Chapter 19: Chapter19-Death Graveyard — Astral Envoy

“We’re on the roof of our hometown, Lilith.”

Leo smiled and gently pinched Lilith’s hand.

“It’s just that this ’roof’ is a little more open to the sky than usual.”

He used the same phrase Lilith had used as a child to describe their leaky attic, and the comparison cracked her up.

The tension drained away, replaced by boundless curiosity and excitement.

She drank in everything around her greedily — sights no book or legend could properly describe.

Leo led her as if on a stroll through a garden; with every step they covered distances spanning whole star systems.

They witnessed nebular cocoons where stars were born, skimmed past black holes that swallowed all light, and listened to pulsars beat out rhythms like cosmic heartbeats…

Yet amid this magnificent sea of stars, one area radiated an alien stillness and the stench of blood.

Before them lay a giant binary star system reduced to a cemetery of death.

The stars’ halos were dim, as if covered in dust.

Former planets had been shattered into belts of rock and drifting clouds of ash, littered with countless scattered chitinous limbs of some crustacean life-form and uncountable fragments of fabricated civilization.

A cold, greedy, nauseating residue of energy stained that space like a stain.

At the very edge of this ruined system they saw a figure.

A man three times the size of a human lay sprawled among the rocky debris, clad in star-blue armor long torn and stained dark with coagulated blood.

Greasy, gray-white hair hung in tangled mats; a broken greatspear lay embedded nearby.

He showed no sign of life—he looked like a rock that had been left to the void.

Lilith’s heart tightened at the sight.

Even across that distance, the thick despair was palpable; it brought to mind the heavy sorrow of Uncle Leig’s passing back in the town.

Leo guided them silently onto the slab where the man lay.

Their arrival seemed to stir the stone-like figure.

He turned his head with extreme slowness and great difficulty.

His face was weathered and carved with endless pain and exhaustion; most frightening of all were his eyes—eyes that had nearly lost their light.

“Father—look, that man—he’s still alive…” Lilith whispered.

Leo nodded. By his senses he had already understood the man’s condition.

He was mostly curious why a battle in this star system had ended in such devastation.

When the deadened figure heard the two of them, an unbelievable light suddenly flared deep within his gaze.

“Li—life?!”

“Alive… children?!”

He croaked in a language the pair couldn’t understand. He seemed to try to raise a hand, then feared he might shatter some fragile illusion.

“No… it’s another hallucination.”

“A hallucination… another—damned—hallucination?!”

When those dead eyes saw living flesh, the tiniest spark of light flickered within them—like a dying ember meeting the last wisp of oxygen—and a terrible force slowly began to stir in the man.

Lilith jumped at the sudden movement and instinctively hugged Leo’s arm.

Her azure eyes filled with fear and a trace of worry.

“Fa—Father…” she said softly, hiding half her face behind Leo and peeking out cautiously.

Leo felt his daughter’s unease and patted her hand.

“Don’t worry. With your father here, no one in this world can hurt you.”

He did not speak aloud; the words nonetheless entered the tall man’s mind with crystal clarity.

“Survivor—what happened here?” Leo asked mentally.

At the question the man’s body stiffened; the fleeting excitement vanished and endless pain flooded him again.

He gave a beast-like whine; the anguish of his will pressed into the two of them.

“Abyssal Zerg—those damn, greedy filth!!”

He pounded weakly against the rock beneath him.

“I slaughtered them, but… it was too late! Talia… Old John… the children… all life in this system… gone!”

“Right before my eyes! Devoured! Dissolved! Because I wasn’t strong enough! Not fast enough!”

He snapped his head up and stared hard at Leo.

“You possess such power—you arrive here silently—do you know what it is to watch everything you love be destroyed?!!”

A look of understanding passed across Leo’s eyes.

No wonder the man had chosen self-exile and silence. Indeed, that was exile by choice.

Although he appeared grievously wounded, the wounds were as much willful refusal to heal as anything else.

A rich, potent life-aura radiated from him—he was clearly an Astral Envoy.

As the title suggested, such a being is an emissary of a star-system world: no matter how grievous the wounds, as long as they do not die, they can draw upon the world’s energies to restore themselves.

Lilith crouched behind her father, watching the silent tears of blood slipping from the man; her fear slowly gave way to sympathy.

“But… if they’re dead… then everything’s truly gone…” she murmured.

“You don’t understand, child. I have nothing left. I live… but what meaning is there?” he rasped.

“Meaning?”

Lilith suddenly spoke, her voice unusually firm.

“Meaning is being alive! Look!” she said, pointing to the distant, gorgeous nebula.

“The universe is so vast—so many stars are still shining! Your Talia, Old John, the children—they’d want you to see more light, not to become a rock here!”

Lilith’s words pierced the man’s heavy armor of despair like a shaft of light.

He stared at her, at the untainted reverence for life in her eyes—something he had long forgotten.

Leo looked at his daughter with a flicker of approval, then spoke at the right moment.

“Abyssal Zerg are endless, but you are the only child left of this system. What you carry is not just your own life or death; it is the last trace of what once existed here.”

At those words a keen light burst in the man’s gaze.

“You’re right. What this world gave me, what I shoulder, and what they hoped for—none of it should end in silent death… besides, I haven’t avenged those damned bugs yet!”

“Revenge… you must be alive to achieve it.”

Leo extended his hand; in his palm appeared a vial of liquid that flowed with rainbow radiance, exuding overwhelming vitality—the Sigh of the Life-Goddess.

“Death is the easy escape.”

Leo’s voice was calm, but carried unquestionable authority. “To live, to bear memory and responsibility, and march forward—that is true courage.”

“Your sword once swung to protect. Now change to protect another place.”

He offered the potion to the man.

“Drink it, and then guard a city for me. When the time comes, I will bring you your vengeance.”

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