Chapter 37: The Star of Sadness

  Who am I?

  The question wasn't a thought; it was a physical sensation. It was a dull ache behind my eyes, and a strange metallic echo in the taste of my saliva. I opened my eyes to almost complete darkness, broken only by the faint glow of energy crystals scattered in the ceiling of a massive cave.

  I was in the middle of a throne room and felt the weight of something in my right hand. I looked down. It was a sword, its blade black as the ash of a dead star, absorbing the little light around it. I felt an unsettling familiarity with it, as if it were an extension of my arm... an arm I didn't feel belonged to me. My body was strange, solid, as if sculpted from cold steel rather than flesh and blood.

  Then I felt the other weight. A warm weight leaning on me.

  I slowly turned my head. Someone was hugging me. His arms were wrapped around me in a final embrace, his head resting on my shoulder. His silver hair was stained with dry blood, but his face... his face was serene. And smiling.

  "Kairo?"

  The name came out as a whisper, an ancient word from a language I had forgotten. He did not respond. He was cold. Very cold. The absolute coldness of death. I gently pushed him off me, and saw the wound. A massive, horrific wound piercing his chest. A wound that exactly matched the width of the black sword blade I was holding.

  The sword fell from my hand and vanished into the void.

  "Kairo!" I screamed, my voice sounding strange, terrifyingly powerful. "Kairo, wake up! What the hell is going on?!"

  There was no answer. Only that calm, final smile on his face. I started trembling, not from cold, but from a pure, primal terror I didn't understand. I looked at my hands. They were covered in sticky, drying blood. My friend's blood.

  "No... No, impossible."

  I hugged his cold body again, pressing him to me with desperate strength, as if the warmth of this strange body of mine might bring him back to life. "Kairo... who did this? Did the Jacobins come here? Where am I?"

  But silence was my only answer.

  I reluctantly left his body and walked. I was in a palace carved from the rock itself. I walked through its vast corridors. Silence. A silence broken only by the sound of my heavy, metallic footsteps. I reached a spacious dining hall.

  And there I saw the slaughter.

  It wasn't a battle. It was an execution. Dozens of bodies lay around the tables. Dwarves, men, women, and children, their faces frozen in expressions of shock. A bowl of soup was still steaming. A wooden toy in the shape of a golem had fallen from a small child's hand. There were no signs of fighting or resistance. They died where they sat, in the middle of their lives, in the middle of their meal, in the middle of their laughter.

  I walked out of the palace into the city. It was a masterpiece carved into the heart of the mountain, illuminated by glowing blue crystals. But it was a ghost town. The houses were empty, the streets silent, and the slaughter extended to every corner.

  I started breathing rapidly, the cold air burning my lungs. Who did this? Who possessed this strength, this cruelty? Me? Was that the reason for the blood on my hands? Was that why Kairo was hugging me in his death? Was he trying to stop me? Or forgive me?

  I didn't understand. I didn't understand anything. All I knew was that I was in the heart of a hell created by some hand... and I desperately feared it was my own hand.

  I felt a presence of life. Two faint signals deep within the city. I reached a small, serene lake in the heart of the cave. The strange thing was that the laboratory entrance was underwater. I didn't hesitate. I jumped. The water didn't hinder me; my new body moved through it with strength and smoothness. I found the steel door and opened it.

  The place inside was the antithesis of the world outside. White, sterile corridors, and bright lights. Small machines moved silently, cleaning up any speck of dust. They didn't attack me. Instead, they stopped when they saw me, their small lights flashing green, as if greeting their returning master.

  My terror grew.

  I reached a massive room that resembled an advanced forge. In its center, there was a huge furnace whose orange glow was still warm. And in front of it stood a small being. A salamander with vibrant orange scales, trembling as it stared at me. It was clutching the Ash Blade, an exact replica of my sword, but it wasn't holding it as a weapon, but as a crucifix to ward off a demon.

  "Did... did you finally come to kill me?" the salamander said, its voice a mixture of hysteria and despair. "To finish your work?"

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  "I don't want to kill you," I said, advancing slowly. "I just want to understand. What the hell is going on? Where am I?"

  Suddenly, the salamander exploded into laughter. A loud, mad, broken laugh that echoed in the silent forge. "You don't understand? Don't you remember?" His laughter stopped, turning into a whisper filled with venom. "Look at the corpses outside, 'Deo'. Look at them well. Did you see their faces? Did you see how they died? They died trusting you. They died chanting the name of their savior."

  He pointed his trembling claw at me. "You did this. You slaughtered them all."

  The salamander, Arda, began to speak. And his voice transported me through time, to another world, to a story that began with despair and ended in ash.

  [MG Year 20]

  Kairo Foist, not yet fifty years old, stood on the summit of an icy mountain in a shattered world. There was no sky anymore, just a black void scattered with the remains of burnt stars. "Fifth-Rank Demon, Habori," Kairo said with his usual cynical coldness. "What a miracle, you really climbed up here, Kairo."

  The icy demon laughed. "A small, bold dwarf. And what do you want from me?"

  "I want you to transport my people, all the Dwarves of World 77, to safety."

  "And what in return?" Habori asked curiously. "What does a dwarf like you have to give me in a new world?"

  Kairo opened his arms in a gesture of complete surrender. "My Soul Gate. My magic. Take it. I no longer need it in a world where I cannot protect those I love."

  Kairo felt a piece of his soul being torn from him, a cold void settling in his heart, but he showed no pain. The next moment, he was standing at the entrance of a massive cave, and before him were thousands of his people, their faces pale with shock. He raised his hand and yelled: "I am Kairo Foist! And from today, this place is our capital! Our new home!"

  And the Golden Age began. With the genius of the Dwarves, the cave transformed into a thriving city. Kairo tamed golem beasts to help with construction. One day, a skinny child named "Leo" came to him, dragging a small, injured salamander behind him.

  "I saved him," the child said shyly. Kairo smiled and knelt down. "Welcome to your home. We are all family here." Leo and Arda became Kairo's shadows, never leaving his side. And when the people wanted to build a palace for him, Kairo refused. "I am not your king," he said, sitting with them around the campfire. "I am your friend."

  [MG Year 49]

  Almost thirty years later, Kairo, now an old man who was still young due to his breakthrough into the divine realm, sat listening to the shouting in the council hall.

  "How long will we remain hidden in this cage?!" yelled a man named Fran?ois, his descendants adorning his long beard. "My grandfather was one of the warriors Deo himself saved! They fought! And they died for their freedom! And we are here, living like rats underground!"

  "This place is our home!" Kairo replied calmly.

  "No! It's a gilded cage!" yelled Fran?ois. "Deo left us the chip! He left us hope! We can revive him! We can build an army! We can reclaim our world!"

  Kairo stood up, and for the first time in decades, anger showed in his eyes. "Don't mention his name! Do you want me to bring my friend back to life only to see this hell?! To see that everyone he loved has died, and that his sacrifice was meaningless?! I will not inflict this pain on him!"

  "You are a coward!" Fran?ois yelled. "You fear his power! You fear him taking your place as leader!"

  But the conflict had already begun. In secret, Fran?ois met with Leo, now a bright young blacksmith craftsman, and Arda, who had grown into a strong, loyal salamander. Their motive was a twisted love for Kairo. They believed that if they brought Deo back, they would restore the genuine smile to the face of their leader who hadn't smiled from his heart in fifty years.

  Fran?ois stole the chip. And in the hot furnace room, they began their work. "Are you sure about this, Leo?" Arda asked worriedly. "The energy emitted from constructing a body this complex... it's enormous. It might attract the attention of the beasts outside."

  "Kairo will protect us," Leo said confidently. "He is exaggerating the danger because he doesn't want Deo to return."

  That night, Fran?ois stood in front of the glass tank where Deo's nearly completed body floated. He placed his hand on the glass. "My grandfather told me about you," he whispered. "He said you were a star. A star that changes everything. Please... save us. Save us from this despair."

  The narration ended. I returned to the present, to the silent forge, and Arda trembling in front of me. "What happened after that?" I asked, my voice dead.

  "They succeeded," Arda whispered. "They made you a perfect body, stronger than your original one. Then they put the chip in. We were waiting. Waiting for you to wake up... to speak... to be the savior we dreamed of."

  He paused for a moment, and a fiery tear slid down his cheek.

  "But the thing that woke up... wasn't Deo."

  I saw the scene in my mind with horrifying clarity. The glass shatters. The body emerges, silent, its eyes empty. It kills Fran?ois first, with a single touch. It left all the scientists for some reason, then walked out. And it kills. It kills everyone in its path. It doesn't scream, it shows no emotion. It kills calmly, efficiently, as if it were its only function in this existence.

  "And Kairo?" I asked, dreading the answer.

  "When the slaughter began, he was in the throne room. He didn't fight. He didn't run. He remained seated on his throne, waiting for you. When you went to him. You had killed almost everyone. He looked at you, got off his throne, walked, and you struck him from every direction with all types of magic. Then he reached you and hugged you. And he died."

  Arda finished his story. He picked up the Ash Blade from the floor. "We betrayed his trust," he said quietly. "And this is our punishment."

  He stabbed himself with the sword, and turned into orange ash scattered on the floor.

  I was left alone.

  Alone with the truth.

  It wasn't crying. It was something older, deeper. A scream. A scream that erupted from the center of my empty soul, a scream that shook the very foundations of the cave. I struck the walls with my fist, not to shatter them, but to feel something, anything other than this icy void.

  The walls crumbled in front of me as if they were paper. I ran through the tunnels, running from myself, from my memories, from the monster I had been. I ran until I emerged from the cave, into the outside world.

  I stood on the edge of a mountain, looking at the sky.

  There were no stars.

  I understood everything. I understood the prophecy. I understood the sadness of the Five Heroes. I understood why they cried. They weren't crying for a dying world. They were crying for me.

  For the sad child cutting into oblivion.

  And I collapsed to the ground, screaming at the void, a scream no one heard.