Somewhere, far across the world, a girl shivered in her bed, clutching her sketchbook. And in the darkness of another world, a man breathed awake.
Darkness stretched endlessly, thick and suffocating, broken only by distant echoes — the clash of swords, the cries of the fallen, and the hollow groan of metal against metal. It was a soundless war, yet everywhere at once. Somewhere in that void, a slow, deliberate breath trembled, pulling life from the shadows.
Macon stirred.
In the real world, his body lay weak and still, suspended between sleep and death. But here — in this shadowed, liminal plane — he rose. His eyes opened first to nothingness, then to the ruins of a battlefield that stretched farther than memory could hold. Smoke curled in invisible spirals, carrying the scent of blood, iron, and burning wood. The air was heavy, oppressive, yet alive with anticipation.
He was no longer the boy who had fallen under the blood moon. He was the General.
His armor was cracked and scarred, faintly glowing over the mark on his chest — the curse that had bound him. Each fracture shimmered with an inner fire, a reminder of what he had endured. Around him, soldiers stirred, blinking in disbelief as they witnessed the impossible: the return of their fallen leader.
"He lives…" whispered one, voice trembling. "The Merciless Dawn rises again!"
"It can't be," said another, shaking his head, eyes wide. "He fell under the blood moon!"
Macon did not speak at first. His lips pressed together, silent, as if testing the reality of his own resurrection. Then, deliberately, he let the words escape:
"I have returned."
The pause that followed was heavy with expectation, suffocating in its stillness. And then he added, almost in a whisper that carried farther than the soldiers dared hope:
"And the curse returns with me."
There was no confusion, no fear in his voice this time. Only awareness, calm and absolute. He accepted the name they spoke aloud — The Merciless Dawn. He did not flinch. He did not question. He simply existed in the power that had always defined him.
The soldiers knelt, uncertainty etched into their faces, waiting for commands. One of them dared to speak:
"My lord… what do you remember?"
Macon's eyes glazed for a moment, distant, as though peering beyond the veil that separated this place from the world he had left behind.
"Fire… a voice… a promise I could not keep," he murmured.
And then it came, sudden and searing — a memory sharper than any sword, vivid enough to cut through the void around him.
A battlefield. Flames licked across the broken earth, painting everything in shades of orange and red. Blood pooled in the hollows of shattered walls and charred banners. A girl reached toward him, her hand glowing as if caught in the firelight. Her face was blurred, yet those eyes — those eyes — tore through him, stopping his breath, stopping time.
He gripped his chest instinctively, over the scar that tethered the curse.
"Who… who was she…?" he whispered, his voice almost breaking in the void.
The soldiers glanced at one another, confusion and unease flickering across their faces. They assumed he spoke of some enemy long dead, some phantom of legend. They did not understand the grief that tightened his chest, nor the faint echo of loss that clung to his soul like smoke to skin.
He turned slowly, scanning the battlefield ruins. Ash swirled around shattered walls and broken banners, drifting in the crimson glow of the rising moon. The red light painted him in shadows and blood, emphasizing the sharpness of his armor and the inevitability of his presence.
A soldier stepped forward cautiously, bowing slightly.
"My lord… the villages whisper strange things. They speak your name again. They say the Dawn returns."
Macon's eyes lifted to the horizon, where the blood-red moon began to climb. Its glow was the same of Rina's vision, though he did not yet know why the memory stung so deeply. His lips moved, almost unconsciously:
"Then it begins again."
The mark on his chest flared suddenly, hot and demanding, and for a heartbeat, he heard it — soft, trembling, impossibly distant:
"Macon… please…"
He stiffened, hand trembling over the hilt of his sword. The soldiers did not hear it. No one else could. Only he. The whisper was fragile, a thread of memory bleeding through the veil between worlds.
"Who are you?" he asked the wind, voice low and haunted.
Deep inside, his soul already knew the answer. That voice had called his name once, long ago, before the world had fractured and bled into ruin.
Silence answered.
Then, slowly, the battlefield seemed to awaken. Shadows lengthened and bent toward him as if acknowledging his presence. Ash lifted from the ground and twisted in the crimson wind. The smell of blood became stronger, sharper, more insistent.
He walked forward, his boots crushing the remains of war beneath them. Each step resonated through the ruins, vibrating in time with the power that surged through his veins. His sword hummed softly, a low note of inevitability. It was the same blade Rina had sketched in her notebook — a shape from dreams crossing into reality.
The soldiers followed silently, hesitant, as if afraid to break the spell of their leader's awakening. Some trembled, whispering prayers to gods they barely remembered. Others stared in awe, eyes wide at the sight of the man they thought lost forever.
Macon's mind was a quiet storm, fragments of memory surfacing like shards of glass in a river. Faces, places, moments — all scattered, all incomplete. But among the fragments, one stood out with unbearable clarity: the girl, her hand outstretched, her eyes burning through him.
He could feel the pulse of the curse in his chest, the rhythm of power and pain intertwined. His breath came slow and steady, matching the cadence of a heartbeat that belonged to a General reborn.
The red moon rose higher, bathing him in its sanguine light. Shadows of soldiers and ruins stretched long and thin, bending around him as if the world itself recognized the weight of his return.
"The past isn't gone," he murmured, almost to himself, almost to the girl he could not yet name. "It's waiting."
Again, the faint whisper returned, carried on the wind — soft, urgent, fleeting:
You will remember…
Macon paused. The sound resonated in his chest, vibrating with the scar and the curse alike. It was more than memory; it was a summons, a tether pulling him back through the haze of time and battle. His eyes closed briefly as he inhaled deeply, feeling the connection strengthen, though he did not yet understand it fully.
"Who are you?" he whispered again, more insistently this time, hand gripping the sword so tightly that the metal bit into his palm.
No answer came. Only silence, heavy and unyielding, pressed against him like the weight of an entire world.
Yet within that silence, he felt it — a presence. A name. Not spoken aloud, but known, deep in the marrow of his being.
The General turned, surveying the battlefield one last time. Ruins stretched endlessly, smoke rising in curling plumes, ashes drifting in slow, mournful eddies. The soldiers waited, hesitant, caught between awe and fear.
Macon lifted his sword fully, the hum of its power resonating through the ruins. The ground beneath him trembled in response, and for a moment, it felt as though the world itself bowed to him. The red moon hung low in the sky, a sentinel of inevitability, its light painting every crack, every scar, every shadow.
He began to walk forward, silent, deliberate. Each step left a faint glow on the shattered earth, marking the path of the Merciless Dawn. His soldiers followed in quiet reverence, their eyes fixed on the figure who had returned from death to lead them once more.
The whisper came again, just barely audible over the rumble of the ground and the hiss of smoke:
Macon…
And for the first time since he fell under the blood moon, he allowed himself to remember, even if only a fragment.
The girl. Her eyes. The promise he could not keep. The weight of everything lost, and everything yet to come.
He clenched the sword tighter, feeling the pulse of the curse, the call of destiny, the pull of a name that had survived worlds and lifetimes.
And he knew, in the silence before the storm, that nothing would ever be the same again.
The Merciless Dawn had returned.
And the past was not done with him.