The wind whipped through the ruinous remains of what once was the glorious citadel, its shrill cry rebounding against jagged rocks scattered about like the very bones of a corpse amidst the desolation. Elrian stood on the edge of the ruin and scanned the horizon. The Rift pulsed with a noisome light-the cursed tear in reality-seemed to live on, feeding off the very essence of the world.
The demons had grown bolder, their numbers swelling like an insatiable tide. From the east, the land had already fallen into chaos: flames licking the skies and the cries of the dying blending with the roar of the storm raging beyond the gates of the kingdom. There was no time left for hesitation, no time for mercy. Only the will to survive—and the knowledge that the end was near.
Behind him, footsteps crunched over gravel. The sound cut into the stillness. Adria. She'd been the one steadying force of his life, the thing holding him grounded, tied into this world even when everything around seemed to have unraveled. Still, in shadows stretching long through a broken landscape, her features told the cost of sleeplessness and fear: and something deeper, that raked at the edges of her heart.
"Elrian," she called softly, her voice shaking, "we cannot keep on like this. The Rift. it's devouring everything. The land. our people—" She stuttered, her voice cracking with the weight of her words.
He turned to face her, his eyes darkened by the knowledge of what he had to do. "I know," he said, his voice cold, distant. "But there's something. something I've found. It's the only way to stop it. The only way to save what's left."
She stepped closer, her expression pleading, desperate. "Please, don't. Don't go down that path. We've lost so much already. I can't. I can't lose you too."
The set in Elrian's eyes turned hard, and in his heart, a will forged out of steel. "I don't have a choice, Adria. The Rift won't stop. Not until it consumes everything." A moment later, with a deep, labored inhalation, trying to steady himself-though the shaking in his voice belied him- "I have found a method of destroying it. But that is at a cost."
She had a wide-eyed gaze. "At what cost?
His lips twisted into a grim smile. "A sacrifice. A supreme one."
Adria recoiled as though he had struck her. "No," she whispered, her hand instinctively reaching for her chest. "Elrian, no."
He turned away, unable to face her pain, the pain of knowing what he must do. He had to act, had to end this nightmare before it consumed them all. But the weight of the decision pressed upon him, like a blade slowly sinking into his flesh. A supreme sacrifice: he would have to give up his life and worse than that, something even more precious-the memories of his father. Memories that had sustained him, that had shaped him into the man he was. It was the last connection he had to the man who once stood beside him, guiding him, teaching the way of the sword and the way of the heart.
The thoughts churned in his mind, each one more maddening than the last. Could he truly do it? Was it that he wanted to blot his father's memory, the love and pain they had shared, times which made him stand up against a world of destruction? Or was this too another act of cowardliness to run away from the fact that very existence was defined by those very memories he now felt no compunctions about discarding?
"You'll die, Elrian," Adria said, her voice soft but filled with an unmistakable edge. "But you'll die alone. There will be nothing left of you."
He met her gaze, his eyes dark and hollow. "Perhaps. But the Rift must end. It must be stopped. Or everything else will be for nothing."
The wind howled louder, and the Rift continued to twist in pain. Somewhere, very far off, the sound of battle raged, the crash of steel and bellow of demons echoing back through the hills. Time was running out, walls closing in.
Then a voice cut through the fog, knife-sharp. It was Kaldros.
"You are a fool, Elrian," the voice echoed from the darkness, mocking with a tone that sent a shiver down his spine. "You think by ripping the Rift you can unsay what is done? Damage already done. There is no salvation for you, for anyone."
Out of the darkness emerged Kaldros, his armor glinting with a light that seemed malevolent. His eyes were cold and unfeeling, like the very depths of the Rift itself.
"Stop playing the victim," Kaldros sneered. "You're no better than me. You want power, too. You just mask it in this veil of sacrifice, as if that somehow makes you noble." His laughter was bitter, hollow. "We are all slaves to the same hunger, in the end. The hunger to control. The hunger for power."
The weight of Kaldros's words laid upon Elrian. Yes, they goaded, yet there was truth in the words-so much truth it was hard not to believe in them. For he had tried to gain power to control his life, even while the world around him was falling. Was he actually any better than Kaldros?
"Maybe I am," Elrian muttered, his voice very low, almost a darkness to it. "But I'll do what it takes to stop you."
And so the battle had been joined. Demons swept forward, eyes aglow with unholy fire, followed by Kaldros's army like a tide of destruction. Elrian fought with all he had; his blade sang as he sliced down monstrous creatures threatening to tear asunder everything he held dear. Adria fought beside him, her own sword rising in the killing dance, but no merriment was reflected in her eyes, no glee in the slaughter. Only fear—fear for him, fear for their future.
As the battle raged, Elrian's thoughts turned inward. He had no time left. The weapon—the sacred weapon that could end the Rift—was within his reach, but the price was still unknown, shrouded in mystery and dread. He had to find it. He had to take the final step.
And so, through blood and fire, through pain and loss, Elrian made his way into the heart of the Rift to find the awaiting weapon. The ancient text had been clear: it would only activate with a superlative sacrifice. The weapon was a blade-smithed out of the essence of the Rift itself-and the dark energy within pulsed with a threat to engulf him the instant he laid his hand upon it.
With one last look at the battlefield, where Adria fought so valiantly, Elrian stepped forward and took the blade in his hand.
The moment he did, a voice echoed in his mind, deep and resonant, like the voice of the Rift itself.
"You must give all to wield the blade, Elrian. Your life, your memories, everything you hold dear. For only in the emptiness can the Rift be undone."
His heart clenched. The decision had come. The price of victory was clear.
"I am ready," he whispered, though the words felt empty. He closed his eyes, and with a single, terrible stroke, he severed the bond between himself and the memories of his father.
When the blade severed the Rift apart, it seemed to be the world's final breath. And in that final moment, Elrian was swallowed by the darkness—the last remains of his identity, his past, erased for all eternity.
The Rift was now destroyed. At what cost?
Adria stood on the battlefield, alone, with the skies darkening. She did not hear his final words, nor did she see what he had to sacrifice. The wind was only left with what was of him-the remnants of his presence, a whisper of something lost, something that could never be retrieved.
The beginning of the end.
The world was still. Time seemed frozen in this moment, as if the earth had stopped to take one collective breath to think over all that had transpired. The Rift no longer existed. That hole torn through reality had curled in on itself; it now left behind nothing more than a kind of chilling quiet. That sky which had once been set aflame with flame by battle and bent energy from the Rift now stood in cold, still deadness.
But as the screams of annihilation faded away, something stirred behind them. A great hollowness.
Elrian stood in the very center of that battlefield, his body shaking, his hands wrapped tightly around the blade that brought the Rift down, as dark energy surged in his hands with the blade, but he felt nothing. None of that warmth, none of that recognition, only a void, cold and hollow where memories used to lie. All the past—father, training, the joy and the pain—was gone. Not forgotten, but erased. The very core of who he was had been sacrificed for a greater good.
The blade slipped out of his fingers, hit the ground, and skittered off, but he felt nothing. The emptiness was spreading, filling his mind with a blank canvas that grew wider by every passing second. Unaccustomed beating at his chest was heard, but there was no pulse, no life in it. Only fragments of a life he couldn't remember anymore.
She reached Elrian at a run, pounding with a heart she was not sure how to get past. She'd felt the destruction of the Rift herself; she'd heard its collapse release and now approached him, the awful truth spread out before her eyes: his. Nothing behind them, no flicker of that fierce fire once shining so brightly within, no sadness, determination, love-nothing just cold empty space.
"Elrian?" she whispered, her voice breaking. Her hand reached for his, but when she touched him, there was no response, no recognition.
She shook him, her desperation mounting. "Elrian! Look at me! Please!"
But his gaze remained unfocused, distant. He seemed. lost. Like a shadow of the man she had once known.
"Elrian!" Adria screamed, her voice cracking with the raw agony of seeing him like this. "What have you done?!"
For the first time since the battle had begun, Elrian stirred. His lips parted, but the words that came were not his own. They were hollow, as if spoken by someone—or something—else.
"I. don't remember." His voice was flat, distant, as if the very concept of memory had become foreign to him. "I don't know who I am."
Horror surges over Adria, and her knees buckle beneath her. She falls to the ground and weeps and wails for nothing in particular, just the winds carrying her words away. "No. no, Elrian. please." she cries out, her voice almost lost to the wind. "You. you gave everything. For me, for us. and now you. you're. gone?"
He stepped back from her, reeling as though he were drawn away by her presence, though in his eyes no recognition gleamed. "I am. Elrian?" His head tilted; the name itself seemed to be nothing to him, as though the identity that he had been carrying for so long was stripped away, like a dead skin.
Adria's mind reeled, her heart breaking at the sight of the man she loved—was it love? Was it a memory of love, or a shadow of it?—now reduced to a shell, a ghost in his own body. The weight of the sacrifice, the price of victory, was heavier than she had ever imagined. She knew that Elrian's plan would require him to give something up, but this. this was beyond anything she had feared.
"Elrian," she whispered, her voice shuddering between sorrow and incredulity, "you. you were supposed to save us. You promised. you promised you wouldn't leave me."
He didn't respond, his face blank, eyes empty. "Save.?" he said, the word strange on his lips. He looked about himself, dazed. "There's nothing to save.".
Once more, the wind moaned across the desolation, its scream wailing its way across, even as it held its breath over all that had ended. The battle was done; the Rift, no more. But the price had been steeper than anyone would ever have seen coming. World saved from those horrors of the Rift, and what price that? What to savior? And what to he who gave up everything?
Adria reached for him again, this time her hand faltering. She knew that nothing she could do would bring back the man who had once been Elrian-the man who had been her hope, her strength, her reason to fight. He was gone and in his place, something. else. Something that didn't belong.
She closed her eyes as her heart broke in a way she never thought it could. She had always known the world they lived in was one of edges that cut: the price for living was steep. But she had never envisioned any survival paid for with every last dear thing they had ever been.
She stood up, her legs feeble, facing the horizon. The land was marred, people were broken. Yet still, the world is here. The Rift is gone, and the demons were banished. And still, amidst all this, no victory was to be seen. Only void. Only what once had been left to decay.
In the distance, she can see the survivors—those who fought with them, those who bore the atrocities of the grip of the Rift—are gathering what remains of their broken lives, trying to piece things back together. They would never again be the same.
"Elrian," Adria said quietly, barely louder than a breath. "What have we become?
The wind carried her words into the breadth, and for an interminable moment, she could have sworn that she heard an answer. Only it was not Elrian that spoke. But something older and darker, that had always lain there, waiting to be called from the shadows, to speak through the silence.
"Sacrifice is never cheap," the voice whispered. "And sometimes, the price is not the life given. but the soul lost."
She turned back to Elrian, her breath catching in her throat as she saw him standing there, motionless, like a puppet with no strings. Her heart broke all over again at the realization that the man who had been her love, her everything, was gone, replaced by a stranger, a hollow shell.
And as the last rays of sunset began to die out, casting a mystical glow upon the world, Adria realized that the real fight had yet to begin. It had just started.