I run and run on the cobblestone streets of the castle town straight ahead without stopping for even a second. I don't know why I'm doing it. My legs are burning up and hurting. My body is moving on its own, and I have a strong feeling of urgency and anxiety.

As I look around me, I see nothing over the houses but thick dark grey smoke and radiantly burning flame as far as the eyes can see. People panic and rush in my direction. Not thinking about anything but escaping the hellscape behind them. Some of them are bleeding from more wounds than you can count. Some have missing limbs where the chunk that remains got patched up by fire magic so they at least don't bleed out. A child is crying for her mother on the sidewalk. People nearly trampling over her as well. The only thing I can see on every face is fear. Immense fear of imminent death that will come for them. As I fight myself through the tsunami of people, I see an alley to the left, so I push myself through to reach that where I can run more freely.

After getting farther from the noise of screaming people, the war cries of soldiers got louder instead. My nose got assailed by the strong odor of the dead. Every street I pass by turned into a river of blood, with the bodies of beheaded soldiers decorating the sidewalks. Just as I pass by one, a soldier gets impaled by a spear while another one gets held by his leg and smashed into the ground and walls by a well-built warrior in heavy armors, as if he was a children's lifeless doll. I look away and run. My lungs are on fire, I can’t feel my legs anymore. But I run.

When I finally stop and reach my destination, I look up and my face turn pale, all signs of life disappearing from it in an instant. What I see before me is nothing else but a simple stone house that you see anywhere in the capital. It doesn't resemble any place I should know, but despite that, seeing the place in half ruin makes my heart skip a beat. I start to get dizzy and my breathing becomes more ragged than ever before. My chest hurting as if an invisible hand is trying to crush my heart in any moment.

I slowly start walking with shaky legs, but don't get too far before the next revelation hits me about this location. As I nearly take my turn around the corner for the door, I see it on the ground. Finally realizing what was that bodeful feeling I feared moments before it was too late. I start sweating, my breathing is out of control and my legs are weakening. I’m feeling like the ground under me gets pulled out in an instant. My vision gets blurry as tears start rolling down my cheeks.

What I see on the ground are two human bodies. A woman and a man in their late forties. The man is missing an arm and has numerous deep wounds all around his body. His back is pierced with a lance and he hugs the woman tight under him, his face is buried in the cobblestone road. The woman under him is dead as well, obvious by her face. Glassy eyes, looking into nothingness.

"...mother."

The face on the ground is none other than Lutezia's, which means the man must be Boro. I want to go there, but my legs aren’t moving. They got nailed to the ground. I try to look away, but my eyes can’t even blink. They have attached themselves to the face on the ground. To the face that I had seen smiling so many times under long years, now being unanimated and cold.

All of this is so overwhelming, I start to lose myself, not believing what is happening around me. All of this is too much to process at once and I don't know what to do with all of these complex emotions, I feel like puking from stress for the first time in long, long years. I think I'm going insane.

Thud.

"Kh..."

"This is just the beginning..."

But before that could happen, my consciousness gets pulled back into reality by a deep voice and the sound of someone pushed against a wall.

"The beginning of a new age..."

Someone is around the corner.

"Someone will stop you in your steps..."

"Not if my gods want it another way. That presumptuous and arrogant bunch will fall, their rule is over."

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My mind completely clears out for a second as I hear a familiar voice. Hearing that, just for a single second, my mind resets itself and starts working again. When I realize that the person who might have killed both Lutezia and Boro might be a few steps away from me, all of a sudden, I get overwhelmed by powerful emotions. I feel vast, unending sadness and an enormous, boiling rage inside me. My body starts moving again after being paralyzed, I grab the hilt near my waist and prepare to plunge out towards the person without thinking as I start to draw my sword.

"It's not a good behavior to eavesdrop into things not meant for you."

My body tenses up, then I feel a punch reverberate through my whole being as I get smacked into the wall with so huge of a power, I thought it might have been a dragon that punched me into it. My senses are crying out from the intense pain and how my brain is working overtime just to try to puzzle together what happened. Despite me believing the deep voiced man was around the corner, under a single second I heard him right behind me as well, before being smashed into the wall. While I’m thinking about all that happened, a hand grabs me from under the rubble and I can finally see the man before me.

Despite feeling something otherworldly out of him, he looks human with dark grey hair and a short beard. He doesn’t look like a soldier, doesn’t wear any armor on him either. Instead, he wears clothes resembling a lineage of nobility. Doesn’t look that old, yet a mature and sophisticated face looks back at me. I know this man. I try to open my mouth to talk, but nothing comes out besides blood, my lungs gave up on me and I can’t even breath anymore.

"So young... may the gods give you mercy."

With that, my whole body goes numb. I see him stab his arm through my chest, pull it out then letting me go with his other, while I just fall to the ground without any resistance.

“Sir Leopold?” someone asked from outside of my sight with a surprised, yet slightly mocking voice.

I hear clacking of boots as someone appeared from the corner of the house.

“Dolos. I am Leopold, why the sarcastic tone?”

“Maybe it makes you feel better if I call you Laran?”

“Don’t even try to joke with that. I might even feel offended.”

They have a leisure talk, clearly acquaintances. I barely hear what they are saying.

“Either way, I saw Aplu calling for a retreat. We should go as well.”

“I think I did what I wanted here. Didn’t expect that I can meet so many annoyances at once, they were just coming without end. I’m kind of in a good mood already.”

“We aren’t in a rush. This moment here is already the dawn of a new era that can’t be stopped anymore.”

“Indeed. For now, this is enough. I’m satisfied. Shall we, then?”

“As you wish.”

With that, the two of them walk away as if nothing happened, leaving me behind to my demise. My vision starts to get hazy, my numb body tells me that I'm not far from Death's Door. Just then...

"...ah..."

I hear something behind me.

"...ohnda..."

Suddenly, I remember that the man had someone with him, someone whom I know. With my remaining power, I try to turn around. As I roll to my other side, powerless, my eyes meet with another pair looking straight at me. How could I not know her. Someone who looks like she is in her early twenties, yet a never changing eternal beauty. Red hair, so beautiful and brilliant, as if it would be melting magma itself. Eyes so blue, the sky could shy away in comparison. Of course, I know her.

It's me.

But she can’t talk to me anymore, as her face is pale and stiff, her eyes glassy and empty. She's dead, most likely used her remaining power just to try to talk to me.

"You know what you have to do when the time comes, I hope..."

Someone is behind her, a woman in blood red dress. But as I try to look up to her, my vision becomes blurry and before I can see her face, the only thing that happened before me was complete darkness. I died as well.

—¦—

It was early in the morning as I woke up on the floor, drenched in sweat, my head hurt. As I tried to stand up, my whole body felt stiff and weak, I couldn't stop trembling. A feeling of sickness got to me so I ran out of the house on the backdoor, trying not to fall over before I found a bucket and started puking into it.

For a while I was there, dazed, not knowing of myself. Slowly, my head started to clear out and I felt better. After the headache disappeared, I used water magic to filter out the sweat from my clothes. This didn't solve the problem itself that I sweated in my sleep and was completely soaked, so I got up and walked down to the river where I trained with Konda to wash my clothes and take a dive myself as well.

While washing myself in the river, I fell into thoughts, thinking back on what happened.

"...another one. It’s so blurry. What does that Goddess even want...?"

I tried not to think much about that hazy dream for now. The duel and trip back to the capital were more important. I had plenty of time to think over these strange dreams. Or so I hoped.