The world was white.
Not a gentle white, like snow under moonlight. But a sterile, soulless white—the kind that clings to hospital walls and gowns, to linoleum floors and silent, lonely beds.
A boy, no older than seventeen, sat upright in one such bed. His hands were thin, trembling against the bedsheets, the IV trailing like a leash of life from his wrist. The air was cold. The heart monitor beeped slowly, steadily, like the ticking of a clock that knew its end.
He stared out the window.
The sky outside was the only color he could still cling to—blue, bright, boundless. The opposite of everything in the room. It mocked him with its promise of a world he could no longer touch.
Lately… he'd been dreaming. Not of heaven. Not of peace.
But of war.
Of banners in the wind. Of screaming soldiers. Of flame-choked cities.
And always, always, the boy in those visions—a beautiful tyrant with silver-gray eyes and a face too elegant for the monstrous deeds he committed. Crowned with black thorns. Laughing with blood on his hands.
He didn't understand it.
He didn't know him.
But every time he closed his eyes, that boy's voice echoed in his bones like a forgotten oath.
"Why are you showing me this?" he whispered to no one.
No answer came. Only silence. And the weight of dreams not his own.
He knew he was dying. The doctors never said it, but he could read it in their eyes. All the books he wanted to write, the places he wanted to go, the love he wanted to feel… it was crumbling. Everything was white. Everything was ending.
But still—why did the dreams feel like a beginning?
...
Somewhere Beyond Time — The Throne Of Heroes
Far beyond mortal time. Far beyond memory.
Where all legends sleep, and the greatest names are etched into eternity.
There, in the endless halls of silence, a figure stirred.