The slanted rays of the sun rested upon the polished stone.
Where the name 'MIYA' now gleamed with stark clarity.
Kelen's calloused fingers traced the engraved letters with an agonizing tenderness.
As if he were touching a face rather than cold marble.
The biting morning wind tugged at his heavy coat, but Kelen remained motionless.
The faint, rhythmic clinking of his chain—Chink...—felt like a heavy sob.
Echoing through the cemetery's absolute silence.
"I am still wearing the shackles of that promise, Miya," Kelen's voice was so low it seemed to dissolve into the mist.
He diverted his gaze from the gleaming new blade to the withered grass at his feet.
"I don't like staying in this uniform anymore... carrying this iron. It's hollowing me out from the inside."
He exhaled a long, labored breath that turned into a plume of white vapor in the morning chill.
"Everyone calls me the 'Sentinel of Vespera,' but even in this crowded city... I feel utterly alone."
"There is no one here who understands the silence you left behind."
His hand instinctively drifted to the chain bolted to his wrist.
He felt as though the links weren't just for his weapon, but for the emotions he had kept locked away from the world.
He leaned closer to the cold stone, as if waiting for a whisper of a response, but Miya's grave remained silent.
A sharp gust of wind whistled through the cemetery shrubs.
Kelen closed his eyes and embraced the loneliness.
A weight far heavier than the cold steel bound to his arm.
Kelen closed his eyes, and the silence erupted into a cacophony of ghosts.
The cold headstone vanished, replaced by a hazy, sun-drenched memory.
He saw the first flicker of Miya—a tiny doll of six or seven, her hair dancing in the wind.
She was clutching Kelen's finger with her small hand, chirping, "Kelen brother"
That innocent laughter still echoed in his ears like honey.
But then, the veil of memory shifted.
The girl was older now, twelve or thirteen.
A touch of maturity had entered her voice; she would run to him, calling out, "brother!"
With a face radiant with the pride she felt for her soldier brother.
The cycle of memories spun faster.
Now, Miya was a beautiful young woman of eighteen, her eyes brimming with compassion for Vespera.
She often said, "brother, I want to help everyone... the people here are so good, they need us."
Suddenly, the golden light turned to ash. The scene morphed.
Kelen's breathing grew labored.
He remembered that horrific house, the shadow of a wall falling across Miya's broken form.
She lay there, drenched in dust and crimson.
The light in her eyes was flickering out, her eyelids growing heavy—like a lamp fluttering for the final time.
As Kelen gathered her into his trembling arms, Miya looked up at him through the haze of death.
Her lips quivered, and a sound emerged that shattered Kelen's heart into a thousand pieces:
"Brother... it hurts so much..."
Kelen's fist tightened against the gravestone until his knuckles turned white.
That pain... those final words were still embedded in his chest like a jagged blade.
The 'Sentinel of Vespera' had been unable to stop the agony of his own sister that day.
He snapped his eyes open. Miya wasn't there; only the stone remained.
The new chain bolted to his wrist—the Leopard's Claw—shimmered in the morning light.
As if it, too, were a part of that unkept promise and that final, lingering pain.
The scene reawakened in Kelen's mind with a violent clarity.
He gathered Miya's blood-soaked form into his trembling arms.
He was sprinting like a madman through the debris-choked alleyways.
The sound of his heavy boots hitting the blood-slicked mud—Splosh... Splosh...—mimicked the rhythm of a dying heartbeat.
He held her so tightly it felt as though he were trying to breathe his own life back into her.
Pulling her from the very jaws of death.
Miya's face had turned a ghostly pallor, and her breath—Wheeze...—sounded like a fractured flute.
She raised her trembling fingers, touching the hardened skin of Kelen's cheek.
Where a warm trail of a single tear was forming.
"Brother..." her voice was fainter than a passing breeze.
"I'm sorry... I won't be able to help anyone now. I wanted more time... with you..."
Kelen's racing world came to a shattering halt.
The small hand that had been cradling his face suddenly went limp, slipping away—Thud.
It hung there, swinging lifelessly like a broken pendulum.
Her eyes remained open, but they no longer held the dreams of Vespera; they held only an infinite void.
Kelen's scream died in his throat.
In that instant, every sound in the world vanished.
There was only the rustle of the wind and the leaden weight of Miya's cooling body in his arms.
The warrior who played with death was now watching his entire world turn to dust within his own grasp.
The veil of memory snapped back, and Kelen was once again in the cemetery.
He looked down at the Leopard's Claw bolted to his wrist.
In the shimmer of the steel, he saw the final light of Miya's eyes.
He clenched his fist so hard that the links of the chain bit deep into his flesh.
The silence of the cemetery was now screaming in Kelen's ears.
He remained collapsed on his knees before Miya's grave, his body as rigid as the headstone itself.
His arms were still curved, frozen in the posture of cradling her eighteen-year-old form.
As if her weight still anchored him to the earth.
He could still feel the phantom warmth of her blood against his skin.
And the final, rhythmic shudder of her failing lungs.
He tightened his grip slightly, instinctively shielding the little Miya who used to fall asleep in his lap.
A gust of wind brushed past his hair.
And for a fleeting second, Kelen felt the weight of her head resting against his shoulder.
"Just... one more moment," Kelen whispered.
His eyes mirroring the terrifying void that only death can witness.
Trembling, he extended his right hand to touch the 'presence' he felt in his lap.
As his fingers reached toward the spot where he saw Miya's face, the air grew frigid.
The moment his skin made contact with the 'image,' she didn't feel like a living being.
Instead, she dissolved like a stray mist of the morning, flowing through the gaps between his fingers.
The shadow of Miya—the six-year-old child, the laughing teenager—vanished in a heartbeat like drifting smoke.
Kelen's hands fell back onto his empty lap.
There was no blood, no Miya, no lingering presence.
There was only a grave and a brother whose hands were now filled with nothing but dirt and chains.
He clenched his fist tight, and the chain of the Leopard's Claw bolted to his wrist—Cling-Cling...—cried out as it struck the lifeless stone.
Reality had delivered a violent blow. He was alone. Utterly alone.