Chapter 344: The Death That Wouldn’t Die (5)
*
Death has come, yet I cannot die.
Kyle realized something was binding his soul to his body. Standing at the edge of the road, he saw a new path attempting to unfold before him.
A road stained black.
A path that denies every road he has walked. Therefore, it also denies the life of Kyle Toven. Naturally, he could not walk such a path. He had to resist.
But how?
His body wouldn’t move.
Even if his soul were still attached to his body, this body was already dead. A dead body can’t be moved. In that moment, Kyle realized.
Is that so?
Was this it?
Was this what you were trying to stop me from?
Raniel from the future.
The Goddess of Ashes had told Kyle
that her world had perished. It had turned to ashes. Crying out in despair, the future Raniel had pleaded with Kyle.
Please, don’t go there.
When Kyle heard her words, a question brewed within him. The world had ended? Why? At this moment, he found it hard to think of an enemy that could surpass Raniel, who possessed the Star.
“The disaster… there are many I must kill, many I must defeat. So many…”
Moreover, parts of what Raniel said were obscured. By hiding certain information and distorting it, Raniel concealed something from Kyle. She didn’t lie, but she also didn’t tell him everything.
Yet then.
When Raniel pronounced the word “disaster,” Kyle recalled that her gaze had been directed at him. Remembering that fact, Kyle let out a hollow laugh.
So I was your enemy.
Before the unfolded road, Kyle smiled bitterly.
The blackened road was the path of corruption.
A life as a disaster awaited Kyle, not as a human. Something pushed him from behind. Whispering for him to become its vessel. Ignoring that whisper, Kyle thought.
No, it can’t be.
Kyle opened his eyes.
He moved his body. Each time he exerted strength, a crunch echoed as his flesh began to crumble, but Kyle stubbornly moved. To do what he had to do.
He pushed Sara away.
He was faced with an encroaching shadow.
At the moment the shadow swallowed him, Kyle felt his consciousness tremble. His identity twisted. What he believed began to distort. Within that horrific sensation, Kyle gritted his teeth.
Crunch.
Gritting his teeth, he held onto his awareness.
He must resist. The result that came with that bastard’s future must not come to pass. He had to show that bastard the possibility of another future.
So, he must resist.
Even if this action might seem meaningless… he had to resist, for struggling until the very end is the specialty of humanity.
Sword.
The man who refused death.
The one who chose to resist until the end prayed to a god unknown to him. Perhaps it was a prayer to himself.
…If only there was a sword.
The winds that scattered the whispers.
The star didn’t listen to that wish.
Yet that voice reached someone. The Goddess of Ashes listened to the human’s wish. To grant that wish, she took a handful of the remaining time and created a miracle.
Flurry.
Ash dust scattered.
A handful of ashes that rose from the darkness was brilliant. So brilliant that it became the guide for Kyle even in the darkness. His eyes, which were about to close, widened.
…Ah.
A smile leaked from his lips.
Where the ashes flow, there lies a sword (?).
The life he had let go of is still there.
Crack.
Kyle grabbed the Holy Sword.
Starlight did not rise.
2.
The moment he held the sword, Kyle realized what he needed to do. His blurred consciousness became clear. With a sharp mind, Kyle thought.
What can I do?
What can I unleash?
It’s impossible to cut the surging shadow.
It’s also impossible to cut the path of corruption that lay ahead. Only impossibilities remained. The time given to him had already run out.
…How absurd.
He was called the strongest hero.
Yet at the very end, what he could do was utterly pathetic. Even that felt desperate to Kyle now.
Holding tightly onto the sword, Kyle made a decision.
“Raniel.”
Kyle hoped.
“I leave the rest to you.”
As he prayed to her, who must be listening to his voice, Kyle moved the sword. A sharpened blade did not point towards the shadow. The tip was aimed at himself.
Thud.
Kyle pierced his heart with the sword.
A mouthful of blood erupted from Kyle’s lips. The shadow that was engulfing him momentarily surged. The origin of the shadow was his heart. At its core, Kyle carved a wound.
A wound etched into the root.
A flaw that would never be erased.
Without mending that wound, the shadow swallowed Kyle’s spirit and flesh. Even as Kyle felt his consciousness plunging into the darkness, he murmured.
…This will do.
This would be enough of a variable, right?
Wouldn’t it, Raniel?
With those final thoughts, Kyle closed his eyes in the fading consciousness.
Because he closed his eyes.
Because he thought it was over.
Thus, Kyle could not see.
…Don’t joke with me.
The moment he closed his eyes, her movement.
The Saint, Sara.
*
Sara watched as Kyle was swallowed by the shadow.
Kyle, entangled in darkness, was changing. Sara instinctively sensed that Kyle’s soul was fracturing. She could tell it wasn’t the typical betrayal, but rather something entirely different.
I must run away.
I must flee right now.
Her instincts warned her.
Something chilling was about to be born. It was not the Kyle she knew. Something that surpassed a disaster would appear right there. Without thinking, Sara took a step back.
One step back, then another.
As she retreated, something caught her eye.
It was the ash dust remaining on the sword Kyle held. Sara recognized whose it was. Raniel. The Ashen Mage, Raniel.
…Until the very end, Raniel helped Kyle.
The voice of the future Raniel, her pleading face, flashed through Sara’s mind. Stopping in her tracks, Sara staggered.
…For real.
She was a jealous person.
A person with deep ownership issues.
Sara let out a hollow laugh as she brushed her hair back. Then she took a trembling step forward. She approached the changing Kyle.
“Don’t joke with me.”
As if she were the one in a relationship, a real gem of a person.
“That man.”
Kyle Toven is.
“Mine.”
That man belongs to me.
Just when she thought she had cleared out some filthy elf, a childhood friend from the future showed up… then moved that aside and now it’s a god (?).
Sara let out a hollow laugh.
There are far too many rivals.
‘Why do they keep coveting someone else’s man?’
Laughing lightly, Sara walked on.
With her back straight and shoulders back, confidently.
Sara embraced Kyle, who was engulfed in shadow. Pressing her skin against his, she thought of the last price she could offer.
It was her specialness.
The uniqueness of being chosen by a god.
Just as Kyle had given up his uniqueness for Raniel, something similar could be possible for herself. Sara squeezed every ounce of her specialness. That was the essence of who ‘Sara’ was.
Chosen as a saint.
Raised as a saint.
Adored by everyone, she lived her childhood entranced by her specialness. To Sara, being a saint was everything. She knew that without this uniqueness, she would become nothing.
‘But it was that way from the beginning.’
Still, it didn’t matter.
Though she had lived her whole life as a saint, in front of Kyle, she was just a girl. A girl who fell in love like any ordinary girl, who dated like any ordinary girl. So it didn’t matter at all.
Without hesitation, Sara spoke.
“I’ll offer it.”
The life of a saint.
All the memories of having lived as a saint.
The sanctity given because she was a saint.
Sacrificing all of that, Sara created a small light. With the light on her lips, she grabbed Kyle by the collar. Pressing her lips against Kyle’s cold mouth, she passed the light into him.
In that moment, Sara’s pupils dilated sharply.
It felt as though white paint was poured into her mind; the memories began to bleach away. In her fading consciousness, Sara barely managed to utter a single phrase.
“I love you, Kyle.”
In those last moments, Sara smiled.
Like an ordinary girl, not as a saint.
3.
The Goddess of Ashes watched it all unfold.
Raniel, who came from the future 13 years later, struggled to understand the situation that had unfolded here. Yet she could grasp nothing.
A miracle occurred.
Variables layered upon variables.
The choice Kyle made at the end, Sara’s actions, all had not happened in the past Raniel experienced. Things that hadn’t occurred were now happening.
…Unpredictable.
Raniel sensed the path toward the future had veered off course. Of course, the main path remained unchanged. Despite the variables created by the two, Kyle began to succumb to a betrayal. Soon, a new disaster would appear upon this land.
Yet.
…It’s not the same.
The disaster she experienced was.
With the Sword of Yeocheon, Kyle had been nearly perfect.
To kill Kyle, Raniel had to lose so much. She made countless sacrifices, turning so many to ashes just to reach him. But what of the current Kyle?
He was not perfect.
He was incomplete.
He bore an irremovable scar on his heart, and the light that Sara had planted shimmered within the shadow. The variables had rendered Kyle an imperfect being. To Raniel, that was a possibility.
The chance to head toward a different future.
The possibility to reach a future different from what she had imagined. A hint of light flickered within Raniel’s eyes, which had lost their luster for so long.
…Perhaps.
Perhaps, Raniel murmured.
Perhaps, just perhaps…
The best rather than the worst could become possible.
Fearing to vocalize it, Raniel pondered the condition for its realization.
…If someone can seize it.
There would surely be only one.
“Next.”
The Goddess of Ashes paused before Raniel.
“Next is your turn, Raniel.”
The Goddess of Ashes smiled bitterly.
…I’ll be waiting.
If only it were the country of thirteen years ago.
If it were a nation that had not fallen apart.
If it were a country that sought the best.
‘Perhaps I could find some answers.’
The Goddess of Ashes took a step forward.
She took a final leap through time—to the last point she remembered, ten days into the future.
*
