Warmth.
Elyra giggled as she bit into a slice of strawberry cake, cream smudged across her nose.
Faran burst into laughter, shaking his head as she wiped at it clumsily.
Kairo watched them from across the table.
A small smile tugged at his lips.
…This is fun.
"Kairo!!"
Elyra leaned across the table and shoved a forkful of cake toward his mouth.
"Try it!"
He hesitated—then leaned forward and bit into it.
Warm.
Sweet.
Soft enough to melt on his tongue.
His eyes drifted to the strawberry on top.
Red.
He stared at it.
"…huh," he murmured quietly.
"Red."
A droplet of red ink struck the wooden floor.
Not clean.
Not straight.
A heavy drip that spread slowly across the grain.
Kairo blinked.
Faran's laughter faded.
Somewhere beside him, a fork rolled off the table—
a tiny metallic clink hitting the floor.
Kairo slowly looked back at the cake again.
"Oh."
A faint crack echoed—like glass breaking somewhere behind his eyes.
Warmth collapsed.
Snow swallowed everything.
The table was gone.
The inn was gone.
Elyra.
Faran.
Velronia.
Gone.
Only cold.
Only Lagos.
Not a footprint.
Not a bird.
Not a falling branch.
Even the snow looked like it had landed hours before he appeared.
A single swing—half frozen, half buried—creaked in the wind without moving, the sound trembling through the empty street.
Kairo exhaled, a trembling fog spilling into the frozen air.
The cold crawled under his skin like a living thing.
He was kneeling in the snow—
shoulders shaking,
body numb,
blood dripping from the stump where his arm should've been.
His blade lay half-buried beside him, frost growing over the steel like white vines.
He stared forward, blank and unfocused.
…I zoned out.
The snow kept falling.
Alone.
The flakes drifted in slow, unnatural waves—
soft one moment,
slamming sideways the next.
Wind scraped through collapsed roofs in thin whistles.
Kairo blinked, vision struggling to sharpen through the cold pressing into his skull.
His breath scraped his throat raw.
RUMBLE—
A deep vibration rolled through the ground beneath him.
Too heavy for thunder.
Too slow for nature.
He lifted his head.
"…huh."
The blizzard parted for a heartbeat — just long enough to show the edge.
Far on the horizon—barely visible through the storm—
something enormous shifted.
Tall.
Black.
Endless.
A blade.
Obellion's blade.
Even from Lagos, half-buried in snow, half-dead, barely conscious—
he could see it turning.
"So even from here…" he muttered under his breath, voice thin, "…you can be seen."
The weapon moved like a piece of the heavens' spine had been carved out and set into motion.
Snowstorms bent away from it as if in fear.
Clouds curved along its edge.
The sky itself looked bruised where the blade pierced it.
Kairo stared at it for a long, empty moment.
A gust slammed into him, nearly knocking him sideways.
Ice bit at the exposed flesh around his stump.
His fingers curled.
Blood dripped from the wound, pattering softly into the snow—
warm for a moment,
then freezing solid.
Red—
the same red as that strawberry.
He closed his eyes once.
Opened them slowly.
His vision blurred again.
He exhaled slowly, unevenly.
Each breath escaped him like a fading whisper.
Then he stood.
Not firmly.
Not steadily.
Just… because his body forced itself upright.
One step.
Crunch.
Another.
Crunch.
The storm swallowed his footprints almost as fast as he made them.
He didn't know where he was going.
He didn't know if he could walk.
He didn't know why he was still breathing.
But he reached down, grabbed his katana from the snow with his remaining hand,
and slid it shakily back into its sheath.
The sound was soft—
barely a scrape beneath the wind.
He moved.
One arm missing.
Body torn apart.
Breathing heavy.
Blood trailing behind him in thin red veins across the white.
He walked.
Because something far away called him.
Because something was happening in Velronia.
Because something enormous was rising above the world.
Because there was nothing left behind him.
He walked.
Into the snow.
Into the wind.
Into whatever waited next.
The snow crunched beneath his steps, slow and uneven.
His breath spilled into the frozen air—thin, fading, fragile.
The world around him was silent—
a silence so heavy it felt as if even sound had died.
He swallowed.
His lips parted.
"…dad."
The word drifted out—quiet, small, almost weightless.
Silence answered.
He blinked once.
"…mum."
Nothing.
No echo.
No shift in the storm.
Not even the wind moved.
A tremor rolled through his knees—not from fear, not from cold, but from something he couldn't name.
A laundry line snapped somewhere behind him, ice breaking under its weight.
A wooden toy—half-buried—peeked from beneath a doorway he passed.
The world felt thin.
He stared ahead for a long moment, eyes half-lidded, colour drained entirely.
Then—
"I survived."
The words didn't carry pride.
They didn't carry relief.
They barely carried breath.
They simply existed.
He stepped forward.
His feet carried him ahead—
toward what remained of the path,
toward the distant shape of Obellion's blade.
A black pillar cutting through the sky.
A mark carved into the horizon.
A direction stamped into the world.
A checkmark.
No matter how foggy,
no matter how cold,
no matter how ugly the world became—
some things still guided him.
Guardians.
Faran.
Cyran.
Elyra.
Their names drifted through the blizzard like faint lanterns—distant, dim, but still there.
His brain felt empty.
His eyes carried no colour.
And inside his chest—
his soul flickered.
A faint flame,
weak and uneven,
like a lighter drowned in water
trying to spark one final time
before the storm erased it.
Kairo kept walking.
Through the snow.
Through the silence.
Through the endless cold.
His body broken.
His spirit dim.
His heartbeat uneven.
But moving.
This fragile, trembling thing
barely clinging to life—
this was the man
Kairo Mercer was.
The snow kept falling.
It coated broken fences, shattered doors, frozen wells — covering every memory like a burial cloth.
And the world stayed cold.
And Kairo walked into it.