A sacred light, thick as honey and burning like the sun, filled the celestial chamber. It was not a place of stone and mortar, but of woven light and echoing prayer. In the center of the chamber, suspended in a cage of incandescent runes, hung a boy.
He was slight, with tousled hair and simple clothes, looking utterly ordinary save for his eyes. They were ancient, black, and deep as a starless night. As his gaze swept over them, it held no fear, only a weary, bottomless contempt—the look of a king forced to endure the chattering of ants.
Kai stood at the head of the ritual, his ornate armor blazing with the same holy radiance that filled the room. He was the anchor. To his right, Seraphine, her face a mask of fervent concentration, channeled her power through her blade, weaving it into a barrier of incandescent runes that tightened around the boy. The other members of the Last Vanguard were arrayed around them, their combined might forming a divine geometry meant to cage a god.
A figure moved among them, a man robed in vestments of pure white. One of the Goddess's own Disciples. His face was a picture of serene devotion, his hands raised in benediction, his voice a soothing chant that reinforced their will.
"Steady, my champions," he intoned, his voice the very sound of faith. "His chaos is almost subdued. Your sacrifice today will usher in a millennium of peace."
The light intensified, becoming a physical agony. Kai gritted his teeth, feeling the boy's—the Tyrant's—resistance not as a struggle, but as a vast, silent pressure, a weight that threatened to shatter his very soul. He poured more of his own essence into the seal, feeling the drain on his life force.
"We cannot hold this much longer!" Seraphine gasped, her knuckles white on the hilt of her sword, a crack appearing in her flawless concentration.
"Just a moment more," the Disciple soothed, gliding behind her. "The final glyph requires the utmost purity of intent. A single flaw, and all is lost."
But then Kai saw it. A flicker in the Disciple's eyes as he passed behind Seraphine. Not serenity, but a terrifying, calculated ambition. The man's hands, which should have been weaving reinforcement into their pattern, were instead tracing a subtle, inverted sigil in the air. He wasn't just strengthening the seal on the Tyrant.
He was weaving a second one. Around them.
A cold dread, colder than any ice magic, seized Kai's heart. The faint, saccharine stench of betrayal filled the air, but it was too late to break the ritual.
The Disciple's serene expression melted into a grin of sublime, unholy triumph. "A new world requires a clean slate," he whispered, his chant now a vile curse. "Free of tyrants... and the flawed, powerful heroes who would inevitably become them. Do not fear. Your power will not be wasted. It will be mine to shepherd."
The holy light they were channeling turned inward. It did not burn; it preserved. It was a petrification of pure, rigid order, a beautiful, agonizing crystallization. Kai felt his body locking into place, his muscles turning to unfeeling stone, becoming a monument in a divine tomb. With a final, monumental effort, he fought to turn his head, to look at Seraphine one last time.
He saw the horrifying understanding dawning in her eyes, the betrayal that cut deeper than any blade. He tried to speak, to give one final command, one final reassurance, but his throat was already stone.
"NOO—!"
His scream was the last sound he made, cut short as the sacred light filled his vision and turned his world to eternal, silent stillness. The last thing he saw was not the Tyrant, but the smiling face of the holy man who had sealed them all.
Kai jolted upright, a scream trapped in his throat, emerging as a strangled gasp. He was on the floor of the dusty shed, his body drenched in a cold sweat. The phantom sensation of petrification still clung to his limbs, a ghostly stiffness that made him tremble.
The sacred light of the chamber was gone, replaced by the weak grey light of dawn filtering through the vines over the door. The Disciple's triumphant grin was seared onto the back of his eyelids.
Roric, who had been dozing against a wall, started awake. "Seven hells, partner! You trying to wake the dead?"
But Kai's eyes were locked on Seraphine. She was watching him, having not slept, her expression still wary but now layered with a deep, unsettled curiosity.
The memories weren't hazy fragments anymore. They were a flood. He knew who he was. He knew what they had done. And he knew the devastating, world-shattering truth.
"Seraphine," he said, his voice raw.
He tried to stand, to go to her, to make her understand. But his legs, weak from exhaustion and the psychic shock, gave way beneath him. He stumbled forward.
She moved without thinking, instinct overriding caution. She caught him before he fell, her arms wrapping around him to keep him upright. For a long moment, they held each other—he, trembling with the aftershock of memory; she, rigid with confusion.
Then, a warmth bloomed where their bodies met, a familiar comfort that felt like coming home. It was a feeling she didn't recognize but her soul did. Her arms tightened around him almost involuntarily.
Just as quickly, she came to her senses. This was the man who had been a prisoner, a variable, a weapon. She pushed him away, her hands on his chest, creating two paces of distance that felt like a mile. "Don't," she said, her voice tight.
The word hung in the air. And then the pain came.
It started as a dull throb behind her eyes, quickly sharpening into a white-hot spike. She winced, bringing a hand to her temple. The scent of the shed—dust and old hay—vanished, replaced by the ghost of a memory: the smell of ozone and sanctified incense.
Kai saw the change in her face. "Seraphine?"
She didn't hear him. A voice, smooth as oil and cold as stone, whispered in the depths of her mind. A new world requires a clean slate...
She gasped, stumbling back a step as the words echoed, not in her ears, but in her bones. There was no full memory, no vision. Just a wave of visceral, soul-deep betrayal that felt a century old, accompanied by that single, poisonous phrase.
She looked at Kai, and the last of her defenses crumbled. The calculating slaver, the pragmatic leader—they vanished. The phantom voice, slick and treacherous, coiled in the back of her mind, but it was overshadowed by a more immediate, visceral certainty.
Her gaze swept over his face, not as a stranger's, but as one tracing the familiar lines of a ghost. The set of his jaw, the intensity in his eyes—it was all different, yet fundamentally, undeniably the same.
Her breath caught.
"Kai?"
His name was a soft exhale, a question and an answer woven together. It was the first time she had ever said it, and it felt like remembering a prayer she'd recited a thousand times.
In that single word, everything was acknowledged. The shared memory, the betrayal, the lost century. They hadn't fallen in battle. They had been murdered by the very faith they served, their victory stolen, their names turned to legend for a cause that had betrayed them.
Roric watched from the corner, the usual quip dying on his lips. The air in the shed had changed. He was no longer looking at a prisoner and his jailer. It was like they were lovers that had amnesia.
He cleared his throat, the sound rough in the profound silence. "Okay," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "I'm gonna need one of you to start talking. What in the seven hells is going on?"