He had been happy. He had retired from his Heroic life and settled in quaint little cottage he called Serenity Farms, within the Demon Door realm of Homestead. Here, our former Hero could live with his wife and soon to be future children. He could live here without fear of being attacked like his own home had been in his childhood. The Jack-Slayer could live without worries and finally have a long-needed sense of security. He, Alexander, the Hero of Oakvale was at peace…

Or so he had thought…

Tragedy.

His wife died because of a complication in childbirth.

Their child was an infant who died a few months later in its sleep.

Burying his dead wife in child in the Oakvale Memorial Garden, he retreated back into the realm of Homestead once more which was located near a small community, where a few farmers and traders who survived the Oakvale raid from his childhood settled after the original village was destroyed. This community would later become Oakfield, home to the Temple of Light in the later centuries.

Grief-stricken, the hero isolated himself within Homestead, dedicating himself to mastering the three Heroic attributes. Over the period of several decades he mastered Strength, Skill and finally Will. While he trained to master the Will, he found combining the Willpower with his fully unlocked royal Archon bloodline; he could effortlessly halt his aging process completely. With the completely mastering of the Willpower he found he could control his own aging process completely just as effortlessly, he could appear as old or as young as he wished with no mental strain and willpower focus usage.

After completely mastering the Heroic attributes, the Hero ended his isolation. He resealed the Demon Door, closing the only entrance to his retreat away and sought to return to the Heroes' Guild. He wished to reconcile his relations with the Guild and reassure his membership. He hoped, he could find purpose in the guild, in hopes of teaching a new generation of heroes. When he failed to establish contact with his Guild Seal, he journeyed on foot to the Heroes Guild…

But what he found in place of the Heroes' Guild and his new purpose was grief and despair. Tragedy had been waiting for him once more…

The Heroes Guild had been burned to the ground and was no more. The ruins had been buried underground. The only standing part of the Guild left was the Chamber of Fate; the enchantment on the Chamber protected the ruins of the Guild and sank it into the ground, creating an underground cavern in the process. This sealed off the remains of the Heroes' Guild underground, only those with a Guild Seal enter them.

He fell to his knees. Tears fell from his light blue eyes and rolled down his cheeks. He ex-quiped his helmet and armor, and exchanged it with a black hooded cloak and a simple villagers outfit. The place that had been his home during the last years of his childhood and his teenager years, the place that became his home away from home was… gone.

"Why?..." He finally managed to choke out.

He silenced the world around him while he let the reality that had hit him like ten-thousand tons sink in.

"I should have been here… I should have been here to stop this…" Tears continued to steam down his face as the guilt of having isolated himself from his comrades continued to eat away at him.

"The only thing you would have been able to do was to die with them, Alexander." A voiced sounded from several steps behind him.

"Scythe?" he said, recognizing the voice instantaneously.

"You could continue to call me that, but perhaps it's time for you to know my true name. Seeing as you and I are of the same blood."

"Same blood? What do you mean?" The Hero of Oakvale slowly rose to his feet and turned to face the being that had addressed him. "Explain."

"You are my descendant of my bloodline, an Archon just as I am. Our blood has remained the same despite the passage of time. " the withered shell of a man plainly stated. "I am your ancestor, William Black. Though I may not look like much due to the effect of a wasting disease of the Void, I am still as powerful as I had been when I defeated the Court."

"Then why did you help me during my final battle with Jack of Blades?! Or my first battle with the bastard? Why didn't you ever help me train to my full potential earlier! Why!... I want an answer!" he yelled,

"If I had revealed who I was to the Guild, there would have been disorder and chaos in Albion. It was your destiny to finish what I started, if I had of intervened during your battles, your destiny could have been altered for the worst." Scythe or William Black as he is truly called, calmly stated as plainly and dryly as possible, carefully choosing his words to prevent more of a reaction out of his descendant

"For the worse?! My wife and child are dead, the guild I have long treasured, gone. My sister went off to find her own destiny elsewhere and hasn't been seen since I defeated Jack of Blades for the first time. I am all alone and you say to me that my fate could have been worse?!" he screamed, his anger more evident in his voice. "Leave me alone. I want nothing to do with you or your bullshit excuses."

Alex pulled up the hood of his cloak over his head and shifted his age into his early twenties before beginning to walk away.

"Alexander, let me finish explaining—" the withered shell of an old man attempted to continue speaking before being abruptly cut off.

"I told you to leave me alone. I'm done with listening to you." Alexander cut off Scythe's dialog. "If you wanted to change my mind and alter this path I now walk, then you should have done something years ago. I'm now a stubborn old man who is not bound by aging or destiny. If you wanted something different, well you're damned out of luck."

Scythe watched Alexander walk away into the distance and sighed. Perhaps he could have altered Alex's life for the better had he done something long ago. No matter what he could have said to him, nothing could have changed the hero's mind, Alexander's as stubborn as a mountain so beating the words into the Hero's head wouldn't have done much for the old Archon either. Alexander reminded William of himself as he had been so many centuries ago. But, that stubborn-headedness could lead to Alexander into more misery than he is already in.

"I suppose some lessons must be learned the difficult way for others" Scythe sighed once more before disappearing.

A/N: I borrowed the ex-quip term from FairyTail because of the similarity between the concept used there and in my story. The explanation is Alexander was taught how to create a pocket dimension to store his equipment while training in the Guild. Either Maze taught it to him or the Guildmaster or he learned from the books in the Guild Library. But He can exchange his equipment and simultaneously equip another item. He can use this to change his clothes, armor or weapons quickly with relative ease