Run!

His legs moved with frenetic speed, pushing up plumes of dust with every step, bellowing behind him like a mad desert.

Dark dirt, wet and sloppy, sloshed beneath his feet, trying to pull him in with every step, yet he didn’t falter. Leonidas spared a glance behind him and immediately regretted it.

A massive pilgrim was chasing him, easily a dozen meters tall, a hulking smith of metal and madness. Wicked spikes jutted from the beast’s back, stretching high, piercing the thick blanket of branches that blotted out the sky.

They were black in color, the same as the razor-sharp tips Leonidas had seen when he was riding his umbrella.

What mad luck I have!

To think he encountered the very thing that he had been trying to avoid, how terribly cruel fate was. Leonidas chuckled bitterly, but it came out as a violent, blood-filled cough.

His feet stumbled, and he nearly stumbled, but it was for the best. The slight movement had been enough for him to barely escape whole from the red-eyed metallic dog.

The titanic mouth had missed him by a hair’s breadth, grazing his already injured shoulder, inviting blood to pour.

Enraged, the monster roared, a harrowing sound, something that belonged to the very pits of hell. It burrowed into Leonidas’s ears, rupturing his eardrums—which, too, hadn’t yet healed.

Blood dripped from them, and all of a sudden...the world tilted.

No, it wasn’t the world that had tilted; it was he who had fallen.

Huh...?

Nausea hit him with a wave of dizziness, as if he had been slapped senseless. The feeling was impossibly large and much more potent than everything else combined.

His head slammed into a nearby tree, thick and bustling with bubbly dark bark. Blood instantly stained the onyx trunk, a dent marred its grotesque surface.

Oh no... 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

He was about to die...again.

His jarring crash gave the beast enough time to close in, its jaw an endless abyss with churning blades of steel jutting from a plethora of places, clamped onto his body.

Forcing the dizziness away, Leonidas moved at the last moment, barely avoiding certain death...ah, but he wasn’t safe, not even close.

A gusher of blood exploded from where his right leg had once been, a pained scream leaving his lips.

Tears gathered on the corners of his eyes, threatening to fall. Yet he had no chance for that either. The goddamned pilgrim stepped onto his other leg, crushing it into mist in an instant.

Ah...ah...my legs...

"AHHHH!!!!"

The pain wasn’t the worst part, no, the worst part was knowing he had become a cripple, in the truest sense of the word.

He had lost his right arm a few weeks ago...it had not been enough to break his will to live, but he had gotten close to the pushing point.

And the next day, he had suffered a plethora of other injuries—ears, shoulder, poison—but even so, he had still not wanted to truly end his suffering...not until this moment at least.

The light slowly left Leonidas’s cerulean eyes, darkening until only a smoldering fire was left, nothing compared to the brilliant intensity they had once glowed with.

Was this his fate? Was he always destined to die in a ditch, abandoned and forgotten by all but the beast whose feast he had become?

Fate...but fate is the collective will of the choices everyone makes.

The thought made him pause...not that he was moving anyways. The red-eyed scrap of spikes was looking at him with delight, as if wanting him to feel nothing but pain in his final moment.

What a goddamn asshole...but even meeting him was the result of my choice.

The great tree of fate, said to spread across dimensions and space, was the collective will of all things, living and not. Leonidas was but one leaf from an unfathomable number of leaves.

So in the end, whatever choices I would have made wouldn’t have mattered at all.

The thought made him chuckle, blood spurting from his mouth like an explosion of crimson. The demon behind him roared with him, as if delighting in his pain.

Even though he was about to die...Leonidas wanted to focus on the bright side of things, even in his lightless hell.

At least, Willow might survive because of my sacrifice...just maybe the fall of my leave from the Tree of Fate would have caused a little disturbance in its swaying.

He really hoped so...he would not mind thinking of it as a final gift for Willow. Leonidas pushed himself upright with a trembling hand, back against the misformed tree.

"Come at me, you toothpick bastard."

He coughed up blood, then smiled through it.

"I may have decided to think of my death as a sacrifice...But I am Faithfully Faithless, a man who breaks every promise he makes."

He circulated Insenium in his body...a final act of defiance. He knew it wouldn’t do the beast any damage...it was of the second rank—Superus—or, in simple words, a being far beyond mortal realms...a super.

"Hah...hah, take this, you overgrown toothpick."

A flower formed in front of him, massive in proportions, spinning like a lazy leaf in summer winds. Leonidas met the toothpick’s eye through the glistening body of the crystalline flower, and smiled.

This is my sacrifice...a final act of defiance.

Memories of his life passed through Leonidas’s mind: his father, whom he hated with all his being, his mother, the worst hypocrite he had come to know, Seridius...his dear friend Seridius.

Oh, how Leonidas missed him. The red-haired man was the only person whom Leonidas could fully trust with his life and more.

Speaking of trust.

His relation with Willow had gotten a lot better over the course of their journey. Leonidas smiled despite himself...it was a big smile, a sad smile, and most importantly, a resigned smile full of longing.

He clenched his hands.

Boom—!

The flower burst into a tempest of ruby, sharp enough to slice the surrounding forest like paper. He had expected the end to take him...but behind his closed eyes, a sharp golden glow, etched with lines of shifting silver.

[The Sanctum of Sacrifice senses your will...the Spirit of Sacrifice invites you.]

[Yes/Yes]