Yuusha | Ni Minna

The question landed like a stone in still water. Kael, the mage, let his staff clatter to the obsidian floor. “Thank? He won’t even look at us. He never does.”

“And you were a hero,” Elara cut in, her voice gentle but not kind. “But we were more than your tools, Theo. We were people. You just… never saw us.” yuusha ni minna

“Minna,” Theo said at last, turning. His eyes were hollow, twin furnaces burning low. “You fought well.” The question landed like a stone in still water

Minna. Everyone. Not Alena, who’d picked the lock to the Demon Lord’s sanctum while a thousand traps sang around her ears. Not Kael, whose forbidden spell had stripped the Lord’s wards bare, shaving years off his own life. Not Elara, who had called upon her goddess so fiercely that her hair had turned white. Not Finn, who had taken a poisoned dagger meant for Theo’s back and now stood smiling with purple veins crawling up his neck. He won’t even look at us

The silence stretched.

In the hushed aftermath of the Demon Lord’s collapse, dust and shadow bled from the crumbling sky-tower. Alena, the party’s thief, was the first to speak.

Kael laughed—a dry, broken sound. “I’m Kael. Remember? You called me ‘mage’ for eighteen months until Finn told you my name. You looked embarrassed for half a second, then went back to calling me ‘mage.’”