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  Chapter 32: The Golden Tree

  The Price of Forgiveness**

  #### **Part I: The Yellow Skin and the Green Breath**

  Beneath the wounded streets of Neversand, there was a yellow skin that supported the entire city. It was a layer of light, dense and translucent, like a membrane that breathed softly—a protection that Zeke and Akari had woven with *Dankai* in the haste and precision of those who know that every second bought means lives saved. The acid rain hit its golden back and hissed, but did not penetrate; bricks, beams, and bodies hovered in slow suspension, trapped in a prison of light that prevented the tunnels from collapsing and protected those sheltering below from the heat of the explosions.

  Inside, the air was suffocated by the smell of iron and damp bread. Small children breathed under blankets, the elderly murmured prayers torn from memory. Outside the yellow skin, the city writhed in fire and steel. Zeke and Akari had already left a trail of death through the alleys. More than thirty Skulls had fallen under their blades—a dance that had become protection, a ballet of edges that bought an extra minute for each family buried under the city. And for every soldier that fell, more appeared. As if the poison of war replicated itself in flesh.

  In the sky, Kaien tore through the night with a green breath. Soken rode on his back, small and firm, absorbing every sight the dragon offered: the coastline drawn below, the black mouths of the boats, the trails where men disembarked.

  "What are we going to do, Kaien?" Soken asked, anxious with so much information.

  Kaien measured the sea and the current as one reads an ancient letter.

  — *We do what is within our reach. For now, we attack the boats—burn them and keep the soldiers away from the coast* — Kaien said as he brushed the clouds.

  Soken ran his hand over Kaien's scales, feeling the heat and roughness, and heard the dragon's voice in his head. The wind screamed louder; a storm of acid rain was brewing, fed by the energy that the fragmented battles released.

  — *Besides, I'm worried, Soken—that man fighting Gotier showed up, and we know he's from Kugutsu Island. They came for Zeke, Akari, and Yuzuki* — Kaien said.

  Soken couldn't accept that his own land would hunt its people.

  "Why do they do this? I don't understand why people from the same country hunt their own," Soken asked.

  Kaien fell silent for a moment.

  — *Kugutsu Island doesn't let its children leave. That's what Yuzuki told me, Soken.*

  Soken looked at the smoking ruin where Yuzuki had fought, and something in his chest broke in silence.

  "I've never told anyone this, Kaien. I can feel people's feelings—everyone knows that." He ran his hand over the scales around the dragon's head as if asking the world for permission. "The saddest and loneliest person I've ever felt is Yuzuki. Honestly, I can't even be near him—for some reason, he carries a guilt and an unhappiness too great for me to bear."

  Kaien listened. His eyes shone green like grapes in the rain.

  — *I noticed that a long time ago. Honestly, Soken, I feel like Yuzuki has already chosen his destiny, but he hopes someone will save him.*

  Soken raised his voice, fragile and sharp with anger.

  "Why doesn't anyone save him? Why don't his friends listen to him or at least try to know what he feels?"

  Kaien's answer came like the breath of something ancient; it did not console, it only affirmed what was:

  — *In this situation, a person feels so alone that the only option left is to look in the mirror and ask for help from oneself.*

  There was an unusual tenderness in that moment—a boy and a dragon, amidst the apocalypse, understanding a pain that not even steel could cut.

  — *You should save him, kid* — Kaien said, smiling—and Soken blushed, bristling like a leaf in the wind.

  "But I'm just a disciple..." Soken said in a low voice, without conviction.

  — *We all try, Soken. I was about to give up trying—thank you for reminding me. You, kind and gentle boy.* — Kaien laughed, a deep sound that seemed to muffle the touch of the storm.

  Soken playfully patted the dragon's head in response and laughed, and then they dove toward the sea like a comet: Kaien released his breath—a green so dark it burned the eyes—and set the boats on fire, turning wood and oil into fountains of fire. Soken leaped between decks and ropes, cutting, destroying, believing with a childlike faith that there was still time to save someone.

  #### **Part II: The Price of Forgiveness**

  Meanwhile, beneath the surface, the war took another form: a network of interconnected corridors like veins of stone that Nina knew like the back of her hand. She moved with the precision of one who had seen it all before; her hands shone whenever they passed over living flesh, stitching death back to life. Nina's gift had a price. Each healing stole a bit of her sun; each breath she returned to someone appeared as a wisp of smoke on her own body. And with every person she saved, her own shadow thinned. She felt her body fail. She planted her foot on the cold ground and slapped her face hard to wake up. The bucket of water exploded on her cheeks; the blood mixed with the drops. In the distance, the sound of boots on stone—men sweeping the surface above, echoing through the ventilation—pulled a thread of consciousness upward. Nina took a deep breath, gathered what strength she had left, and moved to the next row of wounded. Time was scarce; every second she closed her eyes could cost lives.

  Above, the city had become a map of ruins demanding a different kind of precision. Open streets, burning vehicles, broken walls; the surface was immediate and cruel. It was there that Akari cut the line of fate of another Skull. Akari moved through the main street with precise, cold steps. The rain clung to her face; her blade cut the air with the calm of one who has seen too much. A man lay fallen—a Skull still writhing with the laziness of death; Akari approached, tilted her head, and in a dry motion, removed the head from the body as one closes a book opened by mistake. There was no compassion—only the brutal economy of one who closes a wound.

  Zeke staggered behind her, a map of the night written on his skin—blood, ash, salt.

  "Akari, are you okay?"

  "I'm fine. Just tired..."

  "We need to help Gotier; he's fighting and we don't know what kind of enemy—"

  Before Akari could finish, Zeke interrupted her:

  "We're not helping Gotier. Our priority now is to finish off the Skulls—we've got this. Now we must go after Taida; he's the main pivot of the attack. Kill him and everything falls apart."

  Akari walked toward Zeke, looking him in the eyes with anger.

  "Look him in the eyes," she said with a face of anger and disgust. "Do you think you can give me orders?"

  Zeke took a step forward, touching Akari's face with an unexpected gesture. Zeke placed his hand on her face gently and offered a smile of care and tenderness.

  "Why do you like to question me? But I love seeing you like this. At least you're being yourself, Akari."

  The touch broke something. Akari stepped back; her expression hardened.

  "Enough about my master. Why do you always go back to that subject?"

  Zeke noticed the change and tried to calm her; his words were not enough. Akari, taken by memory, grabbed his clothes and pointed a finger at his chest with fury.

  "Because I know that in the end, Zeke, he will be by my side. Yuzuki trained me these months, took care of me, told me the truth about his life, about his family, his younger brother, and even about his suffering."

  Zeke asked for calm, tried to speak, but Akari silenced him with the frankness of one who had been treated as an object for too long. Akari held Zeke's clothes and pointed her finger in his face.

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  "Yuzuki may have all the flaws, but he never judged me for a moment. He never asked about my past, what I did, or how I got here. He accepts me as I am. The only ones who have been like that with me are Zyon and Yuzuki."

  Zeke fell silent, bowing under the weight of his past. Akari continued, her voice sharp:

  "You should be ashamed, Zeke, to say that behind his back, because Yuzuki always defended you, even without trusting you for months. Your actions for the group meant much more than your past to Yuzuki."

  Zeke lowered his head. The tunnel seemed to press in on him, the memories tightening his chest. Akari took a step forward and pulled Zeke closer, as if demanding that he face his own soul.

  "Do you remember?"

  Zeke did not answer.

  "Do you remember what we did!?" Akari shouted at Zeke. "We tortured him for months in the past, humiliated him—or are you not remembering?" Akari said with a smile of anger and disgust.

  Zeke had no ground to stand on. His face dissolved into silent tears; remorse erupted through his skin.

  "Zeke, he told me everything... Zeke, you threw shit at him, urinated in the cell where he was locked up, laughed at the death of his family. YUZUKI seemed like a circus act, the island laughed at him and we actively participated in it. So!!" she shouted, "stop saying that Yuzuki is a bad influence or a bad person, because we actively helped make him that way and even after everything he is with us."

  The confession weighed like lead. Zeke became a boy; the strength he had used as armor crumbled. His voice came out reduced to a plea:

  "Zeke, in a low voice, asks for forgiveness."

  Akari listened in silence. Unceremoniously, she hugged him. The hug was warm, heavy with the smell of rain and gunpowder; it was the surrender of two who knew they had been monsters.

  "I forgive you."

  The words came out trembling, imperfect, but true. Tears streamed down Zeke's face; he clung to the woman who gave him something he thought he had lost. Around them, severed limbs and mangled bodies formed the landscape. Fires still licked at the houses; the rain fell; the world continued to burn. But there, in that old, damp tunnel, forgiveness passed like an impossible gesture.

  Accepting the mistake was an act—not an end. Zeke knew he would carry the price of that forgiveness in his bones. Akari, in her hard silence, would carry it too. Nina, with her trembling hands, would pay with another day of exhaustion. Soken, mounted on Kaien, drank the promise as if it were fuel.

  They would all pay for it. They would pay for Yuzuki, for Neversand, and perhaps, for themselves.

  The Golden Tree

  If this reaches your hands, know first: it is not a manifesto, nor a plea for mercy. It is just a piece of skin torn from my own chest and addressed to anyone who still wants to hear the voice of a man who no longer knows if he deserves to be called one.

  The Golden Tree is not a symbol. It is not folklore. It is not a promise.

  It is a body that breathes light and devours names.

  It has grown so large that it touches the sky. The clouds around it are never just clouds—they are veils of gold that tremble, and the blue above becomes a memory of paradise. Look at it and you will understand: there is beauty that heals and beauty that kills; the Tree gathers both in every leaf. That is why kings have moved armies for a strip of land beside it, why priests have composed prayers that smell of the market, and why assassins are born with shining eyes when they see it. Hundreds have died. Thousands have marched. They continue to march like ants, letting themselves be touched by something that was not made for human touch.

  You already know all this: the story of the Tree, the kings who surrounded it, the caravans of believers, those who turned it into power and those who turned it into an altar. I do not tell you this as if it were new—I tell you because, when I speak of it, I see myself whole and naked.

  I was a mercenary. I sold my blade for whatever price they asked: gold, wine, flesh. I worked for princes and for beggars who dreamed of being princes for twenty-four hours. I killed because I had to kill, because it was pleasure, because it was the simplest remedy for the nameless anguish I could not name. I killed for money, for pleasure, to sleep easier. After years, the debt of what I had done began to grow. Not a debt of coins—a debt that accumulated in the throat, that weighed on me when I looked someone in the eye.

  You know Tomo. You know the father and mother torn from my memory as if I had ripped pages from a story that shamed me. You also know the Leper King—the one who studies everything as he studies a prey before the slaughter. I worked for him. I learned to smile at his trust and, at the same time, to build the road that would lead me to what I had sworn to destroy.

  I grew up thinking the enemy was vast, distant, made of rules and islands. I grew up thinking that guilt would transform me if I paid it. I spent nights planning atonement with the sobriety of one preparing a funeral rite. But the truth is pettier, dirtier: I discovered that guilt can be a warm blanket if you embrace it the right way. I realized that a part of me—perhaps the most honest part—did not shrink from horror. It approved of it. It drank it. It found pleasure where it had promised penance.

  The Tree appeared in a scene of corpses—a pile of bodies after a battle that later seemed smaller to me than an empty cup. I sat on top of that pile as one sits on a throne of bones. The golden light pierced the smoke and stabbed my eyes like a soft blade. It was not a voice: it was a warmth that made me remember what of me was still alive and that, at the same time, showed that this living part did not need forgiveness to exist. For the first time in years, I felt something that was not simple remorse nor the impulse to flee: I felt the desire to continue. I felt the will to be alive.

  The desire stabbed me with irony. I, who for so long had wanted to die as one asks for rest, discovered that I needed to live. Live for what? To pay? To feel the light again? To exchange remorse for something that shone in the dark? The Tree did not promise atonement. It did not promise salvation. It offered me presence. And in that presence, my perversity took shape: I wanted to be alive because life allowed me to touch that which corroded me. I wanted to pay. But not to pay as one pays a debt with sweat; to pay as one drinks poison to the last drop and calls it a sacrament.

  I planned. For years. I moved between kings and thrones; I made myself useful to the Leper King, gained his trust, laughed at the banquets he gave and kept, between sips and promises, the path to the Tree. I killed, betrayed, erased tracks. Every night I remembered what I had been—and the memory burned. The map of desire was written in blood and longing. My friend Tomo appeared in dreams like a wound that would not heal: he was what I should have been and was not. He was also what taught me that admitting guilt is only half the verb—the other half requires something crueler: admitting pleasure.

  There were nights of drinking, women as hollow as the taste of resin, and fights that were exercises for a body that no longer felt. Suicide ceased to be a threat and became a companion. I spoke with death as one speaks with an old acquaintance: silently, it sipped my courage. But on one of those days that the world calls useless, I hovered over the pile of corpses and the light of the Tree—that damned friend—pierced me again. This time, not to kill: to tell me that I could continue.

  I continued.

  I continued to feel. I continued to see if guilt burned more than beauty. I continued to check if what my genuine self wanted was redemption or the continuation of the crime. Getting there did not make me a saint. It made me a creature that accepts its own contradiction. And perhaps that is the most human thing: to exist between guilt and delight, without a convincing relief.

  Today, before Yuzuki, I understood—in a second that seemed to last for centuries—that everything I had sought was not freedom. It was not an escape from chains forged by kings or rituals. No. My shackles were made of taste. I liked what I did. The choice to be monstrous was not born only of orders; it grew like a rotten fruit fed by my own thirst.

  Yuzuki stood before me and read this in seconds. There was no pity in his eyes. Only clarity. He told me, without words, that it was not the history of the Island that shaped me; it was my decision. And in that reading, my mask fell like a dry husk.

  We both smiled.

  Different smiles, common in a ring of golden light. The glow of the Tree touched our bodies and burned the blood, circled our wounds with a brilliance that turned the scarlet into pure metal. There was in that moment a beauty that hurt—the same beauty that ruined continents and made kings trade hearts for a piece of land.

  I felt small and absolute at the same time. I felt a pleasure so vast that I thought I could compress my entire past into a coin and throw it on the ground. And beside me, Yuzuki was a mirror that did not return excuses.

  For twenty-two minutes, I held the life that the light had given me. For twenty-two minutes, I was something between regret and exaltation. I do not know what you will do with what I write. Perhaps you will condemn me, perhaps ignore me, perhaps feel in the back of your throat the same strange admiration for something that kills and saves at the same time. I do not ask for forgiveness—not because I do not want it, but because I have learned that forgiveness is not for those who recognize themselves as idle in their own crime. I only ask that you listen to the confession of someone who, despite everything, still breathes.

  If you ask me: "Taida, did you pay?"—I will tell you the truth that scares me: no. I did not pay. Perhaps I paid in shame, in sleepless nights, in memories that do not leave me. But the full bill remains. And the Tree continues to grow, indifferent to our misery.

  If you ask me: "Do you want to be saved?"—I will answer with another piece of truth: I wanted to be saved until the moment I felt the light like a caress. After that, being saved became another form of death. I chose—and choosing hurts like a blade that cuts the belly.

  The letter ends here because what I feel now will not fit into longer words. The wind carries soot and a song of hopelessness. The Tree shines as if nothing had happened. Yuzuki watches me. I return a smile—not of a man who redeems himself, but of someone who has been seen in his full contradiction.

  Twenty-two minutes have passed.