Raiking said nothing. His hand settled on Ezmelral's shoulder—
—and the world lurched.
Colors smeared, sound folded, then snapped back into place in the middle of a bustling marketplace. Stalls. Voices. The smell of spiced meat and fresh bread. Life.
Ezmelral's mind was still stuck in the slave pits. Mother taught me to stand for justice. To fight for the weak. If she became a Praexer… was it all a lie? Her chest tightened; the question rotted everything it touched.
"Thief! Stop her!"
The shout cut through the noise. A cloaked woman tore past a stall, Essence Scrolls clutched to her chest. The vendor reached out with callused hands, desperation cracking her voice.
No one moved.
Some glanced up, eyes flickering with the urge to act—then dropped their gaze, choosing coin, errands, comfort. Too troublesome. Not my problem.
Ezmelral saw it this time: faint black nodules—Seeds of Corruption—inside their Essence Cores pulsing, swelling by a hair's breadth with every act of apathy.
Before she could speak, Raiking's hand touched her shoulder again.
The market vanished.
---
They stood in an arena. Dirt floor. Tiered benches. A crowd howling for blood.
Below, two Essence users fought.
Fire—ranged, bow drawn, loosing blazing arrows in sweeping volleys.
Air—close-combat, darts in on gusts, palms cleaving flames aside with compressed wind, body whipping through gaps in the barrage.
The Air user yanked with his hand; a gust wrenched the Fire user off balance, dragging him in. A blur, then fingers locked around a throat.
The crowd surged to its feet.
"Kill! Kill! Kill!"
For a breath, the Air user hesitated.
Then he turned slightly—enough to see the faces. The hunger. The worship.
He twisted.
The neck snapped. The body crumpled. The arena erupted, cheers drowning the moment the soul left the flesh.
Around them, the Seeds in the spectators' chests swelled more visibly now—fed by bloodlust, cruelty dressed up as entertainment. Each roar, each delighted flinch at violence, thickened the dark nodules like tumors.
Raiking's hand tightened.
Scene after scene. Quick cuts.
A rigged gambling match in a back alley—winner gloating, loser swallowing the humiliation, Seed twitching into slow growth.
A courtroom—false testimony, a judge knowingly nodding the innocent into chains, corruption in his Core pulsing like a dark heartbeat.
A family dinner—petty grudges, barbed words, no one apologizing, resentment steeping the Seeds until they bulged like rotting fruit.
Over and over: not grand evil, but a thousand small decisions. Each one feeding the same thing.
The Seeds weren't invaders.
They were mirrors.
Ezmelral stared at her trembling hands. "We… we were," she whispered. "We're the cause."
The weight crushed her knees; she dropped, breath ragged. It wasn't some outside curse. It was us. All along.
Her fingers brushed the bird pendant at her throat—her father's last gift. John: stubborn, kind, infuriatingly soft-hearted. Judgemental, yes. Flawed, yes. But he never became hollow. Never turned.
He didn't transform. So there has to be a way out. There has to be.
She forced herself to look up.
"There is a solution," she said, voice hoarse but steady. "There has to be. My father didn't become a Praexer."
Raiking held her gaze for a long moment. Then his hand came down on her shoulder.
The memories unraveled.
---
They stood in the same town as before—but now it was in its final moments.
Buildings half-collapsed, flames eating roofs and walls. Streets choked with smoke. Screams tearing holes in the night.
Praexers swarmed—gray bodies, empty eyes, twisted limbs skittering through debris.
"I'll explain why some Exars were spared later," Raiking said, summoning his sheath in a flicker of shadow. "For now, I cleanse."
At the center of the horde, a much larger Praexer loomed—veins like black rivers, bulk knotted with corrupted muscle.
Ezmelral swallowed. "W-what is that?"
"A Praexer Commander," Raiking said. "Or, as you knew it—the Slave Seller."
Behind them, the air thickened. Eidolon manifested: not a full body, just two colossal arms tearing through the ether, one bare and clenched, the other gripping an enormous sheath with a half-drawn blade inside.
The Praexers jerked in unison, joints cracking as their heads turned toward Raiking and Ezmelral. The Commander raised its clawed arm and bellowed.
They charged.
"Do not fear them," Raiking said quietly. "Do not mourn them. Watch. My blade will free them."
He slid into a samurai stance, sheath at his hip. Eidolon mirrored him with the massive weapon.
They drew as one.
To Ezmelral, it wasn't a sword strike—it was reality being edited.
Wind howled, Essence screamed. A single horizontal cut erased the distance.
Praexers. Stalls. Cracked facades. Restaurant fronts. All of it split clean through at the same height—a flawless plane running through the town like God's ruler.
For one impossible heartbeat, the halves floated. Silence.
Then Raiking sheathed.
Eidolon's arms dissolved.
Everything fell.
Bisected beasts and broken architecture crashed down in a deafening cascade. Dust exploded upward, rolling over them in a suffocating wave. When it settled, the street was a graveyard of halves.
Ezmelral stared, skin prickling. She'd seen him fight before. She hadn't seen this—a cut that didn't just kill, but rewrote the battlefield.
An ancient tome flickered into existence by his side: cover scarred, title etched in fading gold.
Book of Revesis.
It opened on its own. The first page flared:
Eden's Roots.
The ground answered.
Fissures split open. Roots surged out—thick, serpentine masses wrapping around the fallen Praexers. No flourish, no cruelty. Just work. They dragged the corpses down into the earth, one after another. The soil closed over them, smooth, unmarked, as if erasing a stain.
The last rumble faded.
No more screams. No more fire except the scattered embers licking ruined wood.
Just Raiking, Ezmelral, and a dead town that matched her first one far too well.