The air was still.
Ash fell from the gray skies, settling gently on the two figures amidst the battlefield ruins.
Blood, rain, and smoke mingled into one indistinguishable scent being the stench of war.
Draven stood, chest heaving, his blade still trembling in his hand.
Across him, Noah knelt in the mud, his white uniform drenched crimson.
His face was unreadable... void of anger, fear, or even pain.
Just... emptiness.
The silence between them was deafening.
"Why… why did you do it?"
Draven's voice cracked, hoarse from screaming and exhaustion.
Noah looked up at Draven.
His lips twitched.
"Just kill already..."
Draven's eyes widened before driving the blade forward.
Steel tore through flesh the sound unmistakable.
Noah's body jerked as the blade pierced his chest.
A wet cough escaped his lips, blood spilling from his mouth as his head slumped forward.
The blade trembled again, but this ti, not from Draven's grip from Noah's heartbeat fading against its edge.
For a mont, it seed over.
Then Noah spoke. His voice was low and detached like a man having a casual conversation with himself.
"I… I did it?"
He coughed again.
"Oh yeah, I guess I did…"
"I've been on autopilot for who knows how long," Noah muttered, eyes unfocused.
"Imitating who I was on Earth.
I kept pretending I didn't know what was going on..."
His breath hitched, and the laughter that followed was hollow.
"I guess he's right.
I was the cause of this war."
His mind then started drifting.
***
mories crashed in like waves — each one sharper than the last.
The dim room beneath the Northern Victorian theatre.
The sound of coins dropping into a tal chest.
The oath whispered in blood.
"Chro Hearts…"
"That's where it started."
***
He rembered the founding of the organization...a small group ant to eliminate other syndicates across the Northern Continent. It had begun as a desperate attempt to restore balance.
***
He rembered the massacre of the Southern n the day relics were being feyed to the North.
He had orchestrated it...
***
He rembered the Saint of St. Eldred's Church...
Her death had ignited the flas of war.
And the dagger that slit her throat ...was His.
"I was the one who killed her..."
***
The images ca faster now.
***
He rembered the burning port of Frostveil, where thousands of Southern n were slaughtered in the night.
"Aahh yes...that too..."
The explosion that tore apart the Central Parliant during a peace treaty eting.
He was the one who hired the bomber...
He had even created the myth of a doppelgänger... a false "Machiavelli" to mislead intelligence networks.
He paid rcenaries to masquerade as him...
Every trail led nowhere.
He was the one behind it all.
It wasn't soone pretending to be him or stealing his identity.Although he had hired people like that to throw off people on his trail...or rather the fake him that didn't exist...
It was infact all him.
Sending different divisions on different trails for the doppelganger False Machiavelli he hired... to die so the Central-South Alliance can get a higher hand in thee war...
It was his cause as well.
---
Noah slowly lifted his head. His eyes were lifeless, yet sothing flickered behind them.
"When I ca to the Northern Continent," he said.
"I didn't know if losing the system ant I was free...
Maybe I wasn't.
Maybe this was the only ending that made sense.
The final villain always plays his part, right?"
He smiled... small, fragile, and broken.
"So I decided to play it to the end."
"...insanity is just another form of acceptance."
He dragged his hand through the dirt, saring his own blood.
"A final villain doesn't end with an academy. That's child's play.
No, he becos the calamity that tears the world apart."
He laughed bitterly, voice trembling.
"So I did...
...I built the Chro Hearts...caused a rift between nations that led to an all out war..
...All to..."
He looked up at Draven.
"...to give you the ending that praises you..."
Noah's head tilted back, eyes drifting toward the dark sky.
"You know what's funny, Draven?"
Draven didn't respond.
"Today's the day we were supposed to return to Ravenwood," Noah said softly. "Final sester. We were going to graduate… maybe even take that stupid group photo at the west courtyard."
The silence after that felt eternal.
Draven's breathing quickened. His blade still stuck in Noah's chest trembled as tears welled up in his eyes.
"Why, Noah?...Why couldn't you just stay with us?"
Noah smiled faintly, though it was more of a grimace.
"Because this is my role....this is what I was ant to do.
For … to finally save you."
"You can hate all you want, Draven. But at least… I gave you sothing to fight for...
...sothing that gave you justice unlike that shitty ending..."
Noah didn't scream. He didn't even wince. He just knelt there, bleeding quietly, as the light began to fade from his eyes.
The battlefield had gone silent now. The wind whispered through the ruins, carrying the faint echoes of the past — laughter, voices, fragnts of what once was.
Draven looked at him — the boy who once sat beside him in class, who bickered, who mocked, who smiled that damned smug smile.
And now he was just… a hollow shell.
"Noah…" he whispered. "You could've told us."
Noah smiled one last ti, eyes half-lidded.
"If I did, you wouldn't have beco who you are."
The clouds parted slightly — a single ray of sunlight spilling over the ruins.
Noah's eyes, dim but not lifeless, glanced toward the horizon.
The distant bells of Ravenwood Fortress — once Ironvale — echoed faintly in the wind.
The war was still raging, but for Noah, the battle was long over.
The wind blew once more the ashes rising.
The battlefield remained frozen in ti... one man kneeling before another.
Two students from Ravenwood Academy.
Both victims of the sa fate.
One who sought to save the world through destruction.
And one who would carry that sin forever.
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