Chapter 123 – Epilogue

The silence after war was stranger than war itself.

The skies were whole again, though scarred by faint cracks of light where divinity had once torn them open. The seas had calmed, though islands lay sunken, and mountains were swallowed by abyssal wounds. The world had survived—but it was not the same world.

At the heart of the stillness lay Kael.

He did not stand tall, nor carry a blade anymore. His sword was gone, scattered into stardust. His armor was broken, his body marked by wounds no healing could mend. Yet his shadow still clung to him, faint, but unyielding—as if existence itself could not decide whether to let him fade or remain.

Aria knelt at his side. Her hands trembled as she pressed them over his wounds, trying spell after spell, even as she knew the truth. The magic sparked, but the sparks drifted away like fireflies with no fuel to cling to.

“Don’t you dare,” she whispered, voice breaking. “Don’t you dare vanish after all of this.”

Kael opened his eyes. Faint, hollow, but still burning with that same defiance he had carried from the very beginning.

“I was never meant to exist,” he said softly, almost amused. “So it’s only right… that I end where I shouldn’t have begun.”

Tears streaked Aria’s face, falling on his chest. She shook her head violently. “No. You changed everything. You gave us a chance. You carried hope farther than anyone else could. You can’t… you can’t just call that a mistake.”

For a moment, the air stirred—like the world itself was listening.

Kael managed a weak smile. “Then… if they tell my story… let it be a story of the impossible. A hero who wasn’t chosen. A shadow that stood where no light remained.”

The horizon began to brighten, dawn spilling across the ruins of battle. Nations would rebuild. Survivors would carry forward. The era of gods was gone—erased with the Hidden One. What remained was a fragile, unshackled world, a place where mortals would no longer be bound by divine scripts.

Kael’s eyes closed, but his shadow lingered a moment longer—stretching across the land, vast and eternal—before finally dissolving into the light of the new day.

And in that silence, his legacy was born.

The Hero Who Shouldn’t Exist.

The one who erased gods.

The one who proved that even an error can save the world.

And though the world would forget his name, the shadow of the one who should never have existed would haunt eternity.