"Wh-what…?"
Before Alden could even process the words, a cold flash of sword beheaded him in an instant.
His head hit the ground with a dull thud.
His body crumpled beside it.
The throne room fell into a heavy, stunned silence.
"…Poor kid," murmured one of the older dark elves, a man with tired eyes in his 50s.
He stepped forward, knelt, and gently lifted the lifeless body—head and all—into his arms.
Night fell. Under the moonless sky, the man walked through the forest until he reached a deep, forgotten pit.
He stood there for a moment, holding Alden's remains.
"I'm sorry, kid," he whispered, before casting the body into the darkness below.
Meanwhile…
Alden found himself standing in a pitch-black void—weightless, formless, detached. He looked down, saw nothing. No body. No ground.
"Where am I?"
He slowly raised his head.
Hovering above him was an enormous, twisted grin—just a set of lips, stretching wide, grinning with a smirk that defied sanity.
Then, he looked ahead.
A massive eye stared back at him, unblinking. Its yellow iris glowed dimly, and in the center, a pitch-black slit pulsed like a heartbeat.
And something spoke...
"Zith, kow'th du zith ka-reeva gonh no'roth zith iz'lar gonh vash'tek?"
Another voice responded, low and layered with ancient power:
"Vell, zith moo'la ka-della gonh, zith moo'la ka-della iz'lar, gonh go zith moo'la ka-della gonh vash'tek."
Alden couldn't understand a single word—it was as if the voices were speaking in a language older than time itself. Then suddenly, far away in the real world, his lifeless body began to emit a faint green glow. Slowly, the severed head and the body started to shift… drawn toward each other.
And then—against all logic—they fused.
The glow faded. Alden's spirit consciousness blurred, the blackness swallowing everything. Silence.
And then—
He jolted awake, gasping.
He was lying on a bed.
"Why the fuck am I always waking up in random places?" Alden muttered. "First a prison, now a bed... and didn't I die?"
As he tried to piece things together, a voice broke the silence.
"Oh, you're awake, kid! Gotta say, you really shocked me. How'd you come back to life?"
The voice belonged same man who carried his body to the pit.
"A dark elf?!"
Noticing Alden's worried face, the man raised his hands calmly. "Relax. I won't hurt you if you tell me the truth."
"What truth?" Alden replied.
"Don't play dumb, you died and now you're back. That doesn't just happen. So? How did you come back?"
Alden, still confused about how he was alive but refusing to show weakness, replied coldly, "Why should I tell you anything? Your people executed me without a reason."
"Fair. But how about this—tell me how you returned, and I'll tell you why we tried to kill you."
Alden knew it was a lousy deal—but curiosity clawed at him. After a pause, he spoke.
"When I died… I saw a massive, creepy smile above me. Just lips. No face. Then in front of me… a huge eye. Yellow, with a black slit in the center. I heard voices too—they were talking in some weird, ancient-sounding language. All I remember clearly are the words zith and gonh. They repeated them a lot."
The man's eyes widened.
"That language…" he muttered.
He pulled out an old, weathered book and flipped through its brittle pages. His finger landed on a line.
"Zith means life… Gonh means death."
"What!? What language is that?"
"It's the ancient tongue of the elves."
A flicker of shock crossed Alden's face, but before he could say anything else, the man suddenly spoke:
"Life… Death… Could it be?!"
He grabbed Alden's hand without warning.
"Hey—what are you—!"
"Hold still," the man muttered, closing his eyes. Then he gasped.
"Impossible… This kid… he has both the energy of life and death inside him!"
Alden yanked his hand back.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
The man looked at him, his face pale.
"In the first path—Verdant Path—there are only two forms of essence: life energy and death energy. The elves you met utilize the energy of life. We, the dark elves, utilize the energy of death. But no one—no one—can contain both."
"Why not?"
"Because when both energies exist in the same body, they violently repel each other. The result is always the same: the body explodes."
A cold silence hung in the air.
"But you… not only do you have both… they aren't even resisting each other."
His voice trembled. "They're coexisting. That's never happened before."
Alden blinked. "Sounds kinda cool"
"Don't joke!"
"How did you even get the energy of death inside you?"
"I don't know."
The man stepped back, clearly shaken by the discovery. Before he could further question him, Alden spoke:
"My turn,"
"You promised answers, remember?"
The man looked at him. Then Alden asked:
"Why did the dark elves kill me?"