"You wanted to talk."

On top of a mountain, the king of silence stood in front of a hand-carved grave with the only word written on it being an L.

King of Silence didn’t bother to look at him. "You finally decided to come the last minute before our final battle."

"Talking before that did not change anything." Ray said with his indifferent tone.

"Do you have time to listen to a story?"

"I wouldn’t mind."

"I guess you haven’t ever lived in puberty; since I was eight, I had to work just to be able to buy food. My mother and father worked day and night, and we barely could even buy enough food for our daily meals."

He sighed, "When my father died, I had to take his place as the man of the family, a teenage boy that had no knowledge of the work, taking his father’s place in the cruel world, but I had one hope: in a few years, I would have gotten my magic at last, a hope in the darkness of my life."

His fingers traced the word written on the tomb, "The world laughed at me because of my dreams at night. I hoped for a miracle, a magic that could break the rules, but when the time came, I didn’t receive anything. Even the weakest magic couldn’t work."

That kind of lifestyle wasn’t unknown to Ray; he had witnessed the kind of world where the forgotten ones of the earth lived. He had seen a few people with no magic, and all of them were turned into slaves.

"But I didn’t give up... I couldn’t give up; I worked harder. As my mother got sick, I ate less food to make up for the money of her hospital; that was when suddenly everything changed."

"Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"No."

"That was what happened between us, she was a doctor in the hospital, I was way beneath her league, but everything just went fine, when my mother passed a away a few months later, she stood by my side to let go of the sorrow, she helped me to find a proper job at the hospital and before I noticed we were getting married."

Ray knew this kind of story always ends in tragedy. "What happened next?"

"A disease, no one knew the cause of it, and when we found the cause, it was too late already. Being close to me, someone with no magic at all, her own magic was slowly getting drained." He paused for a minute. "She fell into a deep slumber; can you guess what her cure was?"

"A magic crystal?"

"A light crystal; it would be impossible for an average person to buy one, yet I started working 22 hours a day, and that was my biggest mistake. I was so lost in my own business that I couldn’t spare time to visit her."

"One night she had woken up from her slumber; the nurses had told her that no one came to her visit for months. I don’t know what went through her head... She must have felt so lonely. When I got there, she had already finished herself.

"I picked her lifeless body and ran; I don’t know for how long. Tears stopped my vision, and finally I reached this place." He pulled a rose out of her pocket and put it on the grave, "I buried her in here, and wanted to jump to join her side, untill that devil found me. He promised I would be able to see her again and gave me the very magic that took her away from me, light magic."

"Why are you telling me all this?" Their conflict, no matter their backstories, would end in one way.

"Despite everything that you have done, you are still a man of your word." His hand covered in a dark glove gave him a ring. "This is her ring. I will have no soul when I die, so please, if you find a way to speak to a soul, tell her that I loved her."

The only thing that Ray saw was a broken man clinging to his last resort; he had no reason to pass the request, so he picked up the ring. Putting it inside his inventory, he could feel the weight of emotions behind it.

"Thank you." The king of silence took his last glimpse at the grave. "We should be going; your friends are already waiting there."

Cindi and a few more people of her squad and Fereya personally came to witness their fight; whoever won would be the new immortal to set foot on Mars.

The king of silence opened a portal to Mercury; with heavy steps, he went to the bare planet.

All the memories of the road that had led him to that place passed through his eyes; all those hardships and struggles came and went, causing him to sacrifice more and more of himself.

"Earth is really beautiful..." As a planet, Earth was the perfect planet for lifeforms; humans had destroyed most of its beauties. In a few centuries, the changes were such that it would turn into another bare planet like others.

Ray always dreamt of being born in an age when earth was unknown to humans, a whole planet for him to explore. "Instead of that, now I get to explore the stars!"

"From now on, I won’t belong to this planet; maybe I will find another place that I will call home one day..."

Ray started to crave his own name behind the grave, a sign that he once lived in here. It might have been an insult to the dead woman, so Ray changed the carving on the front too: lover of a silent king.

With heavy steps he started to walk toward the portal; he still had regrets in his heart, and he doubted that he wouldn’t make any more in the future. The only thing that mattered for him at that moment was how alive everything felt...