The fire was consuming everything.
It was no ordinary fire — it was a living beast that breathed and crawled between the towering palace columns, devouring stone as easily as wood, turning everything that had once been great into ash and memory. People ran in every direction, their bodies colliding in the chaos, their hands trembling as they carried water vessels that couldn't extinguish a single flame of this raging inferno.
And everywhere... bodies.
They filled the palace's halls, courtyards, and wide staircases, and on each one were garments bearing two emblems that no one who saw them could ever forget. The first blazed as though fire itself had painted it onto the fabric. The second had stars swirling around it in an eternal spiral, as if the entire sky revolved around a single banner. And above it all, atop the palace's highest tower, the great flag fluttered in silence against the flames — burning slowly, as if refusing to surrender, as if fighting until the very last moment.
---
Then the boy appeared.
He ran with every last bit of strength he had, his small body stained with blood from head to toe — his own blood, or perhaps someone else's; he didn't know, he didn't care. The burning palace receded behind him with every step, its groaning like a farewell to the last remnants of his world.
**Baran** stopped suddenly.
His knees nearly gave way beneath him, his gasping tearing through his small chest. Tears no longer bothered with his eyes — they streamed in sharp silence down his cheeks, soaking the charred edges of his shirt. And slowly, as though something pulled him against his will, he turned toward the palace.
Then he saw it.
An attack lunging at him from the darkness — fast as lightning, impossible to dodge, impossible to deflect.
But it never reached him.
In a fraction of a second, the sky split open.
A single eye, vast and deep, appeared between the dark clouds as though it had been watching from the very beginning — then it absorbed the entire attack in absolute silence. Nothing remained. No sound. No trace.
Baran was frozen in place, his tear-filled eyes shattered by shock.
Then the man appeared.
---
He descended from the darkness as though he were part of it — yet he was no darkness. His long, soft golden hair danced with the wind in strange harmony, as if the wind itself honored him and bowed before him. On his forehead was a clear mark, carved as though he had been born with it: **the Symbol of Light**. His face was hidden behind a veil of shadow, but Baran didn't need to see it. He knew him from the first moment. He knew him by the way he stood. He knew him by the scent of catastrophe that preceded him.
The man parted his lips, and his voice came out calm — like the rumble of the sea before a storm:
**"It seems you survived, Baran..."**
A faint smile. Heavy. Filled with something that had no name.
**"But no matter. You and I will make peace together. Yes... yes, Baran. I will wait for you."**
He took one step forward.
Baran trembled from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. Before him stood **the King of the Light Kingdom** — the man who had set this fire. The man who had slaughtered his entire clan. The man who had left him alone in a world that burned.
Baran opened his mouth... but the darkness spoke first.
It erupted from the ground suddenly, as though it had been waiting for exactly this moment — a black wave that hurled the King of Light away with an irresistible force. From within it, red eyes blazed, and a voice deep as an earthquake roared:
**"Run, Baran... run!"**
---
Baran was deep inside the cave, sweat pouring from his forehead, his breath ragged, his eyes open and fixed on a void that only he could see. Those memories. That memory. That fire which had never died inside him.
Then...
**BOOM!**
The cave walls shook. Stones fell. And a strike of Light energy — sharp, clean, agonizing — slammed into all his senses at once.
Baran leapt to his feet instantly, every muscle in his body tensing for readiness.
**"What?! Who is using the Light Manuscript in this place?!"**
The ring on his finger trembled as if sharing his fury — then it exploded, and from it emerged the spear, half-shattered, blazing with a terrifying light. In that moment, Baran's eyes turned a deep, bloody red. He was no longer speaking. No longer thinking.
**He launched.**
Black lightning erupted from his body in every direction — splitting rock, shattering walls, burning the very air as he surged toward the source of the explosion like a storm raining iron.
---
**Suleiman** looked at the black mass hurtling toward him, and remembered.
He remembered the words Baran had spoken with that scorching gaze:
*"I will kill the King of Light."*
But he understood now — and the understanding burned in his chest — that Baran hadn't simply wanted the king. He had wanted to raze the entire kingdom to the ground. To leave no stone upon stone.
Baran raised the spear high. Lightning coiled around his arms as though it were part of him. And the rage in his crimson eyes was not merely a man's rage — it was the rage of an entire clan staring through him.
**"I wanted to make you my brother... but you were an enemy from the very beginning."**
Baran surged forward like lightning made flesh, the spear splitting the air with a deafening sound.
**THOOM!**
The spear struck the ground with a force that shook the cave — but only stone met stone. Suleiman evaded the blow with a swift spin to the right and was back on his feet in less than a second.
He extended his hand toward the air.
Space tore open before him like a wound in the fabric of reality, and from that rift emerged a **black scythe** with a dark gleam — Suleiman seized it with an iron grip and struck Baran's spear with every ounce of his strength.
**CLANG!**
Sparks flew from the impact, filling the space like falling stars. The sound was like two mountains colliding. Each pushed against the other — Suleiman pressing the scythe downward, Baran pulling the spear upward — the pressure between them expanding and strangling the air.
Suleiman knew that if this continued, there would be no victor. There would only be ruin.
**"Listen to me, Baran!"** Suleiman shouted from behind the straining spear. **"I am from the Kingdom of Darkness. The Light Manuscript — my father stole it once. I trained with it by mistake!"**
---
At the far edge of the battle, **Narvík** was trying to breathe.
Blood flowed from his wounds and soaked the rocky ground. His body no longer had enough left for a single real attack. Even the hand gripping his weapon was trembling. But his eyes remained locked on the battle before him, thinking fast, calculating, searching for any opening.
**"Damn it... Baran is too furious. What do I do now?"**
Then he felt it.
A presence behind him. Cold. Calm. Deliberate.
He turned slowly.
**Lorina** stood directly behind him, her eyes fixed on him with a gaze stripped of all emotion.
**"Hahaha..."** she laughed in a low voice that made the skin crawl. **"Don't worry. The game is over."**
As though her words were a signal — the ground shook beneath them, and from somewhere above, a **colossal stone golem** crashed down, shattering the cave rock under its immense weight. Atop it stood **Shiro**, arms folded, wearing a look of supreme arrogance.
---
**"I have said this before..."** Baran said in a voice cold as death. **"Anyone who trains with the Light Manuscript... must die."**
And in that same moment, at the heart of the battle, the spear and the scythe were still locked against each other — the black lightning still coiling around Baran as though moved by his emotions. And the rage in his crimson eyes grew and grew.
Then Suleiman spoke two words.
**"Heirolina... is still alive."**
Everything stopped.
The black lightning vanished as if it had never been. Baran's grip on the spear went slack. And for the first time since the battle had begun, there was no rage in his crimson eyes. There was something else — something far more painful than any black lightning.
There was... memory.
---
Suleiman seized the moment. He pulled the scythe back and turned his gaze toward Narvík.
**THOOM!**
The colossal golem slid down from above like a mountain boulder, its massive hand swooping toward Narvík the way a human foot comes down upon an ant.
But at the last second — Suleiman blocked the blow. The sound was like a thunderclap. The shockwave rattled the entire cave.
**"Ohh..."** Shiro raised an eyebrow with provoking calm. **"This worthless one who depends on Dyaso? Truly pitiful."**
He gestured with a quiet flick of his fingers. And the golem's second hand began to move.
But it never arrived.
**It shattered.**
And from above — slowly, deliberately, as though he had been waiting for his moment all along — **the Elder** descended.
And a silence fell over everything. A silence unlike anything that had come before.