The descent was different this time. The revitalizing energy from the Warden's sacrifice had forged a new equilibrium within me, but it was a precarious one. The gift of vitality was a pool of still water in the desert of my exhaustion, deep but not infinite. I was acutely aware of its limits, of the hollow ache that waited beneath the surface. The darkness of the staircase felt like a familiar cloak, but I kept my senses sharp, my shadow-sight probing the way ahead. The air, though cold, no longer carried the threat of the void. It felt… expectant.
The stairs ended not in a chamber, but at the mouth of a vast, subterranean cavern. My breath caught. The ceiling was lost in a gloom so profound my sight could not pierce it, a darkness that felt ancient and deliberate. But the floor… the floor was a field.
Grey flowers, identical to those from my vision, stretched away into the impossible distance. Their petals were soft and cool under my worn boots, releasing a faint, melancholic scent as I disturbed them—the smell of forgotten evenings and long-lost twilight. The air itself shimmered with a dim, purple-hued light that seemed to emanate from the flowers themselves, casting long, deep shadows that did not shift or sway. This was not a tomb. It was a place of waiting. A pocket of preserved memory hidden in the mountain's heart.
And in the center of the field, it stood.
The creature was as I remembered from the vision, yet the memory was a pale imitation. It was formed of shifting shadow and solidified twilight, its coat the colour of a starless midnight, its mane and tail flowing trails of deeper darkness that seemed to drink the strange light. Its hooves were like polished obsidian, and they made no sound as it shifted its weight, the movement a liquid ripple of muscle and shadow. It turned its head toward me.
Its eyes were not eyes. They were pools of absolute void, twin echoes of the shard of nothingness I had absorbed. But the moment our gazes met—my weary, silver-touched sight meeting its perfect absence—the compass in my chest did not yearn for another piece of a dead god. It did not pull. It… settled. It flared with a different kind of recognition, one that was sovereign, possessive, and deeply personal.
This was not a piece of the Death God. It was not his tool, his creation, or his to give.
It was mine.
The realization was a thunderclap in the silent cavern, so loud it was almost sound. The Warden had recognized the divine nature of my Spark, the shard of a god within me. But this creature… it recognized me. Cassian. The being I was, the specific angel I had been, before the shattering. It was not looking at the god-fragment. It was looking at the consciousness housed within this flesh and power.
The steed took a step forward. Then another. Its movement was utterly silent, a glide rather than a walk. It stopped an arm's length away, close enough that I could feel the cool, still air that radiated from its form. It lowered its head, not in submission to a master, but in reunion with an equal.
And then, the memories came. Not a divine vision, not the cold, impersonal history of a cosmic function. These were mine.
I saw myself, not as a faceless angel, but as Cassian. I felt the texture of my own past. I saw myself, younger, less worn, in a place of swirling grey mist and soft, perpetual dusk—the Twilight Fields, not as a memory, but as a place. I saw myself finding a foal, a skittish, impossible thing woven from the first shadows of a dying star. It was a unique spark of nascent void, and I, a being of ending, had been the only one who could approach it. I saw the years—the long, patient years—of bonding, of learning its strange language of silence and subtle shifts in the dark. I saw us riding together, not just as a function of my office, but as partners, a single entity of shadow and purpose. It was my companion. My friend. The only being in the cold, echoing halls of death who understood the profound solitude of my duty.
"He is yours," Croft said, his voice hushed with a dawning, profound understanding. He had landed silently on a nearby rock, a dark blot against the grey flowers. "Wholly. The god did not grant him. You found him. You tamed him. That bond… it is yours alone."
I reached out, my hand trembling not from weakness, but from a surge of emotion so long buried it felt foreign. My fingers sank into the cool, solid shadow of its neck. It was not insubstantial. It was real. A name, my name for it, surfaced from the depths of my reclaimed self, rising through the murk of amnesia like a bubble from a deep lake.
"Twilight," I breathed. The word was a key, turning in a lock I hadn't known existed.
The steed—Twilight—let out a soft, soundless exhalation, a puff of cold, scentless mist—the breath of the void—that brushed my face. It was a familiar gesture. It nudged my chest with its nose, a gentle, insistent pressure I remembered from a thousand other moments. The contact sealed the memory, making it solid, real. This was not about reclaiming a function of my office. This was about reclaiming a part of my own soul.
This changed everything. The god's power within me was one thing—a mantle I had worn, a source of authority that felt both innate and borrowed. But Twilight was mine. A choice I had made. A bond I had forged. It was proof, irrefutable and beautiful, that I had been an individual, not just an instrument. I had a past that belonged to Cassian, not just to the Angel of Death.
For a long time, I simply stood there, my hand resting on Twilight's neck, breathing in the scent of the grey flowers and the silence. I was in no rush. The frantic, desperate pull that had driven me from the church was quiet here, replaced by a slow, steady thrum of rightness. Croft watched, saying nothing, allowing the moment to settle.
Finally, I moved. I grasped a handful of its shadowy mane. It was like holding strands of solidified night, cool and smooth. With an ease that felt as natural as breathing, a muscle memory returned to life, I swung onto its back. There was no saddle, no bridle. None were needed. Our connection was direct, soul to soul, a partnership reforged. I was not a rider controlling a mount. We were two parts of a single, shadowy whole.
The moment I settled on its back, the cavern around us seemed to… waver. The grey flowers blurred at the very edges of my perception, their purple light smearing like wet paint. The very air grew thin, the immense weight of the mountain above feeling distant. I could still see Croft, but he was insubstantial, a ghost-image, a memory of the material world.
"The paths are still there," I murmured, the knowledge simply there, inherent in my rekindled bond with Twilight. "The paths between. We can cross distances that would take weeks on foot."
Croft, his form flickering, launched from his rock and flew toward us, a wisp of darkness against a fading backdrop. "Then our journey is transformed," his voice echoed, faint and layered. "The Spires are no longer a barrier. They are a signpost."
I nudged Twilight not with my heels, but with my will, a silent, shared intention. The creature turned with effortless grace, its obsidian hooves leaving no impression on the ghostly flowers. We moved toward the solid wall of the cavern.
We did not stop. The stone did not hinder us. It parted before us like mist, and we passed into the roaring, formless chaos of the spaces between. The world became a torrent of streaking light and howling void, a maelstrom that would have torn a mortal mind to shreds.
But seated on Twilight, with my own shadow-Spark resonating with its ancient, familiar nature, I felt no fear. I felt no disorientation. I felt a fierce, quiet, and deeply personal joy.