Chapter 71

  "Resistance is futile!" shouted the guard in front of me—loudly, and far too eagerly, like he needed to convince himself more than us. I couldn’t help but grin. A quiet chuckle escaped me. It was that line. That classic line people say when they’re the least convinced of it themselves.

  For a brief moment, I considered taking two of them down. One with a wing strike, the other with a precise kick to the chest. The other two—Maira would’ve disarmed them easily. Then we’d capture them. And Arik would be free. A clean, swift solution. But I knew what held me back. Not morality. Not even the risk. It was Arik.

  "One sword strike, and the Ashblood is dead!" said another—probably the one with the spear now pointed at Maira. He tried to sound firm. But his grip was trembling. The spear shook like a branch in the wind. That was the moment I almost burst out laughing.

  I mean… it’s not that I didn’t respect these four guys, in some way. They were standing there, doing their job, pointing their weapons straight. But they weren’t specialists. Not war mages. More like the first line of defense. Disciplined, sure—but not built for anything bigger. I mean: Maira had a fragment of the Plague God sealed inside her, knew all about Tainted Mana, and probably had a whole bunch of other arcane knowledge. Me? Well… I had a demon inside, soaked in dark power. And Arik… Arik was ash. How do you kill someone like that with a sword strike, exactly? I didn’t know. And that was the point. I didn’t know. And that was enough to make me cautious.

  So I took a breath. Slowly. Held Gravor back—at least a little. And lowered my weapon. Maira followed suit—reluctantly, but with a look that said: If this goes wrong, it’s your fault. I gave her the slightest nod. Then began to reverse my transformation. The wings faded. The glow beneath my skin receded. My presence became… human again.

  One of the rebels—probably the same guy who’d nearly pissed himself earlier—took the opportunity to raise his voice again. "Now—hands in the air!" he barked, with the tone of someone trying very hard to sound in control.

  We didn’t raise them. Not a hand. Not a finger. I turned my head toward him. Slowly. Wearing a smile that was anything but friendly. "I said—!" "You can go to hell," I cut him off calmly.

  Then I let just a sliver of Gravor’s power flow into my eyes. Just a flicker. Just enough that even through his helmet, a shimmer was visible. Something unnatural. Something that made the guard take half a step back—without even realizing he did. It was almost cute. That tiny retreat. Like a dog that growls at a wolf… then realizes the wolf is a lot bigger.

  I could’ve pushed it further. But I didn’t. Because something inside me knew: If I did, things would spiral into a disaster I wasn’t ready to deal with.

  -

  I saw the world burning. Not metaphorically. No symbol. No dream. But fire, smoke, and death.

  The eastern continent was torn apart by one earthquake after another. Mountain ranges split open, cities fell into gaping chasms, entire landmasses shifted as if an angry god had smashed the world map with his fist.

  Then the other side: The deep druidic forests—green and full of life, thousands of years old—turned into soot-black skeleton woods. Glowing ash drifted down like snow, and between the charred remains of trees, I saw deerfolk burst into flames, screaming.

  The deserts of the Sand Kings quaked. From beneath the dunes, volcanoes erupted—born from the deep. They split oases in half, drowned palaces in lava, buried trade routes under molten rock. Entire caravans—people, camels, artifacts—became frozen silhouettes of black stone.

  The homeland of the wood elves—shimmering Val’Aneth—was just a shadow. Not a single leaf remained. No branch. No song. The golden-green light that once danced over their cities had vanished.

  Instead, storms of black fire whipped through the valleys, carrying away the last breath of life.

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  I saw oceans littered with wreckage. Gigantic warships—like whales of iron and wood—smashed and drifting. Their masts stood like gravestones among the waves, corpses pierced with harpoons, soaked in oil.

  The sea was no longer a sea. It was a liquid grave, where giant sharks and starving seabirds fought over the last scraps of flesh.

  I saw vast golden wheat fields. Beautiful plains. And blood—blood of all races—soaked the soil. Orcs and humans, elves and gnomes, even giants—none had been spared.

  The halflings had once built little settlements on the edge of those fields. I saw their tiny homes—now just ruins, filled with scorched dolls, their button eyes empty.

  I saw a flower field—once a place of peace, where children laughed and stories were told. Now it lay buried beneath mountains of ash. A few pale blossoms still stretched their heads out from the grey blanket—as if they had forgotten the world had stopped breathing long ago.

  Then: a wall, as tall as mountains. Stones forged by giants, guarded by a thousand spells. And yet—it trembled.

  Catapults—as large as houses—hurled stone after stone against it. Flame spells ripped through the sky, carving glowing scars across its ramparts. On the battlements, defenders fell—not screaming, but silent.

  And finally: the golden gates. Covered in celestial glyphs, blessed by angels, a monument of hope.

  Surrounded by creatures that should never have existed. Demons, nightmares, walking horrors with mouths where none should be. Giants made of blood. Beings whose very appearance shattered sanity. A heartless dragon flew above the army. Curses rained from its wings. Its body was made of corpses.

  In front of the gates, a commander of the damned called out in a tongue that was never meant to be spoken. And behind him, a banner rose—torn, cursed. I had never seen it before. But I knew:

  It was the symbol of Reyn’s Order.

  -

  The return to the present was anything but gentle.

  First, there was a rushing. Not wind. Not sound in the traditional sense—more like an all-encompassing static, a tingling that ran through every one of my scattered ash particles. For a fraction of a moment, I was blind, deaf, unconscious—not in mind, but in the perception of my form.

  Then came the jolt. Sudden. Like being ripped from the deepest dream, the blanket torn away and cold water splashed into your face. My particles reassembled instinctively, orderly, as always. But this time… something was different.

  The images—they clung to me like veils I couldn’t shake off. A spasm ran through my body. Then came the nausea. Or what our kind calls nausea. No stomach acid. No bile. Just... overload. Too many foreign impressions, too many alien souls raging through my perception.

  I opened my mouth. And expelled ash. Dark. Heavy. It poured from me in uneven bursts. Not like smoke. Not like dust. More like… memory. Black memory, sifting to the ground as if weighed down by the images I had just seen.

  Cities in flames. Screaming children. Gods turning away. Peace treaties burning.

  I staggered forward slightly, my legs soft like wet sand. My knees brushed the ground, not from exhaustion—but because my balance was still caught in the vision. But a hand reached out. Steadied me. The old man—the one I still thought of as the leader of the rebels—pulled me up, calmly, without hurry, as if he had done this a hundred times before.

  And maybe he had. I remained unsteady, but I didn’t let the gesture humiliate me. When my mind finally cleared, when I once again recognized the room for what it was—a simple, though tastefully furnished chamber with windows that let in strangely little light—I turned to him.

  “Was that really necessary?” My voice was a little sharper than I intended, but there was irony in it too. “I mean… that intense?” The old man smiled. And this time, I was certain there was something in that smile. A trace of… schadenfreude. Or pride. Maybe both. “I feared you wouldn’t understand otherwise.” I grimaced slightly, wiping ash unconsciously from my lips, though none remained. “Pretty elegant euphemism for ‘I did it on purpose’.”

  He didn’t answer directly. That was his way. Instead, he walked slowly back to the small table, where his steaming cup still stood.

  A hint of herbal tea lingered in the air—an absurd contrast to what I had just witnessed. War. Death. The end of everything.

  And here was a man drinking tea as if everything was part of a play whose script he knew by heart.

  “If Luken’s here,” I said then, quieter, “will they do the same to him?”

  He slowly shook his head as he sat, as if his answer was as natural as breathing. “No. That’s Vin’s task.”

  He spoke as if it had already happened. Not as a possibility—but as a fixed fact. “Just as foreseen.” I blinked. “Foreseen,” I repeated, mostly to myself. Then, more sharply: “How do you know all this? How can you see the… possible future so clearly and in such detail?”

  I saw it again, that grin. Not playful. Not superior. Just—content. “All in due time,” he said simply, and took a sip of tea. As if the answer had already been given.

  As if my question itself was the confirmation.

  And in that moment, I hated him a little. Not out of enmity. But from frustration. Because I knew: he had just seen everything I had seen—and probably more. But I couldn’t grasp any of it. Couldn’t recall a single clear image. Only ash in my mouth. And the echo of a war I did not yet understand.