Chapter Text
Krais sat alone, sighing.
The breath left him slowly, drawn out, as though trying to expel something lodged in his chest that he couldn't find a name for. His eyes drifted upward toward the sky, pausing for a moment on the dark tear hanging there.
He wondered if it would light up again. And if it did, what would appear next time?
No answer to that question. He knew as much — and yet he couldn't stop himself from asking.
There was another question he'd been waiting on an answer to, one he'd been waiting on since morning, his patience wearing thinner by the hour.
More than anything else: when was the squad leader going to show up?
He ground his teeth, just slightly. After everything the camp had witnessed that morning, their superiors should have had the decency to send their squad leader back to them by now. And yet from morning until this moment, not a single soul had come bearing any sign of their squad leader.
Truly — Krais had always known the commanding officer was useless, but he hadn't imagined the man could be quite this useless.
Krais sighed again. Shorter this time, but heavier, as though he'd given up on concealing his irritation.
If the squad leader didn't show up before the day was out, that lunatic Rem might very well storm straight into the command tent and start causing trouble.
It sounded unhinged. But given the muttering Krais had been overhearing from Rem all morning — not quite coherent sentences, but coherent enough to get the gist — he was fairly certain that's exactly what would happen.
He was still turning these thoughts over in his head when the low droning sound began. Not quite familiar yet — not enough to call it that — but no longer entirely foreign either.
Having been through it once already that morning, Krais tilted his head back to look up at the tent ceiling rather than stepping outside. Those around him did the same.
Once was apparently enough to take the panic out of it. Some people leaned back with an almost leisurely air, gazing upward with mild curiosity — the look of an audience waiting to see what came next in an unexpected performance.
This was especially true of the civilians, the ones who had lived peacefully far from the front, who had never grown accustomed to the smell of blood or the beat of war drums. To them, the tear in the sky was like a strange seasoning added to the blandness of ordinary life. Odd, faintly unsettling, but not dangerous enough to be frightening — and for that reason, exactly the sort of thing worth gossiping about.
"I'll wager Aspen forces show up this time."
"Not necessarily. Could still be our own side, for all we know."
"Why think so small? Could be something from an entirely different continent."
Voices overlapped and tumbled over one another — people laying bets, people pushing back, people piling on theories that grew increasingly elaborate. A strange, almost festive energy filled the air.
What no one mentioned, not once, was Enkrid.
Not because they had forgotten. But because his fate had already been shown to them. Plainly, without ambiguity, without leaving any room for hope or doubt.
Some had felt a pang of sorrow. Some had felt contempt, or mockery. Some had wondered what Enkrid would do, now that he'd seen how his story ended. But those feelings, in the end, had only lasted the length of one short morning.
People were not patient enough for more than that. No one had the time to keep thinking about a stranger — someone glimpsed through a strange tear in the sky, who had existed for only a few brief hours, like a memory that belonged to someone else. Emotions, however vivid in the moment, were always carried away by the current of ordinary life.
---
[A white light blazed.
Enkrid's eyes snapped open, his hand flying to his throat — the sensation of being run through still lingering there.
He couldn't make sense of it.
Had he been dreaming?
The dream had been too real. Real enough that he couldn't tell whether it was something he had only imagined, or something he had actually lived. The feeling still clung to his throat — muscles torn, blood rising, airways closing.
The feeling of death drawing near.
The clanging bell that marked reveille pulled him back to the present.
He sat still for a moment, his hand resting at his throat, as though confirming that he himself still existed.
....Let it go.
He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to steady.
Carrying thoughts like these onto the battlefield… would only make him die faster.
If he kept letting himself be haunted by a "dream," his end would look no different from the death he'd just witnessed.]
Everyone stared at what was unfolding before them, wide-eyed. Wait — so what they'd watched that morning had only been a dream? Was this some kind of joke?
"Ha. That's more like it. I knew the squad leader wouldn't die that easily." Rem watched Enkrid — alive and moving within the tear — with gleeful satisfaction.
The rest of them felt a measure of relief as well, though no one was truly overjoyed — not even Rem, laughing as he was.
Because that dream of the squad leader's — it had been too vivid. Even upon waking, he had still felt the echoes of it in his body, had reached instinctively for his throat without thinking.
Things like that had a way of being taken as omens. People had always told stories of dreams that foretold death, hadn't they? A dream that came once could still be dismissed. But the kind of dream that left you waking up still feeling the blade inside your throat — that was something else entirely.
Still. To be safe — the squad leader would need to be trained properly.
[The battlefield was chaos, as it always was. And Enkrid struggled through it, as he always did.
And,
Once more,
A sword drove through his throat.]
The air grew heavy for a moment.
Was it a dream again? Two dreams, identical in every detail? Or was this truly the fate of the soldier named Enkrid — not an omen, not a warning, but a truth that had to appear twice because no one had been willing to believe it the first time?
Stories of death-foretelling dreams were hardly uncommon on the battlefield. Many soldiers claimed to have survived because of them — that sudden surge of feeling in the middle of a fight that made them sidestep at exactly the right moment. But of course, there must have been those who couldn't escape their fate even after being shown it. To know what's coming and die anyway — perhaps that was worse than not knowing at all.
Perhaps Enkrid was one of those poor souls.
"What the hell—" The smirk at the corner of Rem's mouth went rigid.
Damn it all. He'd only just started feeling better.
Audin closed his eyes, as though mourning the squad leader.
The gods certainly had a talent for tormenting people.
[Again.
Those blue eyes opened.
The reveille bell drifted in from outside, alongside the sound of Rem cursing at a bug in his boot.
Enkrid sat up, his hand going to his throat.
A dream within a dream…?
No. Even a fool would have to recognize what was happening by now. And Enkrid was no fool.
"Again?" he whispered, his voice hoarse.]
Right.
What in the world was happening to this man called Enkrid?
People began exchanging glances of a different kind — no longer the look of spectators watching an unexpected performance, but of people trying to make sense of something that had just slipped past the edges of what they knew.
So this was why he was the one the tear kept showing. Whatever the reason, there was no way he was an ordinary person.
Audin closed his eyes. A thought formed slowly in his mind. The squad leader must be a child beloved by the gods. Perhaps the divine, not wishing to see his ceaseless efforts go to waste, had bestowed this gift upon him. He wasn't sure. But if that was the case — once this became known, would the church send someone here? The thought drifted through and he let it pass without holding on to it.
Krais, by instinct, glanced toward Audin whenever something that seemed to fall within the domain of the divine appeared. He saw the giant with his eyes closed, and when those eyes opened again, even Krais couldn't read what lived inside them. Not because Audin was hiding anything, but because too many things coexisted there at once, layered over one another until nothing could be told apart.
Rem's eyes hardened. No conventional magic or sanctioned sorcery could produce something like this — he had enough experience to know that much. Enkrid didn't fit the profile of a dark cult practitioner, and the man himself clearly didn't understand what was happening to him; that much showed plainly in every expression that crossed his face. Rem turned it over briefly, then decided to set it aside. Everyone had their own secrets. And if the tear kept returning to Enkrid, then sooner or later the truth behind the repetition would surface on its own.
His instincts told him so. And Rem's instincts were rarely wrong.
Sachsen's brow furrowed — barely, barely enough to notice if you weren't looking for it. If there wasn't a power here, it was no blessing. It was a curse. Killed, returned to life, killed again, returned again. Over and over until the mind shattered. Madness, sooner or later.
Ragna found himself wondering what the squad leader would do, faced with this. The best choice — by pure logic, by the cold calculation of someone who thought things through — would be to run. Desert. Get as far from the war as possible, find some quiet corner of the world, and live out the rest of his days there. If death kept finding him and couldn't be avoided, then at the very least, don't let it find him on a battlefield.
Krais's thoughts ran in a different direction — or more precisely, in several directions at once, none of which left him feeling any better than the others. That ability, looked at from certain angles, wasn't entirely without value. With it, one could steer clear of lethal dangers, could learn from mistakes in the most literal sense imaginable. But the thought of a soldier with ordinary abilities possessing it — just thinking about it was unsettling enough.
[Enkrid's swordsmanship teacher was a gentle man who never scolded his students.]
Everyone stared at the young Enkrid swinging his sword and found themselves at a loss for words.
…Was this really the moment for a flashback?
The thought erupted in the minds of more than a few people, near simultaneously.
If you're going to flash back, at least pick a decent moment for it!
The least it could have done was return to the first death — the one that started everything. Instead—
They'd just had a slight breakthrough. Enkrid had only just begun to realize something was wrong. They hadn't even gotten to see his reaction yet. Hadn't gotten to find out what he would do.
And then, without warning, the scene had snapped back to the past.
"…Damn it." Someone ground their teeth.
More than a few others could only laugh — the hollow kind.
The feeling was uncanny — exactly like watching a stage production where everything had been perfectly arranged: the music swelling, the lights converging, the audience holding its breath in anticipation. And then, at the single most critical moment, the actor walked offstage.
Vanished.
Leaving behind a silence that was equal parts frustrating and unbearable.
"I want to know,"
Someone's voice caught in their throat.
Want to know what Enkrid will do.
Want to know how he'll react when he realizes he's been pulled into a loop of death.
Want to know,
Want to know so badly it's maddening.
But all those unspoken cries — in the end, they had nowhere to go. They lodged themselves in the chest and stayed there.
No one could do anything. They could only watch.
[His teacher advised Enkrid to join the local militia.
Had he followed that advice, his future might have looked entirely different.
But Enkrid didn't.
All because of something he had heard since he was small.
"You're a genius, kid."
At eleven years old, he had easily defeated a boy several years his senior. And for the first time in his life, someone had called him a genius.]
Anyone who had trained seriously in swordsmanship would have recognized at a glance how poor Enkrid's technique actually was. Excess movement, unbalanced center of gravity, footwork that hadn't yet found its grounding. The only reason the result had looked convincing was that his opponent had been even worse. Nothing more than that.
And naturally, in a village like that, there was no one who knew enough about swordsmanship to see it for what it was. People saw a smaller child beat a bigger one, and to them, that was sufficient.
These things were always easier to see from the outside. A child shows a little promise and adults shower them with the word genius — freely, generously, thoughtlessly — planting expectations that were never meant to take root. The child grows up carrying that label, believing in it, building dreams on top of it. And if no one steps in to course-correct in time, the ending for a "genius" like that is never a good one.
[By fifteen, Enkrid had defeated the village headman.
A boy besting a grown man — anyone in that position would have come away feeling supremely confident.
That same year, for the second time in his life, someone called Enkrid a genius.
The man was a retired mercenary who had lost a leg — someone who claimed to have renounced the title of knight, and who claimed that leg had been lost defending a lady's honor.
He spoke of a vast world, of monsters, of his own adventures.
The way he told his stories had the children hanging on every word.]
He was, at best, a third-rate mercenary. Anyone in the trade could tell at a glance — the way he moved, the way he held his sword, or simply the look in his eyes. His stories might have been true, might not have been, but the heroic parts had certainly been embellished through many retellings.
With a mouth like that, he could have made a name for himself as a traveling storyteller.
[A man like that called Enkrid a genius. So the belief only took deeper root.
Perhaps I really am a genius.
And so Enkrid dared to dream.
That he would become a knight, serve the king, and unite the continent.
A knight who would end the war.
That dream had begun with a traveling bard's song.
"The knight who will end this war!
The knight who paints twilight over the battlefield!
We shall call him the Knight of Dusk!
The Knight of the End!"
A song that set the hearts of every young man and woman ablaze — and Enkrid was no exception.]
Setting aside the bitter end that awaited Enkrid, there was something quietly captivating about watching his childhood. Unclouded, full of ambition and yearning. A youth burning with passion in the most beautiful sense of the phrase — before reality had yet had the chance to wear those sharp edges smooth.
And watching a beautiful child with eyes that lit up when he spoke of his dreams — even knowing full well what lay ahead — stirred something strange. Something that felt, oddly, like healing. Like watching a candle before it goes out, and seeing that while it still burned, it burned with a light that was truly, genuinely beautiful.
[At eighteen, Enkrid left his village to chase his dream, setting out alone into the wider world.
He made his living as a mercenary.
Just two months in, reality dealt him a blow sharp enough to knock him awake.
Enkrid lost to a nameless mercenary — a man who told him plainly that he wasn't ready.
So Enkrid thought about finding a proper swordsmanship teacher. He threw himself into dangerous work to scrape together the money, then enrolled in sword schools in the larger cities. One school, then another, then another still.
He trained hard.
Fortunately, his teachers were good ones. They instructed him with genuine care, and offered assessments that were honest and fair.
During his time at the sword schools, there were those who advised him to quit, and others who mocked him outright. Enkrid never accepted either.
He kept swinging his sword. He swung it until his hands bled, until his muscles gave out.
His dedication was something no one could deny — whether they liked him or not.
And Enkrid believed that hard work would not betray him.]
More than a few people shook their heads at Enkrid's stubbornness. With a face like his, he would never be short of work — could have done at least ten other things, easier things, more stable things, less painful things. And yet here he was, throwing himself headlong at something that seemed beyond his reach.
The truth was this: effort may not betray us, but not every effort is rewarded in kind. There were debts this world simply did not repay, no matter how hard a person tried.
Ragna watched Enkrid's figure with an intent focus — not the ordinary gaze of casual curiosity, but the look of someone searching for the answer to a question they hadn't yet learned to put into words. Why try this hard? You've seen how brutal reality is. You've fallen. You've been told to give up. Why are you still swinging that sword? Was being a knight truly worth that much — or did he simply not know how to stop?
Ragna couldn't understand it. Someone who had never found a reason to raise their own sword truly could not. To him, Enkrid's relentless, almost irrational perseverance looked close to madness. It was just a childhood dream, the kind of thing people set down as they grew up, the way they set down a toy they'd outgrown. Why push so hard for it. In the end, he never even reached it.
And yet Ragna felt something that could only be called admiration — and that, more than anything, was what confused him. Not admiration for talent, because Enkrid's talent clearly wasn't enough. Admiration for something else inside him, something Ragna couldn't name. He felt a pull toward it — a vague desire to try harder at something, anything, even without knowing what that something was.
'Squad leader.' Something shifted in Ragna's eyes — a quality of light he himself didn't recognize, couldn't put a name to. 'Hurry up and get here. Then I'll teach you properly.'
Audin stood very still, gazing at the figure before him with quiet wonder.
Enkrid's faith was immense — not the loud kind, not the kind declared aloud or displayed for others to see. It was a silent faith, steady and enduring, present in every time he rose after falling, in every morning he picked up his sword before his hands had finished healing. Not once had he doubted or abandoned his own dream, even when there was not a single piece of evidence to suggest he was on the right path.
And Audin — who had once had faith of his own, and had felt it waver — watched that, and felt something old and long-presumed dead stir inside his chest.
Compared to someone like him…
The thought went nowhere. It didn't form into a complete sentence, didn't arrive at any conclusion. It simply hung there, suspended, like a question that needed no answer.
Perhaps Enkrid was the divine's way of pointing the path — not a voice from on high, not light descending in a sacred moment, but a concrete, flesh-and-blood form, swinging a sword in the morning sun, bleeding and rising and continuing. Not spoken to Audin directly, but shown to him in another way entirely.
In the visions that morning, Audin had seen himself praying — something he had long since stopped doing, worn down by the weakness within his own heart. He had wondered then what had moved him to begin again. But now it was starting to become clear. With someone like Enkrid nearby, he must have found his way back to trusting his own faith.
'Lord, please bring the squad leader to me.'
Audin closed his eyes, hands folding together. The posture of traditional prayer — familiar enough that his body remembered it before his mind had given the instruction. No answer came, no sign from the sky or from the wind. But he believed. Not because there was proof, but because he had gone too long without believing in anything, and this time he wanted to try again — even just once.
And then — Enkrid, his squad leader, would come too.
[By twenty-five, Enkrid had built a modest reputation in the trade — enough that people might vaguely remember his name.
At that age, he still carried a small, stubborn hope that he might yet improve.
Then, at twenty-seven, that hope shattered.
One match — not even a proper match by any real measure. Enkrid was soundly defeated by a child.
A twelve-year-old. The son of a serf, with only six months of sword training and this his very first bout.
That was what a genius looked like. Enkrid couldn't help but think so.
The condescending air of the child's teacher didn't make him angry. The despair had already swallowed any room for anger at being looked down upon.
But Enkrid did not let the despair swallow him.
If he broke that easily, he would never have made it this far.
He would keep swinging his sword.]
"The attitude on that kid was really something, wasn't it." Rem clicked his tongue, the irritation of someone who had just been forced to witness something deeply unpleasant. "All that over a little bit of talent. Acting like he's already the best in the world."
"The sword teacher too." Ragna added, as though wanting to complete the picture. It was unusual — Ragna wasn't the type to agree with Rem on anything — but this time was different. "Insufferable. The student wins one match and already has his nose in the air, with the teacher puffing up behind him like he's the one who just won."
"A person ought to know humility." Audin's voice was measured, but carried a weight of its own — not a judgment exactly, something closer to a reminder, as though he were speaking to a child who didn't know any better rather than criticizing a stranger. "Excessive arrogance obscures whatever genuine ability one actually has. And those who carry themselves that way tend to find themselves in the arms of God rather sooner than expected."
"All those openings and he can't even see them." Sachsen said — short and straight as a blade's edge, stripped of any unnecessary feeling, simply stating the obvious. "Someone like that dies sooner or later. On a real battlefield, there's no room for that kind of self-satisfaction."
Krais stood listening as four people who rarely agreed on anything united in pointing at the same target, and gave a small, quiet shake of his head.
What standing did any of them have to criticize someone else's character. Rem is stubborn as a mule, Ragna is bullheaded as hell, Audin hid behind God at every turn, and Sachsen was full of secrets he'd never finished telling.
The whole lot of them — viewed from the outside — weren't exactly the kind of people anyone would hold up as models of admirable character.
That said, he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.
And if he was being honest with himself — he agreed with everything the others had just said. The kid's attitude really was unpleasant. The teacher's swagger really was absurd. Some things, even left unsaid, rang true in the gut whether you liked it or not.
[Ten years as a mercenary had taught Enkrid that he would never become a great knight or swordsman — but perhaps, he thought, he could become a good soldier.
With that in mind, he left the mercenary life behind and enlisted in the army.
And at thirty years old, he stood as squad leader of Squad 444.]
It felt somewhat unreasonable to say, but was he truly thirty? Someone narrowed their eyes and peered up at the tear, as though doubting their own vision. That smooth, unlined face — not a single wrinkle, not one mark that time had dared to leave behind. Over a decade on the battlefield. Over a decade of dust and blood and sleepless nights. And still, this?
Even noblewomen who tended their complexions with devoted care, surrounded by attendants, stocked with every manner of cream and rosewater, might not have skin like Enkrid's.
"Honestly jealous," one young woman murmured, her voice so sincere it was almost funny.
[Enkrid held the charm for a moment before tucking it back beneath his shirt.
Soldiers on the battlefield tended to put stock in things like these.
He hadn't bought it out of superstition. He had received it as a commission reward for a mission. The old woman had pressed it into his hands with quiet urgency.
A poor farming village that couldn't afford to post a proper commission had pleaded for Enkrid's help when he happened to pass through.
And the reward for risking his life that day had been this frail little charm.
Enkrid had never regretted accepting. It was the kind of thing a knight would do.
Even when dreams shattered, the shape of them remained.
Drifting out of memory, Enkrid returned — to the shouting, the smell of blood, the weight of the sword in his hand. Back to the battlefield.
Raising his voice with the battle cry, he threw himself into the churning mass of bodies.
When the sword drove through his throat and he crumpled to the ground, the charm slipped free with him, falling into his line of sight.
For reasons he couldn't explain, he thought of the old woman then.
When she had pressed the charm into his hands, she had said: "This will help you fulfill your wish."
To think of that moment at the very end of one's life — how strange.]
The tear went dark again, signaling that the showing had ended.
The final scene, returning to the very first. The circle closing exactly where it had begun.
But before anyone could remark on that, a voice broke through — curious, with the tone of someone who had only just noticed:
"Wait — Enkrid had a charm on him? This is the first time I've seen it."
It was true. Through both viewings into the tear, no one had paid any attention to the small thing until it slipped free and came to rest in the gaze of a dying man. A frail little charm from a poor village with no name to speak of — a reward that fell far short of what Enkrid had actually earned.
And now, with the tear extinguished, people exchanged glances before drifting off to their own business.
The tent of Squad 444 was utterly silent. Not because there was nothing to say, but because whatever had settled inside each of them was not the kind of thing that came easily into words. A feeling — dull and uncomfortable, lodged somewhere in the chest, unwilling to dissolve.
Rem said nothing. He only stared at the place where the tear had just gone dark, his jaw set.
Sachsen turned away first. Not because he didn't want to look, but because he had already seen enough.
Krais exhaled, slowly. That single breath said more than anything he might have opened his mouth to say.