Sangkara was on his knee now, chest heaving, the monstrous glow completely gone. The runes on his skin were fading, leaving behind angry, raw burns. He was just a man, a broken soldier, but his eyes, though dimmed, still held a terrifying fire.
Raikha watched him, saber lowered but ready. The adrenaline was draining away, replaced by a cold, hard ache in his chest—a memory that had been buried deep, now stirring.
Lara joined him, standing quietly by his side, her hands still faintly glowing with the power of the Heart Root.
"Why?" Raikha began to ask, his voice raw, barely a whisper. The single word hung in the now-healing air of the glade. "Why did Kalderan burn Langkasuri? Why my village? My family?"
Sangkara coughed—a dry, rattling sound—and spat a thin line of blood onto the glowing roots. He looked up at Raikha. The sneer was gone. What remained was something quieter. Sadder, even.
"Because we had no other choice," he said, his voice hoarse and shaking. "Do you think I wanted this? That I take joy in the fire and ash?"
His gaze flicked toward the sky, then back down. "The clans… your clans… fought for centuries. Pride. Territory. Ancestral grudges passed like poison from parent to child. Kaldera was forged in that storm. We were the ones who suffered most from the endless wars. So we decided to end them."
He coughed again, blood on his lips. "But unity... unity doesn't come freely. You can't ask broken lands to just join hands willingly. You have to break the old bones so they heal straight."
His eyes glistened—not with tears, but with the strain of a burden carried too long. "Langkasuri refused. Others did too. We offered alliance. You clung to rituals and trees, to balance and silence. But silence isn't peace. It's just a delay. And delay breeds collapse."
His fingers twitched, reaching for something unseen. "So we burned what wouldn't bend. I believed—still believe—it was necessary. That one day, when the clans are united, when the world no longer tears itself apart… maybe then, no child will ever lose their family to war again."
Lara stepped forward, fury and sorrow mixing in her voice. "You destroyed lives. Children. Elders. You burned hope in the name of unity. That's not strength—it's cruelty wearing a mask."
Sangkara bowed his head, trembling. "Maybe you're right," he whispered. Then, he looked up again, and the fire returned to his eyes. "But maybe I'm the only one willing to pay the price peace demands."
Sangkara reached into the ruins of his war mantle, a final trembling motion.
"You think this is over? You think you can stop what has begun?"
Raikha took a half-step forward, heart pounding—not in fear, but in fury. In grief.
"You think that justifies it?" he snapped, voice cracking under the strain. "You slaughtered mothers, children—my brother—because you thought they were a broken bone that needed to be snapped?"
His saber trembled slightly in his grip. "You speak of peace, but all I see is someone too afraid to try the hard path. You wanted to end war by becoming its master."
Sangkara froze, his bloody fingers brushing against the hidden shard.
Raikha's voice lowered, bitter and wounded. "Gantari believed in second chances—not just for people, but for nations. He believed we could heal. Not through fear. Not through fire. But you—" he shook his head, "you chose to become the monster you claimed to hate."
Sangkara met his gaze, hollow and shaking.
"There's no future in your fire," Raikha said. "Only more ash."
Raikha's muscles tensed—but too late. Sangkara pulled out something small and dark: a shard of obsidian, pulsing with a malevolent crimson light. A hidden conduit of raw, chaotic channeling—his final weapon.
"I will take this glade with me!" Sangkara shrieked, voice laced with desperation. He flung the obsidian shard.
A blast of pure, uncontrolled Red Channeling ripped through the air—a vortex of screaming, burning chaos.
Raikha saw it coming.
baaaammmmm
The world slowed.
In the crimson glow, he saw his mother's hands reaching out, holding him amid fire. Gantari's voice whispered like wind:
"Redirect. Don't resist what is stronger—guide it home."
The Heart Root's pulse surged through him. The talisman at his chest blazed, syncing with that rhythm. Two powers—one purpose.
He didn't raise his saber. Instead, with a fluid, precise motion, Raikha moved into Garis Balik—the Reversing Line. Not deflecting. Redirecting.
He twisted his body, extended his palm forward, and met the screaming crimson blast head-on.
The golden light from the talisman, fused with the Heart Root's essence, coiled around the Red Channeling like living silk.
For a breathless second, the glade became a battlefield of red and gold. Then Raikha pushed. Not just to block—but to return the chaos.
He spun, pouring his own forest-born energy into the redirected blast. The vortex twisted, now turned inward, and slammed back into Sangkara with devastating force.
Sangkara's eyes widened. "NOOOOO—!"
The energy consumed him. The runes on his skin didn't fade—they ignited, roaring with unstable power. No longer his weapon—they were his sentence.
He screamed once—but it was choked, cut short. His body exploded into red sparks and black ash, scattered into the wind like dust.
Silence fell.
Raikha staggered slightly, his palm smoldering, fingers numb. The talisman gave one final pulse—then dimmed. Stillness.
He stared at the scorched ground where Sangkara had vanished. Only bare earth remained.
Lara stepped beside him and gently placed a hand on his shoulder.
"It's over," she murmured, barely more than a breath.
But Raikha didn't answer yet.
He looked down at his trembling hand—the hand that had ended a tyrant.
And yet… in the hush of the trees, something faint lingered. A dying ember in the wind. A whisper from the ash:
"Kaldera watches..."
His shoulders tensed. Lara looked at him, quiet. "You did what I thought impossible," she said softly. "You unmade him."
Raikha looked up. Above them, the canopy swayed not in fear—but in relief.
He sheathed his saber slowly, the ache in his chest deep, but hollowed.
The battle was over. But war was not.