We walked for a long while toward the Kingdom of Humans.
Upon entering, the scene was desolate: every house was destroyed, wrapped in flames.
The fire spoke its own language: crackling like teeth, tongues licking beams, smoke that smelled of burned memories. There were no awnings, no flowerpots, no damp murmur of laundry on lines; only wooden skeletons and blackened stones, as if the city had aged in a matter of hours. The air, heavy, would not let one think clearly; it clung to the throat and forced the impression to be swallowed again and again. We walked in silence because any voice at that moment would only break the ritual of what had been lived: better that each step be a small contained prayer, that the metal of our boots whisper the truth of what had happened.
There was no sign of life.
If there were bodies, they no longer spoke. The streets that once seethed with human bustle now showed themselves as open scars: an overturned cart, an empty cradle, a dog that did not lift its head. The sun, muffled by smoke, gave a pale, almost ceremonial light, as if the whole world had put itself into mourning. Everything smelled of ash and broken promises. Inevitably I thought of what we had lost: not only wood and stone, but conversations, awakenings, voices that called names at dawn. The city had become an everyday mausoleum.
We continued through the charred remains of the city until we reached the palace.
It was like the rest: in ruins.
Inside it seemed abandoned for centuries, as if no one had ever lived there.
The columns that once held the roofs had fallen at impossible angles; scorched tapestries hung in tatters that the wind moved like empty hands. There was a moment, as we passed through the main door, when it felt like stepping into someone else's memory, into the shadow of a past that did not belong to us but that, for some reason, claimed our footsteps. The echo returned our movements with a mocking slowness: each footfall seemed to multiply into one or two seconds of silence, as if the palace hesitated before letting us advance.
Finally we reached the throne room.
The hall was large, like all great miseries: wide enough to hold glory and empty enough to hold tragedy. The banners hanging at the sides were blackened, and the floor mosaics, with scenes of ancient battles, had cracked as if time itself had decided to split them. The candles—if there had ever been any that night—no longer lit, and even the silence had a thick texture. There, in that vastness, death did not respect symbols or titles; it settled with the same indifference with which winter flattens a garden.
There we found a terrible scene.
The lifeless body of the knight lay in the middle of the room. A sword was driven through his abdomen, and his head had been gruesomely torn off and nailed to the wall as a warning. It was a dreadful death. He fought until the end… but it was in vain.
The brutality of that image was a slap that pierced us all. It was not only the violence; it was the intention to turn his sacrifice into a grotesque message. The head nailed to the wall, placed with the precision of a macabre trophy, spoke of an enemy who wanted not only to kill, but to humiliate, to point, and to terrify. I could feel each of us lean slightly forward, not from respect alone, but from a near-visceral desire to close the wound, to gather what remained of the knight's honor and place it somewhere less dishonorable. But nothing could undo the act; his body was already an unmoving testimony that demanded justice and, at the same time, gifted us the terrible certainty of our own fragility.
We approached the throne.
Each step toward it seemed to lengthen the echo, as if the hall itself were weighing our doubts. The statues to the sides watched with their stony faces; they seemed to judge or simply observe, but in that place even the stones had a tired gaze. The throne—tall and proud—remained the centerpiece of that ruined scene, now stained with dried blood and dust.
Seated upon it was the body of the king. His throat had been cut, his gaze empty, and blood still dried on his royal tunic.
His posture, though fallen, still retained a hint of dignity: he wore the pieces that had made him a symbol, but those pieces had been betrayed by the mortality of his flesh. The tunic, once regal and vibrant, was now a torn banner that explained the magnitude of the blow. Seeing him like that was not merely contemplating a dead man; it was contemplating the fall of an idea, the extinction of a promise made by someone who, by the weight of his office, was meant to represent hope and the future.
In his hand he held a letter.
I took it carefully and began to read aloud:
"If you are reading this, it is because I am dead… and the general as well. I imagine he fought to the end. He never surrendered. He believed in me, and in that one day we would reach an era of peace. I failed him.
The other races… and our enemies… are too powerful.
I know it is you who read this. Heroes. You were created by the first and only hero summoned more than one hundred years ago.
Before he died, he gave special swords to the former king of the realm. Since then, we have protected them.
Where are they?, you may ask. You only need to destroy this throne. There you will find the weapons. They are twelve… one for each of you.
I am sorry for not having given them to you earlier. I hope they help you..."
The words in the letter were written in a trembling hand that nonetheless retained the intention of power. They were not mere lines; they were the confession of someone who on his deathbed wanted at least to leave a bit of light. It was curious: amid so much devastation, a written promise maintained a thread of order within the chaos. The king's voice, through that paper, spoke to us of responsibility and of cycles closing. When I finished reading, I felt a strange mixture: guilt for not having listened earlier, relief at the possibility of a weapon, and the terrible weight of a task that, while offering hope, also placed upon us the edge of unbearable responsibility.
When I finished reading, Akira did not wait. With a strong kick, he destroyed the throne.
Beneath it, hidden, was a wooden compartment.
Akira's kick was not only an act of haste; it was a kind of rite, a physical denial of the power that had failed us. The throne splintered and its wood creaked as if telling secrets in the moment of dying. When the lid gave and the compartment was exposed, the silence seemed to compress and hold the entire palace's breath.
Inside, we found a sealed box that contained twelve katanas, just as the king's letter had said.
The katanas were arranged as if pieces of an ancestral puzzle: they still shone with a reflection that was not the sun's, but that of history itself. Each blade seemed to hold a promise, each hilt an identity. Looking at them, I could not help thinking of the generations who would have venerated those weapons, of the heroes who had wielded them before, and of the hands that would now need them. Twelve katanas for twelve destinies: the image had the force of a verdict, but also the clarity of possibility.
Each of us took one.
The act was almost ritual—a sort of collective acceptance of an oath we had not yet spoken—and feeling the weight of the blade in the hand, each seemed to measure the new balance of his own body. The metal offered a cold that cut anguish with a strange precision: suddenly, what had been impotence acquired a tangible shape.
Daichi stepped forward in silence and took two.
The second was Iko's. He gripped it tightly… as if by doing so he could bear his will.
The scene of Daichi taking two katanas was etched in my memory as an image of sacrifice. I do not know if he did it for strategy, for protection, or for a more intimate will: to carry another's weight until that other could stand on his own. Seeing him thus, with contained breath and steady hands, had something consecrating; it was the gesture of someone who accepted not only weapons, but borrowed destinies. The belt fastened around his sides seemed to also bear the names of those who could no longer hold their own.
We prepared.
The preparation that followed was brief but full of details that only those going to war notice: adjusting buckles, checking sheaths, securing knots that will not come undone with blood or fear. Some changed clothes or reinforced their weapons. There were small rites: a glove pulled on, a sharpening stone scraping a blade, a tie tightening a cloak. In my case, everything was intimate and mechanical at once: hands that work to calm the head.
I went into one of the side rooms and found a white suit of armor, identical to the knight's.
It was not a search for vanity that pushed me toward it; it was an almost childish need to put something on that would make me feel more whole. I found the armor as one finds a hidden answer: hanging on a hook, dusty, without shine but intact in its form. Its contours were familiar—perhaps from the memory of the knight—and when I touched it, it felt like touching the skin of someone beloved who would not return.
Without thinking, I put it on.
The process was more ritual than expected: the pieces fit over my body as if designed for that specific moment. The armor settled with a precision that made me feel both protected and vulnerable; it was a second skin that could not be completely mine. I noticed how the metal conformed to the body, how the straps gave in some places and tightened in others. The crimson cape, falling down my back, drew a line that separated what was mine from what I represented.
It was an iron armor, white with red stripes, and a crimson cape that descended from the neck to the legs.
The helmet hid almost the whole face, leaving only the eyes visible… though the shadow inside made them nearly imperceptible.
The sight of the helmet in the mirror—or in the reflection of the polished blade—was unsettling. To look and not recognize one's own facial contours had a strange gratuity: it was as if I became, without permission, a symbol. Only the eyes escaped like small windows that could still reveal some humanity. But inside the helmet, the gloom made those eyes seem like windows to the void: the armor did not only protect; it hid, transformed, and sacrificed recognition.
I placed a sword on my back and secured the katana at my waist.
The balance between the weapons defined my figure: two edges, two promises. The sword on my back had a more ceremonial weight; the katana at my waist was a more intimate, immediate oath. It was like carrying history on my back and decision at my side.
When I emerged, my brothers and sisters were already waiting for me outside the castle.
They told me I looked good, though the armor covered my whole body.
Their looks were not merely approving; they were recognition and, in some cases, relief. Seeing the others ready with their weapons lent a strange solemnity: we were not a band of travelers, we were a promise in motion. There was a contained laugh, an ironic word that momentarily broke the seriousness: "white suits you—like custom-made ghosts." It was a brief, almost playful comment that reminded us we were still human and could find humor anywhere.
Without wasting more time, we headed toward our final destination.
The decisive battle.
The words rang like a conclusion carved in stone. It was not hyperbole: what awaited us out there would decide not only our lives, but the course of all we knew. I felt my heart, inside the helmet, beat to an ancient rhythm, like drums announcing a combat that could no longer be avoided.
We would kill the gods.
The phrase had the force of a perverted oath: if once religion and belief lifted toward the sky, now we wanted to return it all at once. It was a brutal and precise declaration, like an edge that cuts hypocrisy. There was no rhetoric; there was decision.
We would end this war.
The intention to finish it all sounded, in some way, liberating. It was not only revenge; it was the aspiration to a definitive end, to close the cycle of pain that had ripped entire cities apart. It was the promise of a postwar silence, of a dawn that might come free of screams. We adjusted, looked at one another, breathed.
But just as we left the human city… a solitary figure waited for us.
A person who, by his posture, seemed to have been expecting our arrival for a long time.
The figure cut out against the horizon like a suspended note on the score of disaster. He did not speak; he did nothing apparent. His silhouette, motionless, was another sign in the scene, but not just any sign: in that waiting there was a sharp patience, a warning that smelled of dangerous calm. And in that instant, all the noise felt small in the presence of someone who had simply decided to wait for us.