Prologue

The sky is a deep blue.

But today it is coated with crimson and ash, as spells flared in every direction.

Muffled screams and desperate wails are heard all around as the children cried in a red-stained village. What was once a quaint and peaceful settlement now raged with red: embers of flames cast either by spell or torches, and blood. Some village townsmen took an opportunity—maybe even a revenge of a lifetime—desperately using any utensil, tool, broken shard to fight against the attackers.

Among them is a man who stood in front of a young woman.

He was a chef, never a fighter. However, he had always told his family that he will protect them in any chance that he could.

Raising his kitchen knife, he stands trembling before a towering man in full-plated armor; he knew this man would shatter his knife.

"Please," his voice was shaking, desperately demanding a dissolution to their agony. The towering man offered nothing. Only a step forward.

The chef inched back, shaking more violently, and raising his knife as if he knew how to stab humans. "Leave them alone... please..."

The young woman—his wife—cradled their daughter tight, both crying and bracing for their inevitable doom.

The man was still unshaken. Instead, he grinned ear to ear. Walking steadily in front of the chef, he unsheathed his sword and—

Snip!

The chef's arms laid by his sides and instantly tumbled down the blood stained sidewalk. His wife screamed in horror, as in front of her is the pale moonlight draped in black-crimson, almost a dim eclipse. The child eyes were dark: her mother had covered her face with her whole body, but as the chef laid there as a crimson husk, the man finally slowly moved to her, gradually increasing his pace. She removed herself from her daughter's vision, and cupped her cheek.

"My baby," she started, her voice commanding, but gentle; sweet, but with urgency. "You have to run."

The child, whose face is streaking with tears out of emotions she couldn't quite describe, tried to reply, but her mom was insistent. She pushed her and screamed all the louder, telling her to run.

The man's imposing footsteps inched a lot closer. She had no time to call for her mama.

So she ran. Each step, her mother encouraging her to go.

With soot and tears masking the young girl, she manages to dash and finally sprint. Her mother and the man fading from view as the ash covered their profiles. She could not look back, she had to run.

--------------------

In a stone's skipping throw, the deep blue of the sky was a lot more prominent. Ash hadn't reached that area, but the smoke was about to catch up. The air was slowly asphyxiated by it, becoming more thick and greasy. It carried the stench of burning thatch, a broken hearth, or possibly something worse. It had reached a place where a lone archer is standing—bow drawn and a target in his sights.

The screams and ash colors have finally caught up to him. A mix of sensory inputs that made his stomach turn.

He had heard all of it before. From how his comrades had treated it as an unfortunate byproduct, or how he had deluded himself that this is necessary for their mission to succeed. From how the royal empress had told him it was his duty as a member of her prestigious entourage of heroes, or how he had convinced himself that this is an aftershock of the empress bringing order.

He'd been lying.

The child had been running for a while, her small frame catching into view of the archer. He had seen her form: very desperate, running for her life. She stumbled upon some uneven ground, and her breathing was erratic, a sign of panic.

Unfortunately, in her panic, she was running right into his line of sight.

Some comrades who had been fighting close by eventually saw the little girl running away. He had heard them all in his periphery, barking orders that sound different, but are all saying the same command:

"Take the shot!"

He had aimed at her small frame, and his arrow pointed at her chest. Clean, fast, efficient. All the qualities that left a good impression on his comrades.

He trembled. His arms suddenly shook slightly, his breathing paused; as if he had just remembered a memory of someone he held dear to him.

Immediately, he heard in his temple a voice; a memory. It was soft and clear, but it was ringing inside his head as if he is being commanded to go against what he is about to accomplish.

"Don't let the world make you cruel. Promise me."

It echoed like a broken record inside his temple. His vision started becoming blurry as he recognized the voice that was like a hand reaching out to him. It was his sister's voice.

"Promise me, Sam."

He couldn't.

He had seen the child running. She looked to be about eight or nine years of age, the same age his sister had been when their parents died. The same age she had been when she picked up a bow from a bunch of scraps and taught herself how to shoot to protect him.

The same age he had been when she first taught him how to shoot. How to aim. How to focus.

"Breathe," she had said once. "Steady. Do not rush. The arrow follows a calm heart."

His heart was not calm. It was cracking open in his chest like a log split in half by an axe swung down in tremendous force. He remembered her laying down on the bed, taking his hand, and saying the same thing she had told him when she first taught him how to focus. He could not do any of that right now. His mind is in disarray, his morale is shaken, and his heart was erratic—just like the young girl that just passed by him.

He stared at the ground as fighting raged around him. His expression is unreadable, but he was shaking, clenching the bow his sister once used. He was about to break a promise his sister had told him. He was about to tarnish his sister's legacy and kill an innocent—

Bang!

The world immediately exploded in pain, as a heavy piece of metal slammed right into his back. He felt something give as he collapsed down a house preparing to fall. The impact drove the air from his lungs, sent him stumbling backward, and he coughed a red streak: his own blood. His bow was clattered somewhere he couldn't find; he had no time for that.

Desperately crawling out, he tried to stand. Instead he was met with a large falling debris that used to be a house and—

Silence.

Darkness.

He overheard some voices, faint in his ear, but recognizable: the empress and some of her scouts. Her voice he couldn't make from the rubble and the pain in his chest, but he heard her only saying one thing.

"Pitiful."

Then, he heard the low sound of horses riding away and disappearing. He had been forgotten by the entourage. Their mission is complete, but their casualty forgotten.

He lay in the rubble, alone, dying, only propped up by debris of something that used to give shelter to people.

And now they are dead.

So is he.

He felt something shatter inside him. Not rage, he'd expected it if it was. He'd expected bitterness. He'd expected betrayal that burns hotter than the embers their mages had thrown to the villagers. He'd expected a flicker of hope to keep him alive.

There was only nothing.

He knew... he was never like them. He knew he was just a tool. He knew from the many merrymaking moments they had, they never made merry with him. He knew that in every conversation that was brought upon him, he was propped to be a valuable asset.

Because that's what they've seen him as this whole time.

An asset. A thing.

And sometimes you lose your assets. Resources get spent.

Tools get discarded.

He used the last of his strength to pull the debris from above him, and his body had become a rag doll with his crushed back now laying on whatever debris he was in. In the last few moments of his vision being active, he saw the sky. No longer the deep blue that he had seen before. No longer the azure that became a bed to a million stars in the sky governed by a full moon. Not anymore the pale blue that seemed to be a lot innocent like a child's painting.

It was grey. Indifferent.

The same sky that had watched her sister fade away. The same sky that had seen him go through missions.

Now the same sky that will see him fade the same.

"Don't let the world make you cruel."

"I tried," he gasped. He had kept his promise to her. And now he was going to die alone in a debris of a collapsed house, and no one will ever know.

"Don't let me die alone..." he had whispered.

But no one heard him.

No one ever heard him.