LOCATION: LIMINAL VOID — UNSEEN ALTAR
Lucan sleeps—but it's not rest.
The world blinked out.
Not faded.
Not blurred.
Just gone.
Lucan stood in a space where time broke its spine trying to exist. The air wasn't air—it was breath held too long by something vast. Cold mist coiled beneath his feet, and spirals of dark light hovered above him like dying halos.
Then the hum began.
Not sound.
Not voice.
A vibration behind the ribs, shaking marrow loose. Like something ancient remembering your name.
From the fog, it emerged.
Cloaked in the same tattered shroud of shifting shadow. No footsteps, just presence. No face.
But this time—
Two red eyes glowed beneath the hood. Dim. Burning. Watching.
Lucan couldn't move.
Didn't dare.
A voice broke the stillness—not spoken. Imposed.
"You've begun to forget."
Lucan clenched his fists. "No."
"Yes."
"You toy with kindness. You flirt with hope. You stand among broken men and offer them leadership."
A pause. The eyes dimmed.
"You think that makes you strong?"
Lucan stepped forward, jaw locked.
"I'm not your puppet."
"You are sinforged. And yet you bathe in hesitation. So I will remind you."
The air cracked.
Reality inverted.
The Void peeled open.
And Lucan was dragged into memory.
---
LOCATION: ASHVALE CATHEDRAL (ALTAR OF THALOS) — THEN
He saw himself.
Younger. Pale. Eyes dimming beneath ritual glyphs. His blood soaked the altar. His breath came shallow.
Above him—Thalos. Smiling. Praying with hands that had never known mercy.
Lucan shook his head.
"No. Don't—"
"Watch," the god said.
The scene looped.
Thalos leaning in. Lucan choking out a broken sound.
The priests cheering.
"This is what they made of you."
Then—
The scene changed.
Lucan standing in that stone hall years later.
White hair. Burning eyes. Walking through disciples like smoke through straw.
Killing Thalos.
Not cleanly.
Not quickly.
But with purpose. With slow, exacting pain.
Lucan's breath caught.
He remembered the scream. Thalos' eyes—blood-flooded. The Griefburn. The fist driven through his chest.
The look on Lucan's own face.
Not fury.
Not sorrow.
Enjoyment.
He had enjoyed it.
The memory ended.
---
BACK IN THE VOID.
Lucan fell to his knees.
The fog curled around him.
His voice cracked.
"I—he deserved it."
"That is not the point."
The god loomed closer. The red eyes flared, brighter now.
"You enjoyed the death of your maker. You tasted freedom and called it justice. You liked the scream. The fear."
Lucan looked up.
Broken.
Truth bleeding from him like marrow.
"Good," the god said.
And the system surged—
---
[SYSTEM UPDATE: MAJOR TRIGGER — ALIGNMENT RECALIBRATED]
[TIER IV UNLOCKED: APOSTATE ASCENDANT]
[Skill Gained: SOULBRAND]
> You may now brand others as you were branded. Mark them. Break them. Bind them.
[Reminder: SINFORGED must become SINBOUND.]
---
Lucan exhaled.
Not from fear.
From understanding.
---
LOCATION: HOLLOW CREED — ABANDONED ALTAR ROOM (LATER)
Lucan jolted upright.
A rasp tore from his throat—half gasp, half growl. Sweat poured down his back like something was trying to leave his skin. His fists clenched around air. Not to fight.
To feel something.
The shadows around him pulsed once, as if holding breath.
His hands trembled.
Blood.
For a split second, he saw it again—Thalos' blood. On his hands. Hot. Fresh. Impossible.
It coated his palm, thick and red, pooling between his fingers—
He blinked. It was gone.
But the phantom warmth remained, and it liked being there.
Across the room, Jareth sat against the wall—watching.
Still. Tense.
"You muttered in your sleep," he said finally. Voice low. Not mocking this time.
"Another nightmare?"
Lucan's chest rose, then fell.
"I… liked it," he whispered.
Jareth frowned. "Liked what?"
Lucan didn't answer.
Didn't blink.
But his eyes...
They had gone still.
Not cold. Not haunted.
Just wrong.
Like something had been carved out of him—and the thing that filled it smiled.
The silence that followed didn't belong in this world.
And Jareth… felt it.
He looked away.
Lucan didn't.
Not yet.
Not ever again.
---
LOCATION: SHADOWEDGE WOOD – TWILIGHT WATCH POST
Twilight laced the trees in bruised gold. Shadowedge was silent — too silent.
Serin Elowen crouched over a flickering glyph-node, fingers smeared with relay ink. The comm-rune was stabilizing, its pulse syncing faintly with the Hollow Creed's fractured grid. Around her, four scouts moved with quiet precision, ten held the perimeter — barely trained, barely grown, but loyal.
One of them — a jittery boy named Rehn — broke the silence.
"Sometimes I wonder... maybe the Iron Creed's got the right idea. Verrick's offering order. Safety."
No one moved.
Serin didn't glance up.
She just secured the node and whispered:
"You think Verrick offers safety? He offers survival. There's a difference."
The boy flinched. She stood. Faced them.
"Safety is earned. We bleed for it so others don't. Survival? That's just what cowards call surrender."
A beat of silence.
Then—
The air fractured.
Shadow glyphs burst open across the treeline — like glass shattering in the dusk.
Incoming.
Serin spun, blade drawn, eyes flaring with quiet fire.
"Positions. We hold this node or we die for nothing."
---
LOCATION: SHADOWEDGE WOOD – MOMENTS LATER
They came like thunder without rain.
The Iron Creed didn't cloak their approach. No stealth. No warning. Just the brutal crash of boots and steel tearing through underbrush — formation tight, glyphs blazing along their armor.
Chain-sigils. Crimson-banded helms. Eyes hollowed by duty, not madness.
Former kin.
Hollow Creed scouts froze at first sight. Not from fear—but disbelief.
"Iron Creed," one whispered. "They're not supposed to—"
"They wouldn't attack us," another muttered, panic creeping in. "We trained together—some of them…"
But they did.
The first Hollow scout barely raised a weapon before his throat was opened clean by an axe bearing the seal of the Ashen Chain — Verrick's mark.
Serin didn't hesitate.
She ran the killer through with a sweep of her blade.
Another Iron Creed soldier staggered back at the sight—eyes wide, knuckles white on his grip.
"Elowen…" he muttered, like the name itself had teeth. "No one said you were still—"
She didn't let him finish.
Steel flashed once more, and his doubt died with him.
Then she turned on her squad.
"Don't look at the sigils. Look at the swords."
"But—Serin, that's Jeryn—he fought beside us in Gravetide—he—"
"I know who they are," she snapped. "So do they."
Because the Iron Creed weren't hesitating.
They fought like they'd forgotten who bled beside them.
Like the past was a lie they'd already burned.
One by one, Serin's squad collapsed under the disciplined slaughter. It wasn't chaos — it was execution. Every move the Iron Creed made was sharp, clinical, calculated.
One stabbed his former bunkmate without blinking.
One threw a chain-spear straight through a wounded girl trying to crawl behind cover.
It wasn't vengeance.
It was orders.
And they followed them like scripture.
Serin fought like a wildfire — uncontainable, fueled by every scream around her.
Even wounded, even alone — she moved like she was born for this last stand.
Blood streaked her side. Her arm hung limp. But her voice never cracked.
"Fall back to the node!" she shouted. "I said fall back!"
A blast tore the bark off the relay tree.
One more scout down.
Only two left breathing.
And Serin.
She could've run.
Should've.
But instead, she slashed her palm and carved a final glyph into the air — a flare sigil meant only for dire need.
As her blood struck the core stone, it ignited.
The signal fired.
A streak of red light screamed into the clouds.
A last gasp.
A war cry.
A warning to anyone still listening.
And as another Iron Creed soldier surged toward her — a face she remembered from training days long past — she whispered without malice:
"You forgot who we were."
Then she drove her blade through his heart.
The forest burned with betrayal.
But Serin stood.
Not untouched.
Not unbroken.
But undefeated.
For now.
---
LOCATION: RIDGE ABOVE SHADOWEDGE — MOMENTS LATER
The smoke from the forest curled up the slope like fingers reaching for breath.
High above the battlefield, someone watched from the rocks.
Still.
Silent.
Cloaked in gray and shadow.
They'd been there before the first blade was drawn. Watched the scouts die. Watched Serin stand. Watched the flare rise into the sky like a cry no god would answer.
They didn't flinch.
Didn't speak.
Just stepped forward, the cloak parting like dusk around a blade.
Below, an Iron Creed soldier raised his axe to finish Serin off from behind.
He never got the chance.
A blur dropped from the ridge — faster than the eye, quieter than breath.
Steel flashed.
The soldier's head dropped before his body even realized it was dead.
Serin spun.
Stopped.
Recognized the shape in the smoke.
No words.
Just a look.
Sharp. Familiar. Heavy with ghosts.
The figure stood fully now, Voidsteel blade drawn, face half-lit by dying firelight.
And for the first time since she vanished…
Rivenna was back.