Azril's footsteps felt heavier than usual, not due to physical weakness, but because of the weight of the memories he had just witnessed.
The image of that majestic figure weeping within the corridor of time replayed like a broken record in his head. "The Ancient Echo... the great Azril..." he murmured faintly, his hoarse voice swallowed by the desert wind.
Azril paused for a moment, staring at his own palms, which were now coursing with a denser silver energy.
He began to speak within his heart.
If that really is me in the future... why does he look so broken? If becoming strong only leads to a regret that sorrowful, then something is wrong with the path he took.
Azril looked up, staring at the static and false sky of the Sanctuary. His eyes, which once sparkled with curiosity, had dimmed, replaced by an ice-cold sharpness.
"I don't want to be like him. I don't need the title of cosmic ruler if the price is losing everything," he whispered with iron-clad resolve. "I just want to go home. I want to go back to Mother."
With a sudden burst of speed, Azril bolted toward the western part of the Sanctuary. He no longer cared about fear. To him, every inch of ground in this cursed place was an obstacle to be crushed in order to find a way out.
The western Sanctuary was no longer a desert, but a vast plain filled with strange vegetation that emitted a fishy stench. There, hordes of deformed creatures with forms beyond human logic were gathering. In their midst stood several giants as tall as coconut trees, shaped like herons but with necks made of stacked muscle and swirling red eyes.
Azril approached. He did not hide. He walked calmly, passing through a crowd of smaller creatures that began to hiss at him. The aura of maturity "forced" into his soul made Azril look like an apex predator strolling through a livestock pen.
Suddenly, a scaly hand from a dwarf creature pulled hard on Azril's leg, trying to drag him into the ground.
Without a word, without a shred of hesitation, Azril stomped his foot.
BOOM!
Azril immediately launched a straight kick infused with the energy of the Star-Crust Veins: Late Stage. The creature wasn't just sent flying; its body shattered into pieces in mid-air before it could even make a sound.
The incident triggered a mass frenzy. Hundreds of strange creatures began to crawl, fly, and leap toward Azril. "Noisy," Azril hissed coldly.
Azril exploded energy from the pores of his skin. A silver shockwave swept the surroundings. The creatures trying to lunge at him were instantly lifted into the air, their bodies distorted by the incredible energy pressure until they exploded into a mist of blood. One slightly larger creature was slammed down right in front of his feet. Azril quickly grabbed the creature's neck.
Brak! Brak! Brak!
Without emotion, Azril slammed the creature's body into the ground repeatedly. The sound of breaking bones and crushing flesh rhymed with his calm breathing. Azril only stopped after the creature's head was no longer recognizable, leaving a puddle of black fluid on the strange Sanctuary grass.
Seeing its swarm slaughtered, the giant heron-like creature let out a sound that vibrated the eardrums. The sound contained a mental intimidation that could drive an ordinary Step 1 Star Crust Veins, practitioner mad. However, Azril only glanced at it with a sharp gaze.
Azril concentrated his energy in his right hand. The space around his hand seemed to be sucked into a single point of light.
Wushhhh! Azril swung his hand like a sword.
A massive beam of nebula light shot out, cleaving the ancient heron's body into two symmetrical parts from head to toe. The light did not stop there; it continued to race until it hit a crystal mountain in the distance, creating an explosion that crumbled the mountain peak into dust.
"Next," Azril challenged in an indistinct voice. Seeing waves of other creatures appearing from all directions.
I must kill all these creatures to become strong so that this place gives me a way home! Azril said in his heart.
A brutal battle broke out. Azril charged into the enemy lines like a bloodthirsty storm. His energy palms struck the ground, creating massive craters that swallowed his enemies.
Outside the Sanctuary.
In a dilapidated shack in the Village of Remnants, time seemed to stand still for a mother.
"Lana, eat a little... you've been like this for days," Aerith placed a bowl of thin porridge on the fragile wooden table. Her face was full of worry seeing her friend, who was now little more than skin and bones.
Lana did not turn. Her eyes were hollow, staring at the door. "If I am the one not eating, it doesn't matter, Aerith. But my son... Azril... where is he now? Can he eat? Is he cold?" Lana began to sob, her voice breaking with despair.
"Bad thoughts keep haunting me. If he was kidnapped... if he was sold into forced labor... does his master feed him? Or is he crying out my name in a dark place?"
Lana stood up with her remaining strength, walking out of the shack toward the spot where Azril was last seen before mysteriously disappearing.
Lana stood there, staring at the expanse of empty land that seemed to mock her suffering. Her knees buckled, hitting the ground.
"Azril... where are you, son? Come home..." Lana wailed, her hands clawing at the dry earth.
Aerith came out and immediately hugged Lana's violently trembling body. Aerith could only join in the weeping, trying to provide a warmth that actually meant nothing in the face of the grief of losing a child.
"Calm down, Lana... calm down. Hopefully, there will be a miracle from the heavens," Aerith whispered while staring at the reddish twilight sky.
Back in the darkness of the Sanctuary.
The atmosphere of the valley was now silent. The smell of rust from the creatures' blood filled the air. In the middle of that hellish landscape, Azril sat calmly. Not on a chair, but atop a pile of hundreds of corpses of the creatures he had just slaughtered.
Azril's hand touched the corpse beneath him, absorbing the remaining energy essence to restore his meridians. His face, smeared with black blood, made him look like a growing little demon.
Azril looked up, staring at the empty Sanctuary sky. "Damned sky," Azril cursed in a cold tone, his voice indistinct and filled with hatred.
"In the past, every time I wanted something, I always looked up and prayed to the sky. I thought the sky had ears. I thought the sky had pity." Azril's voice sounded like a growl followed by a small laugh, a laugh that sounded far too old for a boy his age.
"But now? I don't believe in anything anymore. The sky, fate, or gods... all of it is nonsense."
Azril clenched his blood-stained fist. "If I want to go home, I will not plead anymore. I will destroy anyone who blocks this path. Even if it is the sky itself." His voice was hoarse and distant, like an ancient man's voice.
Azril fell silent for a moment after those words slipped from his tiny lips. Azril himself was a bit surprised, but the tightness in his chest was far greater.
The word "damn" was not foreign to him.
In the squalid Village of Remnants, where every day adults fought over food scraps or lamented their fate under the scorching sun, that curse was the daily music that corrupted his ears.
Before, Azril only heard it without understanding. He saw his neighbors shouting at the sky when a long drought destroyed their hopes, cursing a fate that seemed never fair to the poor. Before, Azril would cover his ears every time those harsh words were spoken.
But now, in the middle of this deadly silence of the Sanctuary, Azril finally understood why the people in his village hated the sky so much. He understood why that word was created.
So this is how it feels... Azril said in his heart while staring at his hands, which were trembling not from fear, but from rage. This is how it feels when you have tried to give everything, but the world still wants to bury you alive.
All those words began to surface in his mind.
Those words were no longer just imitations of what Azril heard in the narrow alleys of the village. They were bullets that Azril fired back at the world that had forcibly snatched away his childhood.
Starting from the age of 4 when Azril first came to the Sanctuary until now, Azril had lost his right to be a child; in exchange, the Sanctuary gave him the soul of a vengeful survivor.
His resolve was now firm. Azril was no longer looking for a way home by asking, but by conquering it.