The rain softened, falling like a whisper over the ruins of Heful. The once-bright city lay in ashes — the air thick with smoke, blood, and grief.

  Eryndor exhaled shakily, his chest heaving. Their Body Reconstruction was finally over. The unbearable pain had subsided, replaced by numb exhaustion.

  He sat up slowly, gasping for air, realizing for the first time that he was completely naked from his waist downward. He turned his head and froze.

  Close by lay his old body — or rather, half of it. His severed lower half rested lifelessly in the mud, rain dripping from pale, dead skin.

  He looked down at his new legs. Perfect. Whole. Alive.

  He touched his thigh, his fingers trembling.

  Then it struck him—

  “Ziraiah.”

  He stumbled to his feet and rushed to her side, collapsing to both knees beside her.

  Ziraiah was sitting upright, staring blankly at the night sky.

  Tears streamed silently down her cheeks, mingling with the rain.

  “They’re dead,” she whispered, voice shaking. “They’re all dead, Eryndor…”

  Her hands covered her face, and she broke down, sobbing into her palms.

  Eryndor followed her gaze.

  There—beside her—lay Mercy.

  Her body was still. Her arm, once reaching toward him, now rested limply at her side.

  Eryndor’s breath caught in his throat. His hands fell onto his thighs as he just stared, wordless, his heart sinking into the void inside him.

  Rain poured down harder, splashing against his skin, tracing the shape of his face as he looked up at the storming heavens.

  He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe.

  And then—

  memories flooded back.

  Three years ago.

  A night of laughter and light.

  It had been Alvin’s birthday.

  There was music, food, and a wide pool glowing under floating lanterns.

  Eryndor sat at the edge, half-immersed, silent as always.

  Across from him sat Mercy. Her reflection shimmered beside his in the water. Her smile was calm, curious — the kind that could draw even the quietest soul into warmth.

  “Has anyone ever remarked that your eyes are quite exquisite?”

  Eryndor didn’t move. “Indeed. More times than I could possibly enumerate.”

  Mercy tilted her head, feigning offense.

  “Oh, confident, are we?”

  Her feet drifted idly through the water, ripples catching the moonlight. “I have never encountered anyone quite like you before—black hair, green eyes, and that unyielding gaze. One might almost say you resemble Pungence himself.”

  Eryndor’s gaze didn’t waver. “I hail from a place far removed from here.”

  She smiled faintly. “And where might that be?”

  “You wouldn’t know, even were I to name it.” he replied simply.

  Mercy looked at him for a long moment. Then, with a playful grin, she splashed water toward him.

  “Do smile, won’t you? You look rather like a statue carved from sorrow itself.”

  Eryndor didn’t react.

  So she splashed him again.

  Still nothing.

  A third time — and then, at last, he smiled.

  It was small, reluctant… but real.

  Mercy laughed, eyes bright. “See? Much better.”

  Eryndor looked back at her, something warm flickering in his expression. He slowly lowered his arm into the water.

  “It would seem,” he said dryly, “that I must descend to your level—for a time… Valerius.”

  Her eyes widened. “No—wait—”

  He splashed her. A wall of water hit her straight on. She shrieked, half-drowned and laughing, hair plastered to her face.

  When she stood again, dripping and breathless, Eryndor was smiling — a rare, genuine grin.

  Mercy couldn’t help but return it.

  For a brief moment, the night was perfect.

  “I am Eryndor Delindor,” he said with quiet pride.

  She brushed her wet hair aside, still smiling.

  “Fiona,” she said softly. “Fiona Mercy Marclair.”

  The memory flickered — and vanished into the rain.

  Back in the present, Eryndor’s chest ached as he looked at her lifeless body.

  He reached forward with trembling hands but stopped inches away.

  He couldn’t bring himself to touch her.

  “Mercy…” he whispered.

  The rain answered for her —

  a thousand tiny voices falling from a cold, uncaring sky.

  He placed his hands upon both her thighs, and at once, Mercy’s body began to rise—weightless, serene. She drifted through the still air toward him, descending gently into his arms.

  Eryndor held her there for a moment, his gaze lifting to the sky.

  Then, as the clouds shifted above, another memory stirred—bright and distant, breaking through like light upon water.

  ---

  The garden behind Festitude Academy was quiet that evening.

  A low sun painted the marble courtyard gold, and the sound of wind dancing through the glass chimes gave the air a lazy calm.

  Eryndor sat with the others on the steps — Alvin, Mercy, Lira, and two others from their class. A plate of half-eaten pastries sat between them. Alvin, ever the loud one, leaned forward with a mischievous grin.

  “So, Mercy,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “Serious question. What kind of guy do you like?”

  Mercy blinked, caught mid-bite. “What kind of—? Alvin, really?”

  “Come on, we’re all just talking,” Alvin said, grinning wider. “Don’t act shy now. You must have a type.”

  Lira laughed. “Yeah, Mercy. You can’t dodge this one. Out with it.”

  Mercy rolled her eyes, though a faint blush rose along her neck. “Very well…” she murmured, lowering the pastry to her lap. “If I were to describe it…”

  She turned her gaze aside, the sunlight weaving through her hair like threads of gold.

  “I suppose… I admire someone strong,” she said softly after a pause. “Not merely in body, but in spirit — someone who does not falter when the world begins to crumble. Someone whose very presence makes you feel safe… even when everything else is falling apart.”

  Eryndor glanced at her then — but quickly looked away, pretending to listen to the wind.

  Mercy’s smile deepened faintly. “He would have to be intelligent as well,” she said, her voice thoughtful. “The sort who does not merely fight, but reasons. Someone composed — one who need not speak often to be understood.”

  Alvin laughed. “So basically, not me.”

  That earned a small laugh from everyone — even Eryndor. But Mercy wasn’t done.

  “And…” she said softly, her eyes growing distant. “He would possess a gentle heart — the kind that hides behind a solemn face. A man who would sooner endure pain himself than allow those he loves to suffer.”

  She smiled faintly, her gaze drifting toward the garden path — but unknowingly, her words had painted Eryndor perfectly.

  Alvin raised an eyebrow and looked between them. “Strong, calm, smart, and self-sacrificing?” he teased. “You just described a certain someone sitting right here.”

  Mercy blinked, startled. “What? I—”

  Her cheeks flushed deeper. “No, I didn’t mean—”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Lira giggled. “Oh, you definitely did.”

  Eryndor, still looking away, exhaled through his nose — the faintest hint of a smile touching his lips.

  Mercy turned away, hiding her face behind her hair. “You all are impossible…”

  The laughter faded, replaced by a soft, comfortable quiet. The sun dipped lower, turning the sky rose-colored.

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  And though neither said a word, something unspoken hung between Mercy and Eryndor — something fragile, and alive.

  ---

  Eryndor gently touched Mercy’s cheek.

  Pungence looked at him for a moment, then walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ---

  A sound escaped Eryndor’s lips—a choked, guttural thing that was half-gasp, half-sob. It was the sound of a dam breaking deep within his soul. His body, which had been held rigid by shock, began to tremble uncontrollably. His elegant tone vanished.

  “I couldn’t— I couldn’t protect them,” he stammered, his voice fraying at the edges. “Mercy… Ziraiah…”

  His forehead struck the ground, the impact jarring. He didn't feel it. The elegant, aloof Eryndor was gone, replaced by a boy drowning in shame and horror.

  “All my power… my spells… my useless intellect!” he cried out, his fists slamming against the stone in a sudden, furious burst. “It meant NOTHING! I was stripped bare… I just layed there and I watched… I WATCHED!”

  His voice rose to a raw, shattered scream that echoed in the ruined plaza. He tore at the front of his own tunic, claws of agony ripping through the fabric as if he could physically tear out the failure festering in his chest.

  ---

  The memory surfaced not as a gentle recollection, but as a shard of glass in his mind, twisting in the wound of his failure.

  He was ten years old, back in the sun-dappled kitchen of their home on Earth. The air smelled of Lyriana’s perfume and the cookies cooling on the counter. His mother knelt before him, her hands on his small shoulders, her emerald eyes—so like his own—holding a seriousness that felt out of place in their safe, warm world.

  “Eryndor,” she said, her voice soft but unwavering. “Look at me. You are the oldest. That isn’t just a title. It is your duty. It is your purpose.”

  She glanced toward the living room where a seven-year-old Valerius was chasing a toddling Ziraiah, their laughter echoing through the house.

  “It is your duty to protect them. To mentor them, to guide them. But most of all, to keep them safe.” Her grip tightened just slightly, imparting the gravity of her words. “Don’t let anything, or anyone, separate you three. Ever. And don’t let anyone hurt them.”

  Ten-year-old Eryndor, brimming with the unshakable confidence of his lineage, had puffed out his chest. “But Mom,” he said, a faint, haughty smile on his lips. “No one can hurt us.”

  His mother’s expression didn’t soften. Instead, a shadow of a fear he couldn’t yet comprehend crossed her face. She cupped his cheek, her voice dropping to a near-whisper.

  “How do you know that, my brilliant boy?” she asked, her words laced with a love that was also a warning. “Have you met everyone?”

  ---

  The memory shattered, leaving Eryndor hollowed out on the cold stone. His mother’s prophetic question now echoed as his life’s greatest condemnation. He had not met everyone. He had not come to Yilheim. And now, he had broken the one promise that truly mattered.

  “I am their shield!” he wept, the words dissolving into heaving, ragged breaths. “It is the one thing I am meant to be! And when Ziraiah needed that shield most, it was made of glass! Mother trusted me with them… with everything… if it wasn't for our Body Reconstruction, she would have died right infront of me!”

  He struck his head to the ground again, his forehead grinding into the dirt, but he did not bleed, he couldn't. His body was wracked with sobs he could no longer contain, great, shuddering waves of grief that left him gasping.

  “I'm a failure… a wretched, arrogant failure…”

  The world narrowed to the taste of his own tears and the crushing weight of his worthlessness. He didn't hear the footsteps, only registered the immense shadow that fell over him.

  Slowly, painfully, he dragged his head up. His face was a mess of tears, grime, and utter devastation. He looked up at Pungence, his eyes begging for an answer, for an absolution he knew was impossible.

  “What kind of man…,” he whispered, his voice a broken thread of sound, “…what kind of son… what kind of brother… am I, if I cannot even protect my own family?”

  Pungence looked down at him, his expression unreadable.

  “You are right,” he said, his voice low and unwavering. “You didn’t save them. You couldn’t. You were too weak.”

  He let the awful truth hang in the air, a verdict delivered without malice, allowing its full, unvarnished weight to crush the last vestiges of Eryndor’s pride.

  “You want to know what kind of man you are?” Pungence continued, his gaze a physical pressure as it swept from Mercy’s still form to Ziraiah’s hollow, weeping silhouette. “You are a man who is alive. You were given a second chance that Mercy, Andrea and all the others, were not. Not because you earned it. Not because you were strong enough. But because you were lucky. Blessed with some strange ability that brought you from death's door.”

  He took a step closer, his presence imposing, a pillar in the shifting ruin.

  “Your mother didn’t give you a perfect shield. She gave you a purpose. And that purpose is not to lie here, whipping yourself for a failure that is already written in stone and blood. Your purpose is to look at your sister—who just lost everything—and be the brother she needs now. Not the one who failed her then, but the one who is here, with her, in the ashes.”

  Pungence’s voice softened, not with comfort, but with a grim and unyielding reality.

  “The man you were before this battle is gone. He died the moment he was cut in half. The man you are now was rebuilt from that failure. So the question is not, ‘What kind of man am I?’ The question is, ‘What will the man who survived his own worthlessness do next?’”

  He finally knelt, bringing his eyes level with Eryndor’s tear-streaked, devastated gaze.

  “Will you learn? Will you drown in the ‘what if’? Or will you stand up, take your sister’s hand, and face the ‘what is’? That is the only choice that matters. Not what you were, Eryndor. What you will be.”

  He placed a hand on his own chest, a gesture of shared culpability. “Even I, for all my power, failed today. We are all bound to fail—now, or in some future we cannot see. But does a single failure define a man? No. We are simply men who have failed. What determines your character—what forges your true strength—is how you learn from that failure, and what you do to ensure it is never, ever repeated.”

  ---

  To Be Continued...