When I opened my eyes, I was already somewhere else.
An immense desert stretched as far as the eye could see, like an open wound refusing to heal. The horizon burned; the sun fell upon the sand with the cruel patience of one who decides what lives and what dies. There was nothing else—no shadow offering respite, no echo answering my voice. Only the unbearable heat and a sandy ground that seemed to breathe fire beneath my feet.
I started walking. There was no goal, only movement—the primitive response of one who refuses to collapse. My throat dried with divine speed; my tongue stuck to my palate as if some invisible god had sealed my mouth. My clothes clung to my body with sweat, like a second skin woven from exhaustion. With every breath, the air didn't cool—it burned, it bit, it scorched my lungs with tiny embers that lodged between my ribs.
I walked for minutes that felt like hours. The sun was a merciless judge; the desert, a tribunal sentencing with every passing second. And then I saw him—a figure in the distance, like a shadow carved from stone. It was him. The same one who had fought Aiko, Iko, and me. I recognized him even before I saw him clearly; his aura was a signature: calm, the calm of someone who smiles at the storm because the storm belongs to him.
He wore a white bandage over his eyes. I didn't know if it was to hide something or to remind everyone else that he didn't need sight to see. Maybe it was just theater for fools: blindfolded eyes, yet always awake. I don't know. But he knew I was there. I knew it from the way he tilted his head; the faint surprise in his smile—like someone finding an old key where others see only sand.
"Hey, finally found you," he said casually. "Been looking for a while. Thought you might've died from the heat… though, well, you're not the only one out here. Maybe there's another wandering around, but I got to you first."
He paused, then smiled as if telling a joke only he could understand. The laugh that followed was short, cut off by itself. It wasn't empty mockery; it was dangerous—tempered by patience.
"So… what do you want to do in the meantime?"
His calm was a provocation. I hadn't come to philosophize. Everything hurt—the blood I'd spat earlier, the taste of metal, the exhaustion that clung to my bones like mud. But there was an unwritten law within me: before rage, steel must answer. So I didn't think.
"I… uh… well… fight!" I suddenly shouted, and drew my sword.
It was instinct—steel and reflex. He didn't hesitate either. He drew his sword too, his fingers calm, holding it like someone ready to write an epitaph.
The katanas clashed with a dry, metallic sound that sliced the air. We stepped back—one, two steps—frozen. For an instant, neither of us knew who had been struck. A second stolen from eternity.
Then I felt it—a line of heat running through my shoulder: a clean, precise cut that split fabric and flesh with the elegance of a cruel poem. Blood traced its path down to my chest, and life seemed to measure itself in millimeters. He had also been wounded: a crack that crossed his face, tearing off the bandage. His left eye… was gone. Only an empty socket remained, breathing shadow. The rest of the eyeball was simply gone. And still, he laughed.
That calm, almost amused laugh ignited me inside. Was he a psychopath? Maybe. Or just someone who had learned not to waste emotion on the childish dramas of the living?
"Hey, not bad… I would've liked fighting you instead of that fool who died so easily," he said mockingly.
I didn't wait. Rage took me like a wave crashing against rock. The image of the fallen one clung to my teeth like a bad memory. Justice doesn't ask for permission—it demands an eye for an eye, and I was ready to offer mine.
"I'll show no mercy! Fight with everything you've got, you damned bastard!" I shouted, because sometimes words cut deeper than steel.
"So be it," he said calmly.
And then he unleashed it:
Special Ability: Hundred Blades!
The phrase floated in the air like a sentence. A hundred magic circles appeared suspended in the blue vault above us, small moons spinning in an orbit of death. From each one, a sword emerged—razor-sharp and merciless—hurtling toward me at deadly speed. The sky itself seemed to rip open and bleed threads of steel.
I had no choice. I activated what remained of my magic—what remained of my pride.
Special Ability: Lightning Speed!
Four magic circles spun around my body like a halo of light. They gave me speed—not human speed, but that of lightning that knows its path. For two minutes, I became thought made flesh and steel, and it would take ninety seconds before the exhaustion struck back.
The swords rained from the sky like venomous drops. But I was faster. I moved like lightning among the blades: dodging, sliding, twisting, becoming a pure line of motion. Every movement drained my magic—like the last cigarettes in a pocket. My body grew heavy; my mind flashed between light and shadow. The speed demanded a price, and I paid it in strength.
I advanced a few steps. Each step was a small victory stolen from fate. I felt like the owner of my own will; every furious muscle worked like a rusted machine that groaned but didn't stop. When I was close enough, I slashed at his neck—because the neck is a promise of silence. I did it with everything: speed, intent, fury.
But he wasn't an ordinary human. With inhuman reflexes, he caught one of the flying swords, grasping it like one would a branch, and countered. Both swords clashed with a thunderous crack that made the sand vibrate. We stepped back, and distance opened again between us like an ocean.
Then I looked up… and understood, with cold terror running through my spine: a hundred circles floated above me—perfect, aligned—like the eyes of a god observing.
"No…" I whispered, but the word was lost in the wind.
He made a simple motion with his fingers. That was all—a tiny smirk, a brief command.
And then came pain. Pure pain, without metaphor or adornment. A rain of invisible blades pierced me with surgical precision. Swords I couldn't see stabbed through my flesh one after another, from ankle to neck, as if sewing me to a destiny I had never chosen.
My body gave in. My legs folded like dead branches. My strength left me with the politeness of a guest who won't return. Blood burst everywhere, painting the sand with maps of my fall. My vision blurred; shapes turned to swirling stains; my breathing fragmented into noise.
I couldn't stand anymore. I fell to my knees, then to the ground, with a dull sound that seemed beyond time. I no longer understood anything—the world turned into a stained canvas, and I saw only his silhouette approaching, as if the world itself cleared a path for him.
With a slowness that hurt, he pulled out one of the swords impaling me. The pain that followed was indescribable; my flesh spoke in a language I didn't know. A scream erupted from me, raw, primal, human:
"Aaaahhh!" —and I felt that voice become the last coin of my pride.
He didn't stop. His face held the serenity of someone admiring a landscape after burning it down. His smile savored another's pain like aged wine—with patience, with appreciation.
He finished pulling the sword out, then drove it straight into my chest, piercing my heart. I felt the tip break something—a heartbeat, a vow, a possibility—and knew the world was leaving me. It was so cold, so precise, that there was no room for surprise, only painful acceptance.
My body froze. Seconds turned into suspended glass. I couldn't speak anymore. Only blood came from my mouth; I drowned in it, swallowing my own breath. The final images were simple, brief, asking for no mercy: the sand, his figure, the blindfolded void.
The last words I heard from him came like a distant echo, as if the scene had become theater and I a forgotten spectator:
"He's here now…
He's watching.
He's furious."
His words carried the weight of prophecy. They came slow, heavy, marking the final rhythm of a song that refused to end. Furious for what? For death? For the spectacle? For betrayal? For blood? For the name unspoken? I didn't know. It didn't matter. The certainty was this: someone was watching, and his fury was a fire waiting to consume everything.
To see your brother die with your own eyes—whispered a fleeting thought—who wouldn't burn for that? A question that doesn't need an answer to hurt.
"He'll be my last prey here," said the voice that had left the blade in my chest.
And then everything turned cold. Not the cold of night, but the silence that falls when the hall closes and the lights go out. I felt warmth slip from my fingers; life became a distant memory I could no longer hold. I tried to think of something worth keeping—a face, a promise, a flame that pride refused to let die.
I fell face down on the sand, and the sand received me with the indifference of the world. My heartbeat faded to a whisper, then vapor. I couldn't go on. My hands let go of the sword's hilt. The heat of the wound filled me, then dispersed. Everything faded, as if someone were wiping a painting clean with a cloth.
_______
[And so Akira fell, the eleventh hero. With courage, with rage, but also with pride. His body lay upon the sand, a red stain that the sun, indifferent, continued to illuminate.]
[His death—cruel and brutal—would become a seed. A fire was lit within the one who watched. A fire that, very soon… would be unleashed.]