The sword gleamed in his hand, stained with impossible red.
The battlefield was ash. The sky, fractured.
And in the middle of it all, a figure stood with its back to the light.
It had no face—only an open book hovering above its shoulder.
From it sprouted black roots, devouring bodies, souls, names.
The hero screamed.
—"NO!"
And awoke.
Elyen, the Sacred Swordsman of the Solar Kingdom, sat up, drenched in sweat. His cloak clung to his back, breath shallow. The chamber where the five heroes rested trembled with lingering energy from the dream.
—"The dream again?" Nerea, the Timeweaver, asked without opening her eyes.
Elyen didn't answer immediately.
Only one image remained in his mind: a black flower blooming between bones.
And a name… one he didn't remember ever learning.
Far below the castle, deep in the forgotten archive, Kael walked down a corridor that hadn't existed the day before.
The walls were carved in a language he couldn't read, veined with dried roots that cracked beneath his fingers.
The air here wasn't cold—it was heavy. Each step felt like sinking into someone else's memory.
At the end of the tunnel, a circular chamber.
At its heart, a garden. Alive.
Black roses, identical to the symbol in his book, grew without soil, without light, without soul.
They floated over pools of darkness that pulsed with distant heartbeats.
Kael knelt before one of them.
—"Why do you exist… without me?"
The book responded. It opened on its own, revealing a page he had never seen before.
Three names, written in bone-colored ink:
Artemis Vael — the First Gardener
Mirei Luth — the Second
— "The Traitor"
Kael brushed his fingers over the third name. The ink had been gouged out, like the world itself had tried to forget it.
The book trembled. Another line appeared beneath the others:
Kael Valen — The Last?
—"The last?" he whispered. But something deep within him already knew:
This wasn't a gift. It was a cursed inheritance.
Behind him, a voice like cracking branches spoke:
—"The Garden does not bloom through power."
—"Then how?" Kael asked, not turning around.
—"Through pain."
—"And what if it doesn't hurt anymore?"
Silence.
The roses withered.
And on the ground, a black root slowly rose… shaping into a face.
His own.