Kael gasped as the realization struck him like a physical blow—he wasn't just dying. He was being erased.
The world was forgetting him.
His hands trembled as he held them up, watching in horror as the edges of his fingers began to dissolve into fine, gray dust. The air no longer filled his lungs completely—as if even the wind was forgetting he needed to breathe. The ground beneath his feet felt less solid, as though his very presence was becoming insubstantial.
"No... no, no, NO!" His voice cracked, raw with desperation.
But the silence swallowed his words whole.
He clutched at his chest, his heart hammering against his ribs, each beat weaker than the last. His skin prickled with an unnatural coldness, as if the void itself was seeping into his veins.
He was disappearing.
Not just from the world—but from memory itself.
The villagers would wake tomorrow and not recall his name. The children he played with would stare blankly at the space where he once stood. His mother—
His mother would forget him.
The thought struck him like a blade to the gut.
"Please... not that..." His whisper was barely audible, choked with grief.
He had already failed her once. He had sworn to protect her, to be strong enough to shield her from the cruelty of the world—and he had been too weak. Now, even his existence would be stripped away, leaving nothing behind. No proof he had ever lived. No proof he had ever loved her.
That was a fate worse than death.
The darkness around him wasn't just absence of light—it was nothingness given form. A void so complete it stole the air from his lungs, the sound from his throat.
He screamed, but the silence devoured it.
He clawed at his own arms, his nails digging into flesh that felt less and less real with every passing second.
"I don't want to go—!"
But the world was already letting him slip away.
Memories flickered at the edges of his mind—his childhood, his mother's smile, the warmth of the sun on his face as he played in the village square. Each one dimmed, fading like embers in the wind.
He was losing himself.
And there was nothing he could do.
Then—
A sound.
Faint at first, but growing clearer.
Laughter.
Warm. Familiar.
Her laughter.
Kael's breath hitched as light pierced the darkness—golden and soft, like the first rays of dawn. Before him, the world resolved into a scene he knew by heart.
His mother sat on their hill, the one overlooking the village, her brown hair streaked with silver, her hands calloused but gentle as they carded through young Kael's hair. The setting sun painted the sky in hues of orange and pink, casting her in a glow that made her look almost ethereal.
"Sing for me, Mama," his younger self begged, curled in her lap.
She laughed—the sound like sunlight given voice—and began the Song of Seven Heroes, her voice soft but sure.
Kael—the real Kael, the one being unmade—wept.
"I'm sorry," he choked out, his voice breaking. "I'm so sorry... I wasn't strong enough..."
He had failed her.
Failed to protect her.
Failed to become the hero she believed he could be.
And now, he would fail to even be remembered.
The memory flickered, edges curling to ash.
"NO!"
The scream tore from him with all the force of a dying star.
His body was half-gone, his legs barely more than outlines in the dark.
But he stood.
Bones ground together, muscles tore—he did not care.
Blood ran from his nose, his ears, his eyes—he wiped it away.
The pillar loomed before him, the moon-eye watching, waiting.
Kael bared his teeth.
"You don't get to take her from me."
He took a step.
The ground shattered beneath him.
The Strike
His first core was empty.
His body was breaking.
But the oblivion shard—the very thing trying to erase him—still thrummed in his chest.
Kael reached for it.
Pain.
White-hot and endless, like swallowing a blade. His right arm blackened, skin peeling away to reveal something darker beneath.
He screamed—but this time, the void did not swallow it.
This time, the void echoed it back.
His fist connected with the pillar.
The world held its breath