End

Gasp!

Cough!

Cough!

Cough!

I immediately noticed that my limbs were back after moving them, and my injuries seemed like they had never happened. 

"What happend?"

The last thing I remember was when I had clawed myself out of the ocean, and began going to the cave. However everything after that... I don't remember at all.

Just then, I felt a shock throughout my entire body. My heart felt hot for a second before the warmth transferred into my flexing forearm. However, there was no blazing fire like last time, only a dimly glowing red flame around my fist, whose heat did not affect me.

I walked towards the Onyx dragon scale. It was covered in blood, so much blood, in fact there was a lot of blood near it. For some reason I felt compelled to punch it, so I got in a stance, and with my dimly lit fist, I threw a right punch right into the scale.

CRACK!

A big crack sound reverberated in the cave, I looked to see that the once small and insignificant line that I called a crack had become a true crack with splitting off ends in the middle of the scale.

So this is the Osiris stage?

"When you reach a pubescent age, such as twelve, you'll be able to awaken into a heart stage."

Sam's words echoed in my mind. Right now, I am only ten years old, yet I was able to awaken to the Osiris stage. This means I have an overwhelming advantage to everyone in this world right now. The only thing I'm missing is a teacher. Come to think of it, why did Riken and those other dragons come to take Sam away in the first place?

They said he was a Ghostwalker, which means that when he was listing off the three current Ghostwalkers in this realm, he was also talking about himself. Why did he hide that from me? Why did he hide a lot of these things from me? Did he think he was protecting me or something? What other falsehoods that I believed to be truths has he told me?

A lot of questions and no answers.

I got up and headed outside of the cave to the cliff where Sam's shack used to be. It was now pretty much destroyed with the wood collapsed and shattered. I began searching for a bin that was full of crappy swords Sam used to keep. After some time, I found the bin of swords destroyed under a large plank of wood, and I picked up the only semi good sword.

I overlooked the burnt down island, which was now pretty much a wasteland of sand like ash. However, on the bottom of this mountain, there was the smallest section of plant life that survived along the bottom edges. It will probably revive itself in the coming years. I picked up the sword and began swinging and striking the air using the techniques that I have learned over the years of training. I imbued my arm with mana in the attempt that it would also cover the sword, but it didn't happen.

You'd think that with how much of a ridiculous fantasy world this is that you could do something like this, but I guess this is still reality. Anyways, there isn't any way off this island. All the wood here is burnt to ash, and it will definitely take a couple of years before another grows. That's fine, I'll train here every day using magic for however long it takes, I'll push myself to the limits every single day.

I thought about the "family" that I came to know in this world. They are most definitely dead now. Even though I spent the past ten years with them, I never really did form that family bond that a real son would. I'm not sure if I should have or not, but in reality, I just couldn't.

Looking out towards the ocean, there was no land in sight, and a realization came to me. Right now, in this moment, in this world, in this universe, I am completely and utterly alone. Unjustly destroyed and forgotten, it's almost as if this island is a testament to my existence.

"Well, no point in thinking about it too much. I'll just focus on training to block out any other unnecessary thoughts and emotions. Besides, this is a good thing. Nobody can bother me anymore."

reassuring myself,

After that, I began my training.