The first time you laid eyes on him, you thought the stories had been wrong.
The man who had left Aedes Elysiae in ruin was no immortal force, no unrelenting god of war. He was a shadow of what had once been—a crumbling ruin wrapped in frayed black cloth, flickering at the edges like a dying flame.
His armor, once silver and obsidian, had dulled to something lifeless. The jagged protrusions, like broken ribs bursting from his form, now seemed more like the remnants of a carcass picked clean by time. And his sword—
The legendary blade that had carved destruction into your home, that had left knowledge itself in embers—dragged against the ground, its edge dull, its radiance faded.
You had tracked him across wastelands and drowned valleys, through the ruins of empires he had reduced to cinders. You were meant to stop him. You had promised you would.
But standing before him now, as the last scholar of a knowledge he had tried to erase, you did not see a man who needed slaying.
You saw a man already dying.
"Have you come to stop me?" His voice was raw, stripped of the grandeur and menace the rumors had given him. He did not sound like a conqueror. He sounded like something that had burned too long and now had only smoke and ash left in its lungs.
You tightened your grip on your staff. "Should I?"
He laughed, and it was a sound that did not belong in this world—cracked, distant, like wind whistling through a skeleton’s ribs. "If you think it will change anything."
A gust of wind kicked up the dust between you. Even now, embers clung to the folds of his cloak, refusing to die.
"You destroyed Aedes Elysiae." The words felt small, meaningless in the face of all he had done.
He inclined his head slightly, as if considering. "I did."
The rage you had carried for years did not rise as you had expected. Instead, something colder settled in its place.
"Why?"
His fingers flexed at his side. They were no longer whole—veins of fire ran through his skin, cracks in a dying vessel. The corruption was spreading.
He exhaled, and it sounded like the last breath of a fire before it collapsed into embers. "I don’t remember."
You took a step closer. "Liar."
His silver mask tilted toward you. "I remember the fire. I remember the screams. I remember something calling me. But why?"
His hand clenched into a fist. "Why did I burn the city that I once called home?"
The nights were cold in the wasteland. He did not sleep, but you could tell the fire inside him flickered weaker when the sun set. He had stopped moving toward the Coreflame for now, though whether it was because of you or because his body was failing, you did not know.
You should have struck him down while he was still.
Instead, you sat across from him, staring at the broken creature before you.
"Was there nothing left?" you found yourself asking. "No one left worth sparing?"
His fingers traced the hilt of his sword absentmindedly. "There was a time I would have spared them all."
You swallowed. "But you didn’t."
"No." He looked at his own hand, the veins of flame crawling higher. "Something changed."
"Something?"
His mask turned toward you. "Or maybe it was me."
The silence between you stretched. You should not have cared. You should not have felt this pull toward understanding him. And yet, as you watched him sit there, a man crumbling under the weight of what he had become, you realized something.
He did not need redemption. He did not need forgiveness.
The grove lay in ruin, the last remnants of its wisdom shrouded in shadow. And at the center of it all—
Anaxagoras sat upon the luminary throne, unconscious, one of the three shards of the Coreflame pulsing weakly.
Flame Reaver stood before him, his tattered cloak barely stirring, his gauntleted fingers hovering just above the light that would end his suffering or consume him whole.
You stepped forward. "Don’t."
He did not turn to face you, but you saw his hand clench. "You would stop me?"
"I would remind you." You took another step closer. "This is not yours to take."
His shoulders trembled. The mask upon his face made him unreadable, but something in the way he stood—
Something in the way he hesitated—
"Cerces has chosen him," you continued, your voice steady. "For you to take it now is to reduce everything to ruin."
The fingers of his outstretched hand twitched. He could take it. The hunger within him screamed for it. And yet—
He lingered.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Then, with a slow exhale, he lowered his hand. The embers along his body flickered once before dimming.
You turned from the throne.
And you walked away.
—
He was not a god. He was not a legend.
He was only a man who sought redemption.
But in the end, even this flame must die. Sooner or later.
