Around us, the celebration starts small. Just a few people crying with relief. Then more join in. Soon the whole field is filled with laughter, tears, hugging, and people just staring up at the sky like they've never seen it before.
Which, to be fair, they haven't. Not for a thousand years.
"Look at them," Irene says, watching a group of people dancing around in circles. "They're so happy."
"Yeah." I sit down next to her in the grass.
I didn't just fix their bodies. I resetted their minds too. Back to how they were before the curse hit, before a thousand years of being trapped in monster form drove them completely insane.
Can you imagine remembering every second of that? Being aware while your body did horrible things, while you hurt people, while you couldn't control anything? Yeah, they'd all be basket cases right now if I hadn't wiped that trauma clean.
Instead, they remember their old lives. Their families. Their normal human thoughts and feelings. Like the curse never happened. All they know is that they have been asleep for a thousand years.
Families are finding each other. People who probably thought their loved ones were dead forever. Kids running around playing games they remember from before the curse. Old folks just sitting and talking, catching up on a millennium's worth of missed conversations.
My Pokemon's are with them helping them settle down.
It's beautiful. Really beautiful.
But we're not done yet.
"We need to go back," I say after watching the celebration for a while.
"Back?" Irene looks at me as her face falls. "Oh.Right."
We make our way back to the entrance of the ruins. The passages leading to the deeper city are completely blocked now, tons of stone sealing them off forever. But the upper chamber, where the emperor sleeps, that's still intact.
Valerius's body floats in the pool exactly like we left it. Peaceful. Unchanged.
"So what do we do with him?" Irene asks. Her voice echoes weird in the chamber.
"I don't know." I run my hand through my hair. "Part of me wants to just leave him here. Let him sleep forever."
"But?"
"But that feels like taking the easy way out." I walk closer to the pool's edge. The water doesn't even ripple. "He needs to face what he did. All those people he cursed. All those lives he destroyed."
I know he didn't mean to do it. He thought he was trying to save them when he cast that spell. But what happened was worse. So much worse. Those people were tormented for thousands of years. Trapped in bodies that weren't their own, forced to watch themselves hurt innocent people.
And there were children, too. Kids who never got to grow up. Who spent a millennium as monsters.
That doesn't excuse what he did. Good intentions don't erase a thousand years of suffering.
I reach into the Inventory and I pull out Durandal—the sword that can sever anything. Even concepts. Even magic itself.
Irene takes a step back as golden light ripples around the blade.
I raised and swung Durandal down in a single, clean stroke. toward the shimmering barrier surrounding Valerius.
The barrier doesn't shatter. It doesn't crack or spark or make any dramatic display. It simply stops existing. Like it was never there in the first place. The sudden absence of magical energy leaves my ears ringing.
Valerius falls into the pool, still unconscious. The curse is still in effect as he remains under the curse of eternal sleep.
I raise Durandal again, focusing my thoughts. Not on the man himself. Not on his body or his mind. Just the curse. The magical binding that keeps him trapped in endless slumber. I need to sever only that, nothing more.
The blade gleams with understanding, responding to my intent.
I bring Durandal down in a precise arc, cutting through the invisible threads of magic that bind Valerius to his eternal rest. The blade hums with satisfaction as it severs the curse cleanly, completely. The spell unravels like thread pulled from ancient cloth.
Valerius jerks awake immediately, gasping and flailing in the water. His eyes are wild, unfocused, like he's still caught between dreams and reality. Water splashes everywhere as he struggles to get his bearings.
"Where—what—" His voice is hoarse, barely a whisper. He tries to stand but his legs give out. The man's been asleep for over a thousand years. His body needs time to remember how to work.
Then Valerius finally focuses on me, and I see the exact moment recognition hits. "You succeeded.."
"I fixed your mess." I rest Durandal against my shoulder. "Your people are free. Human again. Happy. No thanks to you."
His mouth opens and closes like a fish. No words come out.
"Do you have any idea what you put them through?" I take a step closer. The water ripples around my boots. "Kids who never got to grow up. Parents who watched themselves hurt other children. People who remembered every second of what their cursed bodies did while they screamed inside their own heads."
"I didn't—I never meant—" Valerius finally manages to get to his feet, though he's shaking like a leaf. ""I was trying to save them. I was trying to protect my people. I thought—"
"You thought wrong." Irene's voice cuts through the chamber like ice. She's moved closer without me noticing, her hand resting on her sword hilt. "A thousand years. A thousand years they suffered because you were too arrogant to consider the consequences."
Valerius goes quiet for a long moment. His eyes drift away from us, staring at something we can't see. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Hollow. Like someone who's carried a weight for so long they've forgotten what it feels like to stand straight.
"Do you think I didn't know?" The words come out barely above a whisper. "Do you think I just slept peacefully all these years? Every transformation. Every hunt. Every innocent person they killed while screaming inside their own minds. I felt their horror, their despair, their rage at what I'd done to them."
The chamber goes dead silent except for the soft drip of water from his clothes.
"A thousand years of watching children I was supposed to protect tear apart other children. A thousand years of seeing my soldiers forced to slaughter innocent people. A thousand years of hearing their voice."
Then Valerius breaks as tears stream down his face
The sob that tears out of him echoes through the chamber. He collapses to his knees in the shallow water, his whole body shaking as a thousand years of guilt and anguish comes pouring out all at once.
"I'm sorry." The words come out broken, ragged. "I'm so sorry. I tried to take it back. Every day, every night, I tried to break the curse. But I couldn't undo what I'd done."
I watch him cry and feel something in my chest loosen. He's not some evil emperor who cursed his people for power or glory. He's just a scared kid who made the worst possible choice at the worst possible time.
Valerius looks up at us, his eyes red and swollen. "You think I don't deserve to die? You're wrong. I've been dying for a thousand years. Every scream, every death, every moment of their suffering—it's been killing me piece by piece."
I watch him shake, watch a thousand years of guilt pour out of the man who doomed his own people. Part of me wants to feel sorry for him. The bigger part of me remembers those kids who spent centuries as monsters.
"You're right," I say, "You should have died a thousand years ago."
Valerius looks up at me, hope flickering in his red-rimmed eyes. Like he wants me to end it right here, right now. Give him the peace he thinks he deserves.
"But here's the thing," I continue, taking another step into the pool. The water barely reaches my ankles, but it feels deeper somehow. Heavier. "Dying is easy. Living with what you've done? That's the hard part."
"You want to make up for what you did?" I ask, my voice echoing off the chamber walls. "Then you're going to spend the rest of your life doing exactly that."
"So here's what's going to happen," I continue, pointing Durandal at his chest. Not threatening, just making sure he's paying attention. "You're going to get up. You're going to walk out of this tomb. And you're going to spend whatever time you have left helping rebuild what your curse destroyed."
"I don't deserve forgiveness," he whispers.
"Good thing I'm not offering it."
I turn away from him, walking back toward the chamber entrance. "Your people are free now. Happy. Starting new lives. But a thousand years is a long time to be away from the world. They're going to need help adjusting. Food, shelter, medicine, education. All the things they missed while they were cursed."
"You want me to help them?" Valerius asks, and there's something like disbelief in his voice.
"I want you to serve them," I correct, not bothering to look back. "Every day for the rest of your miserable life. Maybe some of them will forgive you eventually. Maybe they won't. But either way, you'll know you're actually doing something useful instead of just feeling sorry for yourself."
Behind me, I hear him struggle to his feet. Water drips from his clothes as he stands, and when I finally turn around, he looks smaller somehow. Less like an emperor and more like just another broken man trying to figure out how to keep breathing.
I was about to say something more when I felt it.
Everything stopped.
The water droplets falling from Valerius's clothes hang in the air. Irene's breath forms a frozen cloud. Even the dust stops moving.
Ugh. Not again
Two figures materialize in the chamber. Chronos in his silver robes, beard flowing like sand. Ankhseram, hooded and shifting between existence and nothing.
"Aiden Leonhart," Chronos says. "We need to talk."
Ugh.
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