Jared was winning. He knew the old man’s limits, knew about his weakness in a war of attrition. The young man would never have been able to outright overwhelm Lux but he sure as hell knew he could wear him down until he could. A swipe with another tendril nearly made it possible to gut the old Hero like a fish yet a hasty defence stopped it.

“You’re going to die, Lux,” Jared taunted as he became relentless, firing blow after blow and forcing the old man to go on the defensive. No attacks were allowed to hit, lest Lux would die. Jared was more than happy to see it happen, however. Any second and it would all be-

The shadows detected the projectile before Jared could even blink, the sheer speed barely allowing him to widen his eyes by the slightest bit before feeling the impact upon his chest. The powers of shadow shielding him hundreds of times, stopping it from hitting directly, yet the sheer power of it stopped Jared from staying in the air. Nearly a kilometre away, he hit the ground with a not-so-soft landing, his back broken as his shadows felt weak. Nothing seemed to work.

Jared was meant to be a being filled with power. He had the abilities of one of the strongest Heroes to ever live, for god’s sake! Trying to force his back to obey him, the young man found he couldn’t feel anything below his stomach. His hands barely twitched when he tried to clench his fist.

His power was… muted? No, that wasn’t right. The muscles used to command them just weren’t properly connected anymore. Jared couldn’t make them move right, his internals was all out of order. Looking down, it seemed a good part of his stomach was bleeding. He might have been impaled by the rocks. He wasn’t sure, not able to twist his head enough to take a look.

“We could have avoided this, you know,” Lux said sorrowfully, the old Hero going down to the ground close to Jared. There was still a good ten metres of distance. In an instant, Jared would have been able to close in. Not anymore, however. Not ever again. “We could have talked things about, made agreements about our differences, and perhaps even moved on.”

…

“In the last fifteen years, I have done nothing but pray to see your decapitated head in my hands,” Jared informed the old man, not liking the lack of reaction his word received. “Every night, I would dream of the day I would get to kill you. Every step is one I wished would have been on your corpse. Every breath I have taken has been for the sole purpose of letting me live another instant so I could kill you.”

“And this is what you have gotten yourself into because of it,” Lux summarised, looking around the piece of the forest they were in. Jared did the same, noting the trees that had been ripped out of the ground. Some parts were on fire as well, the destruction wreaking havoc. If left unattended, it would quite likely be the fire of the decade for the Sector. “Do you feel proud of this?”

“The only thing I feel is a sadness about not getting it right,” Jared said with some form of tears in his eyes. “You are dead and I’m… this.”

“We can’t do things again, Jared. You of all people should know that,” Lux replied with some grim smile. “No matter how much you wish things were different, no matter how much you regret what you have done, there is nothing in this world that will turn back time. There is no power, no tool, and no amount of spite that will let you regret what has already been done.”

“If this is meant to make me forgive you, it isn’t working,” Jared said, once again trying to make the shadows force his body together. His senses to his lower body had been entirely disconnected but the powers he wielded were meant to have some form of healing properties. If only he could force them to work, he could have another chance. “The moment I get out of here, I’ll just try again.”

“I am sorry, Jared, but that is not going to happen,” Lux apologised, pulling out a small phone. A number was pressed on it before the device was thrown on the ground, left to be forgotten for now. “This isn’t something I can allow to repeat. You have hurt people today. You have killed a Hero that the world revered. Do I have to guess that you have killed others before him as well?”

“Every new power needs a sacrifice,” Jared confirmed with a sing-song voice. “It’s for the greater good.”

“For one who hates that kind of thoughts, you sure seem to use it to justify your actions a lot,” Lux pointed out, standing over the broken man. Jared looked back at him with eyes filled with hate. He tried to grab at him yet his arm barely moved at all. “You have allowed this part of you to consume your entire life, Jared. You’ve been so hellbent on revenge for the lives lost that I think you have forgotten to live your own in the meanwhile. Tell me, who do you care about?”

“Myself.”

“Who else?” Lux asked. “What other person, in the last fifteen years, have you cared about?”

…

“I did something I regret every day. Every time I think back to it, I wish I could have done something different, that some other choices proved themselves possible. But there wasn’t. Jared, I did the only thing I could do while keeping the world safe.”

“And how about my parents?” Jared shouted. “They were innocent.”

“There’s no way to have known at the time,” Lux replied with a sigh. “The others will be here at any second now, Jared. I don’t know what is going to happen to you from this point but I hope that some part of you will forgive me in the coming years. I killed hundreds to save the lives of thousands and I hope that you will understand in the future.”

The moment that Lux turned to walk away was the moment that Jared struck, sending the final barrage of shadows toward his one enemy in the world. He needed to win. He needed to know that his one goal in life wasn’t a failure.

“Please die.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lux wasn’t hit at all. That’s what it looked like at first. Then that thin line of blood began to run down his cheek. Just at the side of the old man’s left eye, a cut had been made. Blood flowed through it in small waves, following the rhythm of the Hero’s heart.

Laying his head back down onto the grass, Jared looked up at the sky. There were no clouds, granting him a world of blue. It was beautiful. The empty man nearly didn’t notice when the chain went around his throat, his final connection to the shadows stopping. When his broken body was pulled through the portal to his eternal prison, Jared just looked on with teary eyes.

Had it always been so blue?