[Sarah54321]

Small books have been released, less than ten pages in length. Hand written, each book has a story in it, It's obvious a bit of care has been put into each and every book found. Some could be bought, some would simply be discovered in random places. How strange.

The writer's name? 'To Heal'.

---

“There’s this legend I wanted you to know about.”

The land had always been a bit barren to you. Full of sand, full of dirt. There was a plant here, some vegetation there. Not enough to keep society living. Perhaps that was their comeuppance. Society as a whole became far too strong and prideful in their hubris, so the gods abandoned the world.

Then, they took the world with them.

Ever since then, the world fell to more chaos than was original. The Empire fell to its own citizens. Oniga finally shriveled and lost its remaining land to Gold’s desert. Alstalsia’s land became little more than hot slag and lava, what liveable places left inhabited by horrid monsters. Kysei was covered in flames, from where Helondis was birthed and left just as swiftly. Lordwain was finally frozen into a cold, lethal wasteland. Egwyn possibly had it the worst. Hyatt’s remains burst from the fissure, covering the entire continent in ash, uninhabitable and deadly to any that remained.

You were one of the survivors. Left to the machinations of an uncaring land, you stayed on Sigrogana’s land. Though it was mostly destroyed, there were places where life was at least permitted to remain. Only by the power of druids and Doriads was the place at all inhabitable. Even despite that, you had to work a lot. Very hard, in fact.

You were only human, hardly anything in the grand scheme of things. No matter what you thought, all you had to do was keep living. That was the code of conduct for anyone in the camp, however. Friendship and heroism was a thing of the past. If you weren’t selfish, you wouldn’t gain anything.

Man eat man world, perhaps, but it was life. Your existence was enough for you, and so it went on for years. You only wondered when things would finally fall apart entirely. With the Gods having taken back all of their blessings, ripped what the world had in the first place away…

You wonder when it became so bleak. It wasn’t like you were born before the cataclysm. The time where life was easy for most- kindness existed, heroes were a thing of the present, and people cared for one another like family.

It always sounded nice, but maybe you weren’t meant for that sort of life, afterall. You never realized how much you cared about it. How you missed something that you never had. It was a sudden bit of melancholy that washed over you.

You’d never get to feel the happiness of a carefree life. Your mother and father cared in some way, you supposed. They took care of you, they made sure you lived, but then, they disappeared. Par for the course, it was only normal. Soon, you would disappear too. Scavenging had a high mortality rate.

It was strange that you didn’t mourn. Perhaps it was a conditioning that you didn’t realize was being done to you. To accept death like so, it was amazing that even your birth parents gave very little of a reason to feel ‘sad’.

Pursing your lips, you stared down from the high cliff-side where you resided. This place where you found yourself was hardly anything special. Dirt, rock, and a bit of sand. You were supposed to be scavenging, yet…

Staring at the ruined land below, at the few camps that existed, the ones that still fought with each other even over the smallest scraps of food. How long did you want to remain in this area? In this world, even? The wind felt nice as you stood up from your perch.

Perhaps it was conditioning that you didn’t realize was being done to you. Perhaps it was the atmosphere, the world that you were born in, that told you that this wasn’t worth it.

The air felt nice. You felt a strange sting in your eyes as you passed through the sky, staring upwards at the clouds that you would never be able to reach.

Closing your eyes, you simply accepted it.

You cried, for the first and last time.

"They say there's a God that cried..."

[Sarah54321]

"They say that the god was like Ryart."

It was hard for you- learning to fly when you were little was more like a stepping stone in comparison to this! Learning to fight, learning to be strong, it was all for the right cause. Even still, you didn't know how well you'd do in the end. After all, it was pretty difficult to rise up to the top when there were so many splendid people already fighting. Even still, you did your best to contest to them.

Wielding your blade and spear, you trained day and night. They said that strength in not just body, but mind was required to be a wonderful hero- a person that people would look up to. You assumed that you had the mind for it, but the body? It was difficult to defeat those Black Door Phenomenons, let alone other people that were up to no good!

Even still, you flapped your wings and soared into the sky, before diving back down and crashing into the Jammer that was attempting to attack you. Striking and tossing it away, you wheezed a little bit and smiled. You really were getting stronger.

There was some form of achievement when it came to being able to be strong like others. As you marched back, you happily hummed a tune, one from long ago. A name to a song that you didn't know about. Even still, you came to stop and glance around you.

It was dark, now. Exiting the dungeon you were in, you supposed that you were inside for a long while. Spreading your feathered wings, you took to the skies.

Perhaps it was fate that brought you to the top of the shrine. As you landed down upon the grass, you breathed in the smell of flowers and cool breezes. However, your golden eyes caught sight of someone...

Someone stepping towards the edge of the cliff- about to fall off. It was a reaction you didn't know you had in you. Speed you didn't know you had. You dropped your weapons and made a mad dash towards the person. Grabbed their shoulders and yelled at them to stop.

Yet, the person only looked at you, and you almost felt petrified. The dead look in their eyes, the blank expression they had. It was as if the life was sucked out of the person you just saved. Any sort of heroism and pride you felt drained from your body as you realized what sort of situation this was.

"Why won't you let me pass?"

The words caught you off guard, and you released their shoulders. Frozen in place, you had no real reason. You didn't know the person. You only had the sense of 'this is wrong' settled into your mind. Opening your mouth, you tried to explain, tried to reason, yet nothing came.

The person pursed their lips, said nothing at all. You were stuck as they stepped backwards.

You saw something sparkle in their eyes, perhaps a glint of the moonlight on the clear sky, as they suddenly plummeted towards the ground. Yet, you didn't let them perish alone- You leaped after them, didn't you?

Tears in your eyes, you screamed not to throw away the life that someone so willingly gave them. You could see, in the split second before you crashed into them to raise them into the sky, a hint of surprise.

Being a hero didn't mean being strong physically all the time. You had to be ready for everything.

You had to understand to save someone.

"They say they come from a land of kindness."

[Sarah54321]

"It's said that the God still lives."

You hated it. You hated this world with a passion. Though you were born with a loving family, it was taken away. You were born with talent- that too was stolen from you. You hated it. Why did everything get taken from you? Why was the world so cruel- so selfish? Glaring holes into the darkness of the night, you pondered these thoughts, surrounded by the bodies of the bandits that attempted to rob you.

It wasn't always like this, though. At one point, you loved the world. You endured any sort of hardship because you weren't alone. You weren't abandoned and left to rot. What happened? You didn't even know for certain. Simply put, it happened in the moment of a flash- an instant in time that you didn't comprehend. Your family left you without a word, your powers went out of control, and you were left alone, because you were a freak.

A freak... Was that what you were? Just because you were created instead of born, you were a freak? Sub-Human? You couldn't have human emotions, surely. The stone in your head couldn't afford tears. Cursing, you crushed the spine of one of the already-dead bandits.

You hated this world, and that was your only passion. Perhaps, at one point, you could have cried. You could have mourned over the hand that fate gave you. You didn't, though. Didn't have the power to- didn't have the ability to. Tears were not given to you at creation.

You didn't want them anyway. You didn't want anything anymore. Why were you here?

...

Maybe, you were here because you wanted to see a different path. Perhaps... there was a small bit of hope inside of you, that maybe, just maybe, you could become as you always wished to be. Human, fully human. Loved, completely and unconditionally.

Softly, you let out a chuckle, then a laugh. It was so funny, wasn't it? The fact that you couldn't even comprehend what it was like anymore. To love, to laugh, to cry, to endure hardship with others. You were already falling apart, who was to say you wouldn't be perishing soon?

Somewhere, deep inside of your heart?

You heard a little child cry, echoing into the void.

"The God's tears are our own, they say."