Wan walked east, his steps slow and heavy, carrying him farther from the burned remains of his village and deeper into the wilderness. There was no trace of the life he had left behind—only the endless landscape stretching before him, vast and unfeeling. The weight of the world pressed down on him, but he had no choice but to keep moving. There was no one left to stand beside him. He was alone, adrift in a world that felt indifferent to his pain and loss.

His figure had grown lean, his once-muscular build thinned from the constant journey and sparse food. He was tall, his shoulders broad but slumped with exhaustion, his long black hair hanging in dark strands to his shoulders, ragged from days without care. The tattered remnants of his clothes clung to him, torn and dirtied, a testament to the harshness of the path he had taken. To any stranger, he would appear as a ghostly figure—a drifter bearing the weight of something terrible, his eyes shadowed by a quiet intensity that came from having lost everything.

Every night, Wan lay beneath the stars, his only shelter the vast, uncaring sky. The stars shimmered overhead, distant and cold, and he stared up at them with a hollow expression. Once, he might have found some comfort in their light. Now, they were just another reminder of how small and isolated he was, a lone figure against the unending sky. The silence around him was profound, pressing in on him from all sides. It was a silence that left him alone with his thoughts, with nothing to soften the sharp edges of his memories.

He walked for hours, sometimes days, without seeing another soul. The land was vast and empty, the path winding forward with no end in sight. There was no one to speak to, no one to share in his burden. Just the sound of his footsteps, the rustle of leaves, the whisper of wind through the trees. The world seemed indifferent to his suffering, as if it had already forgotten the village that Astra had burned to the ground.

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Eldoria. It was the only name he had left, the last remnant of Kai's teachings. The land of the Sungard. It lay somewhere far to the east, across miles of forest and mountain, across unknown lands. He knew little about it other than stories of the Sungard, a people said to possess a power that could rival any other in the world. If he had any chance of unlocking his own strength—of becoming powerful enough to avenge his village—it was there. But the path to Eldoria was long, and with every step, he felt the weight of his solitude grow.

There was no certainty in his journey, no clear direction or plan. He was following nothing but a vague hope, a feeling in his chest that Eldoria might hold answers. But for now, the journey was all that existed. He was a wanderer, drifting across a world that felt vast and hostile. Each day brought new hardships—storms, hunger, cold. Each night, he lay alone beneath the stars, wrapped in silence.

Sometimes, in those quiet hours, he felt the memories creep back in. The faces of the villagers, Kai's teachings, the laughter they had shared in moments of peace. It was a life he would never have again, a future that had been torn from him. And every time he remembered, the pain flared within him, a raw ache that he couldn't soothe. His fingers would clench into fists, and he would feel the faintest flicker of the power that had burst from him that night. But he didn't know how to reach it, didn't know how to control it. It was just another reminder of his own helplessness.

The road stretched endlessly before him, each step blending into the next. He was a lone figure moving through an indifferent world, a wanderer with no place to belong. His only constant was the aching drive within him—the need to grow stronger, to find the power that would let him face Astra, to take back what had been stolen.

But in that moment, as he looked down the empty path stretching to the horizon, all he could feel was the weight of his isolation, the vast distance that separated him from everything he had ever known. He was truly alone. And yet, with no other choice, Wan kept walking.