assistirfilmes Chapter 308 306: Death to the King
Chapter 308 306: Death to the King
Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Arthur Leywin
Bairon rocketed away from me, his body spinning as electricity jumped from his skin. Lightning leapt from him, singing the cobblestones before his body dug a furrow in the rock. He slid through the stones for several yards before he finally stopped, sparking like a defunct motor.
I ignored him for now.
I knelt in the rain, threading my hand through Tess' hair, brushing out a few chips of stone and debris that coated her gunmetal gray. Though my touch was gentle, it did not match the cold fury I felt building inside.
Tess raised a shaking hand, her fingers trembling as they clutched my wrist. She looked like she'd personally been dunked in a hurricane. Her uniform was tattered, burned, electrified, and then soaked through, but despite it all, she still managed to maintain a sort of exhausted elegance as she sank into my arm.
"Took you long enough, idiot," she said, tiredly. A strained smile stretched across her lips. "You pick the best times to show up."
The entirety of the street was quiet, save for the crashing rain and ominous rumble of the unfolding spatial ritual. I could feel it, see it as weaves of infinite purple tied the world into knots that tore themselves apart in an increasing wave. The lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Dicathians fueled the growing fire of Agrona's ritual, and the effects were painfully clear to my aetheric senses.
Toren drifted down from the sky a moment later. His hair was a burning, vibrant red that pulsed in time with the feathered runes adorning his physique. An armor of glittering crystal mana refracted the constant streams of light that shone in the skies, bathing him in a warm, otherworldly glow.
He clenched his fists as he stared at the expanding dome of breaking space. Those burning pits widened in horror and comprehension as the lifeforces of countless people carried the ambient mana toward one violent crescendo.
The world flowed inward toward a concentrated point. It reminded me of a mana core, in a way, if a mana core were made of haunted souls and bloodstained weeping.
"This is what he meant," Toren said quietly. "This is what he tried to distract you from. The death and the slaughter… All for this."
Sylvie—in her human form—knelt by Tess, her amber eyes grave and focused. She pressed a soulfire-coated hand to my childhood friend's back. Cleansing aether particles danced amidst the blackened red of her Vritra arts, the combined effect washing away the many wounds across the elven princess' body.
And through it all, Cadell Vritra watched. His gravestone face showed no emotion, and his countenance was smooth as polished marble. But his eyes. Those pits of red burned as they focused on me, memories of my earliest days on this continent threatening to pierce my composure.
Memories of Sylvia, caring for me and calling me grandson. Memories of one moment of time stolen from the world, where a dragon too good for her Fate entrusted me with her daughter and her Will.
Bairon rose slowly from where he'd been struck, snarling in anger, but the other two Alacryans drew more of my attention.
The red-haired one took a hesitant, slightly fearful step back as she looked at Toren, her eyes wide with surprise as they darted between my kneeling form and the lingering scion of the Asclepius Clan. "Spellsong?" she asked, confused. "What is the meaning of this? Why are you with—"
It was only after Toren's hand snapped outward in a blur, a gauntlet of shrouded light clenching into a fist, that I realized someone else had started to move. The purple-haired Scythe had turned, barely in the process of fleeing, before a shimmer of white fuzzed around her throat.
A scream of terror choked off before it even had time to sound. I heard grinding flesh and exhaled air. Toren's eyes remained fixed on the growing swell of the ritual magic, even as the ambient mana bent from his telekinesis.
Viessa Vritra's single remaining arm clawed at her throat as she fell to her knees. She looked like a terrified doll, her eyes bugging out of her head like an insect's as her fingers clawed at nothing. It was as if she forgot to even use any sort of magic as she struggled futilely.
"We'll fulfill that promise we made you, Scythe of Truacia," Toren's voice echoed out, smooth and graceful in its nestled tones. I could feel the heat of his power along my acclorite-infused body, sweat beading on my skin as Sylvie continued her work. "Until then, you shall wait."
Cadell's face slowly split into a smirk as his eyes goaded Spellsong. "Magnificent, is it not?" he said, sweeping a gauntleted hand behind him. "Our High Sovereign can turn anything to his ends. Any defeat and any loss can all be made into something worthy of the gods. Wouldn't you agree? An array that directs both heartfire and mana… Something so great could only be achieved by one who knew the intricacies of the world."
The Scythe's gauntleted hand slowly closed. "Kezess Indrath, Ruler of Epheotus, believes that his kingdom is safe from the grip of the Lord of the Vritra. The Dragon has thought himself above contempt, forgetting the mortality of his land. For as he sees it, it is veiled, masked by aetheric spellwork that forbids entry to all but those he trusts. But soon, that will change."
The dots slowly began to connect inside my head as Cadell spoke. And I could feel it in the aether, too. This gathering spell… It would bring all the power and energy it could to bear, before driving it like a spike through to the distant land of the gods. After all, the barrier between dimensions was weaker here, with an aetheric city floating in the sky.
"There will only be war," Sylvie's voice trembled across our mental link. "Unending war. If the connection to Epheotus is torn apart… Then nothing will spare the people of Dicathen from asuran bloodshed. If Epheotus is sundered, my grandfather's forces will burn everything to the ground."
Visions of the massacres across Sapin flashed through my mind, but on a world-ending scale. Legends told of continents sinking in the wake of asuran warfare. And if Agrona suddenly had free access to Kezess' home ground…
Kezess wouldn't allow it. The genocidal tyrant could not let his base of power be threatened. He'd send his armies over Dicathen, turning this land into an inescapable warzone. And if Agrona was willing to take that gambit, that meant he had a power that let him contend with open, asuran warfare.
My pulse rose as I stared down at Tess, coming to a decision. She saw it in my eyes, no words needing to be said. I slowly rose to my feet, lifting my childhood friend, too.
Sylv, I thought sternly, my body loosening as I prepared for what was to come, take her somewhere safe when it starts. Please.
My bond glared daggers at Cadell, a hatred I had never known she possessed warring within her. This Scythe had killed Sylvia, her mother. But all the same, she wrapped an arm under Tessia's, the two sharing a bond nearly as deep as mine.
Toren's head cocked like a curious bird as Cadell's declaration washed over us. All the while, he had never stopped enforcing his will over the ambient mana, keeping the terrified Viessa in a choking telekinetic grip.
His lips pulled back into a sneer that seemed both remarkably out of character, yet simultaneously made perfect sense. In his voice, I recognized the familiar melody of Aurora Asclepius' melodic intonations. "This ritual is of the phoenix, Hand of Agrona. It is crafted of a firebird's insight and an Inverted piece," he hissed. "These are parts more of us than of your petty Sovereign. We will unmake it."
Bairon had reached his feet, lightning arcing out of him as he glared balefully at me with eyes that could kill. Part of me was reminded of when I had arrived upon the fields of Xyrus Academy during the Alacryan attack, witnessing Tess' battered body as Lucas taunted me.
But even the lord of thunder froze as a baleful aura seeped from the creases and gaps in Cadell Vritra's armor. Like a thousand bony hands thrusting from shadows, I could feel the weight of untold malice creeping from the dark, trying to wrap their hands around my body and soul.
Ever since Toren and I had arrived via his dying tempus warp, all I could see was impossible vibrancy. More mana than I could even comprehend painted the sky the color of a dying sunset as it glinted through the purples of flowing aether. Red and green and blue and yellow created threads of impossible light that nearly distracted me from the unfolding horror.
Cadell took one step forward, and the mana turned black. His presence ripped the life and potential of every single mote of ambient mana that brushed close to him, leaving them dead and decayed. His gauntleted footsteps echoed out even amidst the thunderstorm. His horns glinted darkly in contrast to his long, bone-white hair, drawing a chill from the depths of my core.
"Aurora Asclepius," he said with a sneer, "I have heard much of your powers. You have even managed to make something of your bonded lesser. It's time that growth was put to the metal. Do you think you can protect this son of yours from my blade? Already, your Hearth will burn. It is only natural you are next."
Searing white mist rose off of Toren's crystalline armor as the rain struck it. Flames popped into existence around his shrouded talons as he rose to the bait. I exhaled a breath as I saw the mage tense, his eyes widening in tempered rage. Cadell had struck a nerve in the enmeshed duo of mother and son. His fingers twitched, and Viessa whimpered.
What was it that Rinia said, not long ago? I asked myself, remembering her rickety words.The most dangerous enemy isn't the one on the throne leading the forces, but the soldier with nothing to lose.
That warning was not for Dicathen. It was for Agrona. And here Toren was, the prophesied soldier, the potential to unmake this terrible ritual seared into his very blood.
I stepped forward, leaving Tess with Sylv. My King's Force interceded between the roaring star and the cold march of death, all four elements pulsing with aether as I professed my will.
Toren's churning eyes zeroed in on me, and I once again felt those rising questions in my chest. How had he observed me? What was this mage, who had reincarnated from a distant Earth? How was I supposed to think of him now, when he knew all of my deepest experiences in a way no others but Sylvie could comprehend?
But right now, as Dawn's Ballad shimmered into existence in my hand and Regis' hazy outline cemented itself at my side, I knew that none of that mattered.
"He wants to fight you, Toren," I said evenly, adopting the cold mantle of Grey. "That means Agrona wants him to fight you: and that means you cannot."
The air pulsed. The ritual not far from us was a beating heart, slowly gorging on the stolen life of those I had failed. With every pulse, it drank greedily. Boom boom. Boom boom. Boom boom.
But as I stared up at the cold eyes of the first true threat I had ever faced in this world, the one that had denied me a life where I could enjoy peace with my loved ones, I found that my pulse was even. It was steady and confident in my chest as my gloved hands clenched around Dawn's Ballad.
I
Cadell couldn't have dodged that. With the speed of the spell, his position in the air, and the sheer volume of mana and aether within… he couldn't have just turned part of his body into soulfire like he did before. I had landed my first sure hit of this fight.
But then the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I had been charged with enough lightning to keep an Earthen city powered for a week a moment ago, but I hadn't felt… this. This rising sense of dread. This wasn't from lingering lightning in the air.
My heart skipped a beat as a presence drifted up from the earth.
Thunder rumbled ominously as I stared with rising horror at the charred sinkhole I'd turned into a glass floor. Because rising out of it—in slow, steady waves gradually growing—was soulfire. More and more and more soulfire burned in that pit, like a layer of hell all to itself. Those flames hurled silent tongues high, the particles of black-red deviant mana devouring even the dust.
"You misunderstand me, lesser," Cadell's voice echoed from that growing inferno. "I will show you."
He ascended like a demon from the depths of hell.
Cadell's skin was blackened and burned in a dozen places. His armor sparked and jumped with lingering electricity as his hair flowed behind him. He was wounded.
"Do you think you are the first to weep to me of their Sylvia?" he hissed. "Do you think you are the first to whine about how special the one I slew was?"
As I looked on in horror, his flesh began to mend in seconds, the damage I'd fought so hard to give him vanishing into nothingness. Cracked wounds reknit in tongues of healing hellfire, erasing all my progress.
"I have slain countless Sylvias, and every single Arthur Leywin that has sought their vengeance afterward. I wanted… more from you. I wanted King Grey. But you have disappointed me."
And then Cadell's entire body broke apart as a swell of mana erupted from him. I only had a single moment, a split instant of terrible realization as a storm of soulfire and void wind meshed with the air around me.
Cadell had never needed to change only parts of his body to soulfire. Because as his mana signature dispersed into the winds, I knew with rising terror that he'd somehow melded with the atmosphere itself. He hadn't just turned his flesh to soulfire, but void wind as well.
On horrified instinct, I concentrated mana from my core once more, dipping into water and earthborne as I sensed the utter tide of power stretching toward me. The aether haltingly obeyed my pleas as a cocoon of ice and earth coalesced around me, thicker than an iron hyrax's armor. I lost sight of the world as a celestial shell of glimmering purple, blue, and brown blocked out the light.
But I could sense what was happening outside as the weight of the atmosphere slammed into my shell. Soulfire tore at my defenses and shards of blood iron peppered my last refuge. The impacts rattled through the plates. I exhaled icy mist as I pulled myself inward, curling up to better concentrate my protections around me.
Within my head, I was trying to think of what I could do next. Anything I could do next. I could suddenly sense Sylvie's rising panic at Cadell's swelling mana signature, fearing as it battered my hovering sphere of condensed ice and earth.
He can't just keep doing this! I thought hazily, sensing as more and more power assaulted my protective cocoon. He'll run out of mana eventually! He has to!
I intuitively felt it when Cadell's nebulous form—made intangible and untouchable as it howled around me, assaulting me with an endless barrage of metal and anger—coalesced in front of the sphere once more.
"King Grey is dead," his contemptuous voice seeped through the growing cracks in my prison, "and in his place, I have to fight… this."
And then the flat of his blade slammed into my celestial shell with enough force to level a city block. My defensive measures shattered like glass, ice and stone left to the wind. I hurtled violently down toward the streets far below, the remnants of my sphere dissipating around me.
High above, Cadell had become one with the storm, a black smog of fire and grave-still decay misting through the thunder. A dozen spikes of blood iron hurtled down, each of them larger than a telephone pole, all tipped with soulfire and accelerated along gusts of grave wind. The breath of a thousand corpses screamed their fury toward me.
I resisted the urge to shake and tremble as I hit the ground, automatically conjuring pathways of ice along the streets. I skated backward, using gusts of wind to increase my momentum as I desperately dodged each spear. Dawn's Ballad flashed as I worked through sword arts I'd learned a lifetime ago, trusting in the Water and Wind forms to redirect and see me safe.
I blurred backward along the streets. Spines of oily black followed me, appearing like the quills of a raging porcupine as I barely avoided death by the skin of my teeth. My mana core ached from overuse as I struggled to think of what to do next.
As I raced through the cobblestone byways, trying to think of a plan, I caught sight of someone. A few people.
I squinted through the haze of my battle frenzy, noting… Was that Blaine?! And Kathyln, too, in the distance with a hundred others. They were shouting and screaming, trying to order their soldiers to—
I ducked, barely avoiding a slice of Cadell's sword as it whistled through the air right where my head used to be. My limbs screamed in exhaustion as I whirled with the perfect precision of a ballet dancer, cutting upward toward the demonic shadow at my back.
I could only see two black-red rubies in the cloud of wind and fire. Two pits of infernal scarlet blazed with hatred as my purple blade phased harmlessly through the air.
A gauntleted hand appeared from that fog, gripping my wrist. I tried to reorient, kicking upward toward those eyes in desperation.
Instead, Cadell slammed me to the ground, a crater larger than a house opening beneath my water-wind body. I coughed up blood, my forms abandoning me in that instant.
I blinked, trying to make sense of what was up and what was down as I knelt in that crater, my fingers still clutching Dawn's Ballad. Blood streamed from me as soulfire wormed its way along my mana channels, my acclorite-infused physique battling the foreign influence.
"And just like every Arthur Leywin I've fought, it ends like this. With you kneeling broken at my feet," Cadell hissed above me. "And all who worship you—all who thought you might shelter them from the truth—they can do naught but watch. You have failed them all, Lesser King."
I blinked through the pain, looking up at the monster as he loomed over me. At the edges of the crater, a hundred familiar faces stared down in horror and fear. Blaine… Kathyln… Alanis, the Chaffers, Trodius, and more. The Castle's response team.
They trust me, I thought through the haze. They trust their king. They need me. They need me to be strong. To… protect them all. That's why I took the crown. To keep them safe.
Regis stood silently at Cadell's side. Just… watching. The mask of King Grey stared down at me, separate and distant. I didn't know if he cared. I didn't know if he wanted anything different.
Cadell turned his head, his neck creaking like millennia old wood as he observed the spectators. "You thought you could set yourself up as a king among men, Leywin," he muttered dismissively. "My master wanted to see what you would become, to see if you lessers truly had any potential."
I could hear Sylvie's sudden terror across my bond, but even that was hazy. Blinking past my pain, I gripped Dawn's Ballad again. I forced myself up, trying to cut at the monster in front of me.
It was sloppy. Cadell didn't even bother dodging, just letting the attack mist through him ineffectually. When my cut reached its apex, his gauntleted hand reached out, wrapping my wrist in a crushing grip.
In his other hand, he planted that midnight lance. "I will make a show of ending you," he sneered. "For daring to disrupt Agrona's plans. For killing the little wretch, Nico. For disappointing me. I'll make it slow and brutal, so that none will ever make such mistakes again."
And then the shard of folded night sky elongated, surging forward. It pierced my right palm, forcing Dawn's Ballad to dissipate, before streaking up into the sky. It grew and grew and grew, enlarging as it gored through my sword hand. I screamed in pain as I arced through the sky, dangling from a limp hand.
I stopped before I thought I should have, the lance thunking into something solid. I jolted to a halt, my head cracking painfully against whatever I'd hit.
A tree, I realized vaguely. A massive tree, one I'd just barely been aware of before, towering over nearly everything in Xyrus. And I was pinned to its trunk like a fly to a dartboard as the lance continued to expand. The end of the weapon stayed planted in that distant crater as it pushed deeper and deeper into the mighty oak.
Cadell hurtled toward me, a flare of white hair and grim purpose. I conjured Dawn's Ballad again in my left hand, swiping it at the lance pinning my hand. My violet blade—which had never failed to cut anything before—phased harmlessly past the midnight lance.
As the monster reached me, wreathed in fire and wind, I made a split-second decision. I swept my blade across my own wrist, severing my sword hand. I fell, just before Cadell's knee created a crater in the oak where my head used to be. If that had struck me, my skull would have popped like a watermelon.
The agony of my severed wrist was distant as I fitfully called on my emptying mana core. Sweat and blood and rain soaked me to my very bones as I stumbled backward along the trunk of the massive tree, trying to think of what to do next.
"A swordsman without his right hand," Cadell sneered, rising as he stood perpendicular to the massive tree. In his grip was my severed, mutilated hand, which he inspected with apathetic disdain. With dull hesitance, he plucked something from one of the fingers.
I didn't think I could feel more terror, but as the creature withdrew a single item from my dimension ring, I felt whatever surety I had left in my soul wither and die.
A scepter gleamed there, gilded in silver and gold. Aether and mana danced around it in equal tune, a strange complement to the swelling ritual in the distance.
The Lance Scepter. The symbol asuran authority that had allowed me to reassign and control the effects of the Lance Artifacts at will.
I rushed forward in a roar, trailing blood and fury as my sword flashed. I couldn't let this monster have it. He'd have Aya, Mica, and Varay under his control. He'd have Tess under his control.
Cadell sidestepped with a contemptuous snort, before swinging the scepter at me like a bludgeon.
It smashed into my chest, cracking bone and spraying blood. I was pressed into the tree as agony tore through my sternum, my core shuddering as my consciousness flickered in and out.
"Papa!" someone screamed. "Papa, I'm—"
Cadell swung the scepter again, and I was embedded deeper into the wood. I screamed in pain, blood flowing into the grooves.
Cadell stared at me, Regis at his side. I thought I could feel their joint disdain digging into my soul as I felt my life's blood slowly drain away. "A fitting end, Lesser King."
Then his boot slammed into my chest, and I shot through the innards of the tree.
My vision went black for a moment as I hit some sort of ground, agony and rippling fire professing their dominion over every inch of my body. I laid still for a long, long time.
But a single terrified voice pierced every inch of pain and agony with more efficiency than any lance Cadell could muster.
"Art?!"
My eyes snapped open as I heard Alice's voice—my mother's voice. And it was so close.
I was in a hollow of corded branches and vines, like a nest-hollow crafted within a powerful oak.
My family—they were here. Somehow, they were here, at the heart of this massive tree. Huddled against the far wall, Dad stood protectively in front of my mother. There were a couple of others, too, but I didn't see them. Only my mom and dad, quaking in terror as the shadows of my past loomed behind me. My vision was tainted red by a stream of blood.
They shouldn't be here. They're going to die.
My mother pushed past my father, terror in her eyes as she called on her healing mana. She tripped over her skirts, nearly falling over as she reached me.
"No, no," she whispered through horrified tears as she lowered her vivum arts to my flesh. She pulled me close to her, trying to mend my wounds. "No, my baby. You're going to be okay."
"Ahh," Cadell's voice said, smooth and satisfied. "And they are all here."
I turned slowly, my neck creaking as I stared in deepest horror at the demon at the edge of the tree.
Two figures stood stalwart between me and Cadell. Tess, her hair glimmering silver as her mana danced weakly around her, and Sylvie, with soulfire sputtering around her fingers.
No, I thought in terror, visions of a cave fifteen years ago flickering before my mind. No. No no no. Not again. I couldn't watch this happen again, powerless to affect anything.
I tried to pull myself up, but my limbs refused my command. Dad rushed over, putting himself between me and my bond and lover.
"No," I pleaded weakly, tears gathering at the edges of my eyes. Not from the pain. From the fear. "No, please. Run. Run away!"
Cadell's nose wrinkled as he stared contemptuously between Sylv and Tess, his mana receding for a moment within this broken hollow of a tree. The scepter in his grip still dripped with my blood, my severed hand leaking scarlet between his gauntlets.
"And the cycle continues," Cadell said stiffly. His eyes focused on Tess, making her shudder, before slipping toward my bond. "When I tear out the Lesser King's heart, will the two of you come for me in fifteen years, weeping for your Sylvia?"
Sylvie's face shifted, draconic scales pulsing beneath the surface. "You won't take another step forward, monster," she said, her voice tinged with both fear and resolve. "We'll put you down."
Cadell's boot rose as shadows swelled around him, casting the entire hovel in darkness. Black tongues of fire licked at the edges of the opening in the tree. "That is what they have all said."
I demanded my mana to move, for the aether to flow. I begged and pleaded and screamed at my weakening body as my mother's healing arts sank into my flesh, trying in vain to wash away my wounds. I couldn't let it happen again. I couldn't lose everyone again. Not to this monster. Not to his fire. I had promised them all.
Memories of another life flickered behind my eyes as I tried to stand, but I couldn't shift an inch. I was too weak.
I wasn't Grey.
But then something happened that I did not expect. Cadell's boot halted as it was outlined in sudden white, sparkling mana rejecting his presence. His eyes widened the slightest, just at the edges, as something gripped him even as he tried to shift into the atmosphere again.
Then he was ripped from the tree, torn backward by an explosive boom of telekinetic mana. He vanished into the storm, the demon whirling with a snarl to face our looming savior.
I slumped back to the floor as Toren's telekinesis ripped Cadell from the hole in the tree, a mirrored emptiness taking its place in my chest.
Sylvie whirled on her feet immediately, her worry piercing the haze of my thoughts. My draconic bond rushed over, her aether arts sputtering across her fingers as she stumbled to my body in a near-perfect mirror of my mother. I felt the familiar healing balm washing over my body, soothing aches and pains I didn't know existed.
Tess didn't move yet, still nervously staring at the place Toren had torn Cadell. The sounds of their battle echoed through the sky, sending shivers through the tree.
"Arthur," Sylv said quickly, "we need to get you out of here. We'll get you healed, then we're going to retreat. Spellsong can deal with Cadell."
Dad stumbled back toward me, kneeling at my side. He didn't say anything, just held my mother's hand as she slowly began to work in tandem with my bond's aetheric arts. His eyes were a swirling mix of horror and worry as he looked at the ruin of my form.
Mom bit her lip, her eyes shaking as she helped wash away the brutalities that had assaulted me.
And watching it all was Regis, separate and alone. That was what Sylvia had always wanted for me, right? For Arthur to have a life without Grey?
For some reason, despite it all, that made me laugh. I laughed, tears dripping from my eyes as the warmth of my loved ones made me feel safe, like a child in the womb. Tess and Mom and Dad and Sylv were all here, holding me and loving me. Even in this darkest hour, I felt so…
So full.
"He can't do it," I said quietly, slowly drawing in energy with mana rotation. The stump of my right hand wasn't fully healed yet, but no longer was I at risk of dying. I stood on shaky legs, balanced by my dad as he wrapped an arm under my shoulder. "Spellsong's not strong enough."
Even from here, the aftershocks of Toren's clashes with Cadell rumbled through the sky. I could hear his battle cry, taste his aether and surety on the wind. But Cadell was greater than Toren, more than him.
Sylv's eyes glistened with tears. She could sense it over our bond, the resolve that still played through every nerve. The understanding of what I needed to do. "No, Arthur. No. You can't. You have people who need you. This isn't like your previous life. You don't need to be Grey anymore."
I don't… need to be Grey anymore? That was what Sylvia had said, wasn't it? In a far-distant past? That was what made her special, wasn't it? Cadell's words seeped over me like hot wax. Sylvia wasn't special, he'd said. She was just a broken dragon, condemned to die in a cave.
But that was so, so very wrong. I'd only spent a few months in that cave with the dying dragon, but the time we'd spent together felt like years. Because, despite my mental age, I'd been able to act like… To just be….
Had Sylvia… ever called me a weapon?
The world fell away as I stared at Regis, something deep in my soul aligning. He stared back, and I thought I understood. He was so alone, set apart from everything that could ever make things right. As I was bathed in the warmth of my loved ones, he was a cold monolith, never given the chance to change.
No. She only ever called me child.
I realized, then, that I had always misunderstood. Sylvia wasn't special because she'd somehow seen the future, or accepted a monster. She was special because she had never seen a monster when she looked at Grey. She'd seen something I'd always missed.
"I'm not just Arthur, Sylv," I said, pushing past my family. For a moment, I left the world behind, memories of all I'd endured these past few months trickling into my head.
How had I been so blind? How had I ignored the truth for so long?
No… I knew why I'd run from it, terrified as I was. I wanted to treat this phantom in front of me as something alien. Something wrong. He was a creature, a weapon ripped from my previous life.
But Sylvia hadn't looked at Grey and seen a weapon. To the wise asura, he was just another broken boy, unable to face the world after losing his mother. For all his monstrosity, he was a child hiding from the dark, fearful of what may come. He wanted to hide behind his mask of logic because it kept him safe. And he was still me.
All along, I'd taken Sylvia's message to mean I should avoid Grey, throw him away and never look back. But Cadell's mocking taunts of how Sylvia was nothing special unlocked a deep-seated truth inside.
Sylvia was special because she had seen the truth so long ago: a truth I could barely hope to grasp at the time.
We can be better, Grey, I thought, reaching out my hand to the phantom of Regis. How many times had I offered my hand in second chances?
Trodius. Bairon. Taci. Nico. I'd given them all the chance to be better, to make something more of what they had around them. Not all of them had followed through, recognizing the beautiful gift of another shot, nor how beautiful it might be, to try again and be better.
But as I offered my hand out to Regis, I felt like everything in my life had led to this moment.
We can have another chance, Grey. You can be something better. You can grow. We can make something better of this world and of our second chance. You don't need to be a child anymore, hiding from all you might feel.
"Not just Arthur," I said, the aether around me dancing, as if listening to a song none could hear. "Grey, too."
And as Regis stared at the offered hand, something in that visage of his cracked. It was slow at first, like faultlines in the earth. But as purple, aetheric light pulsed from beneath the shell, like a star bottled in a cocoon, it began to spread faster and faster. Like shattering glass, more and more cracks spread.
He began to change. Emotionless eyes suddenly blazed golden. Short-cropped hair beneath a crown of dead gold lengthened, gaining a pale, wheat hue. Bland and dull features sharpened into something otherworldly and almost… familiar.
Like a butterfly emerging from the folds of a cocoon, he metamorphosed. With the chance to grow—with the chance to be better—a broken boy could be something more.
Regis hesitantly took my hand, a warm smile contrasting the grim line of his features I had always known.
"It's been so long," he whispered. And this time, it wasn't with Grey's dead voice. It was my voice, raw and choked with emotion. Tears streamed from golden eyes, as if he were feeling every ounce of emotion he'd denied himself for so long. "I've waited so long to hear you ask."
And the world was bathed in light.