Grandfather often said that annihilation would feel like a blank spell scroll, but I never thought about it. Yet...here I was, helpless and numb as Grandfather described in the face of death-black flames churning endlessly.

I could not feel the pain from my severed left arm or the shame of letting the kingdom I was supposed to inherit fall into enemy hands. Even the poison encroaching on my mana veins had no effect although they had just been swelling with mana particles before. It was like my mind was a spotless canvas.

My vision only contained an approaching figure and my eardrums echoed with the words the figure spoke, "Give up, Kahil. You have nothing left."

Oh....that was right. The figure who was raising that gleaming blade above my slumped body was Rahzan. Although I knew that blade was going to cut me where I was kneeling disarmed, blade shattered into pieces feet away, I felt no fear. No pounding of blood or seizure of mind. In fact, I felt more at peace then ever.

"It's over, then. I hope you die a slow and painful death." Rahzan's indifferent voice sounded as I lifted my head barely to see the blade coming down and stabbing my chest.

I wanted to speak, but no words came out, only clots of blood. The cold and razor-sharp blade that Rahzan cherished slid out from my heart, shaking with a flick of his hand to splatter drops of blood onto my face.

I vaguely saw Rahzan walk away coldly without a blink of an eye as my body collapsed and slid from a kneel to a faceplant.

As more blood pooled around my body and Rahzan watched the engulfing of the palace we were in from the balcony, a strange feeling arose inside me. It was an urge to fight. No, it was an urge to have no regrets.

I, Kahil Tallohn, the crown prince of Koqnia, didn't want to die by someone else's hand.

It may have been a simple arrogant spark of my ego, but I feebly mustered the strength to wiggle my right hand's fingers and gathered all the mana left inside my body and blasted out the last bomb of mana.

The blue mana glowed bright as Rahzan seemed to turn and look without any change while the floorboards erupted in the blast down to ground level.

My limp and broken body fell like a wounded pigeon down, spiraling down the numerous floors of the royal palace down to the crater created in the bottommost floor, the unused dungeon for criminals of Rahzan's caliber. More cracks sounded as I landed with momentum, crashing into the floor and spitting out more blood.

This was the end for real and I knew it. I coughed out blood in a hopeless attempt to chuckle as my eyesight faded. How ironic of an end was it to me, the once in the millenium prodigy of the Kingdom of Koqnia, to be defeated by a "transcendent being".  At least there would be no regrets for me now.

Blackness enveloped me with the fading of my senses. Was this what death felt like? Then why was there that blinding light shining like a comet above my head. I didn't know why, but my body was sucked into the light suddenly like a small fish being pulled into a large whirpool. My senses cut off again inside the shining light, but a nauseating pain shot through my head.

"Argh!" I groaned.

Wait. I could speak? Was I in heaven, or hell? I blinked open my eyes to find a world of white. I felt flakes of frigid snow drop on my cheek and a cutting wind graze my face. The scene of winter opened up to my gaze and sudden tears pooled in my eyes.

I was not dead.