Lucy stared up at the darkened sky. It was suffocating now, choked by thick clouds of smoke that painted everything in shades of ash and despair. The acrid scent burned his nostrils with each labored breath.
He let out a long, broken sigh and turned toward Ayas, who writhed helplessly on the blood-soaked obsidian floor. The dark stone gleamed wetly beneath the crimson pools spreading outward.
Around him, the war roared on. Clashing metal rang out like discordant bells. Shattered screams pierced the air. Explosions tore through the earth, sending tremors up through his boots.
But Lucy heard none of it.
Only the screaming man—the one he had set on fire. The cries for help. The desperate, choking pleas for mercy that grew more gargled with each passing second.
He blocked it all out. He had to. The pleas fell on deaf ears as the flames cast dancing shadows across his face. His heart was a locked door, and no amount of screaming would break it open.
Lucy wasn't going to save him. Ayas' god wasn't coming to save him. Everyone else was trying to save themselves.
But as Ayas' cries grew weaker... quieter... a sickness twisted in Lucy's gut. A frantic urge to run forward, to smother the flames, to drag the man to safety.
'Save him. Take him prisoner. You don't have to do this. You can still walk away clean.'
The thoughts hammered against his conscience. It would have been easy to listen. It would have been so easy to be the hero.
But he knew better.
Ayas had to die. Not because Lucy hated him. Not because he deserved it, but because of who he fought for.
Ithriel—a god of monstrous power. A conqueror who would only grow stronger if Lucy showed mercy now. Stronger until entire worlds burned, until billions screamed in the dark.
Seraphine wasn't much better. Her hands were already drenched in blood. But at least she spoke of rebirth—of undoing the damage once it was done.
Lucy clung to that thin, fragile hope. Because without it, he had nothing left.
So he didn't save the elf. He didn't put out the fire that crackled and consumed flesh with hungry orange tongues. Instead, he stepped forward, one shaky step at a time, the heat intensifying against his face. He picked up Ayas' sword from the ground, its weight unfamiliar in his trembling hand, and pressed the cold blade against the burning man's throat.
"Forgive me," he whispered, voice raw like sandpaper.
Then he dragged the blade across.
Ayas' blood poured out in a dark river, hissing as it met flames, mingling with the endless crimson around them. The metallic smell hit Lucy's senses like a hammer blow.
For a moment, Lucy just stood there, staring. Breathing. Shaking.
The world around him blurred, spinning faster and faster until he could barely keep his balance. The sounds of battle seemed distant, underwater.
'I'm a killer now, he thought numbly. I crossed the line. I didn't even know anything about him.'
'What if he had a family? What if he had a daughter? Someone waiting for him... praying for him to come home?'
The thought hit him like a hammer to the chest. It cracked something inside him wide open.
The bile surged up his throat—hot, bitter, unstoppable.
He turned his head and vomited all over Ayas' scorched body. The acrid stench of sickness mingled with burned flesh.
The taste of acid burned his mouth, but the guilt burned deeper, hollowing him from within.
"I'm sorry!" he cried out, his voice shattering under the weight of it all. "I'm so sorry!"
He collapsed to his knees, fists slamming into the ground again and again until his knuckles bled. The obsidian floor was cold and unyielding against his skin. The blood from his hands mixed with the others on the floor—indistinguishable—just another drop in the endless flood.
He hadn't expected a response. Ayas was dead, and he knew it. But still... some small, desperate part of him had hoped that apologizing would make him feel better. Make him feel human again.
It didn't.
It didn't matter that the war raged on around him, endless and uncaring. The world wasn't going to stop for the dead. It never did.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught movement—a shimmer of ethereal light cutting through the smoke and chaos.
Seraphine.
Her giant, ethereal image loomed over the battlefield, translucent and glowing with inner power. Her expression was sharp and commanding as she barked orders to Darfin, who stayed in the rear, leading the elves from a distance.
Lucy stared at her, as if staring hard enough could erase the chaos around him. As if, somehow, locking eyes with a god would make the horror disappear.
Instead, she noticed him.
Their gazes met across the battlefield, and for a moment, it was like the world narrowed to just the two of them. Everything else faded—the clashing of armies, the screams of the dying, the roar of magic.
She didn't speak. She didn't need to.
Her lips moved, slow and deliberate, forming a single word that seemed to echo directly into his mind.
"Eri."
The moment he saw it, a spike of fear stabbed through his chest, cold and sharp.
He snapped his head around, scanning the battlefield frantically. Through the legs of giants and ogres, through the maelstrom of magic—fire, water, ice, rock, sand, light—he searched, desperate, wild.
And then he found her.
Eri lay sprawled on the blood-soaked obsidian ground, her body mangled almost beyond recognition. Her limbs bent at impossible angles. Her once-gleaming armor was torn apart like paper. Blood pooled beneath her like a dark halo, reflecting the chaotic light of battle.
But she was breathing.
Barely.
Her chest rose in tiny, shallow movements, each one weaker than the last.
She was alive.
For now.
And standing over her was the beastkin she had been fighting, his sword raised high, poised to plunge it down. The beast's face was twisted in a victorious snarl, fangs gleaming in the firelight.
Lucy moved before he even thought.
Ayas. The guilt. The blood on his hands. It all vanished in an instant.
All that mattered was Eri.
He sprinted forward, pouring every ounce of strength he had left into his legs. His body blurred through the battlefield, weaving between monsters and giants, narrowly dodging spells and swinging blades. The wind whipped past his face.
His heart thundered in his chest like a war drum. His lungs burned as if he'd swallowed fire. He pushed harder and faster, his muscles screaming in protest.
But it wasn't enough.
Even with everything he had, he was too slow.
The sword came down and buried itself in Eri's chest with a sickening crunch of metal through armor and flesh.
Lucy let out a strangled, broken scream that tore at his throat. He stumbled, almost falling onto the blood-slick ground beneath him.
He didn't know why it hurt so badly.
Through his few short weeks at the palace, Eri had treated him with nothing but disdain, her hatred for humans practically dripping from her words, burning in her eyes whenever she looked at him.
But he had wanted to save her anyway.
Tears blurred his vision as raw fury erupted inside him, a volcano of rage that consumed all rational thought.
Without thinking, he raised Ayas' sword and slashed through the air, even though he was still a good twenty feet away. The blade felt suddenly light in his grip, as if it yearned to fulfill his desire.
The blade howled with mana, pulsing with blue light as it extended far beyond its steel.
'I missed, he realized through the haze. Twenty feet too short.'
But it didn't matter.
The beastkin's head, still wearing that smug, victorious grin, toppled cleanly from his shoulders and hit the ground with a sickening thud. For a moment, the body remained standing, blood fountaining upward, before it collapsed beside Eri.
Lucy stood there, gasping for air, the sword heavy once more in his trembling hands.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, cutting clean paths through the grime and blood splattered across his face.
He hadn't saved her.
He was too late.