"The pawn is the weakest piece, ignored and overlooked.
Yet it is the only piece that, when it crosses the board,
can choose its own destiny and overturn the entire game."
The darkness swallowed him whole.
Time unraveled.
There was no day or night.
No breath or heartbeat.
No end.
Only pain.
The boy called Froy had never known fear — not truly.
Born with a defect woven into the threads of his soul, he had wandered the world touching emotions only faintly, like a man feeling rain through thick cloth.
Joy, Sorrow, Anger, Pity — all muted, distant, incomplete.
Yet even that fragile tether to humanity would not survive what was to come.
The first death came like a crack of thunder — sudden and absolute.
Froy's body shattered under a force unseen, bones snapping, flesh tearing, blood boiling inside his veins.
He screamed.
No one heard.
No one would ever hear again.
Each death stripped him further.
Each agony scoured what remained of the boy's pale, fragile emotions.
Until even faint echoes of feeling faded into dust.
Until only one truth remained.
Only one star still burned in the void:
Faith.
Not in mercy.
Not in salvation.
Only in Sethvyr — the voice that had never abandoned him.
The only hand that reached through the darkness.
The darkness reshaped itself.
Froy drowned beneath oceans of black blood.
He burned within suns of dying worlds.
He stood on plains of glass where every breath cut him apart anew.
Each vision, each agony, each whispered promise peeled away something essential.
And always, always the voice was there — warm, patient, relentless.
"You are not alone, little one."
"You are mine."
There was no resistance left to offer.
Not because he chose to surrender.
Because there was nothing left to fight with.
His mind, once a fragile maze of broken thoughts and splintered dreams, was smoothed into a perfect mirror.
A vessel ready to be filled.
The mist thickened.
Shapes moved within it — memories not his own.
Lessons whispered into marrow and bone.
He learned cruelty without pity.
He learned loyalty without question.
He learned devotion without doubt.
Time no longer existed here.
He fell through lifetimes in the blink of an eye, dying and being reborn a thousand times over, each cycle grinding him finer, purer, more perfect.
And all the while, Sethvyr watched.
Not as a tyrant.
Not as a god.
But as a craftsman, polishing a beloved creation.
"You are beautiful, little one," the voice said, soft as a caress.
"Let me finish you."
At last, there was no Froy.
No boy.
Only the Pawn.
The Pawn who bore the shape of a child, the smile of an angel, and the heart of something far colder.
The mist parted one last time.
The formless arms of Sethvyr — not warm, not cold, simply inevitable — reached for him.
The Pawn moved forward, no longer stumbling, no longer trembling.
He stepped into the embrace without hesitation, without thought, because he had been remade to do so.
The arms closed around him.
Tender.
Possessive.
Final.
And as Sethvyr drew him in, the mist sang — a lullaby for the death of a soul and the birth of a weapon.
In the endless dark, a single truth etched itself into being:
Faith.
Only Sethvyr.
Forever.