Slums, miserable slums engulfed in fire. A fitting end, perhaps.
Theo stood in shock, his face pale with confusion and terror.
"What… is happening here?"
As the flames intensified, they licked at his skin, burning him harder with every passing moment. Feeling the searing pain on his arm, he clutched it tightly and began to run for safety.
Strangely, as he sprinted down the dirt road of the slums, past piles of corpses, the "residents" who had once lived here, there was no sound. No screams, no cries for help. Only the crackling of wood consumed by fire, and the roar of the flames themselves. It was almost a melody to the ears… though only if it had been in any other situation.
The stench of burning flesh was suffocating, nearly too much to bear.
"My legs…" Theo groaned, his voice strained as he leapt to the side to avoid a wave of intense heat. Never in his life had he imagined he could feel the scorching power of a fire from ten meters away.
"No one's alive?" he murmured to himself, though the answer was clear in the carnage surrounding him.
Yet his eyes caught something, a thin trail of blood snaking along the ground, leading up the main road. His breath shallow, he followed it.
The road was long, and with every second, it became more painful to run.
At last, he reached the intersection at the heart of the slums, the market. The trail of blood veered diagonally to the right, toward the split in the road.
He pressed on, following it until it reached a charred, collapsed gate to the storage area. There, the bloodstains ended, burned away entirely.
Gritting his teeth with resolve, Theo forced himself to run onward, unshaken by fear.
The path narrowed, barely half the width of the road he'd left behind. As he passed the wooden storages, once used to guard food, he noticed something strange. No guards were in sight.
But then, squinting through the smoke, he saw them.
"Oh… the guards are still here."
Their bodies, blackened and reduced to charcoal, lay motionless in the ruined storages.
Theo's eyes tightened. He couldn't bring himself to pity them, not now. The heat worsened with every step as the buildings around him collapsed in a cascade of fire. He trembled with anxious desperation, sprinting past each falling structure.
His legs screamed in protest, the strain threatening to buckle them beneath him. He knew he couldn't dodge another collapsing building if it came crashing down.
In sight stood a perfectly intact gate, marking the end of the storage area. Strangely, it remained untouched by the fires raging all around it.
Theo, taken aback as he arrived before the gate, then darted underneath as fast as he could. The instant he passed through, the gate collapsed behind him with a thunderous crash, startling him.
"???"
Looking back, Theo's brows furrowed. He couldn't understand why had the gate collapsed the moment he ran beneath it, "Was it a trap?" The thought sent a chill down his spine, but nothing good came to mind.
Shoving the thought aside, he pressed on, sprinting past the residential area, ruined buildings crumbling in flames, reduced to ash. Structures that once held a quiet glory, long since fallen to ruin, now stood stripped bare and swallowed by fire.
Glancing straight ahead, Theo's eyes caught sight of something, sparks flickering in the distance. Confused at first, how could sparks be so visible from so far away?, he picked up his pace.
A fight. A glorious fight.
Hope flared in Theo's chest like a candle in the darkness. In this hellish place, could there be a savior waiting ahead?
But the moment his eyes focused, he froze in place.
There, locked in combat, a knight clad in full shining armor. His sword rested against his chestplate, pointed skyward, the brilliant white steel dulled only by ash scattered across his armor. With swift, fluid strikes, the knight swung his blade against a hooded enemy, its body half-burned, cloak in tatters, as they exchanged slashes in rapid succession.
On the knight's cape, torn and singed by fire, flared behind him as he moved. Angelic wings covering the downward sword, whether a design or something real, seemed to encircle his form, while a skirt-like drape hung around his waist. He wielded his longsword effortlessly with one hand.
The weapon itself was strange, its hilt extended like a pole, ending in a sharp spike angled at 45 degrees toward the blade. An intricate emblem adorned both sides near the upper middle of the handle, which was tightly wrapped in cloth. At its end was a trapezoid-shaped pommel designed to lock the wielder's hands firmly in place.
An exchange of slashes, clearly, the knight dominated the fight, cutting away at his opponent's pride with every strike. The hooded enemy faltered, staggering under the relentless assault.
Theo took a step forward. At that moment, the knight jolted back, sensing someone's presence. His eyes darted toward Theo, locking on him.
"A kid?!" he exclaimed in surprise.
The amazement of the battle lit a new fire in Theo's chest. Now, he understood. Now, he knew what he wanted to do.
His eyes shimmered as he whispered to himself, "I know."