This is the second last chapter. I suggest you read the rest of the chapters all over again before reading this. You might have forgotten some details that might be important here.

And so here comes the revelation…

/.--... .--—/ Mist \.-... .-.. -.\

Distantlight stood. He had landed on the ground in some foreign, inhuman place—the first thing he had seen was a grey sky with none of the features he was used to. And despite his hard landing, he had not felt any—pain?

He surveyed the scene even more. Below the grey sky, everything looked bleak. Another person walked through the gates behind him as he looked down the path; an old man.

So this was the world of the dead. He was dead at last.

Thinking vaguely of the world above this one, and of the guild he had left behind, he wondered if they were now battling the great monster called Ergoth that he had feared so much before, but now hardly cared about, as much as everything else.

The warrior had heard a voice. He turned to the path and saw a woman running towards him—a young woman who looked like she came from a foreign place. Certainly not El Nath or Ludibrium; she looked…simply different.

But that was not the most of his thoughts at the moment. The woman was calling his name. But which dead person would know his name?

"Distantlight! You've really come!" Distantlight stood, frozen to the ground, mouth wide. She came nearer, until they were face to face, and she gazed deeply into his eyes.

"I felt right," she whispered, smiling. "I knew it. You're here now! I don't know if you even remember my face; it was so long ago…I'm your mother, Distantlight! My name is Shakantria." She paused. "You will go soon, won't you? I should say all I can now."

The name was the strangest he had ever heard before, but like her accent, it was nothing like those from El Nath, Ludibrium, or any other place in the world.

"Mother," he quickly replied, realizing that now, he could finally find out how he came to be alone in the world, how old he was, what had happened to his parents. "What really happened to you, to me?"

"Son…it wasn't a choice I made," she answered, sadness tinging her voice. "It was so scary, that moment…it was so powerful, so—dark…But I hid you, hid you deep in the holy shrine at the centre of the forest, where the darkness could not touch you. You can't have remembered anything; you were so young then…"

She shut her eyes for a few seconds before going on. "I had to save you. But I couldn't save myself. It took both my lives at once. But you lived on, didn't you?" She smiled, ignorant of the puzzlement that was crossing his face.

"Both your lives? What do you mean?"

Shakantria, his mother, shook her head lightly. "I can't believe you don't know even this. Does that mean that all of us have died already? Let me tell you how I died. I was Sharen the Third's servant till my death. I was collecting herbs for the kitchens then, when—"

She was a Sharenian. Slowly, it came to dawn upon him that he was a Sharenian as well. Impossible.

Immediately, Distantlight stepped forward. "I'm—a Sharenian?" he gasped, not sure if it was true, not sure if he what he heard was real. It was really too much for him to believe.

And yet again, it explained so much. It was why he was so different from everyone else, why he still felt respect towards Sharen III, why he found the architecture style of the Sharenian Castle so familiar…

Then he realized something, guiltily. "Then…I shouldn't have given up my life so willingly…I was the last…"

To his shock, she didn't look worried or perturbed. "That's where you're wrong," she answered simply. "You have a second life, like all Sharenians. Though our nation has died, your blood has not. You may return through the gate."

Distantlight gasped again, turning back to the gate. A group of men came through it, all wearing puzzlement on their faces.

Hadn't Starfieldsky said something like that? "They were so powerful; they had magic in their veins—they had two lives." So it was true. Perhaps it might work...

Behind him, Shakantria's voice stirred again. "Go on now, it won't be as hard as it might look."

The warrior closed his eyes and opened them again, his nonexistent heart beating fast all the same. Then he whirled around, gave his mother a last embrace, and ran off, the sounds of her farewell echoing after him, up the path, his footsteps seeming to fly through the air.

One step through the gate, and the rush of unworldly wind rose again, around him, lifting him up towards the world of the living once more, back to the Sharenian Castle, back to the battle that awaited.

So…thank you, all of you who have been reading. The next chapter is the last, and I hope you look forward to it.