He rose from the rock where he had been sitting and began to walk slowly toward us.
The sun, already tired, filtered its last threads of light through the ash that floated like dust of forgotten lives. The figure on the rock did not hurry: he stood with the calm of someone who knows he has all the time in the world to strike a wound. His movements were measured, like an actor in the final act before the curtain. Each step he took rang in my chest like an announcement: something was going to change, whether we wanted it or not.
My brothers, tense, drew their swords, ready to attack as soon as he came a little closer.
The blades slid from their sheaths with a cutting sound, a metallic whisper that spoke of learned habits and reflexes that are not trained: hands acting before the mind catches up. I saw Akira adjust his grip, Daichi tense his jaw until a vein pulsed; the air thickened with that ancient electricity that precedes the clash. It was the old choreography of defense, the one we had learned to dance between shadows and screams.
"Hey, boys… calm down. I don't come to fight. I only came to tell you something very important. So listen… and put your swords away," he said with a mocking voice.
"If you take another step, I'll cut your damn head off," Akira replied, drawing his katana with restrained fury.
Akira's threat was not empty; it carried the gravity of someone who has seen death up close and understands the cost of every word. His eyes flashed, and his katana caught the dying light with the same ferocity as his voice broke the calm. Restrained rage is a cold weapon; it sits heavy in the muscles and shows itself in an honest pulse.
The man stopped instantly.
He studied us one by one, and then laughed with a deranged grin.
That laughter was like a crack in the world: it didn't match the other sounds. It wasn't joy; it sounded like broken glass and poisoned memory. He measured us as if reading a book without hurry; his eyes searched the scars on our faces, the feathers on our cloaks, the history in our hands. When he laughed, I felt something snap in the air: an invisible barrier that separated us from certainty.
"You know… you are the last humans alive on the whole planet. The others died in battle. And those who were enslaved… are being executed right now. In a few minutes, the human race will cease to exist. Well… except for you… eleven."
The words fell like cold stones. In my throat I felt the novelty of disbelief and the old taste of guilt. "The last humans" — the phrase repeated in my head like a mantra I refused to admit. I tried to recall faces, voices, names that tied us to a crowd, and only fragments surfaced, scraps that were rumor rather than memory. Eleven. The number struck with mathematical precision: eleven bodies clinging to a planet that had forgotten them. The light of the world seemed to dim a bit more before that merciless equation.
Daichi clenched his teeth before speaking.
The tension in his jaw was that of a man who wields not only a sword, but sanity. I saw him swallow, count silently to a number only he knew, then exhale the threat as one throws a stone into water to see the ripples.
"It doesn't matter. We will kill every single one of you. And when we do, no one will speak of yours again. You will cease to exist too."
Daichi's declaration lacked the poetry of a hero; it had the precision of someone who has done the math on sleepless nights. It was a sentence: if they erased our stories, we would erase theirs. The phrase did not sound like bravado: it sounded like a plan written through insomnia, with tables and crossed-out names.
"Hahaha! That was very funny," the man said, with a crooked smile. "If that's what you want, go to the portal in the ruined city. It's near the Kingdom of the Elves. That portal will take you straight to us."
His laughter returned, longer this time, pleased with itself. He was pointing out the way as if handing the rival the rope to hang himself. The portal was both promise and trap: the chance to find the enemy face to face and the ritual that pushed us toward blood. "Us," he said — as if an entire colony, a legion with a cold name, stood behind it. His words were a map to confrontation, filed down by the arrogance of one who knows he has the advantage.
"This will be your end… and that of your clan, or whatever you are. Do you hear me?" Daichi answered, stepping forward.
Daichi's step was a physical declaration. It was the extension of his voice and his promise. I could almost feel the air around him: it tightened, filled with intent. It felt as if, had the earth heard it, it would have trembled.
"Then so be it. We'll wait for you… in the Kingdom of the Skies. But tell me something…"
The irony of "Kingdom of the Skies" hung in the air like an insult cloaked in theology. The man toyed with sacred names and dressed them in his contempt. Then he focused on me, as if he had found a piece of furniture with a tag.
He pointed at me with his finger, stopping before me.
The finger that pointed was a simple gesture but heavy with accusation. Gazes converged on me like arrows seeking a target: the moment when all eyes become accusatory or protective. I felt the weight of the silence that followed, a noisy-less instant where only thoughts can scream.
"How is it possible that you are still alive… when I myself killed you?"
The question did not seek a logical answer; it sought to disarm a mystery. It was the confession of a shared past, or at least of a clash none would understand outside the two protagonists. I imagined, for a second, the hands that had attacked me and the thin threads of my life that had crossed with his. His incredulity was tinged with annoyance, as if the universe had failed to provide a satisfying conclusion.
He sighed, shook his head and banged his forehead with his fist, as if he could not believe it.
It was a mechanical gesture of genuine irritation. For an instant he yielded to the humanity of disbelief: "how could something as perfect as a murder fail?" he seemed to ask. It was a ridiculous, almost human moment that made the monster look like a person having a bad day.
"Bah… what am I saying? You barely have any magic… But you gave me a good scare, you know? That damned knight… he resisted more than ten minutes defending the gate. It made me so angry! That's why his death was slow and painful. He could barely scream when I tore off his head. Hahaha!"
His story was a blend of pride and sadism. He described the knight's agony like one describes a work of art whose purpose was to entertain others. I felt a cold that did not come from the wind: complacency in torture. His laughs filled the space with the cruelty of one who feeds on fear. I could not prevent the image of the head on the wall from returning to my eyes, vivid and unbearable.
I could take it no longer.
Rage pierced me like an arrow. It is not brave to shout on impulse; it is brave to turn fury into act and then into action. I felt blood rise to my face and my voice become a cutting instrument.
"YOU WILL REGRET THAT! I WILL KILL YOU WITH MY OWN HANDS!" I shouted, with all the fury in my soul.
The words came out as a raw oath, unadorned. It was not vengeance for honor; it was vengeance for the indignity inflicted. It was the promise of one who finds no other justice than his own. Saying it, I felt something ignite inside me: a determination without known origin, but with a clear destination.
"Hahahaha… I'll be waiting, then, new knight. I hope you last longer than he did."
The last laugh accompanied his departure like a macabre applause. Then, as if the end of the conversation required a fitting gesture, he rose.
Without another word, he opened his black wings and took off, vanishing among the clouds.
The wings were black as guilt; they opened with the elegance of one who knows that his ascent is also a sentence. I watched him rise and shrink to a point that swallowed the horizon. When he disappeared, it felt as if the world had lost a fragment purposely torn away.
We looked at each other for a few seconds, in silence.
The silence after his departure was an animal we did not know how to tame. It studied us with coldness, and each of us found in the others' eyes the same question: what is left now? There was no rush to speak; sometimes the biggest decisions form in the pause.
We knew exactly where to go: the ruined city.
The certainty was, paradoxically, a relief. A map traced itself in our steps without words. The ruined city was not a dramatic name: it was a geography of the end, a place where memory had broken and left rubble as witnesses.
It lay near the Kingdom of the Elves.
It would take us two days to get there on foot, so we set out immediately.
Two days. The number lodged in my bones as if it were a countdown not only of distance, but of time to accept the inevitable. We walked without delay because waiting seemed frivolous before the urgency of fulfilling what had been promised.
On the way, we crossed destroyed villages, abandoned towns…
Everything that man had said… was true.
The villages were photographs of a life extinguished. Houses with open doors like mouths that had been swallowed, broken toys in the dust, utensils half-used. We walked among ruins that smelled of farewell, each step a reminder of collective defeat. The man's words were no beacon; they were hard truth, and they hit us with the force of certainty.
No human life remained.
The idea floated among us, austere. No voices answered names, no hands appeared at windows, not a single human cry peeked from the shadows. The land seemed swept clean.
The human race… had been annihilated.
Our mission to protect it… had failed.
The word "failed" was an acid on our pride. But there was no room for comfortable denials: evidence lay in every town, on every face that no longer breathed. We looked at one another as if seeking blame on the back of the other, on mine, on those who had come before. We were survivors with a broken story: that did not absolve us.
That night we camped by a river.
The river sounded like a promise not yet betrayed. Its waters ran without judgment; they carried only leaves and small pieces of life. We set up camp without long ceremonies; fatigue had made us efficient. We lit a modest fire, learned through battles and flight.
We caught some fish, bathed, and cooked.
During dinner, we began to remember old moments from our childhood.
Everyone laughed with anecdotes from the past…
The laughs were small bubbles that popped into the night, light and necessary. We spoke of foolish games, fights over food, grumpy teachers. It was a human way to mend ourselves for a few minutes: to invent a shared past to hold up against the present. The stories were patches, and they worked.
I could not remember any of it.
There was a hole that could not be filled with other people's stories. I tried to remember a laugh that belonged to me and found silence. Something had been torn from me and I didn't know whether it was memory or the mind's mercy to protect itself.
But my heart knew that everything they said was true.
It knew that I too had laughed like that… once.
Certainty came by a route different from memory: not through exact recollection, but through sensations that vibrated in my chest when I heard my brothers' voices. It was like learning to recognize oneself anew in another's echo.
The next morning, we continued on toward our destination:
To kill the gods.
The sun found us on the road again. The declaration sounded heavier when we opened our eyes: killing gods implied a physical blasphemy, an act of war against the inviolable. Yet the need to finish what had been broken was a force stronger than fear.
Hours later, we finally arrived at the entrance to the ruined city.
A huge wooden gate, covered in vines, blocked the way.
The gate stood like the city's old face: wrinkled, wounded, but still willing to hold. The vines hugged it as if nature tried to keep it trapped forever. It was an entrance that promised what its name said: ruin, silence, the weight of years of abandonment or recent plunder.
Together we pulled the vines away, one by one, until the gate was revealed.
We pushed it with force…