"Why did you save me??" the man uttered, each sound leaving his lips filled with pain and disbelief as he slowly raised his ash-covered face.
Each gasping breath, a piercing needle through his heart. "How can it hurt so much, yet I live? For what??"
The warm wind howled around him.
"Why???" he demanded as the tears rolled out and drew a clear line across his cheek. "When I lost, when I lost everything."
"Is it just... to make me suffer?" Another sob escaped his chest and for a second, only for a second, he glanced at the valley down below, almost underneath his feet.
His family estate burning hot, olive and orange trees burning together with the building, smoke clouding the sun that had not yet risen above the horizon, the thick curtain of death made thicker by the scorched town that lay ravaged a mile away. The town his family built, the home to thousands of families. Now all gone.
He could watch it not.
The sounds, distant yet unambiguous, he could not escape from, reached him. The screams of those who were still alive, those who were soon to die at the hands of his enemies.
"Why, why do I live?"
He was still kneeling on the cliff, his favorite place in the whole known universe. He looked toward the ice-capped mountain top to his back, the dormant volcano sleeping soundly while the whole world burned around. He gazed toward the calm turquoise sea that rested there in the distance as if nothing bad had happened last night. Looking indifferent to all his trouble. Just looking... not so pretty anymore.
The sight that used to bring him so much pleasure every time he climbed the mountain to this very spot now brought only more iron splinters into his heart. He could take it not, not anymore.
Drained of energy, his lips shivered. Drained of mana, his whole body quivered.
To hell with Energy and Mana!
None of it proved sufficient anyway.
So foolish, so weak, so... he felt so useless. "Why, oh, why did this happen???"
The tremble of his old father's voice ringing and echoing inside his ears still, "Run, run, and save yourself!"
He did not run. He stayed. And fought. And gave it all. And came short. And if not for the wind that picked him up and carried him out of the mayhem, up away from certain death, up to this cliff, he would be burning together with the rest of them.
"Why...? To watch how I failed? To watch my mother being burned alive???"
"If you don't want to, just take a step... and it could be all over for you," the wind suddenly answered, wrapping itself around him, growing somehow colder and dimmer.
"I am a fighter. Should have died fighting," the man protested.
"But if you're a fighter, you will continue fighting."
"What, what do you mean?"
"You became a Warden, a Warden of Light, a Warden of Time, A Warden of Eternity... have you forgotten your vows so fast? It's been a mere ten years since you accepted our offer. Has your memory been so tainted by all the troubles?"
"I have not forgotten."
"Then fight."
"But how? I gave it all. I know I did. And I have nothing left in me," he uttered almost unable to hear himself, his chest raising heavily, tears ready to roll down again.
"You speak those words with such certainty as if you know it all. You're a mere Level 20 and you think you've got the knowledge of immortals?"
The man looked at the wind, his face frowning, anger amassing. "Why, why didn't you help? You could have!!"
"Why didn't you? You said you could not but assume right away that I could, that we could? But then, if we could, why should you even exist? If we do all your work, why would you ever feel a need to grow, to become stronger, to- "
"I hate you!"
"No, no, you don't!" The wind corrected him right away with vigor, then added in a softer tone. "You have no bone inside of you dedicated to hate. Not even to those who killed your family. I see you. I know you. You understand. And, yes, that's the answer to your question. That's why I saved you. So, stop behaving like a child. This what lays in front of your eyes... it is a mirror. If you do not like what you see, change it. Grow and become stronger."
The man did not understand. How did the wind think that he did not hate? Vermal and his forces of darkness who took everything he ever loved away from him and put it all to the flames. He'd like nothing better, nothing better at all if he could just destroy them all, take out all their energy, turn them to dust, and shatter their spirits up to pieces from which they could never emerge again. Even if it was the last thing he would ever do and cost him his existence.