Lukas stood over the fallen Hero and though every reason told him he should feel victorious, triumph was the furthest thing from his heart. He had struck down the only man capable of threatening everything he had sworn to protect yet the sensation that lingered in his chest was not pride, nor relief, but a sadness that he had not allowed himself to feel until now.

Only until the fight had been won.

Because no matter how hard Lukas tried to bury the truth, no matter how desperately he tried to sever the ties that once bound them, the Hero before him, the man humanity revered as its savior, had once been his father.

Before he had been summoned into this world of magic and gods, Jakob Fronterra had been no legend. This man had not been a weapon forged for divine war. To a boy who had known so little, Jakob had been everything. To Julien Fronterra, this man had been the strongest one alive. No matter the storms or shadows that threatened their lives, Julien had always believed his father would be there, unshakable and unbreakable. A child's faith had painted Jakob in colors brighter than any golden ichor could.

But Lukas was no longer that child and Julien Fronterra was no more.

The one who stood over the broken warrior was not a boy but a Dragon Lord of Linemall, a shield that protected the people of Linemall against any who endangered them.

The man, his body trembling beneath the strain of forces beyond mortal limits, was also no longer Jakob Fronterra. He was simply the Hero From Another World, a vessel that had carried the Titan's might for too long and had now shattered under its weight.

The ocean itself bore witness to the truth.

His blood was no longer divine. Where once it might have shone gold, a mark of his unearthly bond to Oceanus, it now flowed red. When his body broke, when he bled, he stained the waters crimson just like any other man. For all the gods' favors, for all the legends built upon their names, both father and son stood now as nothing more than mortal man and dragon.

Despite it all, the Hero did not yield.

Lukas watched, jaw set and heart aching, as the man forced himself upright.

The Hero's movements were slow, unsteady, as though his body could barely remember how to answer its master's will. His knees threatened to give with every step, his breath came ragged, yet he refused to fall. The Kingdoms of Humanity had named him its Hero for this very reason—because he would not surrender, even when his strength failed him like it did now.

But the figure before Lukas was not the same man they talked about in legends that continued to be spoken to this day.

In Easthaven's Church of Oceanus, in the polished marble of the Citadels within Nozar's Inner Cities, Jakob Fronterra's likeness was carved in perfection—a flawless warrior of unbending strength, clad in the armor of myth, forever youthful and forever victorious. The man who now staggered in the shallows bore little resemblance to that immortal image. His face was drawn, lined with exhaustion and pain. His frame, once proud, shook under the price of his own mortality. There was no godhood left in him, only the stubborn persistence of a man too proud to bow even in his last hour.

Lukas shook his head slowly, the tears beginning to well up in his eyes and his vision starting to blur.

The Hero who once held the world aloft and the father who had once held his hand. Both lay broken here.

All that remained was a man who, despite it all, still chose to rise.

The man swung his fist but, even without the power of the Crest, Lukas was still faster. With a single step to the side, he avoided the blow and used his momentum to push the Hero to down into the shallow waters. The waves churned around them as the body of the once-great warrior hit the surface, his weight heavy and clumsy compared to the grace he had once carried into battle.

And Lukas' heart broke.

Because even now, even knowing in the depths of his being that the fight was lost, the Hero still refused to stay down. Shaking, battered, his body betraying him at every turn, the man rose once more. Lukas could see it in the set of his jaw, in the fire that still flickered in his fading eyes.

The man could not let go.

After thousands of years of battles that had never been his own, Jakob Fronterra still clung to one unshakable belief: that if he fought long enough, if he endured one more blow, one more battle, one more endless war, then somehow he would return.

The man would be able to return to a world where his family was waiting for him.

The Hero had forgotten himself, his very name stripped away by time itself. But even through the madness that plagued him, even through the centuries of blood and steel, one thing had remained unbroken—the memory of what he had left behind in another world.

A son and a wife. A home that no longer existed.

Lukas knew he could not allow the Hero to live. Yet he could not bear to let him die without the truth.

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So Lukas summoned the Crown once more. Its weight pressed against his temples as he called upon its power, threads of ancient magic weaving through his mind until it reached the man before him.

For an instant, the Hero's gaze sharpened, his eyes widening in alarm. Then the connection struck, pulling their consciousness together and Jakob Fronterra saw everything.

Madness gleamed in his eyes as he staggered to his feet, fists swinging wildly in panic and denial. Lukas caught the blows, forced him back with strikes meant to subdue rather than kill. And then, with one final surge of power, Lukas let the Crown carry memories of a life from another world, from the Hero's world.

In an instant, the man's mind was flooded with visions not his own.

At first, he did not understand what he was seeing as flickers of a life he did not know flashed through the connection, images of a child's laughter, the warmth of hands smaller than his own clasped in trust.

Then the pieces began to fall into place, one by one.

The man saw himself. Not as the broken figure who had waged wars in foreign lands, not as the Hero From Another World who turned the tides against the enemies of humanity but as a father. He saw himself through the eyes of Julien Fronterra—the boy who had once looked up to him with awe, who had once believed that his father would always be there for him no matter what.

The Hero roared in anguish, a sound so raw and terrible that it made even Lukas flinch as it tore from his throat.

The man rejected it, trying to convince himself that everything he was seeing was a lie, some cruel deception meant to weaken his mind which refused to break.

Lukas shoved the man back down into the water, pinning him down with all the strength left in his weary frame.

The Hero clawed at his arms, thrashing desperately, his head breaking the surface for mere gasps before being forced down again. His hands scraped against Lukas' skin, biting into it but his struggle was futile. Because without Oceanus, without the divine power that had once set him apart, Jakob Fronterra was only a man. And a man drowned beneath the waves like any other.

Lukas began to cry.

The tears spilled freely, streaming down his face as his hands tightened around the man's throat. The shallow waters around them had grown restless and dark, while above their heads the light of his Crown blazed brighter than it ever had before. Its magic poured through Lukas, spilling into the Hero, forcing memory after memory into the man's already broken mind.

There, between father and son, all pretense of battle slipped away.

What remained was the truth that had been hiding from the Hero since the moment he was summoned to this world.

The man saw a boy, his son, sitting at the edge of the docks, small legs dangling over the water, eyes wide and hopeful as ships drifted in and out of the harbor.

The boy waited.

The boy waited every day for a week, scanning every sail, every crew that set foot on land, waiting for the moment his father would come home. But he never did.

The Hero shook his head as the vision deepened and the last of his strength bled away. The realization struck him harder than any blow Lukas could ever give him. Beneath the surface, he screamed—bubbles rising in frantic bursts as Lukas' grip pinned him down—but his cry was not only of pain, it was one of despair.

More memories came, as Lukas sobbed openly, letting the truth flow through the Crown's brilliance.

The Hero saw the woman he had once loved more than anything, his wife. Her beauty had not dimmed in his heart, nor had his love for her ever failed, even after all those years of exile and bloodshed. What he saw now was a shell of the woman she had once been. She bore the weight of grief until it had hollowed her from the inside out. Pain consumed her and depression swallowed her whole. And then, just like that, she was gone, leaving the boy to face the world alone.

The Hero thrashed weakly, his hands clawing against Lukas' arms, but the man no longer bore the same desperation as he once did.

The boy did not break as his mother had. That much was clear.

He was stubborn, resilient—a fighter, just as the Hero had always known his son to be. And he fought. Day after day, battle after battle, until the boy who had once waited on the docks had grown into a man. A man who had become one of the greatest fighters their world would ever know, cementing his legacy in the history of mixed martial arts.

Pride swelled in the Hero's chest, fierce and undeniable. For the briefest moment, joy touched his weary soul.

This was his son. His Julien. The man he had become was more than he could have ever imagined.

But then, just as quickly, that same pride turned to sorrow so heavy it threatened to break him all over again.

Because there was no family to return to. There was no wife waiting for him with open arms, there was no child longing for his father's embrace. Time had stolen it all away from him, and now, as Lukas continued to hold him down, the Hero understood what he had always refused to see. His grip around Lukas' arms loosened. Fingers once strong and unyielding slipped weakly away.

There was nothing left to fight for.

Lukas wept harder, his sobs ragged, choking him as surely as the waters were drowning the man below.

Irony was a cruel thing.

The Hero, who had survived every war, fought against monsters and magic alike for the sake of returning to his family was now undone here in shallow waters, by the son who once bore his blood. Then, through the bond of the Crown, a voice whispered. Weak, broken, yet filled with a desperate recognition: "Julien…?"

Lukas shook his head, his tears mingling with the waves as the last threads of life in the Hero's body began to fade.

"No," he whispered, voice heavy with grief but steady in resolve. "I am Julien no more. Now, I am Lukas Drakos, Dragon Lord of the Seas. Rest well, father. I will see you…on the other side."

The Hero's body spasmed once, then fell still.

Water filled the man's lungs, dragging him into silence, into the peace he had been denied for so long.

Here lay a father who had fought for centuries to return to a family that no longer was.

Here lay Jakob Fronterra, the Hero From Another World.

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