Legacy of Ash Final - Heretic Challenger

[IskatuMesk]

~ Artist: Yasuharu Takanashi
~ Album: Fairy Tail OST 2
~ Genre: Folk/Rock/Orchestral

Here we stand, at the edge between infinity and imagination, asking ourselves the same old question one last time.

"What now?"

[imgwh 640x400]http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5023/valakaz2.jpg[/imgwh]

The Legacy of Ash is coming to an end. The shadow of the old world has died to dust and lays at our feet. The horizon burns no longer, leaving behind an ocean of smoke and memories of a once great world. We have nothing left here.

There are no constants in the universe. Not time, not matter, not the very bonds of energy that anchor thy brittle mind to the breath of life. I have seen thy thoughts, felt thy desire and greed. Thou would destroy me, seek to harm the very balance of nature itself.

I am infinite and undivided. Here, at the edge of absolution, I am at my strongest. I am at my strongest because all weakness has been burned away by the flames of loss and despair so grand in scale and purity that even my humanity itself has been purged, leaving behind a ruin of hardened obsidian and an eternally burning spirit.

But I know. I know, child. I know.

I know that in order to obtain everything you must first lose everything. That to experience absolution you must first experience desolation. That when all drowns out to fear, hatred and rage... only then can you begin to understand. Until then you are ignorant. Until then you have not lived at all.

I would be a fool to say I wasn't afraid. But this fear is not true fear. Rather, it is a disdain for uncertainty. For I, a creature of foresight, have always been able to tell myself where the future will go with dependent reliability. But now... now I do not know what the future holds. Only that the journey has just begun. Only that everything up to this point has only been a test. A test we have failed.

All men seek greatness, but few men will ever attempt to achieve it. That is because man cannot define greatness. Man wanders from one destination to the next, never knowing what it is he truly desires, for he allows other men to tell him what he wants. Work, girls, money, alcohol! Pah!

I know. I know my own destiny. I know greatness.

I will not just lay down and die. Make no mistake, this will kill me, but I will die by my own hand, at the time of my own choosing. Until then I am forever bound to my charge. Until then I am bound to the will of Creation itself.

We will fall, and rise, and fall again. We will bleed, we will weep, and we will suffer unimaginable, unspeakable horrors unlike that which mortal men have ever known. Yet we will see into the realm of infinite possibilities and maybe, just maybe, our dreams will breathe once more. We will sacrifice everything ten fold time and time again for that one leap of faith, that one chance, to step forward. But we will never regret. We will never look back. We may very well destroy ourselves ahead of our time just for that one chance. But by God, it's worth it.

Only when you have nothing left can you truly see what it is that you can have. And once you see your destination, once you know where it is you want to be, only then can you take the first step. The longest, the hardest, the most painful step of them all. And that, my friend, that takes balls of steel.

The legacy of Ash has ended. The legacy of Conviction begins.