Uriel was in a state that was anything but normal. He looked at Cassie, who remained in front of him with a tense smile, while his mind raced at a million kilometers per second searching for excuses and escape routes to get out of that situation. However, every excuse he formulated could easily be countered with a single word or a simple glance.
Cassie was a seer, after all. And a seer with years of experience detecting lies, hiding truths, and reading between the lines. There was no way to escape.
A few more seconds passed, seconds that felt like hours to Uriel, and he decided to bet everything on a single option: feigning confusion. It was a risky bet, ridiculously risky considering who was in front of him, but it was the only card he had left to play. If it worked, he would buy time. If it didn't work... well, he would deal with the consequences later.
"Lady Cassie, are you feeling alright? You haven't hit your head, have you?" he asked with a tone laden with concern, so convincing that he almost believed it himself.
Cassie looked at him with those eyes that seemed to pierce through everything, and for a moment Uriel thought it had worked. But then she spoke.
"I'm quite fine, actually. But don't change the subject and answer my question."
"What question, Lady Cassie? I have very poor short-term memory," he insisted, maintaining his perfectly rehearsed expression of confusion.
"If that's the case, then I'll ask you again: you are Uriel, aren't you?"
"Of course not. I'm Sun Jin Woo, owner of a simple shop. How could I be the person you speak of?" he responded with a calm he didn't feel.
"I see," Cassie murmured with a tranquil expression that promised nothing good.
Silence stretched between them like an invisible spiderweb. Uriel felt a cold drop of sweat slide down the back of his neck. He knew that expression. He had seen it before, in the old days, when Cassie was about to do something no one expected. Something calculated. Something devastating.
"I suppose I'll have to go review Scarlet's memories now," Cassie continued, as if thinking out loud, "and convince her to make a new movie about Uriel. One with many more visual effects than the previous one. Perhaps with more detailed battle scenes. I know she has contacts in the industry who could work wonders with current technology."
Uriel's eyebrow twitched. It was an almost imperceptible movement, but Cassie caught it. Of course she caught it.
"Please don't do that, Lady Cassie," he responded quickly, feeling panic begin to climb up his throat. "I heard that the great Uriel was very upset about his movie and sued the production company, though he departed for Antarctica before the trial."
The words left his mouth before he could stop them. It was a mistake. A colossal mistake. But it was already said, floating in the air between them like an involuntary confession.
"Aha," Cassie smiled.
It was a small smile, barely a curve on her lips, but it carried the weight of a thousand victories. Uriel's eyes widened as he realized too late.
Damn, she tricked me!
The thought struck his mind with the force of a hammer. He had fallen into the simplest trap in the world, and the worst part was that he couldn't even blame Cassie. She had only set the bait. He had bitten the hook of his own free will.
"So it really is you... you're alive and you've been here all this time," Cassie said, and her voice, which moments before had been controlled and measured, now trembled with a mixture of emotions that Uriel couldn't quite identify. Relief. Anger. Sadness. Joy. All at once, all compressed into a single sentence.
"I'm sorry, Lady Cassie, but you're confusing me," he tried one last time, though he knew it was useless.
Cassie didn't respond with words. Instead, at her side appeared a sea of golden and silver sparks that danced in the air like crazed fireflies, slowly materializing until they took form. An echo. A woman in a long red dress whose face was hidden behind a translucent veil that seemed made of silk and smoke. The figure was elegant, ethereal, and terrifying in its supernatural beauty.
The echo launched crimson energy tentacles that coiled around Uriel's body with unsettling precision, immobilizing him completely. Before he could react, the tip of a rapier appeared a few centimeters from his throat, gleaming with a pale light that promised pain.
"Uh, ah, Lady Song of the Fallen, this..." Uriel stammered, recognizing the echo instantly.
"Stop the game already," Cassie said, and her voice was now cold, cutting, like steel forged in ice. "We have been very patient with you, Uriel. Do you even know everything I've been through believing you were dead?"
Uriel felt the tip of the rapier press against his neck. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to remind him that it was there, that it was real, that Cassie wasn't playing. He knew that a wound like that wouldn't kill him—his nature as a non-human creature granted him a resistance beyond what any human could withstand—but it would hurt terribly. And beyond the physical pain, there was the pain in Cassie's voice. That was the one that truly worried him.
Uriel's eyes met Cassie's expression, and what he saw there broke something inside him. It wasn't hatred. It wasn't rage. It was something deeper, more complex, more painful. It was the look of someone who had mourned the loss of a friend, who had carried that grief for years, and who now discovered that it had all been a farce. Uriel sighed, feeling resistance escape his body along with the air from his lungs.
"Fine, I surrender. You caught me, Cass," he said, changing his tone of voice, letting the mask of confusion fall like someone removing an overly heavy coat.
"I thought I could fool you, but... well, you're a seer," he murmured, and in his words there was a mixture of resignation and genuine admiration.
"Is that all you're going to say?" asked the blonde woman, and her voice trembled again, though this time almost imperceptibly.
"What do you mean?"
"We haven't seen each other in years," Cassie said, and each word seemed to cost her physical effort. "Everyone thinks you're dead. Everyone mourned you. Everyone remembered you. And when I finally find you, what a surprise to learn that the owner of a simple shop in Bastion is the one I've been searching for so long. The one we've all been searching for without knowing it."
"Cass, I..."
"No. I don't want you to give me your excuses."
Uriel shut his mouth. There was nothing he could say that would fix this. There was no explanation that would erase the years of lies, the years of absence, the years when his friends had believed he was dead while he silently built a refuge for humanity. He looked at Cassie, really looked at her, and saw the weariness in her eyes, the subtle lines that time and war had carved on her face, the tension in her shoulders that never seemed to disappear completely.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, and though he knew they were only two words, he said them with all the weight of his regret.
The echo released him, and the energy tentacles dissolved into the air like smoke in the wind. The rapier floated back to Cassie's hand, who sheathed it with a fluid, automatic movement, as if it were an extension of her own body. Uriel sighed as at his side appeared a awakened beast the size of a four-year-old child: a corpse scavenger. The creature was small, with large, bright eyes that seemed to contain a universe of information, and its dark fur had an iridescent sheen under the shop's light.
"Use this echo's eyes," Uriel requested, and though it was a command, his tone was almost pleading.
Cassie marked the echo and looked through its eyes. What she saw surprised her. The familiar face of Uriel, the same one she remembered from the old days, the same one she had seen in her dreams and nightmares for years, the same one she had believed lost forever. He hadn't changed at all. Absolutely not at all.
"You haven't changed at all," Cassie said calmly, though inside she felt a whirlwind of emotions threatening to overflow.
"Yes, being a non-human creature does that," Uriel responded with a bitter smile. "Anyway, Cass, I know you have many questions, but before we sit down to talk, let's go somewhere else. This isn't the right place for a conversation like this."
Turning around, he created a tentacle of darkness that placed the "closed" sign on the shop door, and then asked Cassie to follow him. The blonde woman nodded and walked behind him, her steps resonating softly on the wooden floor.
Using the echo's eyes, Cassie observed how beneath the shop there was an enormous tunnel illuminated by blue torches. The bluish light danced on the stone walls, creating shadows that seemed to move with a life of their own. The passage descended through a long staircase of irregular steps, carved directly into the rock, and here and there they had to turn following the winding tunnel until they finally reached a wider space.
What Cassie saw left her breathless. It was an enormous clearing full of green grass and fruit trees, with small wild animals roaming freely. Silver-furred rabbits jumped among the bushes, golden-antlered deer grazed peacefully in the distance, and birds of impossible colors sang from the branches. The space was covered by a warm sun that bathed everything in a soft, golden light, and beneath a blue background of clouds that reflected the outside sky. Cassie noticed there were small runes placed on the ceiling to create an artificial sky, but the illusion was so perfect that she could almost believe they were outdoors.
"This is a space I created to come and relax," Uriel explained as they walked toward the center of the clearing. "It's a separate space, I made it with thousands of runes and various enchantments. The sun is a fragment of a sacred soul that I obtained long ago."
The duo soon arrived at a table located in the center of the clearing, a dark wooden table with two comfortable chairs. They sat facing each other, and for a moment neither of them said anything. The silence was charged with everything they hadn't said, all the lost years, all the words that had been trapped in their throats.
"This place should be fine," Uriel murmured, more to himself than to Cassie.
From his hidden storage he took out two teacups, as well as a teapot that he used to fill the cups with hot, delicious tea. The aroma rose into the air, mixing with the perfume of flowers and the distant sound of running water. Uriel organized his thoughts before speaking, aware that what he was about to share would change everything.
"Why didn't you tell us you were alive? Did you plan to hide all this time?" Cassie asked, breaking the silence with a question she had been holding for years.
"Something like that," Uriel murmured under his breath. "Listen, all of this has an explanation."
"Then start explaining from the beginning," Cassie demanded, and her tone allowed no replies.
Uriel sighed, took a sip of his tea, and began to speak.
"It all began after the fall of Antarctica. I traveled to the Dream Realm and appeared falling from an enormous height onto the tomb of the Demon of Terror. After a violent fall where I almost died and fought my way through a myriad of great monsters, I managed to reach the Great River more or less alive."
Uriel began to recount his experience in the Great River with Shade, his battle against the great horrors of the Great River, his encounter with the river's inhabitants, learning about its loop nature, his encounter with Daeron of the Twilight Sea, its inhabitants, the Storm Kingdom, the plan to destroy the River of Time to escape, the construction of the ark to break time, and many more things. He spoke of the creatures he had faced, the allies he had found, the enemies he had defeated. He spoke of moments of despair, instants of hope, impossible decisions he had had to make.
As Cassie listened, her face went through a great many different emotions in a matter of minutes. Surprise. Horror. Fascination. Disbelief. Sadness. Pride. Everything succeeded one after another, like waves in a raging sea.
"Finally we managed to escape with the Night Garden, bringing about twenty million people with me from the great tomb," Uriel finished explaining, and his voice sounded exhausted, as if reliving those memories had cost him immense energy.
Cassie could only finish the rest of her tea. The cup trembled slightly in her hands.
"This is too much information," the blonde woman murmured. "How long did you spend inside the tomb?"
"Time is different inside. Though, not counting the temporal loops, I'd say at least a thousand to two thousand years. Of course, most of that time I spent half asleep, just like many others."
"I understand," Cassie said, though she really didn't understand. How could she understand something like that? How could she comprehend what it meant to spend a thousand years in a place where time had no meaning, where reality was fluid and changing, where death lurked around every corner?
"During all these years that you faked your death, you were establishing the foundation for the new civilization of the river in the Dream Realm," Cassie said, more as a statement than a question.
"Yes, that took me at least about four years to finish everything, and only this year did I have free time. Originally I planned to reveal myself to you after the war between Song and Valor. But apparently that won't be possible now."
Cassie nodded. If the news that Uriel was alive spread, it would cause an enormous uproar in the waking world and in the Dream Realm. In part she understood what he did; it was the best decision he could have made. But the other part of her was upset. Upset because he didn't trust them. Upset because he left them alone. Upset because he carried all the weight by himself, as he always did.
"And now what will you do?" Cassie asked.
"I don't know. The war between Song and Valor is just around the corner, and inevitably I'll have to take a side. It still seems like nonsense to me; Anvil and Ki Song were former members of the same court who now fight to be the sole sovereign of both kingdoms." Uriel felt amusement. "Even Daeron, who was the sole sovereign of his people, was unable to protect them from the great and cursed abominations that ravaged his kingdom, and they believe they can do it."
"Do you doubt they can?"
Uriel looked at Cassie with amusement.
"Cassie, in terms of pure power I'm like a sovereign. I just need to take one last step to reach supremacy without having to resort to a fourth nightmare."
Cassie was surprised.
"Supremacy without the spell? Is that even possible?"
"Yes. Do you want me to tell you the method?"
Cassie nodded.
"You have to perform a feat so great that it breaks the world. This is known as a Challenge. You challenge the world through a feat and claim a part of it. That's how supremacy was achieved before the era of the spell."
"A natural challenge," Cassie murmured.
"It can't be just anything, like killing something stronger. For example, I've fought against abominations that no saint could dream of facing, from great beasts to titans. I even once fought against a cursed terror inside Ariel's tomb in the future."
"What!? You fought against a cursed creature!?"
"Yes, I did. But I won't go into details of how I got to that; you just need to know that I was expelled from the fight. Anyway, going back to what I was saying: even if at the end of the day Anvil or Ki Song survive, the rest of humanity will disappear, leaving at least ten percent. Billions will die at the hands of nightmare creatures."
Cassie looked at Uriel, and in her eyes there was renewed determination.
"So, what will you do?"
"I could kill both sovereigns, become one and create new sovereigns, and strengthen humanity," he responded simply. "Of course, first Nephis's uncles need to disappear from the map."
"If that's the case, then it's better that we all gather, everyone from the court."
Cassie fell silent, using her ability to transmit her thoughts to the others and summon them to meet in the waking world. After receiving confirmation, Cassie looked at Uriel.
"We'll meet this afternoon at the Immortal Flame clan mansion," she said calmly. "I told them I'd bring someone, though they don't know it's you."
Uriel sighed but nodded. He decided it was a good idea to finish this once and for all, rather than continuing to postpone it.
"Uriel, by the way, are you good at creating memories?"
"Of course, I'm the best of all. Though I can't fabricate anything since I'm short on materials."
"I see, that's a shame then."
"Though I know someone. He's a pretty good friend of mine, and he has a shop. His name is Sin Sol. He's at a shop called the Brilliant Emporium."
Cassie blinked.
"What kind of name is the Brilliant Emporium?"
"I don't know, he has a unique sense for naming things."
A while later, Uriel accompanied Cassie back to her shop, where the saint began to return to Bastion. The afternoon sun tinted the sky in orange and pink tones, and a soft breeze caressed the atmosphere. Cassie stopped and turned toward where Uriel was.
"See you, and don't be late."
"I'll be there. Take care, Cass."
"You too, Asterion," having said those final words, Cassie continued on her way.
Uriel closed his shop door with a slight smile.
"Well, at least she doesn't hate me completely."
With that thought, he decided to prepare some snacks for the afternoon.