As I feared… they weren't just explosive bombs.
I remained still—too still—smashed straight into the thick bark of a tree, the rough wood biting into my back as if welcoming me into its ancient embrace. My vision was fading—no, half of it was already gone. Just like that. My right eye… it was done for.
Even the cough stuck in my throat felt jagged, like thorns scraping against my windpipe. Another gush of blood spilt from my lips, warm at first, then cold as it met the freezing air.
That peculiar orb—no, that damned thing—wasn't just darkness and detonation. It had a follow-up... a continuation... a secondary assault, cruelly timed and methodically crafted. After the initial blast that tore my headgear away and dislocated my arms, came the real execution—cold iron spikes, dozens of them. They whistled through the smoke like whispers of death. Small, fast, precise—brilliantly tailored to finish what the explosion had started.
They could've torn through me entirely.
But they didn't.
Because I stopped them—most of them—barely, using my last functioning shred of telekinesis. My hands were shattered, my mind numb, but still, I halted some of the shards... diverted some… absorbed the rest. The cost? Unspeakable.
Now here I was.
Hung is impaled against this tree, suspended mid-air like a cursed ornament.
One spike. One brutal, solid spike—right through my right eye, burying itself into my skull and continuing through into the tree's core. It was holding me there, like I was a puppet hung on death's string. My feet dangled helplessly, at least five meters above the earth. Maybe more. I couldn't tell. I couldn't see properly anymore.
My core... was barely turning. The mana flow was weak, sluggish, like trying to move rivers through cracked stone. It was still trying to direct energy toward the area where my right eye used to be—uselessly. Every rotation came with a pulse of agony that felt like a sword twisting deeper into my brain.
I wanted to scream.
To cry.
To beg the air itself to take the pain away.
But I couldn't even muster that. Maybe even that wasn't written in my fate.
The blood loss... gods, it was massive. I could feel it—like my essence was being drained one heartbeat at a time. Even my remaining eye was beginning to blur, vision fading to grey. I couldn't even make out the details of the land that stretched around me. Not properly. Just shadows. Just silence. Just the suffocating feeling of being done.
There was no enthusiasm now. No heroic optimism. No clever internal sarcasm to cushion the blows. Just pain. Unimaginable, animalistic pain.
Where did I go wrong?
That question looped in my mind.
Sia… I remembered her voice. Her gentle, almost pleading tone. She'd told me not to leave—not now, not in this kind of weather, not at this time. And as always… I didn't listen.
I never do.
Maybe this was my punishment.
To die alone, surrounded by shadows that swallowed the stars. To suffer without honour, without recognition, far from the city I fought to protect. Maybe this was what I earned for letting the Wraith escape.
My eye flickered toward the cratered terrain. Scorched earth. Shattered ridges. Chasms opened like battle wounds carved into the world. And amidst them... the orbs. Still lingering. Still floating. Still searching.
Some hovered in place. Others drifted slowly, patiently, as if waiting for a hint of life. A hint of mana. Just one pulse, one vibration, one twitch too much...
The spike through my skull... it began to dissolve. The metal turned soft, like ash losing form. Maybe the Wraith's power was finally fading. Or maybe… it had moved on. Maybe it thought I was dead already.
I wasn't far off.
THUD.
The spike gave way, and I dropped.
No telekinesis to slow the fall. No mana shield to brace the impact. Just gravity. My legs slammed into the ground, sending a thunderclap of pain roaring through my already ruined body. My knees buckled. My back arched. My jaw clenched so hard I thought it might snap.
But that pain… that was nothing compared to what my skull endured.
It felt like half of my head had been blown off. The cold air stabbed into the open wound like invisible knives, aggravating every nerve left. It was unbearable—like ice being poured directly into my brain, like being flayed mentally.
I collapsed.
There was no elegance in the way I hit the ground. No warrior's fall. Just a broken mess—armour in tatters, limbs mangled, breath heaving, face soaked in blood.
And then I felt it.
A slow, quiet stream slipping down my cheek. Cold. Salty.
My tears.
One drop became two. Then more. My vision blurred, not just from pain, but from the raw emotions ripping through me. The helplessness. The humiliation. The unfairness of it all.
My mouth trembled. My nose dripped. Blood flowed. I didn't try to stop any of it. What was the point?
This pain, this godforsaken, inhuman pain—it made me want to scream. To yell until my lungs tore apart. Just to do something, anything, that might make it feel a bit less real.
So I did.
I opened my mouth.
And let it all out.
Screams tore from my throat. Raw. Unfiltered. Echoing across the scarred land. My yells weren't just of pain, but of betrayal. Of exhaustion. Of dreams left in ruins.
I screamed at the world.
At the Wraiths.
In the sky.
At whatever god sat up there, claiming to watch over us.
"What did I do to deserve this?!" I bellowed. "Was it a crime to want to protect? To want to live a normal life?!"
My voice cracked, reduced to sobs and gasps and hoarse curses.
"I had one dream. One. And this is my reward?! This is what I get for surviving?! For fighting?! For not letting that thing kill me?!"
I wanted someone—anyone—to answer.
But no voice came.
Only the howling wind.
And the shadows... Those damn shadows, watching silently.
***
I could vividly feel my brain shutting down—slowly, but with cruel certainty—as the light in my remaining eye flickered. Each blink grew heavier, until even that feeble light gave in, sealing itself shut. The world outside, the world I bled for, closed off to me. My perception of reality dimmed, and with it, the final reminder of my state: minutes away from death. Perhaps... Eternal Rest.
There's a common belief that at the brink of death, your life flashes before your eyes. Every memory, from the moment you're born to the final breath you take, plays like a reel, reminding you of what you lived for… or what you failed to achieve.
I waited.
I expected it to begin with that first night—the one that truly mattered. That cursed, moonless night inside the Beast Rim. When I first opened my eyes in the darkness, alone, surrounded by danger, with nothing but the unknown staring back. That moment, to me, was the anchor point of my so-called 'epic journey'. At least… that's how I wanted to think of it. Epic. Grand. Meaningful.
But if I were honest?
It barely qualifies as 'epic'. More like a prolonged struggle for survival. A lone man pretending to be part of a world that always reminded him of how little he belonged. Still… it was mine. My life. And now, as I drifted away from it, I found myself in a space much like that world—vast, silent, dark. A shapeless abyss.
I floated, or perhaps stood still. I couldn't tell.
There was darkness all around, yet I felt weightless, as if I were
a speck drifting through a pocket of space. A body without substance. And still, despite the abyss, my form glowed faintly, a soft white outline tracing my shape like some kind of spiritual silhouette. No pain followed me here. No wounds. No pressure. No burdens. No one is demanding I stand again.
This form… was me, but without everything else. Just the soul.
I remember thinking of gravity—how the moon, the world, the stars somehow orbit in tandem without breaking apart, always bound by invisible forces. I must be like that now. A soul cut loose from its orbit, drifting into the unknown.
There were things I wanted to remember. Faces. Voices. Promises. Things I never said. Regrets I buried.
But who gives a damn about a dead man's regrets?
The world won't mourn a failure. Not truly. It might cry, pretend for a while, then forget. The truth is… I died because I failed. Because I wasn't enough. Not fast enough. Not careful enough. Not strong enough. Just another name added to a growing list of losses this world doesn't have the time to process.
I didn't even cry about it anymore. They weren't emotions now. Just facts.
As I floated deeper into the abyss, my thoughts still clung to stories I once heard—tales of what comes after.
They say the soul has a few choices after death.
The first is Eternal Rest, where the souls of the innocent and the pure gather, finally freed of their burdens. No pain, no purpose—just peace.
The second is the Underworld, the dominion of Hades, the god of judgment. Those who betrayed others, corrupted the innocent, murdered for gain—they're cast there, to be tortured until the last thread of their spirit dissolves.
Then there's the Spiritual Realm, reserved only for mana beasts. Beasts don't go to Heaven or Hell. They rest in a realm of their own. Though… there's a tale, an old one, a fairy tale, really—that sometimes, beasts are given a choice. A second chance. To return, reborn… as humans.
Fairy tales.
But I wasn't in any of those places yet.
I was just here. In between.
Floating.
Weightless.
Breathless.
Timeless.
I was dead. I was sure of it. My eye—my blown-out eye—was back in this form. My body felt whole, but hollow. Tangible and intangible at once. And yet, the strangest thing of all was the light. This gentle glow radiating from my form—calm, pure, unthreatening.
Unlike that Wraith.
The thing that nearly killed me—that should have killed me—it was the exact opposite of this. It was darkness incarnate, a shadow cut loose, a thing made of grief and silence. I remembered how it moved, how it bled black mist, how it phased through walls like smoke clinging to death's robe. It felt ancient and alien.
But I also remembered… emotion.
It felt things.
Or maybe… pretended to?
Aurora once told me—her father came to her. Not alive. Not in the flesh. But as a Wraith. He stood at a distance. Didn't touch her. Didn't pass through her window like he could have. He spoke. He chose to speak. And more importantly… he stayed away.
A show of control. Of conscious restraint.
Of emotional intelligence.
Sia told me once, emotional intelligence isn't learned from books. Or battlefields. It comes only from genuine human interaction. Friends. Family. Grief. Loss. Love. All of it. Those are the things that shape that kind of depth.
And that's when it hit me—like thunder exploding in my soul.
The Wraiths.
They weren't monsters. Not completely.
They were… us.
Or at least, once were.
The vanished. The lost. The unaccounted.
The Nmanas.
Those who disappeared without a trace. Entire bloodlines, gone. No evidence. No farewell. No explanation. The world assumed them dead, consumed by corrupted beasts or experiments gone wrong.
But what if they weren't dead?
What if… they became the Wraiths?
Beings made of mana. Twisted by some fate. Bound to darkness. Banished from memory. But not from emotion. Not entirely.
"…Oi! How long are you planning on staying like that?"
A voice.
Crisp. Sharp. Annoyed, and old?
It pierced through the void like lightning through still water. My eye widened—yes, eye. My spiritual eye, or maybe something else. But I saw it again. My thoughts scattered, like birds startled into flight.
The abyss shook.
And the weightlessness cracked.
That voice…