The wind carried nothing but ash.
Eudora stumbled through the ruins of what once was a city. Stone towers, blackened and broken, pierced the gray sky like shattered bones. The earth beneath his feet was cracked, dry, and dead. No grass. No life. Only dust and silence.
His body dragged forward. Each step was a mountain. His legs trembled, not with fear—but with the weight of years spent in endless war. His clothes were torn rags. His hands were wrapped in old bandages soaked in dry blood. His eyes, once full of life, were now dim and sunken. Tired. So very tired.
At twenty-five years old, Eudora had nothing.
Not power. Not glory. Not hope.
He had only survived.
The world around him had long been cursed. Kingdoms had burned. Magic had turned wild. Aura storms destroyed cities. Great heroes had fallen to madness or monsters. The Orders of the world collapsed, and no gods came to save them.
He was called many things during the war. But the name that stuck was spoken in whispers.
"Talentless."
He had no aura. No magic. No strength of sword or soul. But somehow, he lived. Crawled through blood and fire. He was not gifted like the others—but he endured when they didn't.
Now, he was alone.
He sat against a dead tree—blackened, leafless. Its branches clawed at the sky like fingers.
He looked to the horizon. Red clouds swirled above the last battlefield. There, his brother Ragna had vanished.
Ragna, the chosen one. His twin. His light.
Gone.
Eudora pulled from his pocket a broken pendant—his half. The other had belonged to Ragna. It was cracked in the middle, sharp like a blade.
He held it tight. It drew a line of blood across his palm.
"I tried..." he whispered, voice hoarse. "I tried to follow you. But I was never enough."
Lightning struck far away. Not from clouds, but from an unnatural rift. Black energy twisted the sky. The end was coming—no longer a future, but a certainty.
Eudora looked down at his body. Bruised. Scarred. His chest barely moved.
"This world… it's done."
He let his head fall back. His eyes closed.
But then—
A burning pain surged through his heart.
Not from a wound. From something deeper.
A golden light swallowed the world. A roar—like thunder, like memory—filled his ears.
Then silence.