In a distant corner of the mortal plane, a young man of average looks sat on a boulder silently, his gaze unmoving from a piece of shattered jade in his hand.

Though his expression gave away nothing, the depths of his eyes flickered with an unceasing torrent of emotions.

Rage, sadness, confusion… He simply couldn’t understand.

Someone of her standing would most definitely have a life saving jade, why hadn’t it activated? Even if it didn’t active, who could have laid a hand on her to begin with? She was too smart… to highly valued…

The young man didn’t even notice when his frame began to tremble. He was unshakeable, a sturdy mountain that had stood for millennia, nothing had ever affected him to this extent. Most matters simply rolled off his shoulders, met by his carefree smile and nonchalant demeanor.

Yet she, the only person he cared about in this world, was dead.

‘Show me. Show me what happened.’

The shattered jade crumbled to dust, whirling into a vortex of light green gold that grew steadily in momentum. Soon, the image was projected for him to see.

However, he was astonished to find that there was nothing there. It was as though something was obstructing his vision.

‘That’s impossible…’

He knew well the level of treasure that was in his hand. There was nothing on the mortal plane it couldn’t see through. Aritzia herself had never even known he had attached such a thing to her. Yet, the very thing he trusted so much had actually failed.

Just as the young man was about to give up, the black image trembled. Who knew what happened, but the restriction was lifted.

‘No, this was deliberate. Whoever killed my Aritzia used some sort of seal, a seal more powerful than anything I could imagine, causing her life saving jade to fail to activate. After the deed was done, whoever they are realized this seal was no longer needed and removed it… Whatever is left now should be the final moments of her life…’

As the image slowly cleared, the young man’s heart clenched.

Aritzia fell to the ground, her white gown completely covered in blood. However, there was a smile on her face in her final moments.

When he heard her last words, a different kind of pain seared his chest, one that made his throat feel as though lava was dripping down its walls… his lungs feel as though there wasn’t enough air… his heart feel as though it would never beat again.

The final thing he saw before the image faded to black was Dyon’s condescending glance, that unfeeling glare hardly fluctuated beneath the words that should have been said to him. The young man could tell that Dyon truly didn’t care.

Staring blankly into space, the young man sat motionless.

One would think there would be thoughts running through his mind, but this was the absolute furthest from the truth. His mind… His heart, it was filled with nothing but emptiness, a void he suddenly felt was impossible to fill.

Who knew how long passed before the young man slowly stood.

His steps were slow and languid, lacking the very life and spirit they usually had. .𝘤𝘰𝑚

His body disappeared from the oddly quiet space with nothing but a single boulder, appearing in an ancient hall with tall looming archways.

The sounds of his soles lightly tapping the marble beneath his feet echoed. A loneliness that sunk to the depths of his bones pervaded his consciousness with every step, as though he was walking to a place of no return, a lone island where no one but he resided.

The hall was exceptionally long. Let alone hours, it took the young man a full three days to walk to its ends despite being well aware that if he used his full strength, just a few moments would have been enough.

But he seemed to want to feel every bit of the emotions racking his core right now. He never wanted to forget it. He wanted to be able to remember how every fiber of his being reacted in these moments.

Soon, he entered a grand space. Unlike what one might expect, the room was poorly decorated. Or, rather, it was more accurate to say that it hadn’t been decorated at all.

The walls were a plain grey, there weren’t any lights or fixtures, even making it here in the first place was inconvenient beyond normal circumstances.

However, what this hall did have were 13 pedestals… The last of which seemed completely out of place. Not because it was drastically different, but because it was the only of the 13 that didn’t have a single thing placed on it.

Aside from these last 13, the first 12 could be considered the only drawing attraction of this room. Valiant treasures, heroic tales, long lost legends… they seemed to incapsulate them all. One could get lost in a sea of knowledge despite the fact all the 12 pedestals held was a single statue and a single name.

However, the young man ignored these 12 pedestals completely. He didn’t even spare them a single glance after walking into the room. Instead, he focused on the 13th empty pedestal…

Though it had no statue like the other 12, what it did have was a name. The young man stared at it as though he was trying to sear it into his mind.

‘Dyon Sacharro, I will kill you with my own hands. What you’ve made me feel today, I will make you suffer through tenfold.’

The pedestal’s name glowed brightly, flashing a bright light. By the time it faded, the young man was gone.

All that was left was that single name.

Emytheus.

Author’s Note: I keep forgetting to find a place to slide this in because it never seems relevant to the plot at hand, but Dyon’s left eye is still missing. It’s just that he’s covered it with an illusion type array. Any attempt to heal his eye or even replace it with an artificial one ends it in bursting in flames once more. Anyhoo, back to our regularly scheduled program.

“That guy always ruins all of the fun.”

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