Doran’s eyelids slowly unveiled themselves to reveal a pair of cloudy, emerald eyes. The rushing sound of the nearby trickling stream entered his ears and his parched throat yearned for water. A sharp pain seeped through his flesh and he instinctively pressed a hand against his sternum where the gaping hole in his chest remained. Dry blood stuck against his mottled skin, but the seed of corruption that previously leeched away at his existence had faded into ash.

His face twitched slightly before his hand fell to the floor. The edges of his vision were starting to clear, and the bright crystal lights above shimmered wonderfully.

“So,” Doran raised his head to the ceiling, releasing a sigh. “You’ve succeeded.”

His eyes closed over themselves, and he simply remained there for a moment with his head leaning against the stone wall. Ragged breaths left his lips, each one digging up an aching pain from deep within his lungs. Yet the feeling was nothing compared to the daggers inside of his heart.

Another heavy sigh was breathed out and Doran released a groan. His back shifted on the wall and pebbles crumbled to the ground. His hand instinctively reached out, but only the stump remained and he barely caught himself with the other. For a moment, he remained like so before settling down in a crossed-legged position.

His eyes trailed along the remnants of his arm and he saw a faint crimson light emanating from the savage wound. The cold in his body was driven out by a familiar warmth that began to spread through his body. His sluggish heartbeat started to quicken, blood and oxygen carried through his veins as mana was once again produced from his core.

Doran watched silently as his body’s constitution worked to stabilize his condition. His breath slowed, becoming steadier as the pure energies spread across his injuries. Slowly, his flesh started to stitch together, the fractures in his bone restoring to the point where the pain was no longer immediate.

Doran’s mind started to clear, and his blurred vision became lucid unlike that of a fleeting dream. He blinked away the dull aching feeling permeating through his being and held a hand against his heart. Even if it continued to beat like normal, the white-hot edge of the blade never left from his soul.

Yet again, Doran breathed out a sigh before a weak chuckle rumbled from his throat.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it Maria,” he murmured. “Don’t you think that I’m living a pretty lonely life right now?”

His words echoed across the tunnel walls and not a reply returned.

Doran shook his head bitterly, no matter what he did—he couldn’t quell those thoughts that had once haunted him long ago. Ever since she came by, that is.

“You always talked about those little mutterings of fate,” Doran whispered, his hand unknowingly hovering over the hole in his stomach. “Perhaps, this girl… could she really be one loved by the stars?”

Though, the captain refused to acknowledge that there was no such thing as fate, or something he believed it to be like so. His eyes began to drift across the cave, tracing over the scattered pages from his unbinded notebook before coming to a rest on the silver necklace that the girl had left behind.

Doran stared at the ornament blankly, before a hand reached out to grasp the cold metal. He willed a sliver of mana into the item, and a vial of red-liquid appeared into his hands. The crimson liquid glowed with a weak pulsing energy, waiting for him to receive its strength.

Yet, Doran hesitated and his eyes trailed off into the vacant distance. Deep inside his heart, he knew the exact reason why he had decided to withhold the item earlier. If he had, the vigor he would’ve gained would eventually be drained by the Aberration which meant that the girl could never win.

Although now, the Doran of the present only twisted the vial before his eyes, wondering why it was still there. The death he so desperately desired… perhaps it wasn’t yet time. Perhaps the lingering pain in the depths of his heart was the Doran that still clung to life.

A lone page suddenly fluttered, flipping over onto its side to display an elegant line of ink. Doran’s eyes were caught and as they trailed over the sentence inscribed, his heart shimmered faintly.

“Then there are those who defy the stars, carving their own fate as they wandered through the abyss.”

He settled the elixir down and reached for the page, his fingertips brushing against the aged parchment. Upon their first meeting, those very words were once uttered by the woman he loved. Yet, he could never understand the simple conception. Countless years had passed, searching for its meaning but finding nothing.

In truth, the answer he seeked was right there before his eyes. Like leaves would fall bare from a tree in the midst of winter, it was a fallacy to think that a single answer existed for all questions.

Doran glanced down at his only remaining gaunt hand, the rough skin marred by countless years of conflict. The same hand that had felled thousands of enemies, brought fear to many, and life to one that he would never see.

It trembled slightly in his forlorn gaze, just what was his reason for being?

“...”

Just as his mind began to wander, a sudden gentle breeze blew by mischievously. The faded paper floated about as if laughing in the rain, and as Doran reached for the page, it skipped away with a giggle, evading from his grasp. His emerald eyes shook, chasing after the letters in ink as they flew along the path that the girl had tread.

The shallow breeze died down leaving only the indistinct echoes of silence. Doran muttered something quiet, and his voice melted into the air without anyone ever being able to hear it.

Tears wetted his eyes for the first time in multiple decades, they streamed down his cheeks and dripped against the cold stone floor. At the very least, they were warmer than those that had been shed in the past.

After several more minutes of silence, Doran gathered the scattered pages before finally standing on his feet. His weight was heavy on his battered legs, but he supported himself with a hand on the wall and stared down at the necklace hanging around the stump of his left arm.

It wasn’t the cold in the air that bothered him, but he figured that it wouldn’t be fitting for him to remain entirely naked. Doran wordlessly allowed his mana to enter into the item, and a dim flash of light surrounded his figure. Instantaneously, a thin tunic and a pair of trousers wrapped around his skin.

Glancing back behind him for a final time, Doran limped forward into the light at the end of the tunnel. Each of his steps echoed around against the walls and as he stepped into the vast cavern, his eyes started to readjust in the pale glow of the crystals.

A frigid air brushed against his skin, seeping under his clothing and he suppressed a shiver. The frozen blood coating the ground with a cold mist rolling over it drew his eyes into the distance where a wasteland of ice stretched on endlessly. Massive, jagged shards of ice jutted into the ceiling like pillars mimicking the quartz crystals. They shone spectacularly with a pale blue light, and the snow gently falling from the fading vestiges of the essences of winter formed a thin sheet of white across the cave floor.

There at the center, Doran knew that he would find her. Whether she was dead or alive, the girl deserved at least a proper farewell.

A breath of mist left his lips, and he set forth, carefully walking along the bottom of the cave. His eyes swiveled around and caught sight of several white-petaled flowers reaching out of the cracks in the stone. They swayed in the light flurries of snow, seemingly unaffected by the bitter cold.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Doran’s gaze captured the scene but for a moment, and he continued on. Even if the flowers would inevitably perish, they would always yearn for the sun, that was their reason for being.

Soon, he reached the foot of the massive quartz crystal covered in a blizzard of frost. He raised a hand, shielding his eyes and bent his knees before his body effortlessly cleared the edge.

Doran landed with a grunt, stabilizing himself from slipping on the ice and glancing around. The world atop the crystal was as if time had been frozen, suspended in a single, breathless moment. A forest of glimmering shards surrounded him, their tapered edges shimmering like the lone and barren stars in an eternal winter.

As he moved, his steps crunched against the snow, the sound pinging in a whispering echo against the crystalline spires. The noise disturbed the absolute silence and the harmonious melody produced reverberated in the somber voice of a drowning love. Regardless, he ignored the refracting light and breathed in deep before continuing towards the center of this frozen meadow.

Until finally his heart stopped for a moment, and Doran abruptly swallowed back a drawn out sigh. The scene that was displayed on a soft bed of snow, his eyes didn’t deserve to witness such a gracious sight.

That girl, with both her arms torn from her flesh, who lay on a bloodied cloud of white, slept peacefully in a tranquil silence. Her eyes, nor her lips did not move, and Doran wasn’t sure if her heart continued to beat at all.

His gaze fell downcast, unwilling to glance upon her exposed body and he summoned a pair of clothes into his hands. Carefully, his steps crunched forward and he draped the fabric over her pale flesh. Only then, did he permit himself to look at her face.

Framed by flowing obsidian hair where the ends of her locks were seared white, her features were delicate and almost ethereal. Her closed eyes, which gleamed with a bright azure, were hidden away under unmoving lids. Her pale smooth skin, held not a tinge of warmth, and she resembled a woman not of this world.

Doran was about to check for her pulse, but a faint trembling crimson light emitted from not too far away. His gaze flashed over to the sight before settling on the broken, shattered blade that had served him for all these years. The ebbing light sifted away lifelessly, fading into the darkness in a solemn farewell.

{M-master… I’m sorry.}

The voice of the blade seemed to echo in Doran’s mind, and a shuddering silence soon overcast the bitterness of winter. The Crimson Death’s glow vanished into the everlasting cold, its soul saluting to its master one last time before falling into an eternal slumber.

Doran lips curled into a weak smile and he grasped the pommel of that loyal weapon.

“You’ve done well, old friend,” Doran murmured to himself. “Really…”

He attached the lifeless sword to his waist, and his gaze once again fell to the girl. The battle she fought flashed in his mind, the blade had served its purpose and had fulfilled its reason for being.

Doran knelt down and placed a hand against her neck, the soft pulse he felt confirmed her condition and he immediately summoned the final elixir from his necklace. He angled the rim against her lips and dribbled the liquid slowly into her mouth. Colour sprang up in her face and her eyelids almost seemed to flutter, but still, she showed no signs of waking.

Doran wasn’t worried and he settled the glass against the snow. As he did though, a faint silver gleam dazzled in the corner of his vision, and upon further inspection, he recognized it to be the ring the girl always wore. He glanced down at his own hand, where his own ring wrapped around his finger, the oath of a promise it represented. Without thinking much of it, he trudged over, picked up the ring, and clasped it in his hand.

As the cold metal settled in his palm, his eyes drifted back to her still form. He stared at her face for a lingering moment before he crouched down beside her. Gently he slid his remaining hand and the stump of his other arm beneath her body and was just about to raise her up until a warm whisper resounded against his ear, freezing him in place.

“Dad?”

The girl’s lips muttered a word unconsciously, and Doran suddenly felt a hot feeling welling up from within his chest. He almost dropped her onto the snow as his heart started to rapidly beat with the melancholies of a long forgotten memory.

The expressionless and indifferent girl right beneath his eyes—Doran wanted to imagine that… that…

“Marianne…” he whispered.

The one lying just beneath his quivering eyes was a girl far more different from his daughter and still, he wanted to imagine… wanted to hope. Despite their differences, her black hair, Marianne’s golden locks, their eyes shared the same angelic blues of the ocean. And even if they sometimes dull and heavy, vacant and instilled with a faraway stare reminiscent of those that had witnessed the horrors of war, Doran couldn’t help but wish that it were true.

A single wistful teardrop trickled from his eye and fell onto the girl’s face. He wanted to wipe it away, but as he looked at her features, the illusion of her smile came to her lips. And then…

Hey Daddy! You're finally back from work! Remember the place I told you about? Someday. I’ll take you there someday, soon okay? It’s where the sky touches the ground, and everything feels all quiet and nice. You’ll see! We’ll sit on that bench—oh!—and Mommy really loved going there too… she said how the wind looks like it's tickling the grass to make it dance and sway in the soft breeze… weird right—

…There was a voice echoing faintly in his heart, the voice of that little girl which he had almost forgotten.

——She had said so with an innocent, child-ish giggle. That cute little bell-like laugh that she had, the kind that could fill a whole entire room with happiness. Marianne… you really have no idea don’t you?

And then, Daddy, I’ll show you how the sun makes the whole sky all pretty and shiny, just like you said I was when I was little. Do you remember that? You used to say that I made everything brighter, just like the sun!

——She would smile as she looked at me, with blue eyes wide with excitement, her tiny soft hands reaching for mine as if I could carry her whole world. How she would laugh in the winds as I spun her around with freedom at our fingertips. You really did make everything brighter, a thousand times even.

It was as if she was still there, her laughter chiming out in the older times where each day was filled with the unbridled wonders of youth.

And then, maybe we can stay there until it gets really dark, and then the pretty stars will come out! Mommy said the stars tell stories, did you know that? She said that each one of those little sparkling lights all have someone that they love. I didn’t believe her, I really didn’t. But once we got there in the midnight’s of Autumn, when the falling leaves drifted across the orange sky. Oh, it’s gonna be so much fun, Daddy. I bet we can make up our own stories too, just us, you and me. I can’t wait to go there—

“—Daddy,” her tender, melodic voice would say. With little hands tugging at the pants on my legs, her blonde locks swaying in a gentle breeze and an adorable smile gracing her lips. “Promise me we’ll go there someday, Daddy.”

——Oh Marianne… I’m sorry… Marianne, I almost forgot. I-I’m sorry…

“Promise me we’ll go…”

——Don’t you realize that I’ve longed to hear your innocent voice again? To hear you laugh carelessly, to hear you call out to me just one more time? I know we made a promise, a promise that I’ve almost forgotten whilst wallowing in my despair. I’m sorry, Marianne. I really am. I couldn’t even remember your face after all these years. I don’t know why, but right now, even if you aren’t here, even though this girl isn’t you. I’m happy that I could finally see you again. Even if I’m hallucinating, and everything I’m seeing right now is a dream. I’m glad. Really.

Doran’s tears overflowed down his sunken cheeks, the liquid freezing into delicate chords of bittersweet song just before they bounced against the girl’s face. His heart felt warm, and he wanted to speak, but only weak sobs came pouring out.

——Marianne… my beautiful sweetheart. I know that I couldn’t keep that promise. It might’ve been a mistake, but I still promised you that we would go together, that we would gaze upon the stars. Just you and me. I really wanted to fulfill it to you Marianne. But now… I’ve become nothing but a selfish man. I’ve been living like a mess, trying to find what was left for me in this life. I really didn’t know what to do anymore sweetie. All these years I’ve been wandering for a purpose, when all I wanted was to see you again. To talk to you and your mother, to hold you high up in my arms, to watch you live and grow up, to see you become a wonderful woman.

The choked breaths left his lips and his voice turned into a raw cry, while his face crumpled into a sniveling mess unbefitting a man of his stature.

——It’s been forever and it still hurts this much. I know you’d tell me to live on and that’s probably why I’m still alive, but for so long I had been seeking death. For so long I’ve been tempted by this wish, if only that I could—though I doubt that you’ll even remember me. If only I could tell you one last time…

The eyes of the girl he was holding flitted open, her gleaming blue orbs devoid of any consciousness, yet Doran gazed into them solemnly, lost in silent introspection. His head dipped into a bow, the echoing voice of his daughter which he had so suddenly remembered, soon recessed into the fading scars of his heart. The fleeting illusion of his daughter’s smiling face drifted away, too, and he shut his eyes for if only he could hope to burn that sight into his mind for eternity.

“I’m sorry, Marianne,” Doran could not properly speak. “You’re going to have to wait a little longer. I just wish—”

No matter how great the wish, how desperate he was, even if he had repeated that somber prayer for hundreds, thousands, millions, trillions of times… For his sins that he had committed, the capital punishment was issued, and fealty was sworn that he would never see her again. The cruel fate was a destiny that he had accepted, and it was one that he would always, always resent.

“—I could tell you how much I loved you.”

His eyes finally ebbed open and the girl he held had long since fallen asleep. Her gentle breaths tickled against his skin, and with all the gratitude in his soul, he…

The whispers he uttered were for her ears and hers alone.