The night passed with terrifying speed.
The sky began to pale, signaling a morning that should have been bright. Some villagers started preparing food to bolster their strength for the journey ahead, but in reality, the situation was far worse than anyone could put into words.
Knight stood staring westward, his expression grim. Behind him were the frantic cries of dozens of people scrambling to pack their belongings. The sound of children weeping, mothers comforting their young, and the raspy cough of an old man struggling for breath these merged into a dissonant symphony of despair. But Knight didn't hear them. His eyes were fixed on a horizon that should not have been red.
But it was red. Red, as if someone had painted the edge of the world in blood.
A massive cloud of dust billowed from the earth. The Red Cross Army was on the move, and this time they hadn't sent a mere unit; they had brought the entire host. Knight's "Eyes of Judgment" saw red threads filling the sky, so dense they looked like cobwebs woven from blood, shrouding the horizon until the path ahead was nearly invisible. Not just dozens, not hundreds, but thousands and tens of thousands of threads stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, as if the entire world were suddenly filled with the dying.
Knight had never seen anything so terrifying in his life. 'A lot faster than I expected...'
He thought to himself before barking out orders. His voice was harsh and clear, as if nothing were wrong, as if the army behind them were merely a passing rain cloud and not a death ten thousand feet strong racing toward them.
"Everyone, move forward! I'll guard the rear!"
At his command, the procession of villagers broke into a run. Everyone poured every ounce of strength they had into staying alive. Children ran barefoot on the hard earth, their soles bleeding, yet they did not stop. There was no time. Mothers carried their children until they were breathless, their faces pale like people who knew their strength was failing but kept treading anyway. Some young women hauled the elderly onto their backs without a word of complaint. Everyone knew that if they stopped now, it was over not just for themselves, but for everyone beside them.
Knight rode at the rear, circling to ensure no one fell behind. But his horse was in terrible condition. It had been driven hard for days until barely any strength remained; its ribs protruded with every breath, and its legs trembled with every step. Though it had rested last night, one night was not enough. It never was. It could only maintain a slow trot, lacking its former power, as if this loyal beast were running on the final fragments of its soul.
Knight's own body was nearing its limit. Though his fragments constantly healed his wounds and restored his muscles, they could not heal his mental exhaustion. He hadn't slept for so many nights he couldn't remember his last rest. The world before him began to blur into a haze of dust, blood, and repetitive wailing until he could hardly distinguish reality from the hallucinations of a tired mind. There were moments when he looked ahead and saw the faces of the dead walking in the procession, only for them to vanish when he blinked.
'This trial must end soon.'
The pressure gnawed at him from within. He didn't even know the victory conditions. Did he have to survive alone, or bring the villagers with him? Did he need to kill a certain number of enemies, or simply escape? This uncertainty was a bit harder than the fatigue because it turned every decision into a gamble where the stakes were his life and the lives of those walking beside him.
'Reach the silver mist first. I'll figure out the rest later.' Knight gritted his teeth, pushing the procession to reach the goal before noon.
The journey was pure agony. The sun beat down mercilessly on the heads of villagers who had no shade to hide under. The glare from the parched earth stung their eyes until tears flowed. Some children cried until they had no tears left, their mouths hanging open in silent screams, their small bodies shivering from fear and exhaustion. Adults stumbled on trembling legs but forced themselves onward because the massive cloud of dust behind them was drawing closer.
Every time Knight looked back, he found the army had gained ground. It was as if they were waiting for their prey to collapse before devouring them patiently and tactfully, knowing there was no need to rush. There was no destination ahead, no help from the outside, and the people fleeing were losing strength with every passing second.
An old woman fell. Both her knees hit the hard ground with a sickening thud. Those beside her tried to hoist her up, but her legs could no longer support her weight. Knight saw it, but there was no time to stop. He could only lock eyes with her for a split second before the tide of people swept her from his sight. He didn't know if she ever got up. He didn't dare look back.
But finally, they made it. They reached the "Silver Mist."
The mist hung motionless before them, strange and unnatural. Its shimmering silver hue was eerily still. There was no wind to move it, no sound from within. It just sat there like a wall built from something that shouldn't exist in this world, waiting for something it already knew would arrive.
Many villagers stopped, paralyzed by fear. They knew this mist was the "Judgment" that had broken souls into hollow shells, like the mothers of Lina and Aeta who now walked aimlessly in the line eyes open but no one home, mouths twitching as if to speak but producing no sound, hands hanging lifelessly at their sides. A little girl stood holding her mother's hand, looking up into her face as if waiting for her to look back. But her mother didn't. She never would again.
Knight did not hesitate. He dismounted and walked straight into the mist. There was no pause, no second-guessing, because he knew that if he stopped to think, he would find a thousand reasons not to do it. And if he didn't, no one would. He reached out and touched it.
[You have received fragments: 10… 50… 100… 200… 500…]
"Ugh! AHHHHHHH!"
Knight collapsed, groaning in a pain beyond description. Both his knees hit the hard earth, but he couldn't feel it because a far heavier agony was incinerating him from within.
It wasn't just ordinary pain. It felt as if every drop of blood in his body was boiling into lava. The searing heat surged from his core, scorching out to his skin until he felt he was being burned alive. Every tendon stretched to the snapping point; his jaw clenched until he could hear his teeth grinding. His body shook as if resisting something far too massive for it to contain. Every cell screamed in unison, as if every piece of him were trying to escape from the same skin.
The runic tattoos on his back glowed so fiercely they nearly scorched his armor. The patterns, usually still, vibrated as if alive, resisting the icy chill of the mist that tried to seep into his bones. It was like two energies were warring inside his frame: his heat and the mist's cold. Their battlefield was every centimeter of Knight's body. No corner was safe; no tissue went untouched as it was pulled simultaneously in two directions.
As his body burned, the memories of "someone" crashed into his brain like a tidal wave destroying everything in its path. It wasn't a slow drift of memory, but a violent deluge. It was as if someone had kicked open a long-locked door and hurled everything inside at him at once. No apology, no preparation. Memories like these do not wait.
Knight saw images of a thousand pure white cathedrals that once stood tall and elegant. Soaring stone pillars, meticulously carved by the hands of those exhausted through generations. Marble stairs where people once ascended in faith. Children playing between pillars, elders praying in the shadows. All of it was smashed into ruins amidst the flames.
The fire did not burn quickly. It burned slowly, deliberately, as if wanting everything to fully experience its own dissolution. Each falling pillar thundered like the sound of something that had stood too long finally surrendering.
He saw people using chisels to scrape the name of a certain person off stone tablets. The hands holding the chisels shook with madness, relentlessly erasing her name from history. Some cried as they did it, some smiled, but they all did it as if wanting to erase her existence from the universe forever. As if by removing the name, there would be no memory, and without memory, there would be no being.
Did they not know that it didn't make her disappear? It only made her hurt more. Because there is a vast difference between being remembered as evil and being made as if you never existed. Those who hated her could still remember her, but those chiseling her name from the stone were trying to turn her into a void, a gap in a sentence, a blank page in a book.
And the cruelest part was... they would succeed. Because memory always fades with time. No matter how great, no matter how painful, the next generation would not know someone had stood there. They wouldn't know of the name struck from the stone, or the wound that never healed.
But what cut deeper into the soul than being forgotten was the agony of being betrayed by those she loved most.
Knight could feel her gaze as she looked at two great men. One was as elegant as a warm light, the other as deep as a mysterious shadow. Both were brothers-in-arms, brothers-in-spirit, the ones to whom she had given her heart and life to protect without condition. She once believed that if the whole world turned its back, these two would remain.
She had even said it once, on one of the darkest nights when fear was too heavy to carry alone. She told them she was afraid, and they told her they were there. They said they were always there. She was wrong.
In those memories, she saw the hands that once comforted her become the hands that gripped the sword piercing her own heart. It wasn't instantaneous. It was bit by bit. Every action, every word left unsaid when it should have been. Every time they chose silence when she needed their voices most. Every time they chose to stand on the opposite side without looking back. Every small decision accumulated into a high wall she couldn't see was being built.
It hurt more than a blade to the chest. A blade is quick. This was slow. She felt every step every time she walked out of a meeting room and looked back to see them still talking without her. Every time she heard they made a decision without informing her. Every time they looked right through her as if she weren't in the room.
Sometimes she wondered if she was the only one at fault. Sometimes she wondered if she deserved it. And that was the cruelest part that she began to question herself instead of the ones doing this to her.
She watched them help tear down the churches built for her, help burn everything she had ever protected, and join forces to tell the whole world to turn away from her, never once looking back to see if she was still standing there. Still breathing. Still feeling. Still waiting. Waiting for someone to turn around. Waiting until she finally realized she was waiting for something that didn't exist...
The sorrow was so heavy Knight felt as if he couldn't breathe. It pressed against his chest from the inside out, heavier than any stone he had ever carried. It wasn't just sadness; it was the feeling of justice trampled, the loneliness of being left to die in isolation while the world continued to turn without her name. That kind of loneliness isn't just being alone, it's standing among people and knowing no one truly sees you. Knowing you're drowning in the middle of a crowd.
And the cruelest thing of all? The world was okay. It moved on just fine without her. Flowers still bloomed, seasons still changed, children still laughed and played, and the ones who once loved her still woke up to eat breakfast every morning without her name ever crossing their lips. As if she were merely a season that came and went, leaving no more trace than rain soaking into the earth. As if she had never truly existed.
There is nothing more painful than that. Not being hated, not being betrayed, but the discovery that your absence made no difference at all.
"Why... why did you do this?!"
The scream in Knight's head was not his own. It was a long-accumulated rage, so heavy it had its own mass. A vengeance that wanted to tear the sky down and crush the traitors into dust. That hatred was intense and pure, the kind only someone who had loved with all their heart could possess. Because hatred born of indifference is cold, but hatred born of love... it burns. And it was still burning. Every day. Every night. With every breath she still took.
Knight felt his eyes searing as if they would bleed. It wasn't his anger, but he could no longer distinguish his feelings from what the silver mist was pouring into him. The two were blended into one. And he wasn't sure he wanted to separate them anymore.
[You have received fragments… 700… 850… 920…]
The notifications in his head rang out in a flurry until they became a high-pitched whistle piercing deep into his brain. Knight felt his body was about to shatter into pieces. His surroundings warped and blurred; his thoughts became a chaotic swirl. But amidst the excruciating pain, a strange memory that wasn't his flooded his mind again.
He saw a beautiful city of clean white stone standing tall in a valley, only to be shrouded in crimson flames. Screams of terror and despair echoed everywhere. He saw knights in elegant armor lying dead in the streets, some still holding their swords, some clutching their comrades as if trying to protect them even in death.
And most prominent of all was the image of a gargantuan creature with pure white wings fighting an army that looked like the Red Cross, yet far stronger and more brutal. The creature was surrounded and attacked from all sides, its wounds widening every second. Its white wings began to stain red, but it still fought. It still tried. It would not give up. Until finally, it faltered. And fell to the earth with a sound that made everything around it tremble.
The last sensation he felt from those memories wasn't fear or pain, but a rage, a sorrow, and a sense of injustice so powerful it nearly broke Knight's spirit along with it.
I am not dead yet. The thought was not his, but it rang in his head as clearly as someone shouting in his ear. 'I am still here.But why can no longer anyone see me?'