Chapter 16:

  "Signs of Sadness"

  Arc 2: Chapter 6

  POV: "???"

  The air in the kingdom was thick with expectation. Everyone awaited the new orders from the Queen. Approved unanimously by the Houses, the first great directive emerged: extinguish the Infernal Zone and its curses, once and for all.

  A colossal military alliance was formed, gathering soldiers from all Houses.

  On the grand stage set up for the departure stood the four pillars of power: Luka Graymon, the mage prince. Alfredo Lighting, the unbeatable duelist. Bruce Darking, the titan of darkness. Luna Lighting, the queen of light.

  After the tests and presentations, the last to enter—without fanfare, without announcement—was Empty.

  The audience's gaze was indifferent, empty. There was no applause. Until a single pair of hands, loud and stubborn, echoed. It was Raphadun. And then, like a wave of obligation, the others began to clap as well, a hollow and cutting sound.

  ...

  That day, a new mission was assigned: a cleanup and restoration operation at the border, broadcast live to the entire kingdom. Cameras scrutinized every gesture.

  Luna and Luka formed a perfect duet for the cameras. Luna's golden light enveloped and purified the shadows, while Luka's purple magic, coming from his axe like controlled thunder, crushed and contained. Each of their movements was choreographed with efficiency and a synchronicity that resembled dance—a calculated and powerful demonstration of the political marriage flourishing before the kingdom's eyes.

  After the quick defeat of the last creatures, the lenses turned to the royal couple receiving congratulations.

  It was then that Empty, ignored by the spotlights, approached the devastated land. He knelt. Placed his hands on the blackened soil. And like before, a pulse.

  Not of darkness. Of something deeper, more ancient.

  Stubborn and vibrant green sprouts broke through the black crust, spreading in a perfect circle of reborn life at his feet.

  Reporters crowded in, microphones like spears pointed at the victors.

  "Queen Luna! Mage Luka! An incredible demonstration! Comment!"

  Luna, still breathless but with searching eyes, looked back, trying to pierce the wall of soldiers and equipment to locate Empty.

  "The credit isn't just ours. Empty, our ally, was essential. He is the one who truly brings life back to this soil."

  The reporter smiled, a professional and condescending smile, and turned the microphone back to Luka, as if Luna's correction were a modest slip to be ignored.

  "And you, Mage Luka, how do you evaluate the partnership?"

  Off to the side, far from the spotlights, Flávio carried supply boxes, his shirt soaked with sweat. Two veteran soldiers watched, their whispers sharp as razors.

  "That guy was the 'hero' they chose to help?" one spat, loud enough to be a public statement. "Doesn't do anything. Just carries boxes and follows that… thing."

  Flávio stopped. His face turned red with hot, humiliating anger. He was about to turn, swallow his pride with a shout, but a firm, cold hand like winter metal landed on his shoulder.

  It was Empty.

  Behind the mask, his eyes narrowed in a clear, calming, but firm signal: Let it go. It's not worth it.

  Flávio swallowed the shout, the pride, the pain. His shoulders fell.

  "You're right," he murmured to Empty, forcing a smile that hurt. "At least Luna and Luka are crushing it, right?"

  Luna, from afar, saw Empty move away from the main scene. He crouched, picked with infinite delicacy a small white flower that had bloomed from his touch, and approached a curious child watching wide-eyed in the crowd.

  He extended the flower.

  Before small fingers could touch the gift, the mother pulled the child back with a brusque, almost violent motion. Her face was a mask of pure fear and visceral disgust, as if Empty were offering poison.

  Empty did not retreat. Did not shrink. He held the smile in his eyes for one second longer—a sad, understanding smile.

  Then he crouched again. And with the same reverent care with which he had picked it, replanted the flower in the soil. A light pulse of energy, a breath of life, ensured it would survive alone.

  Luna watched the entire scene. A knot of rage, pain, and powerlessness formed in her throat, so tight she could barely breathe.

  But then, suddenly, an interviewer from a small newspaper approached Empty after all.

  "Now, tell us, what is your purpose in this place? Why are you helping us?"

  Empty didn't understand. He kept looking.

  He approached the microphone, and the interviewer stepped back a little, scared.

  And Empty began to sniff the interviewer's microphone.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Luna, who had been observing everything from afar, approached, pulling Empty away.

  "He doesn't give interviews!" she said, pulling Empty away from behind.

  She smiled at him, he smiled back, and Empty remained in his small world of understanding, observing the sky.

  Raphadun, who was a little further away, approached.

  "Do you think it's right? Are we preventing him from showing himself?" he asked genuinely.

  Luna looked at her brother.

  "Raphadun... Remember what was decided. Empty doesn't do interviews, you know... For a long time we were prejudiced against him in the Infernal Zone too... If it weren't for the circumstances, it would have been the same with us. We need to understand the population and Empty at the same time. Without exposing him completely."

  Raphadun listened, and only nodded, but with something still on his mind, which wasn't properly said.

  And the mission ended.

  Like others that continued.

  The same events, but with even greater confidence in the savior and ultimate light, the space Empty needed to live and learn with time...

  Before any impediment.

  But that won't happen.

  Will it?

  The following month brought a slow and miraculous transformation to the border.

  The Infernal Zone, seen from the kingdom's walls, was no longer an eternal gray blur. Stubborn green patches emerged among the rubble, like moss covering an ancient wound. The air, once laden with the metallic smell of death, sometimes carried, in the early mornings, the damp perfume of turned earth and healthy decomposition. The healing process was local, irregular, but undeniable.

  All credit, naturally, flowed to the Queen of Light.

  In the streets, taverns, bars, parties, and Council speeches, Luna's name was whispered with renewed reverence. "She didn't just return," they said, "she's healing the world." The prophecy was fulfilling before their eyes, and Luna Lighting ascended from survivor to savior, her face stamped on posters proclaiming "rebirth" and "new dawn."

  While the sister was carried by the wave of public adoration, Raphadun found himself adrift in her wake. He participated in events, banquets, inspections, always one step behind, his smile a little forced. He tried, but his strength—that which was not physical, but of presence, of gravity—seemed overshadowed by Luna's incandescent sun. He was the prince who returned, yes, but the light of the prophecy did not shine on him. His contribution, the teleportation, the strategy, the silent endurance, were footnotes in his sister's epic.

  It was in this void that Raphadun began to notice.

  Empty was… different. Stranger than usual.

  It wasn't something Luna, immersed in duties and admiring gazes, perceived. Nor the house leaders and nobles, who saw in the hooded being only a mystical curiosity, a living talisman of the queen.

  But Raphadun saw.

  He saw the long periods of absolute immobility, when Empty seemed more a statue than a living being, his eyes fixed on a distant point, lost in a horizon only he could see. He saw the occasional hesitation, an almost imperceptible tremor in the hand when holding an object, as if the connection between will and action was weak. It was a quiet that was not peace. It was the silence of something withdrawing, retreating.

  Paradoxically, it was this strangeness that forged the core of a new friendship.

  Flávio and Fencer, the weak brothers, became regular in Empty's orbit. For Flávio, Empty was the perfect person: an infinite listener who never mocked his optimism, never called him weak. For Fencer, he was an enigma to be deciphered, a living puzzle that challenged his cynicism. Empty accepted both with silent equanimity—the inflamed speeches of Flávio about goodness, Fencer's acidic observations about the kingdom's hypocrisy.

  And, by extension, these two ended up gravitating around Raphadun.

  It was an unlikely friendship. The displaced prince, the despised optimist, the wounded cynic, and the walking mystery. United not by blood or status, but by a subtler bond: they were all, in their own way, observers of the shining center. They were pieces that did not fit perfectly into the new picture Luna was painting.

  What kept them united was something mysterious, an underground current of shared thought. Not through words, but through glances exchanged during triumphant speeches, through shared silences when the conversation turned to the "unquestionable glory" of the queen. It was an unspoken pact of those who could see the cracks beneath the golden paint, who felt the weight of public scrutiny, and who carried a green, pulsing secret hidden in the chest.

  The month slipped by, bringing with it a forced distraction: the inauguration of a water park, pride of Aldert Fingard. "It's to celebrate the idealizations made. And to get even closer to the peace we so desire," the proud Aldert thought. It was a monument of water and light, an exuberant affront to the desert of memory. The water shone turquoise-blue and criminally clear, a luxury that hurt the eyes of those who knew the eternal thirst of the Infernal Zone.

  For one day, the kingdom's weight seemed suspended. Raphadun and Luna dove in like children, their laughter—genuine, disarmed—breaking the water's surface and the ceremonial ice that surrounded them. Flávio jumped with uproar, creating a tsunami of ridiculous and joyful proportions. Fencer stayed at the edge, wetting only the tips of his toes with the reluctance of a cat before an unknown abyss.

  Empty, as always, stayed outside.

  A black metal sentinel against the vibrant blue, watching the strange ritual of human joy.

  "Hey, Empty!" Flávio's voice cut through the water, laden with an enthusiasm that ignored boundaries. He swam to the edge, dripping optimism. "Just come feel the water on your feet, at least! It's a good feeling, man! Believe it!"

  Empty hesitated. His gaze sought Luna's. She was floating on her back, the sun kissing her face, but upon seeing his look, she straightened and encouraged him with a wave. Her smile was open, an invitation without a shadow of doubt.

  It was that smile—that thread of unconditional acceptance—that moved him.

  Slowly, with the solemnity of a funeral or a birth ritual, he sat on the stone edge, cold against his armor. His metal-gloved hands hovered over the straps and fastenings of his right foot. They trembled. It was not fear of the water, nor of exposure. It was the deep concentration of one performing a radical act of faith: believing that his body, as it was, belonged to that world of light and laughter.

  With a dry click, the first strap released. Another. The armor tube slid, revealing the rivet that held the piece together. He pulled it, and the metal cocoon fell to the ground with a dull, final thud, a sound that seemed to silence the surroundings for a second.

  The revelation was a raw blow of reality in the midst of blue fantasy.

  It was not a human foot.

  It was a structure of ruined architecture. The bones, too defined beneath a skin of cadaverous white and translucent, like ancient parchment stretched over a map of ruins. Dark, sinuous veins, more like roots of a petrified tree or circuits of an organic machine, embedded themselves unnaturally in the flesh. The texture was strange to the air's touch—rough, dry, the violent fusion of a man with something much older and primordial.

  Within the water circle, no face changed.

  Raphadun watched with quiet curiosity. Luna kept her smile, a wave of "it's all right." Flávio just waited, excited. Fencer frowned, but in a gesture of analysis, not revulsion.

  "It doesn't matter," Fencer said. Opening a smile so rarely seen, one of the only ones Empty had seen. That was trust.

  For them, it was just Empty. The friend's outer truth. Just one more piece of the puzzle they had already accepted. Nothing to fear.

  But when Empty raised his eyes from his own deformity, his field of vision widened.

  He saw beyond his small world.

  He saw the families scattered through the park. Parents holding children's hands. Couples under umbrellas. All frozen, their moments of leisure paralyzed before the involuntary spectacle.

  And on their faces there was not the tolerant indifference he, in his silent logic, might have expected.

  There was disgust. Pure, visceral, a reflex in the depths of the eyes. Whispers that were not curiosity, but contamination. Gazes that darted away quickly, as if they had witnessed something profane. A mother pulled her son by the arm, turning his face away. A man covered his wife's mouth with a protective gesture.

  The silence around his group was an island. Outside, the sea was one of revulsion.

  Then, with a deliberate movement that seemed to defy the weight of the world, he slid his foot into the water.

  The sensation was strange. The coolness enveloped the dry skin, a sharp contrast with the sun's heat and the cutting cold of the public gaze.

  The water was clear, but it had no purifying power. It did not wash away the mark.

  It only left it more naked, more exposed, under the relentless light of a sun that does not warm everyone equally.