"No way..."
The words barely managed to make it out of Fritz’s mouth. His eyes widened, taking in the impossible.
Yet, there was no ti to lant.
It seed like the world had stopped for a second before ti resud. A deafening rupture rolled across the sea, a pressure wave so massive that it seed to crush the air itself before exploding outward in all directions.
The ocean beneath him convulsed, water buckling as massive waves started to form in all directions.
"Brace—!" one of the dwarves shouted.
But it was too late.
The wave hit him like a battering ram. Fritz felt himself lifted clean off the water, his body hurled sideways as the current slamd into him with all its force. The dwarves were ripped from where they treaded water, swallowed by it all.
Salt filled his mouth again as he was driven under, not downward this ti...but backward.
The empty patch he had escaped from monts ago tore open beneath him once more as the displaced ocean was violently pulled back toward Leviathan’s position.
"Shit!"
With all the strength remaining in him, he tried desperately to swim out of the current. Fritz kicked hard, moving all his Essence toward his arms and legs, yet the sheer pull of the wave was too much.
His body crossed the edge, beyond water and air, before—
"ARHHHHHH—!"
***
He stood in a dark void. His sensations were...empty. Not the crushing cold of the ocean or the weight of the water.
Just...nothing.
Fritz beca aware of himself the way one becos aware of a dream ending.
Did I...
Did I die?
"So this is how it ends," a voice resounded throughout the space.
He turned toward the sound, yet there was no singular direction that it ca from. It perated throughout the entire area, almost like a stubborn parasite.
Fritz didn’t need to guess whose voice it was. It was his.
"Gremory’s Hero," it continued. "Taken out by a single wave."
"What a sha..."
The darkness beneath his feet shifted, and sothing reflective spread outward from where he stood. A surface like blackened glass extended infinitely in all directions.
Then...it broke.
The surface beneath him splintered into a thousand jagged pieces, the reflection breaking apart with it.
Fritz began falling through.
Wha—what the hell is going on?!
He flailed his arms wildly as his body plumted from above. Clear clouds drifted weightlessly as they passed him in silence.
Everywhere he looked, a vast expanse of blue seed to swallow almost everything in his vision.
That’s when he saw it. He was rapidly approaching a small silhouette...a ship that sat alone in the open azure waters, tiny in the endless sea.
But judging from the trajectory of his fall...he was right above its path.
"Shit—! I’m gonna crash into it!"
He threw his hands up instinctively, shielding his face while leaving just enough space between his fingers to see the impact coming.
Yet, he suddenly stopped, right above the small boat drifting lazily in the ocean.
Instead of crashing into the vessel, his descent softened, and Fritz found himself suspended in open air.
Fritz knew it instantly...this was his childhood boat.
He didn’t descend further, simply hovering, as though the world had decided he was not ant to touch it.
A figure stood at the front, tall and broad-shouldered, casting a fishing line into the water.
Fritz knew who it was...yet, didn’t at the sa ti. He couldn’t see his face, as every ti he focused, the features would dissolve when he tried to hold them in place.
Another shape moved fainly within the cabin, soft and familiar, preparing sothing on a portable stove top...But disappearing the mont he blinked.
Near the center of the deck was a smaller figure, sitting cross-legged with a book in his hands.
The boy’s voice carried upward, bright and eager.
"...the Hero descended from the skies! And drove away the darkness!"
The voice was undoubtedly his own, from when he was a kid...but undeniably his. Yet even the boy’s face wavered when he tried to hold it in view. The features shifted and blurred, slipping away the harder he stared.
"I’ll be like him one day," the boy continued eagerly. "I’ll beco a hero. And everyone won’t have to worry anymore!"
There was a sort of pride in the answer that followed, though the words themselves seed to fade in the wind just as quickly as it ca.
Fritz reached out without thinking, his fingers stretching toward the deck below, toward the warmth of sothing he could no longer fully rember.
He rembered wanting to be bigger than life. He rembered that heroes arrived when no one else could, and that they’ll descend from the sky and everything would be saved.
He wanted to be that soone.
The man turned toward the horizon, posture straight as he studied the growing patch of dark clouds in the path ahead.
"Storm’s forming out there."
The cabin door opened. The second figure stepped out, her shape softened by mory, her features still a blur.
"Put things away," the man said. "We’ll head back."
The younger Fritz looked up from his book, confusion flickering across his face.
"But it’s far," the boy insisted. "We have ti."
The man smiled faintly, though his gaze never left the horizon.
"Storms move faster than you think."
The sky above was still bright.
And yet the dark patch in the distance grew, swallowing blue inch by inch. Suspended above them, the present Fritz felt sothing twist sharply in his chest.
He reached a hand out before his body could fully keep up.
No! Turn back now!
Or else it’s too late!
His arm passed through air and sunlight without resistance.
"Turn back," he tried again, though no sound carried. "Don’t go out there!"
Fritz hovered helplessly as the boat continued its course, the sea parting gently before it as though unaware of what approached.
Yet, with just a blink, the entire scene had shifted.
Rain tore across the sky, thunder cracked overhead, shattering what remained of the calm. The gentle blue was gone, swallowed by a mass of cloud and lightning.
The sea rose and fell dangerously, lifting the small vessel high before slamming it downward.
The deck tilted violently. The cabin door burst open as the second figure stumbled out, reaching for the railing just as a wave crashed across the side.
She’d completely vanished.
His father imdiately ca back outside, lunging right after her in a desperate attempt. Yet with another tilt of the boat, the entire vessel had capsized...and the boy fell with them.
Fritz felt the familiar sensation, the sa weightless drop that had stayed in the back of his mind.
Cold swallowed everything and salt invaded his lungs once more. Through lightning-lit water and debris, he saw them...two shapes drifting upward, limbs unmoving, already being carried toward the surface.
He tried to reach out for them, but the distance already seed impossibly far away.
And there was only one thing in his grasp.
His book.
Fritz grasped onto it instinctively as his eyelids started to waver.
Is there really such thing as a Hero?
He began to lose consciousness, feeling his limbs go slack, and his breathing felt light.
Before a light illuminated him in the dark, and just as his fingers loosened around the book—
A hand broke through the abyss.
It seized his wrist, and pulled up.
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