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In the famous continent of Roan, stood a palace built of marble too pale to hold warmth. It shimmered faintly under the weight of centuries, untouched by moss, time, or the hands that once filled it with life. It was a monument now. Not to a king, nor a kingdom, but to him.
Cale Henituse, the man who refused to die.
He still walked its halls. Soundlessly, as the wind of a dear friend. As if afraid the echo of his footsteps might disturb the silence that had long since settled in like dust.
For years, people from the Crossman royal line send people to be assigned to the retired hero, though, they never dared approach him unless summoned.
They said he wasn’t cruel—he was just distant. Polite, sometimes. Distant always. Not much was known about the great hero other that his many accomplishments alongside the other heroes that saved the world many, many years ago.
Some thought he had gone mad. Others whispered he was a god in disguise, cursed to remember a world long gone.
Only one truth remained: he never aged. And he never smiled the way the old portraits claimed he used to.
//The sky was grey again today.
That particular, inoffensive grey that doesn’t mourn or rejoice. Just... exists.
Cale liked it. It reminded him of linen sheets. Of ashes. Of peace that didn’t need trumpets.
He stepped over a crack in the cobblestone. It used to be a flowerbed. The children had planted violets there once—magically enhanced to sing when watered. Now it was just a crack. A small one. Easy to ignore.
He walked past it.
People bowed when he passed, not out of fear or reverence, but because it was tradition.
He didn't correct them.
Not when they called him "Your Eternity."
Not when they said, "The Hero Who Defied Time."
Raon would've loved that title too, it matched with the name of his attribute.//
...
There was a garden behind the palace, grown wild. Once, it had been tended carefully. Bright, noisy, bursting with strange magical plants and talking flowers. Alongside abundant crops, well cared and loved. Now it had thorns and vines that curled like memory.
A single tree stood in the center. A lone violet grew at its roots—wilted and half-choked by weeds.
Cale stood there every morning, long after dawn, long after the birds had stopped coming. His eyes were steady, but never truly focused. As if he saw something other people couldn’t.
There were no gravestones. No plaques. Just that tree.
No one ever dared ask why.
//In the garden, he sat beside the statue.
It wasn’t remarkable. Not golden or proud. Just stone. A kneeling figure with its sword at rest.
It didn’t have a face.
He’d forbidden sculptors from making one.
(If it had a face, it might start to look like Choi Han. That would be a problem.)
...
They said he had loved once.
Many times, in fact. Loudly, quietly, unknowingly. He had built a found family out of broken people, wielding kindness like a sword. He had bled to keep them safe.
And then they had left him.
One by one. One at a time.
Cale Henituse had always been better at leaving first. Until one day… he couldn’t.
//“You’d hate it here,” he said aloud.
He wasn’t talking to the statue.
Of course not.
The birds didn’t sing. Cale had stopped feeding them. He never meant to. Just… forgot. One day. Two. Then a decade passed. He wasn’t counting.
(Was immortality truly a gift? Cale felt like he was cursed with the same curse like the White Star.)//
...
In the winter, he moved slower.
Not because he felt the cold—he hadn’t felt much in decades—but because snow had a way of softening the world. Pure, cheerful and beautiful.
And it always reminded him of Raon.
(“Snow is warm if you’re with the right people!” the small dragon had once shouted while throwing himself into snowdrifts.)
Cale never stepped on the snow-covered stones near the back of the palace. He walked around them. Always. Even now.
...
Sometimes, he’d find offerings on the palace steps.
A child’s drawing. A flower. A medal. A letter scrawled in a shaking hand:
“Thank you for everything.”
He never took them. Never read them.
The wind always carried them away eventually.
It wasn’t cruelty. It was habit.
He had stopped collecting gratitude the moment it started sounding like a eulogy.
It sounded like goodbye.
//The world was peaceful now.
No war. No corruption. No gods interfering.
He should be happy.
Wasn’t that the whole point?
...
There was a room deep within the west wing. No one entered it. Not because it was locked—Cale never bothered with keys—but because it felt like trespassing.
Inside were no thrones, no riches.
Just,
A weathered, blood-stiffened cloak.
A cracked sword with a black ribbon still tied to the hilt.
A child’s marble with faint teeth marks on one side.
And a letter that had never been sent, folded so many times it had started to tear at the creases.
He never stayed long in that room.
Sometimes, he stepped inside just long enough to forget why he came.
//“I remember when you told me I couldn’t die,” he said to no one in particular.
“I told you, ‘Then I’ll live enough for the both of us.’”
He chuckled.
“Dramatic, wasn’t I?”
He didn’t say how he wept into the sea the night Choi Han died.
Didn’t mention that Raon’s final spell cracked the sky open—just so he could fly one last time.
(Both left at the same time; it all happened so quickly.)
Didn’t say how Alberu’s last letter never arrived because the courier was too busy preparing a state funeral.
None of that mattered now.
What mattered was that his tea was cold again.
And the violets never grew back.
(The scent of bitter lemon wafted through the silent room, bringing memories of a kind old man and his son.)
He didn’t visit often.
Just enough to remember.
Never enough to heal.
---
When people asked how peace had been won, the scholars gave long answers.
When they asked what became of the war hero, they were told them, “He’s still there. He always is.”
//“Funny,” Cale murmured. “I thought red would be the first color to fade.”
But his hair only had gone white somewhere along the centuries.
Or silver. Or maybe he stopped looking in mirrors.//
Cale still sat up at night, staring at the sky as though it owed him something. A pure white book laying on the floor.
In his dreams, he still looked for voices that no longer answered.
//One night, when the wind smelled like burnt parchment and rain, he dreamed of something that never happened:
Raon sleeping on his lap. On curled against the purring Hong.
Alberu humming while writing letters.
Choi Han laughing—really laughing—like someone who knew joy.
Ron pouring freshly brewed golden drink to his cup.
Eruhaben teaching Rosalyn and the wolf siblings outside.
The Henituse Dukedom, thriving under Basen's leadership and Lily's protection.
Cale didn’t speak in the dream.
He just watched.
Afraid that if he blinked, they’d vanish.
He woke up with dried blood on his knuckles. Trapped inside his cuticles.//
“Just one more day.”
“I’ll forget them tomorrow.”
(“If I had asked them to stay… would they have?”)
...
Cale Henituse was still a survivor at heart.
Slowly continue on living.
Quietly. As time passed by.
They too, will continue on living.
As long as he still in this world, they will remain living within his memories.//
.
.
.
(They said Cale Henituse was the man who saved the world.)