as he traced the path of the blood to its source: beneath Altair's battered breastplate, a crimson river was streaming, soaking his tunic, pooling beneath him in silent testimony to some grievous wound. It was an injury Altair had borne in silence, hidden from his brother's attention, surviving their flight not through luck, but through sheer, stubborn will. Crowe cursed himself for not noticing sooner, his own pain having blinded him to the suffering of the man who had always shielded him.
The medics swarmed over Altair with frantic, desperate hands—like crows drawn to a fallen hero's last light. Crowe's body screamed with helplessness; he yearned to crawl, to reach his brother's side and find that irrepressible smile that had always defied every disaster they'd faced. But all Crowe could do was watch, his soul bound by fatigue and shock, as Altair's eyes—those familiar, gleaming grey eyes he shared—dimmed, the spark within them fading to ash. In that devastating instant, Crowe's mind became a blank wasteland, unable to comprehend the loss unraveling before him. The world's shining hero, the embodiment of courage, kindness, and reckless hope—was gone. The legend who should have been the world's protagonist had fallen, the tale ending not with a triumphant flourish, but with silence.
Loss settled over Crowe like a shroud. Before darkness claimed him, he uttered a silent, desperate prayer: "If there's a power twisting this world for its own amusement, I swear I'll hunt you down and make you pay."
Aras set down his pen, leaning back in his chair, utterly spent after finishing this final chapter.
"I'm sorry, Crowe… but heroes rarely survive in the cruel worlds we create. I know that better than anyone," Aras whispered.