Up or down? He couldn't tell.
The world was a slurry of mud and red slush. He was crawling, he knew that much, but the sky was screaming so loud it felt like the ground was the only safe place left.
Something wet and heavy slapped onto the dirt inches from his nose. He blinked through the grit in his eyes. It was a hand. A massive, grey hand with six fingers, severed at the wrist, still clutching a doll made of straw and dried flowers.
"A doll?" His mind stuttered. "Why does a monster like Lizardman have a doll?"
He looked up, and for a moment, his brain refused to process the geography. Sixteen hours ago, this had been a street. He remembered the cobblestones. He remembered the architecture—strange, beautiful buildings where the jagged iron of Rockman craftsmanship melded seamlessly with the colossal stonework of Giants. It had been a thriving metropolis, a city that defied the laws of nature, built by creatures who were supposed to kill each other.
Now, it was a furnace.
The grand archways were rubble. The home were burning. The air smelled of a civilization being erased.
It had been over a decade since the man named Rayne forced the world to taste his name.
The Kings of both Kvothe and Roric had emptied their treasuries and drained their villages of men, sending a tidal wave of iron and flesh to bring back Rayne's head. But right now, those same armies were struggling to keep their boots on the ground—a ground that seemed to shout the name of its saviour as if he were a God carved into the bedrock itself.
"Move!"
A boot slammed into his ribs, knocking the wind out of him. A Sergeant of the Roric Kingdom stumbled past, his armor melted on one side. "Hold the line! If they break through, we are dead! We are all dead!"
He scrambled up, clutching his spear with trembling hands. He looked into the smoke and saw them.
A Rockman, his granite skin cracked and bleeding magma, threw himself in front of a volley of arrows to shield a wounded human archer. A demon Lechuza screeched from the rooftops, diving into a suicide run to take out a catapult that was aiming for the residential district.
"CHARGE!" a voice boomed, shaking the burning timber of the city.
It was a Giant. He stood amidst the ruins of what looked like a marketplace. He wasn't holding a weapon of war; he was wielding a massive iron pillar he had ripped from his own collapsed house.
"For our promises!" the Giant roared, tears streaming down his face. "For our future! Protect our Home!"
The coalition army, hundreds of thousands of Knights —Anchors, Nexus, and Ciphers—wavered. They had burned the land to glass, slaughtered the residents, and plundered the gold. But they couldn't plunder this. They couldn't steal the terrifying conviction of an army that was fighting for the right to exist.
A Roric captain drove his blade deep into the enemy's visor expecting a kill, but the helmet was empty, leaking only ash and grey smoke as the hollow armor laughed and grabbed the captain's blade with a burning gauntlet.
The sky tore open.
Violet lightning shattered the smoke. The battle above was a blur of god-like motion, shockwaves flattening buildings that had survived the fires.
The Transient God of the Silver Abyss was up there, waging a war that turned the atmosphere into a vacuum. The night had become a tapestry of storms, painted by auroras of violet and crimson that danced not out of beauty, but out of sincere, terrified loyalty to his power.
"This is suicide!" a soldier roared, watching bodies fall from the heavens like rain.
But the true center of the storm was not in the sky. It was deep in the Core Sanctuary—the resource point where the Ley Lines of the mountain converged. It was the heart of the city.
There, the energy was so dense it vaporized rain before it hit the ground.
Rayne was no longer the boy in the garden. He was a grown man . His strength had matured into a force of nature, a dense, suffocating gravity that warped the light around him. He moved with the efficiency of a catastrophe, his every strike rewriting the geography of the world.
Outside, the coalition armies were locked in a death grip with the forces of the Devil.
A "Devil." That was what their leaders called him. But as the knights looked across the burning valley, they didn't see mindless evil. They saw devotion.
The Demons—ancient enemies of mankind—surged forward. The Lechuzas screeched violently, their wings blotting out the flames of darkness; the Cienmuertes blurred through the front lines on their thousand legs, harvesting limbs; and the Astasreys, the horned demons, lowered their heads like battering rams.
"Do not let the Giants take all the glory!" a Demon Major hissed, his blade wreathed in green fire.
The forces of Kvothe and Roric had never seen such a nightmare. It was a patchwork army of ruthless killers: human deserters, Giants, Demons, Rockman, and Lizardman. These races had spent millennia slaughtering each other. Yet here they were, shoulder to shoulder, bleeding for the same cause.
The coalition knights, gripping their sweating sword hilts, could not comprehend it.
'Who is this man who made the divided races lie down in blood just to hunt us?'
They could only do one thing: 'Hold.'
They dug their heels into the mud, praying to gods they weren't sure were listening anymore. They had to hold their ground until the Zenithar Kingdom arrived with reinforcements. They fought with the desperation of men who knew the truth: their only chance of survival lay not in their swords, but in the duel happening miles away.
They believed they could win because the ones fighting alongside them were the Pinnacles.
The Warlords. The only beings capable of challenging a God.
"He promised us!" a Demon Astasrey bellowed, goring a Roric knight. "He promised us a home! Hold the line for the Rustle of the Demonic axe!"
They didn't know.
They pushed forward, driving the invaders back inch by bloody inch, fueled by the absolute certainty that their God was invincible. They fought for the city that was already ash. They fought for the children who were already dead.
They fought for a man who had already fallen.
In the Core Sanctuary, the violet light flickered. The gravity lifted.
The silence that followed in the epicenter was louder than the screams outside. The history books would record this day. They would write of the strength of the forces of doom. They would write that his power was so great it took the entire world to break him.
But they would also write that on this day, beneath the burning ruins of his dream,
the Nightmare finally ended.
The monsters roared in triumph as they gained ground, unaware of the tragic irony that would soon shatter the sky. They fought with such hope. They died with such conviction.
Little did they know, the thread had already snapped. In the heart of their newfound home, amidst the ruins of his throne room, their Savior, their God, ... was already defeated.
The Throne Room was no longer a room. It was a crater.
The walls had been pulverized into dust, and the ceiling had been torn open to the screaming sky. The only thing that defined this space was the silence that sat in the center of it—a horrifying, intimate silence amidst a world at war.
Rayne stood in the wreckage.
He was a ruin of a man. His upper body was bare, a canvas of violence. A hundred cuts wept fresh blood, mingling with the old, white scars of a decade of brutality. His long red hair, matted with sweat and gore, clung to the open wounds on his back, stinging like salt, but Rayne didn't feel it.
He had broken bones. He had ruptured organs. He had been stabbed, slashed, and bludgeoned a hundred times over in the last hour alone.
But none of that mattered. He could have fought more. He would have fought more. He had enough Awen left to burn the sky. He could have torn the Warlords apart and dragged the Coalition into the abyss with him. His dream— the promise he made to the outcasts—was within reach.
He could have won.
But he couldn't move. Not because his legs had failed him, but because of the arms wrapped around his chest.
Rayne looked down. Protruding from his abdomen was a blade of fine starlight steel. It wasn't an enemy weapon. It was a gift he had forged himself.
The hilt was being gripped by small, trembling hands.
Rayne turned his head slowly, the motion grinding his vertebrae. Behind him, pressing her face against his bloody back, was a woman. Her face was hidden behind a curtain of lustrous, silky red hair that spilled over his shoulders like blood.
He didn't need to see her face. He knew the weight of her hold. He knew the rhythm of her breathing against his spine. She was the reason he had started this war. She was the reason he had endured the fire. He had burned the world so she could walk through the ashes unharmed.
But right now... he was broken.
He looked down at the girl standing in front of him. A teenager with silver hair that shimmered like moonlight. She was weeping, her tiny hands white-knuckled around the hilt of the sword buried in his stomach.
He wanted to speak. He wanted to scream. He wanted to ask the question that shattered his heart more than the steel in his gut.
'Why? Didn't I do enough? Didn't I build this world for you?'
But Norvin—the boy buried deep inside Rayne—didn't have the strength to ask.
"You..." She sobbed into his skin, her arms tightening, holding him firmly in place so he couldn't fall, and so he couldn't fight. "You…you were losing your mind."
Her voice was low, heavy with a guilt that would drown her for the rest of her life.
Rayne felt the heat of her tears on his skin. He wasn't angry. How could he be? Every city he had burned, every law he had broken, every drop of blood he had spilled—it was all for her. It was so she wouldn't have to be a slave. It was so she could have the life she deserved.
If the price of her safety was his sanity, he had paid it gladly.
He was stabbed... not by the Coalition. Not by the Warlords. But by the only two people he had sworn to protect. The only two people who made him human.
His strength flickered and died. He didn't even have the energy to stand on his own. If the woman let go, he would crumble.
Rayne closed his eyes and leaned back into the embrace. He felt something he hadn't felt in years.
Warmth.
'This,' Rayne thought, his vision blurring, 'is worth dying for.'
The dust settled, revealing the two monsters Rayne had been fighting.
One of them was a giant of a man, encased in luxurious armor that was now covered in a thousand dents. His shoulders were as broad as mountains, his arms as wide as tree trunks. He held a greatsword that seemed impossible for a mortal to lift.
Ven Trueblade**.** One of the Eight Warlords of Humanity. A Z-Tier threat.
Ven lowered his massive sword. He didn't cheer. He didn't smile. He looked at the scene with deep, profound surprise and a strange, heavy guilt. He was a warrior of honor; to see his enemy brought down by treachery made his stomach turn.
"Rayne..." Ven rumbled, his voice shaking the stones. "It is a shame. That you were not killed by our hands... but by the hands of your own. By those you considered family."
The other man stepped forward. He was thin, quite tall, and radiated a sharp, biting cold. Grazen Herz, another Warlord of the Kvothe Kingdom.
Grazen didn't share Ven's honor. He sneered, spitting on the bloody ground.
"Huh... look at you," Grazen mocked, his arrogant voice cutting through the tragedy. "Killed by your own loved ones. This death is befitting of you, Rayne."
Grazen had a cruel smile playing on his lips. "After all... you betrayed your own Master to get here. You killed Thane Cladaron. And now? You get betrayed in the exact same way. The wheel turns, traitor."
The words struck Rayne harder than the blade.
The silver-haired girl let go of the hilt. She grabbed Rayne's blood-slicked hands with her own, squeezing them desperately.
"Please don't crumble away!" she wailed, the sound tearing her throat. "I had to... Rayne, I had to stop you! You were going to meet a terrible fate!"
Rayne looked at her. He tried to squeeze her hand back, but his fingers wouldn't obey.
He didn't want to speak. What words were left for a moment like this? Explanation? Apology? Rage? None of them fit.
He simply looked at the silver hair of the child and felt the heartbeat of the woman behind him.
'I...' Rayne thought, the darkness finally rushing in to claim him. 'I did all this for you two.'
His knees gave out. The woman went down with him, refusing to let go, holding the monster she had made, weeping over the ruins of the man who had loved her too much.
The woman and the girl snuggled close to Rayne, pressing themselves against his dying warmth as if they were seeking shelter from a storm they had created.
Rayne, drawing his last, ragged breaths, rested his bloodied hand on the head of the silver-haired girl. As his vision swam, he didn't think of the blade she had driven into his gut. Instead, his thumb brushed a lock of her shimmering hair, leaving a crimson smear.
'I am sorry,' he apologized in the silence of his mind. 'I stained your beautiful silver hair with my blood.'
The woman behind him kept weeping, her face buried in his back, her tears mixing with the blood pouring from his chest wounds. She spoke into his skin, her voice thick with a twisted, desperate apology—not for killing him, but for the fact that he made them do it.
"You are a wreckage of your own goddamn ethics," she sobbed, her fingers digging into his shoulders. "Why didn't you listen to us again? Why could you not just stay with us? Am I fated to always lose you?"
The young girl was shaking, snot and tears running down her face. She finally let go of the hilt. She released the blade she had plunged into him—the only man she had ever looked up to, the man who had been her only safe place in everything even in blood.
She watched the light in his eyes slowly retreating.
"You saved me," the girl choked out, her voice cracking. "Thank you... everything you have done for me... everything you have done for my people. I didn't want to do this. I adore your goodness. Hell, I always wanted to be just like you... you are dearer to me than my own life."
The audacity.
The sheer, blinding audacity of these two. The woman blamed him for his principles while she held him down to be slaughtered. The young girl thanked him, called him dearer than life, while her hands were still warm from the friction of the hilt she had driven into his stomach.
"We saw you screaming in your sleep," the girl whispered, pressing her forehead against his arm. "Every night. The nightmares of the war... the guilt... it was eating you alive. We couldn't watch it anymore. We couldn't watch you burn yourself to keep us warm."
'I screamed so you could dream silently,' Rayne thought, his mind feeling heavy, like sinking into deep water. 'I let the nightmares eat me so they wouldn't touch you. Was that not the deal?'
Above them, the violent sky churned. The auroras and flares of the Transient God still threatened the beautiful dark night, a cosmic war raging over a silent murder.
'I... I spent years building,' He thought, his mind drifting. 'Not sleeping. Not eating. Just trembling. Trembling with the fear that I wouldn't be strong enough to protect you. And this... is this how you repay me? With dagger in my heart? And you think a kiss in the wound will heal it?'
Both of them kept crying, a chorus of grief over the body they had broken.
He summoned the last dregs of his strength. He used it to lift his hand and gently raise the chin of the red-haired woman, forcing her to look at him one last time.
Turning back he saw her...Her face was a mess of sorrow, stained with his own blood where she had snuggled against his back.
'Ah... that face,' He thought, his heart stuttering. 'I would have made a pathway to Heaven for you. I would have drawn a new world for you with my own blood.'
The woman leaned into his bloody touch, sobbing harder. "Your eyes... no... why are you smiling? Don't you see what we did? Shout at me! Scream at me like you always do! Say something, at least!"
She cried, stroking his cheek. "Rest now, Norvin. No more Thane. No more wars. Just sleep."
'I built a whole new world for you... and you erased it with your own hands just so I could sleep?'
'Is this what it feels like? To build something out of your ribs and bones, your blood and devotion... to turn yourself inside out... to declare war against the entire world... and to say, "Look what I have for you"... only to have it rejected?'
The woman scrambled to the floor with him, caressing his face with her tender arms. "I always get this feeling with you... chatting and laughing as if unburdened... I had given up all hope in this world, but you... you were more than my hope."
The young girl fell to her knees beside him, grabbing his cooling hand. "When you were with me, my heart soared across the skies. Such was our connection, our bond. I yearned to stay with you... but you... you made it impossible. You took it all on yourself? I never doubted you... but all the responsibilities was killing you..."
A few yards away, amidst the dust and rubble, Grazen Herz and Ven Trueblade watched in stunned silence. The two strongest warriors humanity had to offer lowered their weapons, exchanging confused glances.
"This is madness," Ven Trueblade spat, wiping dust from his armor. "They speak of love while sliding the knife deeper."
"It is not a trap," He murmured, his voice heavy with a soldier's grim realization. "It is a tragedy. They believe they are saving him from himself."
"Saving him?" Grazen scoffed. "They just handed us the victory."
But it didn't feel like a victory. It felt like watching a star collapse.
Rayne's vision faded to grey. He could hear their voices—professing love, professing hope, claiming he was their world—while he lay dying by their design.
'Then why?' Rayne asked the darkness. 'I let the whole world know... you were the only desire I had. When you came to me, happiness followed. When you were far, my life was taken away. I yearned to stay with you two.'
His final breath rattled in his chest, a sound like crumbling stone.
'Have I not given enough to you two?'
If only they had whispered their wishes to him. If they had just asked for peace, he would have climbed into the sky, grabbed the Transient God of Silver Abyss by the throat, and shattered the heavens to make it possible. He would have died for them a thousand times over.
But to be betrayed? To be killed by the hands he held with love?
'Where did I go wrong?' Rayne thought, the question echoing in the hollow chamber of his fading mind. 'Was my love too heavy? Was my protection a cage? I gave you a kingdom, and you….you gave me a grave.'
Grazen Herz took heavy, crunching steps through the rubble, closing in on the three of them.
"Bastard..." Grazen spat, his voice dripping with venomous disbelief. "You fought two Warlords to a standstill. You burned armies. You reshaped the map. And now? You will die by the hands of weaklings?"
Grazen raised his hand. The air shrieked as a spell formed without a single chant—a testament to his terrifying power. A massive, jagged blade of pure Chaos materialized in his grip, vibrating with enough force to split the mountain.
"I will not let some girls steal my glory," Grazen snarled. "I will kill you with my own hands."
'This feeling...' Rayne realized, watching the blade rise through a haze of blood. 'This hollow, freezing loss... it only happens when you love something much more than yourself. It happens when you give a knife to someone you love, believing they will use it to cut your ropes, only to find they use it to cut your throat.'
Right at this moment, the sobbing stopped.
The woman and the girl glanced up at the approaching Warlord. The sorrow in their eyes evaporated, replaced instantly by a feral, protective bloodlust. They had tried killing Rayne to save him from his burden, but they would burn the world before they let anyone else touch him.
"Take a step forward," the young silver-haired girl hissed, her voice trembling not with fear, but with rage, "and we will kill you."
Grazen Herz laughed. It was a cruel, barking sound. "You think you can kill me, girl? You filth! I am a Warlord! I am at the Pinnacle of this world! A thousand of you couldn't stand in my shadow, let alone my way! GET OUT!"
Grazen swung the Chaos blade.
"Stop!" Ven Trueblade shouted, stepping in.
But Grazen didn't. He was insulted. He was hungry for the kill. He charged forward, the ground cracking under his boots.
The older woman screamed, throwing up her hands. A barrier of crimson flame erupted—a desperate, amateurish defense fueled only by love.
CRACK.
It shattered in an instant. It was like holding a candle against a hurricane. How could she stand before a Warlord? How could a mortal stop a man with god-like strength?
The Chaos blade descended, aiming not for Rayne, but for the woman who stood in the way.
"Die, trash!" Grazen roared.
Rayne's heart stopped.
Time froze. He saw the blade. He saw the red hair. He saw the inevitable spray of blood.
'No.'
The word didn't come from his throat. It came from his soul.
'I accepted my death. I accepted your betrayal. But I do not accept this.'
Rayne moved.
He didn't have muscles left to move. He didn't have blood left to pump. But he had his trump-card. And he had a promise that transcended the grave.
A force—violent, invisible, and overwhelming—exploded outward. It wasn't the refined technique of a warrior; it was the raw, screaming rejection of reality.
Grazen Herz was blasted backward as if he had been hit by a siege weapon. He skid across the rubble, carving a trench in the stone, his Chaos blade shattering into dust.
"What?!" Grazen gasped, looking up in horror.
Rayne was standing.
The blade was still in his gut. His skin was pale as moonlight. But he was standing. He walked past the red-haired woman. He walked past the silver-haired girl. He placed himself between them and the monsters.
"Norvin! No!" the woman screamed, reaching for him. "Don't! You don't have to!"
"Don't use your last strength!" the girl wailed, grabbing at his tattered pants. "We can still leave! We can desert the battlefield! Please, just fall down! Just let us drag you away!"
"NO," Rayne spoke.
His voice was a ruin. It sounded like grinding stones.
He didn't look back at them. He couldn't. If he looked at their faces—the faces of his murderers, the faces of his beloveds—he would fall.
"I..." He wheezed, blood spilling from his lips with every word.
He took another step.
"I do not... leave... things... unfinished."
Ven Trueblade stared at the dying man, his eyes wide. "He is dead on his feet. His heart isn't even beating. What is driving him?"
"Sheer... absolute... madness," Grazen whispered, standing up, his arrogance replaced by a creeping dread.
Rayne walked forward, engaging in a brawl of Awen essence against the two Warlords. He didn't raise a sword. He raised his presence. The air around him twisted, heavy with the weight of a decade of suffering.
'I don't know what faces they are making behind me,' He thought, his vision narrowing to a pinprick of darkness. 'Are they crying? Are they screaming? Maybe... maybe they are smiling. Maybe they are relieved that I am finally dying.'
A blast of energy struck him. He didn't flinch. He absorbed it, turning the pain into fuel one last time.
'It doesn't matter,' he told himself as he swung a fist of pure gravity at Grazen. 'They killed me. They ended my dream. But they are still mine.'
"Why?!" Grazen screamed, blocking the blow and feeling his bones rattle. "Why fight for them? They betrayed you! They put the steel in your gut! Why defend the hands that murdered you?!"
Rayne didn't answer. He couldn't. The darkness was swallowing him.
'Because,' He thought, as he took another step, shielding the women from the blast, 'even if they hate me... even if they killed me... I still cannot bear the thought of rain falling on them, let alone a blade.'
He stumbled. His vision was gone. He was fighting blind, guided only by the sound of the Warlords' breathing and the sobbing behind him.
'Go,' he wished silently to the women behind him. 'Run. Leave me here. Let me be the wall one last time.'
He swung again, striking nothing but air, but standing so tall, so terrifyingly immovable, that the two strongest warriors in the world stepped back in fear.
Rayne stood there, dead but refusing to fall, a guardian ghost protecting his treacherous family.
Ven Trueblade lowered his massive sword, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the broken form of the man standing before him. The air around Rayne wasn't just heavy with death; it was vibrating with a wrongness that made the hairs on Ven's arms stand up.
"Grazen," Ven rumbled, his voice like grinding tectonic plates. "Inspect him. This isn't just will. I sense a curse. A tether."
Rayne stood there, swaying, a corpse puppeteered by a promise. He was in the weakest possible state— his heart silent.
"He is annoying me," Ven grunted. "He refuses to lie down."
Ven moved with the speed of a falling avalanche. He swung the flat of his colossal blade, slamming it into Rayne's chest.
BOOM.
The sound was like a cannon shot. His body was launched backward, tearing through the ruins of the throne room, smashing through the burning city walls, and flying several miles through the air.
He was a comet of blood and broken bone, arcing over the battlefield before crashing into the mud in the center of the chaotic war zone.
CRASH.
The impact created a crater thirty feet wide.
Grazen Herz teleported instantly, appearing above the crater, his face twisted in a sneer. He hovered in the air, looking down at the broken figure trying to rise from the mud.
"Still moving?" Grazen laughed, raising his hand. "Stay down, dog."
He didn't chant. He simply willed it.
A pillar of purple, crushing force slammed down on Rayne. Rayne's knees buckled. His shins cracked. And then, slowly, agonizingly... he knelt.
The man who had declared war on the world, the man who had sworn he would never bow to anyone but his own destiny, was forced into the mud.
"Good!" Grazen laughed arrogantly, descending to float just inches above the kneeling corpse. "This is what I wanted to see! I wanted to finish you with my own hands, Rayne! I wanted to see you break!"
He raised a finger, and a rain of chaos needles began to fall, piercing Rayne's skin, pinning him to the earth. But as the awen connected, Grazen's smile faltered. He sensed it. Deep inside the empty shell of Rayne's soul, there was a black residue.
"Ven!" Grazen shouted as the Titan landed beside him with a heavy thud. "He made a pact! There is a signature here... a Devil from Hell. Someone ancient."
Ven Trueblade looked at the kneeling boy, his expression darkening*. "A Hell Pact? That explains why he moves after death. But that is risky, Grazen. Everyone knows what the Devils from the deeper Hells are capable of. If he owes a soul debt to a High Devil, killing him might trigger a calamity."*
"We need to know," Ven commanded, turning his back to Rayne. He faced the outer rim of the crater*. "Check his memories. Find out who owns his soul."*
"Agreed," Grazen nodded.
Around them, the battlefield had fallen silent for a heartbeat, then erupted into chaos.
The Coalition forces cheered, seeing the dreaded Rayne smashed into the dirt. "The Warlords have him! Victory! Victory!"
But on the other side, the patchwork army of monsters—Giants, Demons, and deserters—saw something else. They saw their God return to the field. They didn't see him kneeling in defeat; they saw him kneeling in prayer before the slaughter.
"RAYNE!" a Giant roared, charging the crater. "Push forward! Save him!"
Ven Trueblade lifted his sword, his Titan aura flaring like a golden sun. "Come then, vermin," he growled, preparing to slaughter the remnants of Rayne's dream while his partner dissected the dreamer.
Grazen didn't waste a second. He was a Phantom Cipher, a mage of unparalleled mental acuity. He raised three fingers.
In an instant, without a single word of enchantment, three high-tier spells manifested simultaneously.
Chains of ethereal light erupted from the ground, locking Rayne's spirit to his body so he couldn't pass on.
Two more green eye opened on Grazen's face, analyzing the curse, tracing the black residue to its source.
Grazen thrust his hand forward, his fingers sinking into Rayne's forehead as if it were water.
Thousands of miles away, in a place where the sun never shone and the mountains were made of black glass, a being stood on the cliff of Giant Bones.
He was immense, his form shifting between nature itself and a figure of human shadow. He had been gazing on the war hundreds of miles away through his senses. He saw the betrayal. He saw the death. He saw the kneeling.
The monster sighed, a sound that caused earthquakes in the surrounding region.
"Looks like you broke your promise, Rayne," the entity spoke, his voice sounding like tearing metal. "You promised you wouldn't die a dog's death. Now... I have to interfere."
The being jumped from the cliff.
Back in the crater, Grazen Herz gasped as his consciousness was sucked into the vortex of Rayne's mind. The noise of the war faded. The smell of blood vanished.
The darkness swirled and cleared, revealing a memory from the past.
Grazen watched as the memory solidified. He was looking at a scene from seven years ago.