In 2020, everything changed for us.
We who had lived in a world where only spirits remain. Where the air was clean with our own light, where the ground remembered our footsteps, where nothing looked at us with anything other than recognition.
Then the Incursion came.
And overnight, we were brought into a world where we must coexist again.
With Humans. Beastfolks. Fey Creatures.
I remember the day it happened.
I remember the sensation of it — the barrier between our realm breaks instantly.
The elders went quiet.
My father stood very still with his eyes closed for a long time.
I, on the other hand —
I felt joy.
That is the part that still hurts to remember. How much joy I felt.
I had always been fond of humans.
Not from experience. I never even met them.
But I had read about them in our old history books. Listened to stories of human and spiritfolk coexisting. I even tried to imagine what they sounded like up close. In my imagination they were warm and strange and brilliant. A creature that live a shorter life than mine but somehow was more creative and brilliant.
So when the Incursion came and I sensed human presence somewhere beyond the forest.
I did not hesitate.
I flew through the forest.
I emerged into the open.
I let my light show, the way it always does when I am excited, that soft blue-white glow that I had never once thought to be ashamed of.
I was smiling.
I remember that clearly.
I was smiling when a woman screamed.
The sound split through me like something cold.
She was standing perhaps three meters away, a basket dropped at her feet, her face a shape I had never seen on anyone's face before.
Not fear exactly.
Something past fear.
Something that had already decided what I was before I had opened my mouth.
"I am sorry — did I bump into you?" I extended my hand toward her.
She picked up a rock from the ground and threw it at me.
It passed through, of course. I am a spirit.
Unless a weapon is imbued with mana it cannot touch me — this is simply what I am.
The rock scattered into the dirt behind me and meant nothing.
But the sound she made.
The sound she made when she saw it pass through.
"AAAAA!!!!!!!!!!! GHOST!!!"
More of them came. I don't know from where. They gathered almost instantly drawn like an alarm was sounded. Men and women both with their own rocks. Some of them with torches. All of them with that same expression, that same angry and hateful expression written behind their eyes.
"GO AWAY GHOST! EVIL SPIRIT! GO AWAY!"
The rocks kept coming.
I stopped tracking them.
I was standing very still in the middle of it and thinking, strangely, that there must be some mistake.
That if I could only say the right thing they would understand.
That I only needed a moment, one moment, to explain.
But I was never given a chance to.
I tried opening my mouth.
But I couldn't say anything.
So, I ran.
I ran back into the forest.
I ran until the shouting stopped and there was nothing around me but trees.
It was like I was so scared that I can even control my magical energy correctly
I found a stream.
I sat at its edge.
I looked at my reflection in the water.
Was there something wrong with how I look?
Why wasn't there joy in their eyes when they saw me?
I sat there for a very long time.
The forest did not offer any answers.
I watched my own reflection waver and tried to understand what I had done wrong and could not find it, which was almost worse than if I could have.
My father lectured me when I returned.
Said that I had not thought about what my presence and appearance would mean to people who had never seen our kind.
Said there are ways these things are done, proper introductions, proper arrangements, that you do not simply emerge from a forest and expect people to understand.
I did not accept it. Not then.
I thought he was afraid.
I thought the elders were afraid, all of them, hiding in the old ways because change frightened them.
I believed — I genuinely believed, with all the confidence of someone who has never been truly hurt yet — that the best path to coexistence was simply to be present.
To close the distance. To let them see that I was not something to be feared.
I was simply that naive at the time and I thought understanding was something you could earn by wanting it badly enough.
I was wrong.
I tried again.
In different towns.
This time, I changed my appearance into that similarly of a human woman.
White-blue hair. Blue eyes. Skin that holds its own light like a lantern holds a flame.
In every failure of greeting humans, I told myself each time that the last time had been a fluke, an unlucky first impression, that the next group of humans would be different.
But the pattern never change.
Even if there are some towns that did treat me better than the first one. If they knew me or I told them that I was actually a Spiritfolk and not a human, they would revert back to how people in the first town treated me.
What broke me was probably not cruelty.
It was the fact that if I ever show my true self to them.
They will always be unable to accept who I am.
Until I eventually lost my hope. That was when I stopped going.
That was when I have turned to be distasteful of humans.
So I moved on and focus on helping my hometown against the dynamics of this new world.
Eventually, I was invited to Vanguard Academy as a Hero Candidate as their first generation. I was not excited to be meeting humans again.
But somehow people there in particular 3 humans did made me slowly see things differently.
Humans that don't just talk with people from their own race.
Humans who hangs out with demi-humans and elves.
The Trio was abnormal in my own judgement.
To be strong but also care for the entire race not just humans.
I did not like them when I saw them from afar.
It was because I didn't want to feel hope again that I will be accepted for what I am as a spiritfolk.
Then came Focalors and Vepar.
I do not like to remember how badly that went.
Things moved very quickly in the wrong direction.
Cobalt and me was on the verge of losing against Focalors then Raymed suddenly helped me. Mind you, Raymed a human charging with all his might ready to sacrifice his own life to save someone like me and Cobalt. A spiritfolk and Elf.
Somehow seeing the way he fights so seriously helping us had sparked something that I burried a long time ago.
As I was defeated, he kept going.
Then came Kourin, then came Carmilla and Thalamik.
They all came towards me.
Not away from me.
I had braced for a great many things in that moment.
Being left behind was somewhere in the range of outcomes I had prepared for.
But they did not leave me behind.
They all rather die than leave anyone behind.
Even though that event ended in my team and Thalamik's team having an argument. It doesn't relinquish the fact that he indeed saved us with all that they can do. Trying to minimize casualties in any way possible.
When he asked me to fight beside him against Raum. He was ready to put me in a position where his life could be threatened if I betray him. Putting a great trust on me and others that he didn't even considered good friends yet.
I began to revise my conclusions.
About him, No.
About humans.
About the possibility that I had drawn them too broadly, from too small a sample.
That perhaps the pattern I had learned — the silence, the closed tables, the rocks — was not the only pattern.
That there were people who don't judge.
Who looked at you and saw a person before they saw anything else.
I was starting to believe that.
I was right in the middle of starting to believe that —when the notification came.
[Final Stage is about to begin.]
I read it twice only to stayed up awake at that night.
Nanaya was asleep nearby, her breathing slow and even, still so young in the way she sleeps — with her whole self, holding nothing back.
Five months inside this death game known as Artifact War.
Five months of searching for another way while trying to survive people who was filled with bloodlust.
Cobalt and I and the others turning the problem over in every direction.
There is no other way.
[You will be fighting against Kaiser of Darkness Thalamik and Momoka]
The very people who had brought me to a conclusion that not all humans are the same.
People who convinced me that not all humans don't accept me as a Spiritfolk.
Is somehow pitted against me in a kill or be killed scenario.
If only....
If only....
If only there was another way.
I closed my eyes and imagined.
Thalamik, Carmilla, Ray walking with their friends as I too were part of their crew.
An image that will never come true.
I will die.
Full of regrets.
But at least, at the end, I can share this feeling with you Thalamik.
I move my face to look at the mirror.
Showing a reflection of Thalamik.
Please stay alive Kaiser.
***
Thalamik woke up from his sleep, tears on his eyes.
He shivered before putting his hands on his face sweeping the tears away.
[You have relived the unfinished trauma of the person you just killed]
[Due to the person you killed having an unfinished trauma]
[You will relive that trauma based on how much the person possess fragments]
"Istar... I am sorry. I wish I could've done more," Thalamik sat there inside his new private room staring into the ceiling.