[POV: Otos Exemplar | Otos: Age 28 | Vanitas: Age 19 | Aretia & Justitia: Age 22]
The scene in the service corridor had not left me since last night.
I stood upon the gallery balcony overlooking the western courtyard, staring into the void. The image of the maid Mira refused to loosen its grip on my mind—that soundless pulverization unlike anything my eyes had ever beheld, and the state of Justitia frozen at the angle of the archway, her eyes nailed to nothingness, the blood utterly drained from her parted lips, her dry sockets incapable of shedding a single tear.
My right hand throbbed with a dull, subterranean heat, the knuckles bruised and aching with every contraction of my fingers, while my shoulder remained stiff and weighed down by the lingering ache of that driving punch I had buried into my brother's jaw only hours ago.
When I had descended to Father's study in a desperate bid to breach this suffocating wall, Motus sat behind what remained of his shattered desk in absolute, unmoving silence. He did not raise his eyes toward me, offering only those dry, curt words that left no room for speech:
"Leave me to myself, Otos... Put on your attire, and go down to the courtyard."
I walked down the stone stairs and stood upon the flagstones of the paved courtyard. And now, the family's grand carriage was descending into the center of the terrace.
A lavish, black-armored carriage of expansive breadth, the family crest engraved in silver upon the burnished steel of its flanks, it hovered above the crushed gravel in absolute stillness without a single part touching the ground, drawn by four hybrid alchemical steeds whose hooves drifted through the air like tongues of condensed fog that bore not the weight of a grain of dust.
Father emerged first.
He wore his heavy fabric armor, striding with deliberate, measured steps toward the open door, and boarded without once glancing back. Mother, Superia, followed him; a sumptuous crimson shawl wrapped tightly about her neck, her knuckles whitening as her fingers clamped around the velvet clasp of her handbag, ascending the step with a rigid spine that sought to conceal the deathly pallor of her cheeks.
Then came Justitia.
Her steps were slow, her thin slippers dragging across the jagged gravel with a hesitant, scraping friction, her eyes pinned to the earth, refusing to rise by so much as a fraction of an inch, as though she dreaded that her gaze might graze a single stone in the courtyard. She climbed in behind Mother with bowed head, like a drifting phantom.
And from the stone colonnade of the gallery, Vanitas emerged.
He wore an elegant black suit, its collar buttoned high to the hollow of his throat, his hands buried in his trouser pockets, advancing with his usual unhurried cadence. Our eyes met, and upon his lips formed a faint, lifeless smile that did not stir a single muscle across his cheeks. He raised his thumb and forefinger, pressing them firmly against his split lower lip, shifting his jaw from side to side—and a sharp, stinging nerve-throb flared through the knuckles of my right hand, violently unearthing the memory of my fist striking his bone the night before.
Vanitas moved past me, walking toward Aretia as she approached with her crisp, rhythmic military stride. He extended his hand to assist her up the step:
"After you, sister."
Aretia stopped dead in her tracks.
She fixed her gaze upon his outstretched palm with hardened, rigid features, then raised her eyes directly into his face:
"Can you not simply take another carriage?"
She did not wait for his answer; lifting the hem of her gown, she mounted the carriage, brushing past his suspended hand.
Vanitas lowered his arm slowly, his frozen smile never wavering, and gestured with his head toward me:
"After you, brother."
I crossed before him and climbed inside.
The cabin was vast, designed with an extended breadth to accommodate the broad shoulders of warriors, upholstered in dark velvet and seasoned, treated leather. Yet the air within felt as though it had turned into a suffocating vapor of mercury, thick with the scent of aged leather polish clashing against the heavy perfume of lavender radiating from Mother's attire.
Father and Mother sat upon the wide front bench; Motus leaned his arm against the window frame, his eyes lost in the far horizon, while Superia sat beside him with a rigid, unyielding spine. Directly opposite, upon the facing seat, the four of us sat shoulder-to-shoulder in a single line: Aretia on the far left by the window; beside her, Justitia, curled inward like a chrysalis, swallowed entirely by her mantle; then myself, my broad shoulders acting as a physical bulwark between my sisters; and to my right, tucked into the corner beside the door... Vanitas.
The door slid shut with the muffled thud of an airtight crypt.
The steeds surged into the air, and the carriage ascended toward the cloud strata. An absolute, oppressive silence fell over the cabin, broken only by the faint, high whistle of the winds rushing past the double crystal glass.
Mother cleared her throat.
She reached out, laying her palm atop Father's hand where it rested upon his knee, and looked across at us all, her voice straining to gather the frayed remnants of maternal composure:
"I believe... this is a good opportunity for us to speak."
She paused for a fleeting breath, adjusting the edge of her crimson shawl with trembling fingers:
"Whatever we have quarreled over... and whatever the future holds for you, my children... you are one family. Perhaps I placed burdens and expectations upon your shoulders, Otos, that exceeded your strength... and perhaps I was neglectful, turning away from you two... but we are a real family. We love one another. This is a warmth I was denied in my youth, something I never had... and so, we must cherish this house all the more."
Beside me, Vanitas shifted in his seat, the fine cloth of his suit rustling faintly against the leather.
His words emerged in an even, flat cadence, completely devoid of resonance:
"There you are again... turning every matter, as always, to revolve entirely around yourself."
Mother's hand snapped back from Father's palm in a dry, reflexive jerk, her eyes widening in motionless shock.
Aretia leaned her upper torso forward past the broad line of my right shoulder, fixing her sight directly upon Vanitas's face, her pupils constricting as the temporal muscles bunched along the corners of her jaw:
"Can you not speak a single kind word for once in your life?"
Vanitas tilted his eyes upward toward the cabin ceiling, his gaze settling upon the silver-threaded embroidery of the stag straining to leap free from its gilded velvet frame. A faint, minute tremor seized the edge of his lower lip:
"I... what I have done..."
"Look into my eyes when you address me!" Aretia cut in with sharp, unyielding command. "You must bear the consequences of your choices. I do not know what madness you are scheming in your head, but I am certain it will bring no joy to any heart sitting in this carriage."
Vanitas turned his head slightly toward me for a fraction of a second, his voice emerging cracked, syllables crowding his throat before tumbling out all at once:
"I offered for you to share in the endeavor with me. If harm befalls you, no blame rests upon me, nor any obligation."
"Share with you?!" The words detonated from Aretia's throat like white-hot flame. "Do you deem yourself an exception above this house, Vanitas? Or do you delude yourself that every cruelty you have tasted grants you the right to become rot devouring us from within? No... you are nothing more than a foolish pawn whose pride will lead nowhere but ruin in a dark alley, dying alone without a soul sparing a glance in your direction... And yet, you dare insolence toward your own mother?!"
Aretia stopped abruptly.
Her tongue locked in her mouth, the remaining syllables dissolving in her throat as Justitia turned her head toward her.
Justitia was staring into Aretia's face with wide, dilated pupils, her features completely stripped of expression, the whites of her eyes stark, cold, and unblinking—a dead stagnation and a fathomless black void reflecting silently in Aretia's gaze. She uttered not a word, but her pale presence turned the air between the seats to ice; it was the look of an eyewitness who had beheld the naked inferno, effortlessly obliterating every shred of moral rhetoric.
Aretia swallowed hard, the sharp edge of her voice shattering, asking in a hushed, fractured whisper:
"Why... must you always insist upon this coldness with her?"
I spoke in an even, firm tone that cut through the whistle of the wind: "Enough, Aretia."
Aretia leaned back against the leather seat, staring out the window, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.
A crushing silence descended upon the cabin, through which nothing could be heard save the rhythm of hushed, hurried breathing.
Father turned slowly. He studied Vanitas's face in extended silence, his eyes narrowing over the deep lines of grief carved between his brows, breathing with a deliberate weight heavier than the fall of mountains. Then, he spoke in a low, warm voice that emerged soft and measured from his broad chest:
"Vanitas... you have never once revealed to us what lies within your breast. You have never told us what it is you truly desire, content always to deflect and cast riddles."
Vanitas remained motionless, his eyelids unblinking.
Father continued, his tone carrying the quiet gravitas of paternity: "That look in your eyes, my son... I never thought I would live to see it in you. But... whatever has transpired, I am beside you. If someone is blackmailing you in the shadows... if someone is exploiting you, clamping their hand around your throat... only tell me."
Beside me, Vanitas's body seized as though struck by an electric charge.
His pupils narrowed, his dark irises vibrating violently, and his voice tore free in a high, fractured scream that pierced the cabin's hush:
"No one blackmails me! And no one has the power to exploit me!"
He clamped his fists onto his thighs until his knuckles turned stark white through his trousers, his voice shaking with fierce intensity as he met his father's eyes:
"This is what I am! Even if you despise the way I look... even if you abhor this face!"
Father answered him in a low, steady voice that did not waver: "Had I walked the path of hatred, I would have cast you beyond the walls of this house long ago... yet I did not. Because you are my son."
Then he leaned his torso slightly forward, locking his gaze into Vanitas's eyes without blinking: "I want you to speak truthfully to me... Why do you wish to marry Aurelia?"
Vanitas's face drained of color, turning the gray of cold ash.
His head snapped back until it struck the leather headrest, and his hands rose violently to claw his fingernails into his temples and forehead, clamping down on his skull as though the bones of his head were splintering from within. Beads of icy sweat broke across his brow, and his words tumbled from between his clutching fingers in fractured gasps, swallowing half his syllables amid ragged breaths:
"Why do you speak to me like this?! Just be silent... all of you, be silent! Leave me alone! I... I will not be able to go on like this!"
Father moved without hesitation.
Motus descended from his seat, dropping to his knees upon the carpeted floor of the cabin before Vanitas. I pulled my legs back, drawing my heavy combat boots inward to yield space for his massive, armored frame.
The shock of the sight seized the very breath from our lungs: the great Lord of the House, the unbending patriarch who had never bowed to any man, kneeling on the floor of the carriage. Superia froze in place, her fingers twisting into the velvet of her purse until the seams strained to rupture; Aretia's mouth fell open in mute disbelief; and Justitia shrank into her corner, clutching her knees to her chest like one bracing against the collapse of a roof.
Father raised his broad, calloused hands and clasped them gently yet with searing warmth around the cold, delicate wrists of his son, drawing his fingers away from his face:
"I am your only father, Vanitas... and you can always speak to me."
Vanitas froze rigid in his seat, his chest heaving like a drowning man grasping for his final gasp of air, his eyes nailed to his father's palms encircling his wrists with suffocating warmth.
And at that exact second, the carriage slowed its ascent, dipping as it brushed the lower currents of landing, and the driver's voice resonated through the brass speaking tube:
"My Lord... we have arrived at the Apex Gate."
With a swift, rotational twist of his wrists, Vanitas exploited the anatomical gap between Father's thumb and forefinger at the precise instant his grip slackened with the driver's voice, wrenching his hands free with a single agile snap.
The sliding side door glided open in the very same heartbeat, admitting the blinding glare and glacial chill of the colossal gateway plaza. Before Father could gather his balance to rise from his knees, and before I could reach out an arm to restrain him, Vanitas slipped out with terrifying grace and was instantly swallowed by the sea of cloaks and the silver armor of the converging host, leaving Father's hands suspended in the freezing void.
We stepped down from the carriage onto the stone terrace.
Father signaled with a stern wave of his hand for Mother, Aretia, and Justitia to remain under the protective cordon of the carriage guard. I advanced beside him until we stood upon the towering rock precipice of the gateway plaza.
The air here was razor-thin and biting, cutting the airway with glacial severity, while an endless sea of white clouds stretched beneath our boots, blanketing the entire mortal world below. Around us, the vast flagstone expanse bustled with the descent of noble carriages, while an entire army of knights in burnished silver armor ringed the basalt path leading toward the inner sanctum of the Apex Gate behind an unbroken perimeter of gleaming spears.
I scanned frantically in every direction, searching through the crowds and the sealed galleries, my heart hammering violently against my ribcage with every ragged breath of thin air.
I turned toward Father: "Father... where is Vanitas?"
Motus remained gazing toward the monolithic steel portals sealed shut at the head of the plaza. He did not turn toward me, nor did an eyelid flutter. A crushing silence settled over him, rivaling the weight of the howling winds around us, before he spoke a single, dry word that dissolved into the screech of the gale:
"He has entered."
I looked toward the steel gates and the legion sealing the horizon behind their shields, through which not even a bird could slip past their helms, and then turned back toward the barren stone.
There was no one there. Only the glacial winds howling against the rocks.
[POV: Vanitas Exemplar — The Apex Sanctum]
One step.
Then another.
The corridor was long and cylindrical, carved from dense, light-and-sound-absorbing basalt; the heel of my boot struck the smooth flagstones without producing the faintest echo. The moment I crossed the threshold, the shriek of the glacial winds outside was severed abruptly, as though a spatial membrane had snapped shut behind my back, isolating the tumult of the entire world.
A sudden, violent spasm wracked my chest, coughing through my throat like the friction of shrapnel. My torso bent, my diaphragm seizing as I spat thick, viscous black blood upon the stone. The dark droplets spilled across the porous basalt, swallowed instantly by its thirsty grain in a fraction of a second, leaving neither sheen nor stain.
I wiped my chin with the back of my sleeve and continued forward into the gloom.
With every stride, the constriction around my mouth slackened. The minute tremor vanished from the edge of my split lower lip, and the taut muscles of my jaw settled into a cold, flat line. My breathing quieted until my chest scarcely rose or fell, and my pupils locked into place, drinking in the shadows without blinking. Layer by layer, the warmth withdrew from the pores of my skin, until my entire face closed into a dead, arctic numbness, stripped of every trace of human expression.
I stopped.
At the terminus of the corridor, an awe-inspiring chamber unfolded before me that no hands of clay could ever have built—a towering, fathomless space that swallowed the sight, its floor paved with pitch-black marble polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the silence of the abyss, its columns soaring upward to dissolve into a dark expanse glittering with suspended motes of energy.
The instant my foot crossed the inner threshold, the shroud of concealment was torn from my flesh beneath the crushing aura of the sanctum.
The illusion sloughed away like pale smoke. Upon my neck, and from beneath the collar of my shirt, the dark alchemical lines of tattoos crawled beneath the skin, climbing my jawline and temples to settle around my eyes in geometric patterns that drank the light.
I raised my eyes toward the dais.
Twenty paces ahead, three stepped stone platforms elevated three immense thrones:
The throne on the right was a colossal mass of dark, molten gold, pulsing with a suffocating radiance that cast sluggish yellow reflections across the black marble. Upon it sat Aurum, Lord of Gold—a being of absolute, eternal stillness, his hair composed of threads of fiery gold harbor-banked embers, his dead, molten-gold eyes unblinking as he rested his chin upon his fist in cold detachment.
In the center, the second throne was an impossible geometric lattice of warped space and suspended particles drifting in zero gravity, emitting chemical blue sparks that flickered across the reflective floor. Upon it sat Aetherium; he appeared as a scholar consumed by obsession, clad in a frayed white linen tunic stained with corrosive solvents that reeked of caustic sulfur and pungent acid, his disheveled white hair floating in the air, his eyes blazing with manic curiosity.
And on the left, the third throne was a massive, monolithic slab cleaved from dark osmium metal, distorting the light along its edges through its unfathomable density. Upon it sat Osmium—a dark-skinned titan, a living boulder clad in an impeccably tailored white military uniform with polished steel buttons, its crisp elegance contrasting with the terrifying crushing force latent within his stone-like features.
Three gods.
Osmium was the first to shatter the silence. His voice rumbled like a crushing millstone grinding against flint:
"How did you enter this place... Vanitas Exemplar?"
I placed my hands in my trouser pockets: "You recognize me? Quite an honor for a boy such as myself."
Aetherium paid no heed to our exchange; he leaned his torso forward within the floating void, his feverish eyes dissecting the tattoos surfacing across my face: "Those matrices... that stable geometric distribution beneath the tissue... extraordinary!"
"Come to the point," Aurum cut in with cold authority, his voice ringing through the chamber like heavy gold ingots clattering within the belly of a stone sarcophagus.
I fixed my gaze upon Aurum, unblinking.
The ring upon my finger flared with a faint glimmer, and within my grasp materialized a cheap, hollow-legged white chair molded from the processed alchemical resin slag that crammed the junk shops of the lower city—a vulgar block of fragile polymer devoid of divine majesty or noble pedigree, its edges marred by rough molding seams, its whiteness faded under the sun of the gutters.
I set it down upon the immaculate black mirror marble, producing the hollow clatter of cheap polymer that echoed between the three thrones, and sat back at ease, crossing one leg over the other:
"I am going to begin it... and you know full well what I mean."
The entire hall compressed in that exact instant.
Without a breath of warning, a crushing pillar of hyper-gravity detonated vertically from Osmium's throne, descending over my position as though the dome of the firmament had collapsed upon the soles of my boots.
The divine black marble groaned beneath the weight with a subterranean rumble without fracturing. The cheap polymer, however, had no defense: with a dry snap, the hollow legs shattered, and the corners of the chair pulverized into bone-like white splinters scattered across the stone in a fraction of a heartbeat.
Yet my body did not plummet to the stone.
The geometric matrices beneath my skin flared with a dark, counter-pulsing repulsion, projecting an opposing vector of lift that neutralized the crushing mass. My frame remained suspended at the exact same spatial coordinates in the air, hovering two spans above the marble, one leg crossed over the other, my back resting against the void.
My ribcage seized and my diaphragm clamped tight under the suffocating pressure. Fine threads of black blood burst from the pores of my face and neck, and a thick, viscous line trickled from my nostrils, trailing over my lip and chin to drip steadily onto the white polymer shards strewn like shattered bones across the mirror of black marble.
Yet my neck did not bend, nor did my expression falter. I looked into Osmium's eyes with a lifeless smile, blood staining my features, my voice emerging compressed, air-starved, and unyielding:
"Do you wish... to play with mass? Even though you know... that if you crush me now, you will wait another thousand years for a madman willing to pay the price of what we are to begin."
A clap.
Aetherium brought his palms together, and the crushing field of gravity vanished instantly.
My shoulders settled with a faint, elastic rebound, and a hot breath vented from my lungs. In that very heartbeat, Aetherium dissolved from his throne, blinking instantaneously through the void to reappear suspended directly before my face. His sudden spatial displacement produced a cold rush of air that whipped the falling thread of blood sideways; barely two finger-widths separated my pupils from his feverish eyes, his breath reeking of sharp acids:
"Enough! The two of you... we are builders and creators by nature, not mere butchers in an arena!"
He tilted his head, rubbing his chin with manic fascination: "That transformation in your flesh... and at only nineteen years of age! How I burn to know what you paid in exchange! I truly hope, once this entire rite has ended, that we might work together in a single alchemical laboratory, Vanitas."
I wiped the blood from my chin with the back of my hand, answering in a dead, flat tone: "With pleasure... if you are still breathing then."
Aetherium cackled sharply: "I will live, without question! I have survived far greater than this. I agree to the commencement; we have stalled long enough."
Osmium's stony rumble cut him short: "I do not agree. I will not place my hand upon a wager guided by a mutilated boy."
Aetherium sighed, drifting backward into the air and glancing to the right: "Then... it rests in your hands, Aurum."
A suffocating hush descended.
Aurum slowly turned his golden eyes toward me—a silent gaze that stripped the soul, weighing the drops of black blood falling upon the marble:
"I agree," Aurum spoke, his voice ringing through the hall like a gold ingot striking hard stone. "However... upon two conditions."
I remained suspended in the void: "Name them."
"First... we shall begin the rite with Aurelia, my daughter."
The frozen mask of my face did not shift: "I anticipated this beforehand, and have already begun making arrangements for it."
"The second condition..." The corner of Aurum's lips curved with an icy smile. "You must wrench the blade from Mugen yourself. We lords shall not descend to the earth to contest that ancient beast whom the earth refuses to swallow."
I raised an eyebrow: "You cast the heaviest task upon me?"
Aetherium waved his wrist in a careless circle in the air: "He guards his steel with blind obstinacy, Vanitas; it will be no leisurely stroll, even for one such as yourself."
"Then... the covenant," I said softly.
I gestured with my hand, and four blank magical scrolls parted the air between us, floating in the void like pristine sheets of parchment.
I scored my palm with my fingernail; a thick drop of black blood welled up like bottomless ink, and I pressed my cold thumbprint onto the first scroll. The parchment drank the viscous fluid, its edges flaring with an obsidian glow.
Aurum raised his index finger, and from its tip flowed molten, incandescent gold; he stamped his mark upon the second scroll, leaving an eternal radiant brand.
Aetherium licked his thumb with phosphorescent blue saliva and pressed it against the third, the parchment absorbing the glowing moisture with a faint alchemical hiss.
Finally, Osmium released a harsh hiss through his teeth: "I shall not sweep the ashes of his ruin when he perishes."
He scratched his stony flesh with his nail, producing a dark red drop of blood glowing like molten iron, and pressed it onto the fourth scroll, searing the parchment with a scorched hiss that released a thin wisp of smoke.
In the span of a single breath, the four contracts flared with multi-colored flames and vanished into the void, sealing the covenant beyond all revocation.
I uncrossed my legs, and my suspended frame drifted vertically downward through two spans of air until the soles of my boots settled firmly upon the freezing black marble. The cold of the stone seeped upward through my boot leather, amidst the shards of white polymer scattered beneath my stride.
I turned my back upon the three thrones and began walking toward the darkness of the corridor without looking back, casting my words over my shoulder in a hollow, lifeless tone:
"I shall see you in the future... as the fourth throne."
I paused for a fraction of a second, then added: "Or... as the only throne."
The shattered white polymer fragments clicked beneath the tread of my boots over the polished marble for a few paces, and then the sound of my footsteps gradually faded, its echo dying completely the moment the darkness of the sound-absorbing basalt corridor swallowed me whole—leaving the shards of cheap polymer lying as an eternal desecration in the heart of the divine chamber, while the sound of my words rang in the silence above the heads of the three gods.