When did everything go wrong?
Rael asked himself the question over and over, as if repeating it might force the world to answer. At what moment had things slipped beyond repair? At what precise second had his choices led him here, standing upright only because his body refused to collapse, staring at something he could no longer deny?
His chest rose and fell erratically. Each breath felt too shallow, too fast, as though the air itself had become thinner. His heart pounded violently, not with adrenaline, but with panic. The kind that creeps in slowly, then suddenly tightens its grip until thinking becomes impossible.
Fear ruled him.
Not the sharp fear of an incoming attack, nor the focused tension of battle. This was worse. This was the fear that came afterward. The fear born when there was nothing left to fight.
His hands trembled uncontrollably. His fingers felt numb, distant, like they belonged to someone else. His legs shook beneath him, threatening to give way at any moment.
Rael no longer felt present inside his own body.
Lying on the ground before him was a person.
A body.
Too still.
There was no mistaking it. No illusion, no trick of the light. A familiar shape, now robbed of motion, warmth, and intent. Someone who, just moments earlier, had been alive. Someone who had spoken, moved, trusted.
Someone he had failed.
Just like him.
Just like what he still was, despite everything.
Rael's gaze refused to shift. He knew, instinctively, that if he looked away, if he allowed himself even a second of escape, something inside him would break beyond recovery. So he stared. He let the image burn itself into his memory, engraving every detail like a curse.
A thought surfaced, heavy and suffocating.
He was exhausted.
Not physically. Not completely. But deep inside, where strength was not measured by muscle or mana. He was tired of arriving too late. Tired of choosing wrong. Tired of carrying names that would never answer him again.
He wanted it to end.
Not the world.
Not the war.
Not even the pain.
Just this unbearable weight pressing down on his chest. This feeling that no matter how fast he ran, no matter how hard he fought, he would always be one step behind fate.
The air shifted.
It was subtle. Not a sound, not a visible change. More like a distortion, a pressure spreading through the space around him, as if reality itself had inhaled and forgotten to exhale.
Something old stirred.
Four hundred years ago, the continent knew fear.
Not the fear of bandits or rival nations, but something far deeper. Something primal. The kind of fear that made kings abandon pride and enemies sign treaties written in blood.
In those days, the human kingdoms were divided. Borders shifted constantly, wars flared and faded, and alliances were temporary conveniences at best.
Yet above all their conflicts hovered a single truth.
There were beings the world could not control.
Ancient beasts that walked the land before crowns were forged. Dragons that ruled the skies with fire and memory. Creatures whose existence alone reminded humans how small they truly were.
Among them stood a king.
The King of Beasts.
Fenrir.
History would later paint him as a calamity, a tyrant, a destroyer of civilizations. Songs would describe his roar as the herald of annihilation, his shadow as the end of hope.
But legends rarely ask why.
Fenrir had not been born a monster. He had not awakened one day with a desire to destroy. He became a legend because the world demanded one.
Humans feared what they could not command. And fear, when shared by enough people, becomes justification.
Fenrir's presence alone was enough to scatter armies. Not because he delighted in slaughter, but because resistance always ended the same way. Humans attacked first. Humans escalated. Humans blamed him afterward.
They called it self-defense.
They called it necessity.
I died because humans chose it.
The thought echoed through time, stripped of sound but heavy with resentment that four centuries could not dull.
They erased my kind.
They hunted the dragons until the skies fell silent.
Not because we were evil.
Because they were afraid.
Fenrir remembered flames streaking across the heavens. Remembered forests burned not by dragonfire, but by human torches. Remembered alliances forged overnight, not to protect life, but to cleanse the world of anything that challenged human dominance.
They crowned themselves heroes.
They wrote epics of courage and sacrifice.
From Fenrir's perspective, they were cowards hiding behind numbers and holy words.
Rael blinked.
The world fractured.
The stone hall, the shattered ground, the lingering smell of blood, all of it vanished. Or perhaps it was never there to begin with. He stood among towering trees, their trunks bathed in soft blue light, their branches frozen mid-sway as though time itself had stalled.
A forest.
No.
Something else.
A blue world.
The sky above was neither night nor day, just an endless expanse of deep azure, illuminated by a single moon. Vast. Heavy. Watching.
This was not a place one could reach by walking.
This was a space between.
At its center floated a blade.
Not a pristine weapon. Not a legendary artifact gleaming with power. It was broken. Chipped. Cracked along its edge, its surface marred by countless battles.
A wandering sword.
It hovered silently, rotating ever so slightly, as if unsure whether it still belonged to this world.
Rael felt drawn to it.
Not because of power.
Because when he looked at it, he saw himself.
Fragments.
Mistakes.
A purpose once clear, now fractured beyond recognition.
Memories surfaced without order. Faces blurred together. Laughter cut short. Promises made with confidence and broken with regret.
Death was present.
Not as a figure. Not as an enemy.
As a certainty.
Fenrir observed.
He did not manifest in form or shape. His presence was deeper than that, woven into the blue world itself like an old scar that refused to fade.
He spoke.
Rael did not hear words.
But his soul trembled.
I know this feeling.
The thought seeped into him, wrapping around his heart, synchronizing with his uneven breathing.
Losing what matters most.
Watching it disappear right in front of you.
Being dragged through the mud by those who stand above and call it justice.
Rael's jaw tightened. His fists clenched.
His thoughts answered without hesitation.
I understand.
It was not agreement. It was recognition.
We understand each other.
And in that moment, something shifted.
Two souls brushed against one another.
Separated by centuries.
By blood.
By destiny.
Yet bound by the same wound.
Under the immense blue moon, their presences overlapped. Not fully. Not violently. Like two shadows cast upon the same ground, merging and separating with every breath.
Fenrir's rage was ancient and refined. It did not explode. It pressed inward, dense and heavy, a hatred that had learned patience through extinction.
Rael's anger was still raw. Still human. It flared and faltered, uncertain, driven by grief rather than conviction.
Their memories intertwined.
Rael saw cities burning beneath crimson skies he had never known.
Fenrir felt the weight of a single life lost, a pain intimate and sharp, foreign yet familiar.
The wandering blade trembled.
It no longer belonged to a past or a present.
Perhaps it belonged to what was coming.
We were betrayed.
The thought no longer had a clear source.
They decided who was allowed to exist.
Humans.
Kings.
So-called heroes.
Under the blue moon, a shared will began to form. Not a pact sealed in words. Not a fusion completed in blood.
A direction.
A silent understanding.
We will remember.
The forest bent slightly, leaves rustling without wind, as if the blue world itself acknowledged the birth of something irreversible.
Rael's heartbeat slowed.
The fear did not disappear.
It sharpened.
It hardened into something colder, something focused.
Deep within that overlapping space, Fenrir felt something unfamiliar.
A smile.
Not of joy.
Of recognition.
They did not need to shout their hatred.
It already existed, etched into their souls.
One day, this overlap would fracture.
One day, the voices would merge.
And on that day, those who had written history would finally understand their mistake.
Monsters are not born.
They are created.
Beneath the blue moon, two souls swore without words.
Vengeance was not a scream.
It was certainty.