Darkness.
Safsan could not feel the ground.
He could not hear the battlefield.
He could not hear Safuu.
NAREZEN.
The knights.
Nothing.
He had lost consciousness.
But his mind had not become silent.
Instead...
it took him somewhere he had spent years trying not to return to.
His childhood.
Safsan opened his eyes.
He was small again.
Much smaller.
The world around him was different.
Not because the world itself had changed.
But because this was the moment when Safsan first began to understand what was actually happening around him.
Before this...
war had only been a word.
Something adults whispered about.
Something that made people suddenly close doors.
Something that made his parents speak differently when they thought he was not listening.
But children eventually begin understanding the words adults try to hide from them.
And Safsan remembered the moment he did.
War was everywhere.
He remembered people running.
He remembered screaming.
He remembered weapons.
He remembered seeing people die in ways his young mind could understand.
A gunshot.
A body falling.
Someone who had been alive moments earlier...
suddenly no longer moving.
But those were not the memories that stayed deepest.
There were others.
People taken away.
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People tortured.
People whose screams continued long after Safsan could no longer see them.
And others...
slaughtered while they were still alive.
Safsan had been a child.
He did not understand politics.
He did not understand armies.
He did not understand why adults could hate one another enough to do these things.
But he understood something much simpler.
Those were people.
And they were dying.
He remembered watching the adults around him.
Some cried.
Some screamed.
Some prayed for the violence to stop.
Others had become so accustomed to death that their faces barely changed anymore.
That frightened Safsan almost as much as the violence itself.
Because something inside him understood:
This was not supposed to feel normal.
But it was becoming normal.
Safsan looked down at his younger hands.
Small.
Powerless.
There was nothing he could do.
Nothing he could stop.
Nothing he could change.
And somewhere inside that child...
something began to form.
Not an Origin.
Not a power.
Something quieter.
Something Safsan would spend years refusing to look at directly.
A place inside himself where everything he understood...
but did not want to feel...
could be buried.
The Hidden Truth.
Safsan stared at the memory.
For years, he had told himself he did not have time to feel this part of himself.
He had kept moving.
Kept himself occupied.
Kept living.
Because stopping meant remembering.
And remembering meant feeling.
The child Safsan looked toward him.
Neither spoke.
Then—
THUMP.
Safsan looked around.
The memory trembled.
THUMP.
Again.
A heartbeat.
His heartbeat.
THUMP.
The childhood memory disappeared.
Back on the battlefield...
the two royal knights stood between NAREZEN and Safuu.
The Knight of the Spear attacked first.
His weapon tore through the air.
NAREZEN moved aside.
The spear struck the ground.
The earth cracked.
The Guardian of the Roots followed immediately.
Ancient black roots erupted around NAREZEN.
They twisted together.
Closing every possible escape.
NAREZEN raised one hand.
The roots stopped.
The Knight of the Spear appeared above it.
His spear descended.
NAREZEN caught it.
The battlefield shook.
For a moment...
neither moved.
Then NAREZEN looked at the weapon in its hand.
“You still don't understand what you're fighting.”
The Knight pulled his spear free.
“We understand enough.”
The Guardian of the Roots raised her shield.
More roots spread beneath NAREZEN.
But NAREZEN did something neither knight expected.
It activated an Origin.
Safuu stopped walking.
Her eyes widened.
“No.”
Something was wrong.
Deeply wrong.
NAREZEN did not possess an Origin of its own.
It couldn't.
Not because it had failed to awaken one.
Not because its Origin was dormant.
Because of what Holawaka was...
having an Origin of its own was impossible.
But there was a difference between possessing an Origin...
and using one.
And the Origin NAREZEN had just activated was not ordinary.
Safuu felt it immediately.
One of the most dangerous Origins in existence.
She turned toward her knights.
“Leave!”
Neither knight moved.
Safuu's voice became sharper.
“GET AWAY FROM IT!”
NAREZEN looked toward Safuu.
It understood immediately.
Safuu knew what was coming.
The Knight of the Spear tightened his grip.
The Guardian of the Roots raised her shield.
Neither retreated.
NAREZEN released the Origin.
Something changed.
Not only on the battlefield.
Something changed in the world around it.
Safuu felt it.
The knights felt it.
But then...
NAREZEN froze.
There was another energy.
Faint.
At first.
Almost impossible to notice beneath the Origin it had just released.
NAREZEN slowly turned its head.
That was not supposed to happen.
It remembered this battle.
It remembered Safuu.
It remembered the knights.
It remembered the Origin being used.
It remembered what came next.
NAREZEN had experienced this event before.
Through reincarnation...
it had carried those memories into this life.
This moment was not new.
At least...
it wasn't supposed to be.
But this energy...
NAREZEN had never felt it before.
Not in its previous life.
Not during this battle.
Not anywhere in its memory.
For the first time...
NAREZEN was standing inside an event it remembered...
and something new was happening.
THUMP.
NAREZEN looked toward the sound.
The Knight of the Spear heard it too.
THUMP.
The Guardian of the Roots slowly lowered her shield.
Safuu stopped.
Across the battlefield...
soldiers turned their heads.
Civilians hiding inside ruined buildings suddenly became silent.
A mother holding her child felt it.
A wounded soldier lying against a wall felt it.
People running through the streets stopped without understanding why.
THUMP.
It was not loud.
And yet everyone could hear it.
Not through their ears alone.
It felt deeper.
Like the sound was passing through their bodies.
THUMP.
Something was struggling.
A heart.
Fighting against something.
NAREZEN stared into the distance.
For the first time...
certainty disappeared from its face.
It knew where the sound was coming from.
Everyone did.
Every heartbeat pointed toward the same place.
Toward the ruins.
Toward the unconscious young man lying among them.
Safsan.
THUMP.
Safuu stared in his direction.
NAREZEN did the same.
The two knights turned.
The people of Odania felt it.
No one understood what was happening.
Not even NAREZEN.
And that...
was impossible.
Because NAREZEN remembered this day.
It remembered what was supposed to happen.
Safsan was supposed to die.
Instead...
his heart was fighting against something that had never existed in NAREZEN's memory.
THUMP.
THUMP.
THUMP.
And somewhere inside Safsan...
something was fighting back.