The HaRT Knight Decaverse
Presents
Correspondence from the Afterlife
The Ending Where It Began
Ezra wiped the tears from his eyes as he finished reading the last words on the burnt letter. He sat in the middle of the charred remains of the Monk's Wood Haven. Once he had gotten back from the hunt Amobiel had sent him on, it had been too late. The bastard who had tried to kill Gami had already burnt down the Haven and his master was dead. Inside the palm of his white-knuckled left hand, Ezra clutched the crystallized soul sphere of his mentor. It was the only other thing he had found while scouring through the remains of the burnt down Monk's Wood, aside from the box full of letters that had miraculously survived the fire. Through his tear-filled eyes, he stared at the last line on the last letter again. Perhaps Ezra can be how I finally change the world. He held up the soul sphere and smiled at it as he said, “I thought you said you couldn't give me my purpose. It looks like you could in the end.” And then he succumbed to the tears. He clutched at both the letters and the soul sphere, curled himself into a ball in the middle of the burnt wreckage, and cried for the loss of the closest thing to a father he had ever known. After a while, he cried himself to sleep. When he awoke, he got up and strapped his mask to his face. He placed the soul sphere and the stack of letters into the satchel at his side and walked over to the nearby stump where he had cut the firewood for last night's fire. He took the ax that still stuck out of the wood in his hand and scanned the ground. It didn't take him long to find the trail. Three men had stood there for a while, probably as they watched the Monk's Wood burn. Their trail then left in a southwesterly direction at a leisurely pace. “Righteousness,” he said aloud, reciting the lesson Amobiel had given him. “The virtue rooted in justice. Not justice of the law, or faith, but justice for what is right, as judged by your heart and delivered by your hand.” Beneath the blightmask, Ezra smiled as he set off in the direction the tracks led him. The hand that clutched the woodcutter's ax itched as he walked, slow and as graceful as a wolf on the hunt.