A great wind blows from the epicenter, carrying masses of dust and smoke. For a while, all Avalel can hear are the shrill screams of nature, cursing him for the pain inflicted upon it. Gradually, those sounds fade and so does the dust settle, revealing the destruction before him. A moment ago, the headquarters stood as it is, a structure hastily built yet sturdy, the center of operations for the Confederation. Now, there lies only rubble. The Confederation army has lost its forms of communication, its command, its brain.

It is only a matter of time before Avalel won, but somehow, he feels not jubilation nor relief… but emptiness. A nihilistic emptiness.

Is it protection that he wants? To end the war and let the people return to their long-forgotten lives? To be the savior that rescues the people from the depths of despair and defeat? He failed to protect his dearest friends. What gives him the right, the responsibility, the drive to protect the world when he can’t even protect those closest to him?

Or is it chaos that he desires? The corrupted world burnt to the ground? The world that no longer can hold the presence of intelligent, destructive life, killing each other for the sake of some ulterior motive? If so, then why is he leading armies, preventing a city burnt to ashes, reviving a cause once lost to weakness and sloth?

Or… maybe it’s neither. Maybe he’s just lost. He no longer knows what he wants. Ever since that day when the Anapadeia struck his comrade on his own volition… he has lost himself. He took over the New Rule, but for what? It was neither a burst of impulse nor a long-planned coup. Yet here he stands, a trail of ash and scorched earth before his eyes, the enemy headquarters in flames. The savior of the New Rule, once again delivering the soldiers, the people from the Confederation. Unlike before, he is not an unknown boy. He leads a faction now, a de facto nation. He cannot shrink back. He isn’t allowed to shrink back.

Yet he is confused, very confused. Only now, he’s beginning to doubt himself. What was he doing all this time? Why did he kill the President? Why did he kill Ipela? Why did he sacrifice tens of thousands of troops? Why is he smiling even at this moment?

He looks at the Anapadeia, the pose all so familiar. The sword tip pointing slightly upwards, the blade still feeling the warmth of energy instead of blood. Instead of the death of one so dear to him, it’s the death of thousands he never even met. How far has he come since he felt faint from seeing only a hundred dead before his eyes? Just how far has the Anapadeia led him?

So you have realized.

The voice. Ever since Tarak was gone, it had never appeared. Then why, why now of all times? The voice that he once so feared, possessing his mind and body for a limited amount of time. Now, of all times, it returns to torture him.

His army dissipates before him, the gray smoke-filled landscape gradually dissolving and spiraling away. There are no soldiers, no vehicles, no aircraft. There are no bombardments, no blasts, not even a trace of their sounds. Instead, he finds himself warped to a strangely familiar location, so serene, quiet, the sky above a brilliant blue, the light beaming down on his dirty armor. There is no one but himself, the breeze whistling through as it passes by him, the grass swaying timelessly as usual.

Yet as he removes his damaged helmet, he finds himself staring at a little girl, dressed plainly in white. Her emerald green eyes stare at him like that of a serpent, immediately probing deep inside his core, searching for… something.

“Hello, young one.”

The girl smiles.

“No, no, no…”

The guilt hits. His memories return to him in horrifying clarity. The blood on the Anapadeia as Tarak slipped away before his eyes. The paralyzed Confederation troops, their energy flow damaged with shallow cuts. The rallying of the people before him, proclaiming his leadership and superiority as their savior. The cold, efficient slash, ending his rescuer’s life. Ipela’s life. Without a second thought.

The cut hand of Tevlaia, crumpling on the ground, the splattered blood still vividly stained in his mind.

How many had he broken since he lost control? How many had perished by the flick of his hand? How much of himself has he already lost?

He crumbles to the ground, an acute pain piercing his head from within, dropping the Anapadeia to the ground. He had done all of this without ever flinching or hesitation. Power, the very thing he adamantly rejected… Why is it firmly in his grasp? Everything that he has done… Why?

The girl laughs. “You seem to be in a state of confusion, young one. Perhaps you weren’t yourself when you marched on your rapid ascent to power?”

Her voice stabs at him, pinning him to the ground. Her small frame seems almost like that of a giant to him, her tiny shadow seeming to encompass the entire landscape. As she approaches closer, Avalel feels simultaneously the intense, torturous flames of an eternal fire and the crazed freeze of an undying blizzard. Strange, considering he had never tended a furnace nor did he ever venture to the peak of a snow-capped mountain.

“But I have.” The girl kneels down, her dainty, chill fingers running across Avalel’s paling face. “Even after all these months, you’re still a weak boy, afraid, wallowing in despair. You lead people now, do you realize that?” Her voice is soft, almost to a murmur, yet holding the strength and rumble of a beast’s roar. As she lifts Avalel’s chin to face her, her gem-like eyes bear down on him, revealing the authority of a leader yet the mystery of a rogue.

Avalel trembles, his lips unable to even utter a single word. The mighty savior of the New Rule on his knees, at the mercy of a little girl. In this dreamlike realm, his eyes simultaneously ablaze and frozen in place. The Anapadeia glows, the metal ringing like funeral bells centuries old.

“That sound is familiar as well,” the girl says as she holds Avalel’s hand, lifting him up to his feet. “I’ve heard it many times. It’s a shame they do not hold such customs nowadays.”

As Avalel stands, the girl changes physically before him. The body morphs and grows, the clothes melts and reforms. Instead of giant gems curiously probing at his core, he finds himself staring at a singular eye, the other concealed by a mass of fine silver hair. Instead of a childlike appearance no older than ten years of age, the girl looks at him face-to-face, her features bearing an elegant confidence completely lacking in Avalel.

“You share many similarities with me, don’t you? Even though we are so far apart.”

An illusion of a weapon, illustrated by energy, begins forming on her right hand until it becomes a silhouette of light unmistakable for anything else. A weapon of mass destruction, a powerful relic of the past, a sword orchestrating his fall to power. With a slight flick of her wrist, the illusion suddenly seems to cut the air in half, leaving Avalel unable to breathe for just a moment, the particles all but pushed away before they converge and mingle again.

And as quickly as it was formed, the illusion disappears again, becoming only pockets of energy that fades like smoke dissipating into the environment, leaving Avalel gasping for air, in shock from such a small move.

The girl lightly touches Avalel’s coarse lips with her index finger, leaving a red mark and a rusted taste. “Please calm down, young one. Do not be afraid. I have been your loyal companion for all this time, after all.”

She gently holds Avalel’s hand, using it to touch her forehead. “I have a physical form in this realm as well. I’m no different than you, at least here.”

Yet Avalel cannot hear those words. Upon contact, endless scenes of carnage flood his mind. The broken, burning flag of some nation long ago atop a pyre for the dead. A helmet dented beyond recognition. The ruins of a fortress still smoldering from its remains. Shards of a gauntlet, hacked to pieces.

Two young women, their faces unrecognizable, their bodies incomplete, staining the stone bricks in a puddle of blood.

Frantically, he shrinks his hand away, the scenes flashing away as he sees the girl before him again.

“Ah, I accidentally showed you my memories, didn’t I?” she says, putting no extra effort into her words. “Although to call it an ‘accident’ will make it seem like it is my mistake…”

“W… What… were those…” Avalel stammers, the words forced out of his mouth.

“I thought you have been used to such scenes,” the girl says. “As I have said, they are memories. I often relive them here every once in a while. They remind me of who I was, of my weak self. Before my journey began.”

“A-Are—”

“Please speak with clarity. You are not a toddler, though you may be one in my eyes.” She stares sternly at him, her demeanor like that of a general commanding their soldiers to speak.

“Are you the voice?” Avalel asks, suddenly gaining the courage to raise his voice.

“I am,” the girl replies. “In a way, I am your mother as well, the one who birthed, who rose your old Empire to its greatness. The one who eventually birthed you.”

“No, you’re not—”

“Are you not Avalel nai Stasibel, the last descendant of the Achien Empire? The one so cowardly to refuse the scepter bestowed upon you by Fate, by Power?” Speaking this, the girl scoffs, the wind and grass laughing with her.

“I do not want power!” Avalel shouts.

“Oh, finally brave enough to shout back at me?”

“If I had never been corrupted by you, by the greed and thirst for power, all these atrocities wouldn’t have happened!”

“And yet I have accepted that same power, the promise, the contract between two parties,” the girl says. “I have never resisted it, nor have I allowed it to possess myself. As you eventually became.”

“You… You are not the origin?”

“Are you stupid?” The girl suddenly lashes out, her expressions molded almost into another person entirely, the previous elegance replaced with a rough, loud voice. “I am just a body here, and so are you. That should’ve been obvious, right? And, and, and you just stubbornly refuse to take up the power and responsibility! Do you know how stupid it is to reject something you can use to protect and save your people? So much for ‘protecting others’, your stubbornness is the reason you lost so much! You lost your own independence! If not for the Anapadeia, you are already rotting under a pile of dirt!”

“No,” the girl interrupts herself. The voice changes again as she speaks with a slight accent, punching every word with clarity and simple pronunciations. “Take the power. Before too late.”

The sudden attitude changes are abnormal, unseen before for Avalel. It is almost as if the girl before her is only a vessel harboring three separate persons in one. He can only stand stunned as she twitches a little, her arms motioning for something, before she returns to her previous expressions, calm and dignified.

“I apologize for my lack of control earlier,” she says, making a mysterious cordial gesture of sorts. “Yet as you may have realized at this point, you have already lost yourself. You can only be yourself, your cowardly self, in this realm that I have prepared for you… No, that we have prepared for you.”

“What do you mean? Who are you?”

“I am called many names,” the girl says. “The stone, the girl, the conqueror, the first Queen and founder of the Achien Empire…”

A grand robe envelops her, her eyes now shining brighter than ever as she looks at him in regal pride and authority. Her hands are raised high as if they are grasping the sky, beckoning for the wind to heed her call. A pair of magnificent flaming wings materialize behind her, so strong in heat yet leaving her completely unharmed. To Avalel’s shock, the Anapadeia races towards her, soon landing firmly in her grasp. The girl herself seems to have aged a bit as well, her features more defined with an aura of complete maturity, able to command the respect of millions beneath the sword. Her sword.

“I am I,” a different voice says, coming from the stone even as the girl’s mouth moves. “I am Elethien. We are two. We are one. We are I. We are Elethien.”

Avalel finds himself shifting closer to her until their noses almost touch, his body having nowhere to run or hide. As Elethien’s eyes glare at him with their strikingly beautiful green, the jewel on the Anapadeia becomes pitch black, completely devoid of light.

“Soon,” both of their voices say, overlapping each other. “We are, I am… you.”

“Then who… am I?”

“You, Avalel nai Stasibel, are dead,” the two voices proclaim. “Your core resides here now, as does your father, your grandfather, of all descendents of I who took Elethien as its vessel and spirit.”

An abrupt, cold kiss on his forehead. Avalel’s eyes are opened. Hundreds of figures surround him, each bearing a face different from him yet having some sort of familiarity. They do not speak, yet each and every one of them holds a story, their memories replayed inside them after their deaths. All are slightly transparent, with only Elethien—I and Avalel himself bearing a physical body in the realm.

“Return to the battlefield, young Avalel,” Elethien says, giving the Anapadeia back to Avalel. “You may still resist your fate, but you will simply become corrupted further. You have already lost yourself. It is only a matter of time before you beg for the solace of this realm, this paradise.”

“You…” Avalel’s eyes suddenly burn with rage, but his body has already begun to dissolve, his vision blurring. The silent ghosts look at him, some smiling, some bowing down in sadness. Elethien’s appearance as a great queen disintegrates as she returns to the appearance of a child, except now with a necklace clutched in her hand.

“I will protect all those who are left! Even if I lose all that I have, I will protect the wishes of the people! Never will I give up and allow myself to become nothing but a possessed shell!” Avalel screams, a newfound strength and determination rising from within him. He has already lost too much. Tarak, Kavlina, Ipela… If he has failed to protect the ones he cared most, then he shall protect the loved ones of the New Rule. Instead of succumbing to the possession and destruction of the Anapadeia and Elethien, he will retain his identity, his ideals till the very end.

That is his purpose now. To live not as a puppet, a shell, a vessel, but a free individual.

He disappears, leaving only Elethien with the ghosts of her descendants.

“He has shown great strength at the very end despite being a fearful coward for most of his life,” she says, talking to herself. “Perhaps it is only when we are driven into a corner do our true abilities and resolve show itself.”

“Alas, it is all but too late. He will become my, our new vessel in the end. The unity of three: I as the origin and the core, Elethien as the spirit and the will, Avalel as the executor and the vessel.”

“Of all my sons and daughters, he truly holds the greatest potential of them all.”

“Perhaps the dream of domination can finally be realized.”

“And with it, the dream of peace shall be reached as well.”