“Help me”, the words comes in a whisper that he struggles to comprehend. Amid sobs and screams, he barely hears his own heart beating with difficulty. There is a heat wave and he understands that if it's not his injuries that kill him, the fire will take care of it. Moving is impossible for him, he fought until his muscles gave way but now his body no longer listens to him. By chance or irony, perhaps because the universe has taken pity on his fate, the way his body is left on his back allows him to see the sky. The blue stretching as far as the eye can see never seems to move, as if everything they had done had been for nothing. As if his sacrifice, that of all the others, hadn't changed anything. There is something tragic about it but perhaps reassuring, too. Under this sky, there will always be generations to rise up against the monsters who try to engulf them, to enslave them. The sethraks are not a people who submit, he knows they won't be the last. A few meters from him there are the cries of a child and he regrets that it is already too late. It is hotter and hotter and he sees less and less. Those who are the least injured have a gut-wrenching cough; he doesn't have that strength. He briefly wonders what his body looks like, how many injuries he has accumulated during the last days of torture. Maybe it's been a few weeks since he was caught, he can't be sure— he had been kept trapped in a cave somewhere. Feeling the sunlight on his skin is such a pleasant sensation that he keeps his eyes open despite the smoke that obscures his universe. He can't afford to close them, not while the fatigue that freezes his muscles spreading rapidly. He knows he won't survive long. Not enough to be burned, not enough to go home. Oh, how he would like to go home! To see his little sister again, his little brother who still needs him —how he would like to live just a moment longer to think of them longer. What seems to be tears fills his eyes and he clings to the veil behind which still lies the sky, unchanging. He almost sees a flash of lightning, is his goddess still with them? If she is, she must watch over what remains of their broken people, save the next generation from a war that will tear them apart. He thinks he recognizes his name breathed in a voice that is familiar to him and then nothing exists anymore.