Darkness. Endless, suffocating darkness.
I floated within it, weightless, untethered, like a man lost at sea, with nothing but the void as my companion. There was no pain, not anymore—only the cold, numbing sensation that comes when the body begins to shut down, when life starts slipping through your fingers.
Was this it? The end, yet again?
No. Not yet.
I wasn't dead, though I was close enough to feel its breath on my neck. I had pushed myself too far, reckless in my pursuit of victory, and now I was paying the price. But it had been worth it. Everything I did was for a reason, for a purpose greater than any single life, including my own. I had learned that long ago.
Suddenly, a spark ignited within the darkness, a flicker of light that grew, expanding into a cascade of memories. Flashes of a life long past. Leon Winter. My past life. The tyrant, the conqueror, the king, the man who had once held the world in his grasp only to see it slip away.
Why now? Why was I seeing these memories now?
The images came fast, too fast to catch hold of, a blur of moments and faces, victories and failures. And then they slowed, crystallizing into clarity.
I saw him. I saw me—Leon Winter. A figure standing tall with that same aura of cold arrogance I had worn like armor. My face, chiseled and sharp, was framed by neat, silky dark hair, parted in the middle with precision, falling just above scarlet red eyes that seemed to pierce through all who dared look into them. Those eyes were both my weapon and my curse, for they saw everything—and in seeing, they judged.
I remembered the way people looked at me, how they whispered behind my back, calling me perfect, a prodigy among men, a natural-born leader. They thought I was untouchable, flawless in every way. How wrong they were. How blind they were to the truth.
Mistakes. Countless, crippling mistakes.
One by one, they resurfaced, each more vivid than the last. The battles I had lost because of my arrogance, the alliances I had shattered with my pride. The near-death experiences that had come for me like silent assassins in the night.
A particular memory burned into my mind—the dragon.
The roar of its fire echoed in my ears, a sound that could tear apart mountains, followed by the blinding light of its fiery breath. I remembered the heat, the searing agony as the flames licked at my armor, threatening to roast me alive. The air itself had burned, my skin blistering beneath the metal. I had been so close to death then, mere inches away from being reduced to ash. But even in that moment, when the smell of my own burning flesh filled my nostrils, I had not given in to panic. I had adapted. I had survived. And the beast had fallen.
But it wasn't the dragon that had haunted me. It was the mistakes. The small errors, the oversights, the moments where my pride had nearly cost me everything. I had been hailed as a genius, a tactician whose brilliance defied all odds, but no one knew how often I had brushed against the edge of death. How often I had danced with failure.
What made me, Leon Winter? Was it my victories? Was it the fear I inspired in others, the respect, the awe? No.
It was my mistakes.
Not the mistakes themselves, but the fact that I learned from each one. Every time I encountered death, every time I felt pain, I adapted. I evolved. That was what truly set me apart. Not my talent, not my intellect, but my refusal to be defeated by my own failures. I embraced them. I wore them like scars, each one a reminder of a lesson learned. A lesser man would have been broken by those mistakes, driven to insanity by the weight of them. But not me. No. I had long since abandoned the luxury of fear, of doubt.
Insanity, I had often remarked, was not born from the trials life throws at you. It was born from making the same mistake, over and over again, and expecting the world to change for you.
I would change the world.
I always had. It was my will, my power, that bent the world to its knees, that made it yield. And if it didn't, I would crush it beneath my heel. I had a path, a dream, an aspiration that burned brighter than any sun. It had driven me in my past life, and it drove me now. Nothing would stand in my way. No obstacle too great, no enemy too strong. I would shape the world to my desires, and if that meant becoming a villain in the eyes of others, then so be it.
I didn't care for their judgment. I never had.
The world was evil, rotten to its core. And to change such a world, to drag it out of the muck and filth, sometimes you had to become something worse. A greater evil, one that would devour the lesser evils.
That was me. Leon Winter. Eliot Blackthorn.
It didn't matter which name I wore. The core of who I was remained the same. I was the man who would make the change—force it, if necessary. And if the world hated me for it, feared me for it, that was only proof that I was doing what needed to be done.
As the memories swirled, I felt the weight of my past decisions settle on my shoulders like an old, familiar cloak. I hadn't regretted them then, and I didn't regret them now. Pain had been my greatest teacher, failure my closest ally.
And now, in this new life, I would wield them both again.
My body may have been broken in that fight with Fendrel, but my spirit remained unyielding. I had come too far, sacrificed too much to let a single battle decide my fate. I had learned from this, as I always did. And when I awoke, when I stepped back into the world, I would be stronger for it.
This was merely another lesson.
I smiled into the darkness, a slow, knowing smile.
I would return. And when I did, the world would tremble once more beneath my feet.
Because I, Leon Winter, Eliot Blackthorn, would never stop.
Not until the world was mine.