Chapter 605: Broken Vessel (2)

The same hollow words—words that had always sounded like mockery. But that night their echo was different, and the Broken Vessel, bleeding out on the ground, finally understood what lay behind them.

Pure Vessel had been alone for most of his life. He’d been treated like a noble relic, kept at a distance from his peers, to the point he never learned how to express himself properly at all.

"Are you all right?"

It wasn’t scorn, nor empty phrasing. It carried weight.

It was Pure, worried that his only friend might no longer be able to keep up with him.

As if he were asking, "Can you keep going? Can you still run with me? Are you still there?"

Yes—Pure Vessel cared. Broken’s presence mattered in his life. That was what Broken had failed to see.

"Just as I kept lifting my head to the sky, chasing your back... you kept turning your head, peering down into that abyss behind you—looking for me."

At the start—climbing that long stairway of power—whenever Broken lifted his gaze, he saw his friend’s back. And Pure, looking over his shoulder, would find him close behind.

But eventually, as the gap widened, they could no longer see each other at all—and that was why Pure kept asking that question, which Broken had taken as an insult. He thought Pure was mocking him and all his struggle.

In truth, Pure had valued him—and had acknowledged him as a friend—since long ago.

Realizing all this, Broken laid his forearm over his face with a bitter look.

"Damn it... you’re awful at expressing yourself, you damned bastard. How can something people call ’perfect’ be this bad at it? It makes no sense—ha... ha..." He let out a dry laugh, and Pure Vessel answered with a gentle smile.

"I’m not perfect at all... I’m far more broken than you."

From the beginning, Pure Vessel had been raised in a brutal forge meant to turn him into a weapon of war. He carried the hopes of an entire race. Yes, he was monstrously strong—but in every other branch of life, he was more incomplete than anyone.

"Your existence truly saved me, Broken... so don’t you dare sink into that filthy abyss."

There in the cold facility of Fellwyn—the pit the Vessels saw as an abyss that swallowed their dreams—Pure made that one request of his friend. Broken burst out laughing.

"That’s not fair, Pure... asking me something like that."

What Pure wanted was for him to keep chasing, to keep trying to match him. And to do that, Broken would have to work many times harder than he already had if he hoped to pursue the shadow of that monster with terrifying potential.

Forcing himself upright, Broken stood again, drenched in blood, and stared up at Pure sitting above.

"Watch me, Pure. I won’t just climb out of this abyss—I’ll surpass you and fly farther than you ever will. I’m the Broken Vessel no one expects anything from!"

He shouted... then crumpled to the ground again.

Pure simply nodded, wearing that calm, noble smile of his as always. The smile that had always infuriated Broken—yet today, somehow, it didn’t.

Pure Vessel was the vessel that carried the hopes of an entire race.

Broken was the vessel that carried Pure’s hopes.

Strangely, the weight of one person’s expectations was heavier than that of the Lightbearers as a whole.

And so the days went by, one after another, and the two kept moving forward—together. The training grew hellish, but Broken endured to the end, chasing the phantom of his extraordinary friend.

Then one day, as they sat slumped against a wall, Broken floated a wild idea.

"Listen, Pure... how about we run away from here?"

He asked it out of nowhere—even Pure was taken aback.

"Run away?"

Pure had never once considered such a thing in his life. Escape from Fellwyn’s abyss—was that even possible?

"How would we escape? And where would we go?"

It sounded utterly unrealistic, but Broken had reached his limit.

"I can’t stay in this damned place anymore, my friend. The darkness of this abyss has grown too heavy for me."

Fellwyn—the abyss that forged the fiercest Vessels—was a cursed place where, no matter how brightly light burned, the darkness devoured it. The Vessels lived their lives in pitch blackness, unable even to see each other’s faces. Whether Pure or Broken, neither knew the other’s features; in that darkness they were only two roaming flames of light, searching for their path.

"Tell me, Pure—have you ever heard of the Legendary Vessel?" Broken asked. Pure replied, puzzled:

"Legendary Vessel?"

He didn’t recognize the title—he’d spent most of his life in isolation—but Broken was different.

"The Legendary Vessel was a remarkable woman. They say her birth caused a stir much like yours, Pure. Many call her the strongest vessel in history. People piled hopes and expectations on her without end—but do you know what she did? She threw all of that in the trash and chose to do whatever she wanted. Can you believe it?

"She was the only one who dared try to escape Fellwyn—the place that’s supposed to be inescapable—and she did it. She cut down everyone who stood in her way and walked out of this darkness into the real world. She’s out there now, doing as she pleases—to the point she even cast aside the name granted by Sun Presence and chose one for herself."

Deep in Fellwyn’s shadows there had been a Vessel who not only fled, but rebelled against everything—even her own name. She had defied the great Sun Presence himself.

Hearing that impossible tale, Pure felt a strange thrum reverberate in his chest. He was moved in a way he hadn’t expected.

"This woman... what’s her name?"

Pure found himself wanting to hear the name she chose—proof that she had seized her freedom and shattered her chains.

Broken only shook his head.

"I don’t know. Speaking her name is forbidden here. All we’re allowed to call her is the Legendary Vessel—the only one who achieved what we believed impossible."

Rising to his feet, Broken held out his hand to Pure.

"Let’s get out of here and find her together, Pure. Then we can ask her name ourselves!

"We’re strong—we’ve spent our whole lives training in this cursed place. Let’s shatter our shackles and step into the world, my friend!"

He invited Pure—and for Pure, those words stirred a desire that had been suppressed deep inside for a very long time.

Freedom.

To be free of the chains of expectations others had laid upon him—and to do only what he wanted.

It was pure selfishness—selfishness that began to spread through Pure Vessel, kindled by his friend, the Broken Vessel. That kind of selfishness filled Pure with a quiet joy. He took his friend’s hand.

"Let’s do it."

Together they set out to attempt what the Legendary Vessel had done—an undertaking that demanded making the impossible possible.

It was the turning point that would shape, more than anything else, the Pure Vessel the world would come to know.