Five years had passed since Thanatos was taken in by the Skuggulfr clan.
A grand mission had arisen—the final assault on the legendary elven city of Geffenia. It was a cold morning when Thanatos, only five years old, was brought along with the marching troops, his innocent eyes already familiar with steel and blood. The rising sun cast a golden glow upon the city, its elegant towers gleaming like a silent elegy for the destruction to come. A heavy stillness hung in the air—the silence before the storm of steel and sorcery.
When the assault began, the sky was torn apart by war cries. Dwarves allied with the Rune-Midgard human army surged forward like a sea of metal and stone. Their colossal siege engines closed the gap between the troops and Geffenia's enchanted walls. Flaming boulders launched by catapults streaked across the sky like falling stars, while iron-clad battering rams slammed into the gates with crushing force. Each blow against the elven fortifications echoed like thunder—a grim toll heralding the end of an era. Forgotten and unguarded in the chaos, Thanatos watched wide-eyed as the ground trembled beneath him. The roar of explosions and the rhythmic pounding of thousands of boots pulsed in his chest.
Inside the city, chaos was unimaginable. Elves fled in panic, mothers clutching their children, while elven warriors fought desperately to hold back the relentless enemy forces. Thanatos saw a group of dwarves break through the elven lines, smashing through everything in their path with massive maces that crushed flesh and bone without mercy. Screams of agony mixed with the metallic clash of weapons. He saw a young elven warrior, desperate and afraid, skewered by a spear. For a brief second, the elf's eyes met Thanatos's—eyes filled with a pain so deep and real that the boy would never forget them.
Destruction spread like wildfire, consuming everything in its path. The towers that once guarded ancient magic and millennia of wisdom collapsed one by one, raining stones and debris upon both defenders and invaders. Thanatos watched, stunned, as Liv fought through the chaos, her blade carving deadly arcs through any elf who crossed her path. She moved with unshakable ferocity, every strike precise, every movement purposeful. There was no room for hesitation or mercy. The woman he knew as a motherly figure now seemed like someone else entirely—a relentless warrior. She didn't see him. She didn't know he was there, watching every detail with frightening clarity.
The dwarven allies, carrying bombs and siege tools, tore through the ruins with victorious roars, setting fire to every last vestige of the elven defenses. Thanatos watched as a team of dwarf alchemists conjured green and blue flames, using their craft to melt the enchanted doors of the arcane halls. The boy, unable to look away, saw elven children torn from their mothers, bards casting aside their instruments to take up arms, and the very soul of an ancient culture being devoured by steel and fire.
And then, when it seemed that destruction had reached its peak, something unexpected happened.
A light—ethereal and blue—ripped through the sky, engulfing the city in a force unknown. The elven mages, in a final act of desperation, had unleashed an ancient spell, a power so immense the very air around Geffenia began to hum and vibrate. Thanatos watched, both horrified and mesmerized, as the shapes of the city began to twist and blur. Towers and walls vanished in bursts of raw magical energy. The ground shook violently, and a deafening roar echoed as part of the city simply ceased to exist. Where once stood majestic towers and mighty walls, now there remained only a massive, silent crater—blanketed in thick mist and floating ash, drifting down like snow.
The surviving elves had teleported away to another dimension—Alfheim, their mythical homeland. The remaining human and dwarven warriors, though victorious, stood in reverent silence before the void left behind by the vanished city.
Thanatos, his legs trembling, his face smeared with ash and dried tears, stared into the devastation. It wasn't just Geffenia that had been destroyed—something inside him had shattered as well. The innocence he still held had been devoured by the sight of suffering, terror, ashes, and sorrow.
He looked around and saw Kjetil—wounded, exhausted—approaching. The alchemist, his face bloodied and body tense with pain, placed a hand gently on Thanatos's head. His eyes, heavy with sorrow and fatigue, searched the boy's.
"You saw everything, didn't you?" Kjetil murmured, his voice trembling. Thanatos nodded, his eyes fixed on the smoldering crater and the ash that continued to fall—soft and deadly, like the very nature of war.
Kjetil sighed, and in his touch, Thanatos felt a bitter comfort—there was no going back. The brutal reality of this world had now become an irrevocable part of who he was.