WebNovels

Chapter 12 - EPISODE - 12 - (FINALE EPISODE) - The Last Ember of Resolve

Part - I - Ashes of a Garden

The sun in Ryn's memory was warm.

The color of honey poured over morning soil, he was six, barefoot, his hands covered in soft brown earth as he helped his grandfather plant tulips. The old gramps's voice was rough with age yet gentle, a melody that drifted above the steady rustle of wind through the field behind the shop.

"Careful with the roots, Ryn. You plant them too deep, they won't breathe," his grandfather said.

Ryn giggled, holding up a clump of dirt. "Like me when I hide under the blanket, grandpapa?"

The old granpa laughed. "Exactly. Everything needs a little light, even you kiddo."

They worked together until the row of flowers looked like a painted ribbon across the soil. Bees hummed, and the air smelled of rain and sap. For a moment, the child believed that happiness could last forever—just sunlight, laughter, and the quiet rhythm of a kind hand patting his shoulder.

Then, the world blinked.

The Burning

A flash of crimson.Smoke thick enough to swallow the sky.Screams that didn't sound human anymore.

Ryn stood in front of what was once his grandfather's flower shop, the scent of ash stinging his lungs. The glass windows had melted into twisted shapes, framing a storm of orange flames that devoured everything. Firefighters shouted, hoses hissed, and somewhere under the roar, the old gramps's name echoed once—then vanished.

A police officer blocked his path. Ryn tugged the his sleeve, voice trembling."Please—my grandfather! He's inside! You have to—"

The officer shook him off, irritated. "Get back, kid! We've got casualties. Don't make this harder."

"But I just want to know—he's okay, right?" Ryn pleaded, tears mixing with soot.

The officer looked at him—then away. His voice came out flat."He's gone. Now move."

The words didn't register at first. Then they did.

Ryn's legs folded beneath him. His knees hit the pavement, and all the sound around him—sirens, people, the rush of fire—blurred into a single, endless ringing. He could taste the smoke. He could feel the heat on his cheeks. His mind froze on one memory: his grandfather's hand guiding his in the soil.

Light, he had said. Everything needs light.

But all Ryn saw now was red.

The Kid Without a Place

Hours later, when the fire had been reduced to smoldering ruin, Ryn still sat there, staring at the blackened wreckage.The crowd behind the police tape whispered.

"That's the grandson, isn't it?""Poor kid… didn't they say he was inside when it started?""No, no—he was out fetching water.""Still, that family… strange folk.""Pity. But you can't dwell on things like that forever."

Ryn didn't move. His face was blank, but inside his heart something hollow began to echo. It was a feeling too big for his small body—a grief that didn't know how to speak, so it turned into silence.

When his parents finally arrived, their expressions were stone. His mother's eyes were red but dry. His father's voice was low and clipped.

"Get in the car."

Ryn obeyed. The drive home was wordless, only the sound of rain tapping on the windows. He watched it streak across the glass like falling fire.

The House Without Warmth

Their home was neat. Too neat. The air smelled of disinfectant and cold dinners.Ryn's room had toys he never played with—lined up perfectly along the shelves, untouched since the day his grandfather gave him his last set of gardening gloves.

His mother spoke without turning to him."You need to stop crying, Ryn. It's been a day."

His father added, "Life doesn't pause because someone leaves."

"He didn't just leave," Ryn whispered.

The silence that followed was worse than anger.

At night, when the house went dark, Ryn sat by the window. He pressed his forehead to the glass, watching the city lights flicker like distant stars. Somewhere beyond them, the world kept moving—busy, alive. But in his mind there was only the dull ache of something heavy and invisible.

Sometimes he whispered to the wind, imagining his grandfather could still hear him."I'm still planting, Grandpa. Just… somewhere else."

The Rift

Days bled into weeks. His parents didn't mention the fire again. They filled the silence with schedules, lessons, and rules.

When Ryn came home one afternoon with dirt under his fingernails, his mother scolded him sharply."Stop playing with soil like some stray animal! You're not a farmer. You're going to be something useful."

"But Grandpa said—"

"Enough," his father interrupted. "You're not him."

Something inside Ryn broke then—quietly, like a seed snapping underground. He stopped speaking during dinner. He stopped smiling. He went to bed early, staring at the ceiling until sleep came like a slow flood.

He wasn't sure when he first saw the screen—the glowing ad hovering in his school tablet, promising escape.

"Eien: A world without pain. A place where everything lost can bloom again."

He clicked it.

The page opened into a swirl of light and sound, a perfect garden rendered in impossible color. A voice whispered: You can start over here.

It felt like sunlight. It felt like forgiveness.

A Door That Shouldn't Have Opened

Ryn sat in his room that night, the lights off, the headset cold in his hands. His heart raced—not from excitement, but from the fear that this was wrong, that if he put it on, something real would disappear forever.

But what did he have left that was real?

He placed it over his eyes.

Light poured in. Then everything went black.

The Present: The Cage

The sound of breathing echoed in the dark.

Majiku's breathing.

He woke in the cold glow of metal bars—trapped in the same cage that Ryn had sprung earlier that day. His body ached from the blows; his mind spun between panic and determination.

He had no idea how long he'd been out. The light in Eien's artificial sky was dimming, sunset forming through glitching clouds. He didn't have much time.

If he wasn't out before sundown, his mother would call for dinner. She'd come upstairs, see him still wearing the headset, and—if she panicked and pulled it off while his avatar was trapped—He would die, thinking of the events of his brother when he put on the headset in these cruel situtations. Errors and more, especially since if she pulled it off while he couldn't log off because of the cage, he would probably die he thought to himself.He shook the thought away.

That couldn't happen. It wouldn't happen.

He pressed his hand against the bars. They felt real—like cold iron, not code. Ryn had built this place differently. The structure was a mix of logic and emotion, made to trap not just avatars, but the player's sense of will. Majiku could feel the code resisting him, alive and watchful.

"Think, Majiku," he whispered. "Come on, think."

He remembered what Ryn had said before vanishing the last time they fought:

"Eien doesn't obey logic. It obeys memory."

That was it. The cage wasn't metal—it was memory, a construct bound by the echoes of Ryn's grief. He believed it so.

He closed his eyes and listened.

At first there was only silence. Then, faintly, he heard it: a voice, small and young, repeating a phrase over and over."Everything needs light… even you."

A Grandfather's voice.

Majiku's breath hitched. He could see the faint outline of a small kid kneeling amid flames—the memory Ryn had never let go of.

"I'm sorry, Ryn," Majiku whispered. "But if this is your pain… I have to step through it."

He reached toward the image, and as his hand touched the echo, warmth spread through his heart. The bars flickered, trembling like they were about to shatter—then solidified again. It's like he was grabbing someones mind through the terms of memorys, overall garbbing memories at that. Due to the weird mechanics of Eien.

Not enough. He needed something stronger.

He reached deeper into his own memories—his mother's laugh, the smell of his father's delicous cooking for his son, the first moment he stepped into Eien believing it was just a game, yes even that to. He gathered every feeling of hope he could remember and pushed.

The cage began to crack.

The Countdown

The artificial sun dipped lower. The sky above the Hollow Plains turned a molten red.

He imagined the real world outside: his mother setting plates, calling softly for him to come eat. The smell of dinner mixing with the cool evening air. A world that was safe, ordinary, and precious because of it.

He couldn't lose that.

Majiku shouted, a wordless cry that tore through his heart as he slammed his palm against the bars. The metal melted into light, fracturing outward in a storm of white petals—like the tulips in Ryn's lost garden.

The cage disintegrated.

He fell to his knees, gasping, free but trembling. The world around him wavered, half-stable, half-dreaming. Somewhere in the distance, the Hollow Spire's silhouette pulsed faintly, as though sensing his escape.

Majiku looked toward it and whispered,"Wait for me, Ryn. I'm coming. This time, I end it."

He pressed his fingers to his wrist, activating the logout command. The symbol flickered weakly—unstable.

Then the screen went black.

The Edge of Both Worlds

He opened his eyes to the dim light of his room. The sunset outside was nearly gone. He could hear his mother walking toward his door.

"Majiku? Dinner's ready!"

He wiped at his eyes quickly, forcing a shaky smile."Coming!"

For a brief moment, he glanced back at the headset lying on his desk. It hummed faintly—too faintly, like a heart still beating after death.

He didn't notice the small pulse of light in its lens, or the single whisper that slipped through the static.

"Everything needs light… even you."

Majiku froze, half-turned toward the door. Then the sound was gone.Just the hum of evening, the scent of dinner, and the ghost of warmth that shouldn't have been there.

He shook his head, left the room, and went downstairs.

Outside the window, for a moment, a single white tulip bloomed in the cracks of the pavement. No soil. No sunlight. Just memory.

Part - II - The Hollow Spire

The sky above Eien was cracked glass—shards of light bleeding through pixelated thunderclouds.Majiku stumbled through the debris-choked streets, his breath catching as the burning skyline shimmered like dying code. The air buzzed, vibrating with static. Whole towers flickered out of existence in digital screams, replaced by empty void.

He hadn't meant to log in. His hands had just twitched, the headset sliding on before his mind could stop it. But now, staring at the devastated city he once swore to protect, he was almost glad. Because he could see exactly where the destruction was coming from.

A crimson surge pulsed from the heart of Eien—from the Hollow Spire. The citys core.

Majiku sprinted. Sparks erupted beneath his boots as the system lagged around him, data-storms tearing through the streets. And then he saw it: the figure at the spire's base, surrounded by collapsing light.

"Ryn!" Majiku's voice echoed through the static. "Stop!"

The figure turned slowly, the distortion peeling away to reveal him—Ryn, the friend who once fought beside him to save lives, now standing amid corpses of broken avatars, eyes glowing with corrupted fire.

When he smirked, it wasn't the usual snorky grin. It was something darker—something that made Majiku's blood freeze. "Majiku," he said, voice slicing through the static, "you shouldn't be here."

Majiku's chest tightened. "Why? Why attack Eien? Why attack my family? We saved you. We gave you a place to belong."

Ryn's head tilted slightly, expression unreadable. "Family…? You think that word still means something?"

"I saw your memories," Majiku snapped. "That's why I'm asking!"

For a heartbeat, silence. Then Ryn chuckled, the sound warped and bitter.Fragments of memory began to flicker around them—holographic echoes: a kid sitting alone in a school hallway, a screen glowing in the dark, the shadow of an old man smiling faintly before fading into light.

Ryn's voice became layered with the echoes. "I tried to escape from Eien once. Thought maybe it was just a dream, some place to breathe where the real world couldn't reach me. But over time I realized—no one cared here either. Not really. Not in the real world, not in this one."

He stepped closer, pixels crackling underfoot. "They said Eien was an escape. But every login, every smile, every party—it all faded. They left. They always leave. Just like the real world did after my grandfather died. You know what's funny? Even grief gets recycled here. Pain respawns."

Majiku clenched his fists. "So you decided to destroy it? Because you couldn't make peace with your past?"

"No," Ryn said softly. "Because I understood it." His grin returned, jagged and cruel. "If both worlds are pain, then I'll make a new one—one where only I exist. No betrayal. No leaving. Just silence."

Around him, the spire pulsed crimson, releasing waves of corrupted code. "Eien's core is mine now. I'll rewrite it, Majiku. When it's done, only I'll be able to enter. The new world will be mine alone. For someone like me."

Majiku's eyes flared behind the brim of his hat. "That's not freedom, Ryn. That's hell."

Ryn shrugged. "Then maybe hell is the only home I ever had." His tone shifted, biting. "And as for the Misty Four—you think I cared about any of you? You were just data, Majiku. Tools. Experiments for what came next. I wanted to feel something, so I used your pain to fuel my plan."

Majiku's breath hitched. "You… used us?"

Ryn's smirk wavered only for a second. "Maybe. But you—" He pointed. "You were different. You made me hesitate. And I hated that. Because why should anyone care for me now, when I already chose my ending? You should've stayed dead in that trap I left you in. You surviving ruined everything."

Majiku's expression darkened. "You think your pain gives you the right to kill millions? To erase everything?"

Ryn's eyes blazed. "It's the only right I have left."

Majiku drew his twin daggers. The blades gleamed—a shimmering blue that cut through the red haze. "Then I'll stop you. Even if it kills me."

The air screamed as he launched forward.

Metal clashed against corrupted flame, the sound echoing through the spire like thunder. Sparks scattered as their weapons met, every strike tearing data apart. Majiku's heart pounded with fury and sorrow; every blow carried a question, every parry an answer he didn't want to hear.

"You call this justice?" Majiku shouted.

"I call it peace!" Ryn roared, deflecting another strike and sending a wave of energy crashing through the air. The city beneath them buckled—streets disintegrating into glowing particles.

Majiku dodged, slicing through the blast. "You're just running again! You can't destroy pain by killing everyone who feels it!"

Ryn's laugh was harsh. "And what would you know about pain, Majiku? You, with your family still waiting outside the screen?"

Majiku stopped, panting. "I know enough to never use it as an excuse to hurt others. Your only mad at me to because my family almost ruined your plans, by bringing me into the picture."

For a moment, Ryn hesitated. Then his fury returned tenfold. "You don't understand! You never will!"

The ground shattered as Ryn unleashed his power. A storm of crimson chains spiraled from his body, wrapping around the spire's walls. Majiku slashed through them, his daggers glowing brighter with each swing. The battle spilled upward—through crumbling stairways, across bridges dissolving into nothing.

At the summit, the core of Eien shimmered like a dying star. The two stood across from each other, both exhausted, both bleeding digital light.

Majiku wiped the sweat from his brow. "You're wrong, Ryn. I do understand. I saw your memories. I saw the child who wanted to be seen. Who wanted to protect something—someone."

"That boy's gone," Ryn hissed.

"Then I'll bring him back!" Majiku yelled back.

They clashed again. Blades whirled, light and shadow colliding in a storm that tore the heavens apart. Code rained like snow, burning their skin. Every strike felt slower, heavier, filled with everything they once were—teammates, brothers, rivals.

Finally, Majiku broke through Ryn's guard. His last dagger—his only weapon left—pierced straight into Ryn's heart...

Time froze.

Ryn stared at the blade lodged in him. The crimson glow faded from his eyes, replaced by something human—something fragile. As Majiku's hands began to shake and tears streamed down his face. He began to scream scream as he began reaching out to lodged in blade. Showing his sad and truly emotional side.

Majiku's voice trembled. "Ryn… I didn't mean to hit your heart I—"

Ryn slapped his hand away weakly. "Don't… don't you dare pity me now you fool."

His body flickered, fragments peeling off into static. "Guess… this is how it ends, huh?"

"No!" Majiku shouted. "You don't get to run away again! You killed them—you killed so many—and now you just fade out like it's nothing?"

Ryn coughed, a glitching laugh escaping. "Always so serious… That's what I liked about you." He looked up, his expression softening for the first time in years. "Listen. You were the only one who ever really saw me. Even when I didn't deserve it."

Majiku shook his head, eyes burning. "Then stay. We can fix this. We can—"

"Majiku." Ryn's voice cut through, quiet, sincere. "Don't waste your time on me. Some people aren't meant to be saved. But maybe… maybe they can still be remembered."

He smiled faintly. "Tell your parents… I said thank you. For the tea. For the warmth. For letting a stranger like me sit at your table once."

Majiku's vision blurred. "Ryn…"

"Promise me something," Ryn whispered, his hand trembling as he reached out. "Keep logging in. Keep playing. Keep… living. Don't let this world die because of me."

Majiku grasped his hand tightly. "I promise."

Ryn's form glowed brighter. His edges blurred into light, breaking apart into pixelated dust.

"Goodbye… Majiku."

And then he was gone. The team was now... The Misty Three once again.

The Hollow Spire collapsed around him, light flooding outward like dawn. Majiku fell to his knees, the daggers dissolving from his hands. He didn't cry at first. Only when the silence came—when the system stopped trembling—did the tears fall.

He looked up. The sky of Eien shimmered once more, rebuilding itself from the ashes. The city would live. But something inside him never would again.

Epilogue — Another Login

Years later...

The real world's sky was dusky orange over the quiet suburbs. Majiku—now seventeen, taller but with the same restless eyes—set his college bag down beside his desk. The old Eien headset sat waiting. Dust clung to its edges, but the logo still glowed faintly when he touched it. And a cleaner house.

"Majiku!" his mother called from the kitchen. "Don't forget your tea before bed this time! I don't want another sleepless night like last week!"

He laughed softly. "Yeah, Mom! Got it!"

He sat down, cup steaming beside him. The aroma of the tea reminded him of something long ago—someone who once said thank you for the same warmth.

He slipped the headset on.

The world blinked to light—familiar fields stretching beneath an endless blue sky. No war, no destruction. Just peace.

Majiku smiled faintly. "Alright… one more adventure."

And somewhere, deep in the endless code of Eien, a single pixel of crimson light shimmered—just for a moment—before fading into the horizon.

[!End of Series!]...

More Chapters