Birds chirping, and the sun had risen far above the horizon. Rays of sunlight passed through the branches of the tree, shining upon the morning dew on the dried leaves on the ground. It had been hours since the imperial soldiers fought over this slice of the forest, with the Seirionians having full control of the area after pushing the Tachyonians far back.

  Although the shots and explosions had ceased over this area, it was far from safe for anyone to tread through. Apart from leaves, the ground was also littered with dangerous unexploded bombs, broken components harmful to life, or cursed fields yet to be cleared by the new occupier of this land. That didn’t include the countless bodies scattered across the forest that might have been forgotten by their comrade in the heat of the battle, totally at the mercy of nature.

  Thus, it came down to the dispatched low-ranking Seirionian soldiers to clean up after the mess before the rest of the centurion could utilise the ground for anything meaningful. These backline soldiers, mostly drafted from poorer regions, as compared to the more voluntary frontline soldiers, were separated into teams of two or three personnel accompanied by a six-legged, dog-sized golem called the munchers to clean up the section they were assigned to.

  Among those cleanup teams, one of them was assigned to the spot where the three friends from Tragula had been separated the previous night. As the two young men and their muncher carefully tread across the cratered land, they came across a body semi-buried in the soil, which they initially assumed was one of their fallen brothers.

  “Aghmer, wait, I saw a body there”, said Iremus.

  “Hm, that? Is that our soldier?”, Aghmer replied as he guided the muncher to the spot.

  As they slowly approached the small mound where the body was, they started to realise that it wasn’t one of their soldiers, but rather, an unfortunate soul that had somehow made his way here. His legs were blanketed under the soil, and the slightly chubby teenage boy was lying on his side without signs of consciousness when they discovered him.

  “Oh… No, it is a dead local…”, Iremus solemnly said.

  “Man, what is this young lad doing out here?”, Aghmer regrettably questioned. “This is quite far from any settlement, isn’t it?”.

  Iremus replied: “Well, not exactly. There’s that village that was… uh, you know, but there’s no good reason as to why he would be here. Unless he was here before the hylics, that must mean he had intentionally run towards them”.

  “Weird. Could it be that this kid was a hylic spy?”, Aghmer speculated.

  “Honestly, given how low those machine-suckers had been, I won’t be too surprised”, Iremus said.

  As they were busy cursing the Tachyonians, their muncher had been sniffing the teenage boy up close. Upon rubbing its snout on the boy’s face, the boy suddenly started to show some small reaction:

  “Ack—”

  The muncher jumped, surprised by the sign of life. It frantically ran in a circle around Aghmer, who was immediately irritated by it.

  “Hey! Hey! What’s the matter, buddy?!”, Aghmer said.

  The muncher had no voice, so it could only jump up and down like a frog to show its distress. Iremus and Aghmer watched it cluelessly as it hopped and rolled around like crazy before it guided them to the boy on the ground.

  “What do you want us to check?”, Aghmer squatted down and looked at the boy’s face.

  Aghmer’s eyes widened as he saw the boy weakly breathing. His eyes weren’t open, but it was clear as day that the boy was indeed still alive. Iremus joined in on Aghmer and witnessed the miracle himself, before the two stood up together and discussed what they should do.

  “Uh… now what?”, Iremus asked.

  “Don’t ask me! It’s your job to deal with bodies”, Aghmer argued.

  “But… argh! My job is to deal with dead bodies, not a living one!”, Iremus was infuriated with the situation.

  “Should we bring him back first? His condition looks critical”, Aghmer suggested.

  “Bring him back?”, Iremus questioned. “Oh, no thanks! I don’t want to double our work just to bring this kid over. Besides, it’s not like this kid is of any importance, like a resolutor or something”.

  “And on top of that, they’ll only send us back here afterwards to finish off our work! It’s really not worth it!”.

  Aghmer asked: “So, what are you suggesting then?”

  “I… ugh… I got an idea”, Iremus said. “But don’t feel bad about it afterwards”.

  “What’s the idea?”, Aghmer asked again

  Iremus pointed his Hadeian staff toward the teenage boy and awakened it from idleness. Its red gem slowly lit up, and Iremus gripped it firmly in his hands while ominously saying:

  “We should just end this kid’s misery for good…”

  “Whoa, whoa! You’re really going to cremate someone alive?!”, Aghmer was shocked.

  “So what?!”, Iremus stressed. “You’re going to heal this kid and have him live through the fact that his home had been destroyed by some… evil white light from above?!”.

  “His life would be painful for him to endure… so this is the most merciful thing we could do…”

  As Aghmer watched on guiltily, suddenly, he noticed something shining coming from beneath the teenage boy’s body. In quick action, he grabbed the almost fully charged-up staff and redirected it over to a nearby tree. Iremus was caught off guard by it and had it cast upon its blazing beam to the tree, turning it whole into snow of ashes.

  “OI!”, Iremus slapped Aghmer. “What had gotten into you?!”.

  “Iremus, Iremus, listen!”, Aghmer blocked another slap from landing on him.

  “I saw some white lights shining from beneath him!”.

  Iremus calmed down, mostly because he heard the word ‘white lights’ uttered from Aghmer, which would imply a very important thing. He put his hand down and asked carefully:

  “White lights?”

  They get their muncher to start digging the boy out of the ground, and to their surprise, they found a resolite in his hand. It shone brilliantly, even in broad daylight, and the two soldiers looked at each other as if they had found gold.

  “Iremus, we’re going to get a massive bonus…”

  “Ahaha! Aghmer, you’re our saviour! Imagine if I had cremated this kid!”, he hugged his buddy in joy.

  The two joyfully danced around while nobody was watching them as they celebrated their unexpected find. Finally, Iremus seemed to be a lot more willing to make the journey back to their base at Ninova to send this teenage boy over to the Arcane Order to become a new Paladin while they collect their massive bounty awaiting them back home.

  .

  .

  .

  “Hadrick?”

  “Ugh… huh?”

  Hadrick slowly lifted his eyelids upon hearing his name, and the first thing he saw was the orange-blue sky with a fair amount of clouds. The air was mildly cold, soft to the skin, and the fragrance was akin to freshly cut grass with a hint of flowers. He gathered his strength to sit up and found himself surrounded by nothing but vast grassland with bumpy hills. He was awakened on top of a hill himself and saw that the sun was setting.

  “Who… called my name? Where am I?”, he asked.

  None answered, for no one was there to answer his question. He pushed to the ground and stood up, and started wandering around.

  It was very serene, but at the same time quite eerie to him. His mind was at peace, but his heart knew that something was off. He tried to remember what had happened before, but couldn’t recall anything meaningful.

  Suddenly, as he wandered around, he saw a humble cottage house inside a valley. Smoke was towering up from its chimney, and the house looked oddly similar to his home.

  “Huh?! Is that my home?”

  He rushed down the hill and stopped right before the front door. He looked at the house up close, and it was undeniably his family’s home. However, as he looked for the detail, he noticed that this house still had its old feature of not including the donkey stable right next to the house, which was added much later, after he had grown up.

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

  “The stable I built with uncle and dad… it is missing…”, he said as he rubbed his hand over the wall.

  “And these flower beds… we no longer have these. The flowers had died off, and I had accidently destroyed one of them before Mom kept the other one inside”.

  “This house…”, he said as he stepped back, “…is from back then”

  Horror dawned upon him when it had just confirmed that, indeed, something was off with this place. He knew he wasn’t in Tragula, or worse, not even in the real world.

  He frantically looked around, checking if there was anything else around here. Nothing. Just the house and him over an endless meadow of grass. Looking back at the house, he realised that there might not be anything else for him to do here, prompting him to enter the house.

  With a gulp and careful steps towards the front door, he grabbed the handle with his eyes closed and pushed the door inward.

  Warm air rushed out, and when he reopened his eyes, he saw four kids chatting by a ripening wheat farm late in the evening. At the same time, he suddenly realised that the door he had just opened had disappeared, so too the entire house. Now, he did appear to be standing in Tragula.

  “Wait, what? How did I end up here?!”, he said as he observed around.

  While he was deep in confusion, the kids' conversation captured his curiosity, as their voices appeared familiar. He turned back around and observed their face properly from a distance, which surprised him deeply.

  “Wait…”

  “That’s my friends… and myself when we were younger!”

  They were Lorian, Hadrick, Yuna and Catarina when they were 11. Upon eavesdropping on their conversation, he began to remember that this was his memory from the last few days before Catarina moved out.

  “Catarina, couldn’t you beg your father to stay? *sob*”, Yuna begged her best friend with noticeable tears on her eyelids.

  Catarina, despite being moved by her friend's tears, could do nothing but tug her closely while apologising: “Sorry, Yuna, but he really wants us to go to Tachyon. He said he got a job that could change our family’s life”.

  “What kind of job did your dad get with the Tachyonians?”, Lorian asked.

  “I don’t know…”, she solemnly said as she slowly stroked Yuna’s hair, who was resting her head on Catarina’s shoulder. “He only said to me that this job is not like anything he has done before, and that it is an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up”.

  “The Tachyonian that hired your dad sound so sketchy…”, Hadrick, who was much chubbier back then, doubted fervently. “Catarina, show me where that person is! I want to beat him up!”

  “Hadrick, no way that person is still around…”, Lorian said with eyelids half-closed.

  “Thanks for the spirit, Hadrick”, Catarina said. “I wished it was that easy though…”.

  Present-day Hadrick watched his younger self speak with full embarrassment. Only now that he looked at it did he realise how stupid that was.

  “Oh, Protective Angels…. What am I thinking back then?”, he looked down and shook his head.

  After the kids stopped talking, they suddenly faded away along with the entire wheat field. The scene suddenly changed to him standing in the forest during the day, this time seeing his 14-year-old self confronting the village bullies, who were arguing over the ownership of the battle golem scraps they found.

  “Hey, skinny and fatty, let’s make this easy, okay?”, said Lukas, who was the tallest among his gang. “Give us that golem hand, and we won’t disturb you two ever again”.

  “You said the same thing last time! Don’t think we’ll fall for the same trick twice, you hog-faced!”, Lorian angrily replied, guarding over the log-sized battle golem’s hand with nothing but a shovel.

  “What did you just call me?!”, Lukas frowned and swiftly approached Lorian. His hand was about to reach Lorian’s shirt when Hadrick grabbed it first.

  “Don’t think just because you’re the tallest and strongest in this village, you could do whatever you want…”, Hadrick warned him.

  Lukas whipped his hand off Hadrick’s grip in a single pull and backed off before strongly sliding his thumb over his nostrils, completely maddened by Hadrick’s daringness.

  “You… dare touch me, HUH?!”, Lukas shouted. “Boys, beat this kid up!”.

  “Hadrick, watch out!”, Lorian shouted.

  “Lorian, Go! Go tell the Chief that Lukas is causing trouble again!”, he told Lorian before Lukas’ gang swarmed him.

  As Lorian hastily ran back to the village, Hadrick fended the older boys off all by himself. He received quite the beating, with bruises all over his body. Yet, he held on and made sure the bullies also received the same pain as he did.

  That memory faded away. Present-day Hadrick smiled as he looked back to when he rose to be regarded as the ‘second strongest kid in Tragula’, who repeatedly stood in the way of Lukas and his gang's bullying activity in the village, until they could no longer continue after being turned into a laughing stock rather than a serious threat.

  “Hehe, I missed those golden days…”, Hadrick reminisced. “If I’m not mistaken, after they changed, they boarded the Merchants' airships to find real jobs in Rustbed”.

  “Can’t help but wonder what they’re doing these days… not even sure if they’re still alive, haha!”, he joked.

  Finally, the last memory appeared before him. This time, it was a beautiful night on top of a treeless hill under the full moon's bask. There was nobody there, except for Yuna, sitting on a rock while watching the night sky above her.

  Before the memory even started playing, Hadrick was already feeling uncomfortable. He remembered this vividly, as it had always been haunting him to this day.

  “Damn it… Why must it be this one…?”

  Past Hadrick finally reached the top of the hill, and Yuna overheard his footsteps coming.

  “Hadrick?”, Yuna asked after turning around. “How did you find me up here?”

  “Oh, um… I saw you walk away from the festivities all by yourself, and I was worried if anything might happen to you…”, He embarrassingly said.

  “Aw… you’re such a caring friend”, Yuna replied.

  She continued: “Well, if you would like to join me in watching the sky, you’re completely welcome”.

  Yuna made some space for Hadrick to sit, and Hadrick sat down with slight hesitation. He didn’t expect that Yuna would be so open to having him as her company.

  Upon sitting, they looked to the sky together, not looking at the stars or the full moon, but at the shining blue and purple dancing around over the horizon. They watched the aerial dogfight in silence, both immersing in its beauty and reflecting upon the reality they’re living in.

  “Hadrick…”, Yuna broke the silence between them.

  “Yes?”, Hadrick replied.

  She asked: “Do you miss the time when there was no sound of explosions off in the horizon?”.

  “Um… Yeah! Surely, I do!”, he stumblingly said.

  She continued: “*sigh*… have you ever wondered if we might never experience a peaceful night ever again?”

  “Uh—what made you say that?”, he asked.

  “The two empires had been at war for almost 150 years by now, yet they’ve left Everbloom mostly untouched until five years ago. Ever since they got into Ninova, there has always been some tension in the air about whether they would ever want to capture our village next”.

  “Sometimes, it keeps me at night, thinking that those blue and purple lights over there might reach us someday”.

  Hadrick replied: “Didn’t the village chief assure us that we won’t be invaded because he had already talked to both sides to leave our village alone?”

  “That’s what he said”, Yuna commented. “We don’t know if things could change”.

  “Even with these annual festivals where we pray to the Protective Angels to continue protecting us, I always feel that one day this so-called ‘protection’ will wear off, and they will come in and flatten us all”.

  Seeing Yuna getting more anxious and depressed, Hadrick decided to cheer her up with the only method he could think of.

  He suddenly stood up and faced Yuna with full enthusiasm. This confused Yuna greatly before he said:

  “Well, don’t worry, Yuna! Because if they ever come and disturb us, I’ll make sure that you’ll be safe, no matter the cost!”

  Yuna cracked out laughing, due to how hilarious his delivery was.

  He smiled upon seeing Yuna’s laughter. Although he knew well just how stupid he sounded, lifting Yuna’s mood was all he wanted to do.

  “Oh, Hadrick… you really never change, huh?”, she said with a wide smile after laughing.

  “Well, I’m Tragula’s second strongest kid after all!”, he continued the act.

  “Okay, no, seriously”, Yuna’s tone changed.

  “If the day ever comes…”

  “Please look after yourself first, alright?”

  “Huh? Why?”, Hadrick was shocked by her sudden seriousness.

  “Because…”

  “I believe that someone like you should go even further than simply protecting others…”

  “You’re the kind of people I see that the two empires would truly fear. It’d be a waste if you’re slowed down by someone like me”

  The memory abruptly ended here. Present-day Hadrick was left speechless upon hearing all of that, despite having it engraved deeply in his heart.

  “Why did you say that, Yuna…”

  “Do you know how much that last sentence haunted me?”

  “I hid it from you, from the others, about what I feel about it”

  “And acted like it was just like a passing wind…”

  He paused, clenched his fist and said:

  “The only reason I have this spirit… is so I could make others smile”.

  “And of course… see you happy”.

  After that final memory, Hadrick found himself standing alone in an empty place where the white ground was flat and shiny, and the sky was beautifully blue. Here, his mind subconsciously turned tranquil, with all the previous memories no longer bothering him.

  In front of him, there was a white shining door. Naturally, he stepped toward the door out of curiosity. Upon observing it for a while, he reached for the knob, but just as his skin was about to touch it, he suddenly heard someone call him.

  “Hadrick”

  “Huh? Who’s that?”, he turned.

  It was another Hadrick, a perfect copy from head to toe.

  “What the—”

  “So, you must be the one who called me earlier, right? When I had just woken up”

  The other Hadrick said: “Indeed. It was me”.

  “It was also I who showed you all the previous memory”.

  Real Hadrick asked: “So… what was that all about? And what’s behind this door?”

  “Those memories reminded you of your resoluteness”, Mirror Hadrick explained. “And that door behind you is a choice that you’re about to make”.

  “Choice?”, Real Hadrick wondered.

  “Yes, a Choice, for you to bid it all farewell”.

  “By that, you mean…”

  “Yes, farewell to this world”, Mirror Hadrick frankly said.

  It felt heavy upon listening. With somberness, he asked: “Is this… the only choice I have?”

  “Actually, no. That’s why it's a choice”, Mirror Hadrick amicably said.

  “Then what is the other choice?”

  “The other choice is for you to return. But… it comes with an implication”.

  “Which is?”

  “Everything you fought for before is long gone. You would no longer be fighting for those you’ve known for long”, Mirror Hadrick answered.

  “From now on, you’ll be fighting into the future, not for the past’s sake”.

  Suddenly, the memory from the final moments before he passed out surged back to him. He remembered getting shot at by that thief and then having Yuna and Lorian lift him under fire before that missile strike separated them. He also vaguely remembered how Yuna ran away in fear for her life after incapable of pulling him off the ground.

  “This war… had finally come to take what I cherished…”, Real Hadrick murmured with lowered head.

  “But, I must keep going. Because… because…”

  “…I must go further than just simply protecting people”, he said with a sharp look to his mirror self.

  “Well said…”, Mirror Hadrick applauded.

  “Then, if you wish to return and continue, you must reach for your ‘heart’ first”

  “Reach for my heart?”, Real Hadrick asked.

  White light began shining out of Mirror Hadrick’s chest, where his heart should be. Without saying a word, he finally realised what was meant by him.

  He carefully reached for ‘his heart’ inside Mirror Hadrick, and when he pulled it out, he had acquired himself a shining white crystal… a resolite.