Paving a Path of Flowers for My Nephew Made Me the Hero — Episode 1
—!
Darkness had fallen over the world, and a rain of fire was pouring down.
Yet no one's screams rang out, nor the sound of anyone fleeing.
Because they were all dead.
In this place of nothing but corpses, only two things remained: Alex himself, and the Demon King and the Hero, locked in battle across the way.
KABOOOM!!BOOM!
But neither the Demon King nor the Hero knew Alex was there.
Because Alex was a ghost.
'Leo!'
Neither his cry to his nephew—the Hero—
'You damn Demon King!'
—nor his curses at the Demon King reached either of them.
If even his voice couldn't be heard, what chance would physical force ever have?
Chwaaak!
He threw himself in the path of the Demon King's attack, only to pass straight through it and land on Leo's body instead.
Again and again and again.
As a ghost, Alex could do nothing but trail helplessly after his nephew as he was beaten down.
And yet.
'Leo! Dodge!'
Even if he wasn't heard,
'Damn it!'
Even if he couldn't block a single blow.
His dark golden hair streaming behind him, Alex threw himself in front of Leo time after time. So that Leo—left all alone after the Relief Corps and his friends had perished—wouldn't have to fight in loneliness. So that at least Leo could win and come home alive.
Because by some miracle, even just once, he might manage to stop the Demon King's attack.
But—
"Ugh!"
the god did not grant Alex's wish.
<Leo….>
No—it couldn't.
Even Lord Solenius was lending the Hero his power at the cost of his own extinction.
That was how powerful the Demon King was—a being intent on slaughtering every living thing on the continent and claiming it as his own.
"I'm… I'm still okay…."
Leo could barely manage to exhale.
The brilliant blond hair that had once drawn every eye in a crowd had turned snow-white, and one of his jewel-like sky-blue eyes was now shut tight, blood trickling from beneath the lid.
"Haah."
Worse still, the prosthetic left arm fitted by the Magic Tower Federation was moving so poorly it seemed on the verge of breaking down entirely.
The Age of Ruin.
An era when the terror of a death that could strike at any moment had to be accepted as one's fate.
Leo Solenius, the Hero of this era, had fought his way to this place, his body shattering itself against enemy after enemy.
'Run, Leo!'
Alex made his futile plea once more.
'Forget the continent! Forget the Last City—just run!'
Who cared about any of that?
His nephew was the most precious thing in the world to him!
But the Hero rose to his feet and gripped the holy sword once more. Not a single spot on him was whole, and yet he stood up straight.
'Damn it!'
When your nephew was like that, what else could an uncle do but help?
Even if his soul was torn apart for it—for Leo, it would be worth it.
But as though he existed in some other world entirely, none of Alex's efforts landed.
BOOM!
Helplessly, he let the Demon King's attacks pass straight through him.
"It ends now, Hero."
With those words, the pure-white skull embedded in the Demon King's chest rippled with dark-green flame.
Alex and Leo tensed.
Whenever that skull flickered with dark-green light, an especially devastating torrent of magic came pouring down.
And just as they feared, spells erupted from the empty air.
Leo dodged what he could, deflected the rest with his holy sword, and charged straight at the Demon King—
burning every last drop of his divine power, and even his own soul alongside it.
<Leo…!>
Lord Solenius, too, poured his strength into Leo.
Even if his own existence was being erased, he wanted to be of use to the Hero he had chosen.
KWA-BOOM!
Gathering every ounce of power, the Hero struck at the Demon King.
'Aaargh! Just block one, would you! You useless lump of a body!'
Ghost Alex flung himself this way and that, hurling his phantom body at attacks he could never hope to stop.
"Begone, Demon King!"
Hero Leo became a single streak of light, flying straight at the Demon King. He had packed everything he had into this one strike.
BOOM! KWA-BOOM!
Punching through barrier after layered barrier, Leo closed the distance to the Demon King.
His grip tightened around the shining holy sword.
Both hands on the blade, Leo drove it straight in.
And at that very moment—
the pure-white skull embedded in the Demon King's chest lit up.
Dark-green flame.
The omen of the magic every living soul had learned to fear.
But Leo did not fall back. Instead, he clenched his teeth and pressed into the holy sword with everything he had.
Then—
from the skull, a lance of dark-green light shot out like a colossal arrow.
'Leo!'
Knowing full well he couldn't stop it, Alex still threw himself in its path—just as he had done hundreds of times, thousands of times before.
And at last.
Alex's wish came true.
'…!'
The lance of dark-green light halted in midair, caught against Alex's body.
'I blocked it! I actually blocked it!'
But his joy lasted only an instant.
As if laughing at him, the beam—after pausing for the briefest of moments—simply carried on as though nothing had happened, passing straight through Alex's body.
And then it pierced through the chest of Leo Solenius standing behind him.
"…Kghak!"
His heart.
Where his heart had been, a hole had been carved clean through him.
And yet Leo Solenius felt no pain.
Because a moment ago—when the dark-green lance had hung motionless in the air—he had glimpsed, dimly but unmistakably, a figure.
A young man with dark blond hair and light green eyes.
"…Un-uncle?"
Why was his uncle—dead for twelve years now—here of all places…?
'Leo!!'
Somehow, he even seemed to hear the voice.
"Ha… haha…."
Thud—!
Leo crumpled to the ground, laughing before he knew it.
'Our Leo!'
'Uncle!'
Their short but happy childhood came flooding back—those days when, knowing nothing of the world, he had lived under the care of an uncle barely out of his teens.
'…I wanted to do so well.'
Leo's breath faded, little by little.
'…I'm sorry, Uncle.'
Finding the parents his uncle had missed so terribly, protecting the people and his comrades, striking down the Demon King—
he hadn't managed any of it.
'I… the truth is….'
He had wanted to tell his uncle.
The man who had been his only protector, the one he'd leaned on through everything.
'I was scared… of all of it….'
Fighting enemies, watching his comrades get hurt, getting hurt himself, shielding the people, defending the continent—
…even being betrayed.
Of course, these were the things a Hero was bound to do, and things he had wanted to do, too.
But there had been fear as well.
The kind of fear any human being carries—fear he could confess to his uncle and no one else.
'…I missed you, Uncle.'
Even an illusion conjured by the Demon King would have been fine.
Even a trick of his own mind would have been fine.
Glad beyond words to see his dead uncle one last time, Leo shed a single small tear and closed his eyes.
And so died Leo Solenius, the last Hero of the Solenium Continent.
'I blocked it… I finally managed to block it….'
With trembling hands, Alex tried to lift Leo's already-cold body with all the tenderness in the world.
But a ghost cannot touch the body of the living.
His hands passed clean through, and Alex pounded the ground in fury.
'You should have run!'
Alex screamed, his voice shaking uncontrollably.
'To hell with being the Hero! To hell with the people! To hell with the continent! You… you should have lived….'
Alex tenderly stroked Leo's body—riddled with wounds, a hollow where his heart should have been.
'You silly fool….'
Why did it have to be Leo?
There were plenty of skilled knights, plenty of wealthy nobles, plenty of priests overflowing with divine power—so why did it have to be Leo, a commoner orphan, who was chosen as the Hero?
He understood, though.
Leo had been a good kid.
The kind of child who drew every gaze and won every heart simply by being there.
Besides, Leo had real talent—a genius who grasped in one lesson what took others ten. And he worked harder than anyone Alex had ever known.
Even Alex himself would have trusted the world to that boy.
'And yet this… this is just wrong….'
If so, then he should have let Leo win. Let him triumph.
'Let him survive and live happily ever after, you damned— damn you, you worthless god!!'
He knew that Solenius, too, had done everything in his power to help Leo. But he couldn't help cursing him all the same.
Because Leo had been only eighteen.
Younger still than Alex himself, who had died at twenty.
'Damn it all!'
Wah-wah! Mid-scream, Alex crumpled to his knees.
Everything was already over.
At the end of grief and rage, a hollow emptiness came washing over him.
'…But then, why haven't I disappeared?'
If there was a world for the dead, he wanted to see Leo there—even that would do. He wanted to tell him it must have been so hard, that he'd done well. He wanted to curse out the traitors and that damnable god until his lungs gave out.
'Did you know I was with you the whole time?'
From the day Leo turned six until he was eighteen, like now.
He wanted to tell him: for twelve long years, your uncle was always right there beside you.
'Will your sister and brother-in-law be there too?'
They had left on a mercenary contract when Leo was still a baby and never come home—so surely they had already passed on as well.
'Then it'll be a family reunion, after all this time. I'd better hurry myself.'
Alex brushed the hair back from Leo's face, so peaceful it might have been merely asleep. Of course, his hand never actually touched it.
'Still so young.'
Gazing down at Leo's face—that of a boy who had barely become a man—Alex whispered.
'You did well, Leo. My nephew really is the best there is.'
If Leo had heard, surely he would have beamed.
'Rest now.'
No more suffering. No more worry. Not ever again.
'Good night, our Leo.'
Alex hoped with all that remained of him that Leo would rest as comfortably as he deserved—catching up on all the sleep he had been denied.
'I wanted to give you a happy life….'
Then—
[Got it…!]
[Grab the sto—!]
A voice rang out.
The voice of some man.
'What? What did you say?'
Startled by a voice that came out of nowhere—in a place where even the Demon King had departed—Alex whipped his head around, scanning his surroundings.
In that instant—
darkness swallowed everything.
"…?!!"
A searing heat on his back snapped Alex's eyes wide open.
"…!!"
It hurt so much he couldn't even scream.
Twelve years spent as a bodiless ghost had left him with no resistance whatsoever to pain like this.
He was already dead, and yet it felt as though he might die all over again.
His vision swam. Grass, packed dirt—and fresh, vivid red blood soaked across all of it.
'…This place… I've seen it before….'
It seemed his experience traveling alongside the Hero's party (unbeknownst to them) hadn't been wasted after all—even through agony fit to kill him, Alex managed to hold onto his sanity.
Ghost Alex may have neglected everything else, but if there was one thing he had trained relentlessly, it was his mental fortitude.
'Which means….'
Grrrrrl!
A wolf's growl rolled out from behind him, and Alex's green eyes flew open wide.
He remembered!
This was the moment he was being mauled to death by a wolf!
For a heartbeat he wondered if this was some dying vision flashing before his eyes, but the vivid agony searing through his back said otherwise. This was real.
'Then that means—!'
He had returned to the past. He could see Leo again—young, and alive!
'But why now, of all times!?'
If you were going to send me back, send me somewhere else! What kind of idiot dumps a man back at the very moment of his death!?
Gritting his teeth, Alex still racked his brain for a way to survive.
But there was nothing he could do.
The wound across his back was far too deep, and even drawing breath was a struggle.
He had no weapon to drive off the wolves circling him—let alone so much as a single remedy to treat himself with.
'Damn it…!'
So this was how he would die again. Useless to Leo once more, an uncle who could never help.
Then—
a voice surfaced in his mind, seared into his soul like a brand.
[Grab the sto—!]
'Grab…? Grab what?'
Grab a stone?
The ground before the fallen Alex was scattered with rocks, big and small. But somehow, he felt certain it wasn't any of those.
Then something slid into Alex's blurred field of vision.
A glass marble.
A round glass marble lay a short distance away—peculiar, in that something like green gas swirled inside it.
Alex knew in his gut: he had to grab that thing.
So, dragging his nearly immobile body along the ground, he inched his way forward and stretched out his hand toward the marble.
'…Got it!'
Whoosh—!
In the same instant, an explosive burst of flame erupted from the glass marble.
'…?!'
Before Alex had any chance to react, the green fire swept past him—engulfing the wolf that had been about to pounce, and swallowing it whole in flame.
Even the fresh, lethal volume of blood Alex had spilled seemed to feed the fire, blazing up as fuel for the emerald blaze.
In the blink of an eye—
the wolf, and every drop of blood, were simply gone.
Watching in stunned silence, Alex realized the green flame was now drifting toward him.
'…!'
Fire that might reduce him to ash just as it had the wolf—Alex scrambled to drag his body out of its path.
But of course, he failed.
Wrapped head to toe in green flame, Alex squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself for the pain.
But no pain came.
Instead, the wounds covering Alex's body healed over at astonishing speed.
"…Hahk!"
As the torment ebbed away, the ragged breath that had seemed it would never slow began, little by little, to settle.
"…What in the world…."
And while Alex stood there, utterly bewildered by the sudden turn of events—
[Oh! Hello there?]
[Otherworld human friend!]
a bright, cheerful voice rang out.
Paving a Path of Flowers for My Nephew Made Me the Hero
A long-form fusion fantasy novel by Book Bear
Author: Book Bear
Publishers: Kwon Tae-wan, Woo Chun-je
E-book Publication Date: 2026-06-22
List Price per Chapter: 100 won (Chapters 1–15 provided free)
Provided by: KWBOOKS
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This e-book was published by KWBOOKS under contract with the copyright holder.
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