The sky had darkened, taking on the same bruised red of dawn before sunrise. Pillars and monoliths rose along the road, each spire glowing from amber to gold and then to vermilion. The dark grey metal felt familiar, foreboding, oppressive. Something was wrong.
The structure had absorbed his stockpile of power and copied every piece of data he possessed. It wore his armor now, powered by his energy. He tested the theory. Muscles tensing, he raised his arm. Cyan energy gathered in his palm and flared toward amber. The spires answered.
A force pressed down into the soles of his feet. His eyes flared vermilion. He was yanked forward, dragged against his will toward the center of the region. At the heart of the ruins stood a massive construct like a mechanical coliseum. Sweat beaded at his brow as the structure guided him to its entrance. The doors opened.
He entered a chamber that felt regal and solemn. Dim light pooled from hexagonal panels in the vaulted ceiling. A raised ledge loomed ahead. He wrested control of his body back and looked around. This was the first chamber, the first break in the structure. Shadows pooled in its corners.
At the room's center, on a podium, a statue stood shrouded in an adorned cloak. Around the figure, murals carved into the massive walls told a trilogy of stories. Each panel moved like a memory played across stone.
The first depicted a creator watching over his work, only to be shattered by the very things he had made. His creation rose in corruption and destroyed all he built. Two of his progeny remained loyal, one fallen god replaced by the Tribunals.
The second showed a man who had lost everything to the gods who rebelled against their maker. He suffered, then stole the power to trespass into their realm. He returned after razing the world, slaughtering three of the twelve Heralds — Power, Perception, and Evolution. In the end he was ambushed by weapons forged to stop him: the Soulborne, two entities, male and female, created to combat the super adaptable being called the Axate. That being, Akumo, was split into twelve beasts at the cost of the Soulborne's souls.
The third mural unsettled him the most. It showed a horned entity spawned from Akumo in its final moments, collecting power. In a gestation pod a child seemed to grow, but the rest of the mural was blank. That alone was strange. What made it stranger was what happened next. The image began to glitch.
The statue of the priest vanished from his sight. For an instant nothing was there. Then pain hit like a hammer. Mind-numbing, soul-searing pain scorched through him. Sparks danced across stone and air. A hundred meters away the priest stood, robes billowing in a wind that was not natural. Its eyes flashed purple, then crimson, then a void-black corruption. Its exposed palm was ornate and streaked with blood.
In the priest's hand writhed an artificial vertebra. Its metallic spokes moved with a life of their own. With a single slow exhale the object reacted, and Arc felt the implant's influence peel away.
Suppressed memories slammed into him. Torture. Endless small cruelties. Emotions he had buried roared up and filled him. The practiced apathy fractured. He panicked. He understood then with cold clarity that he might die here. Everything he had been was a lie.
His body reacted on reflex. Wounds snapped closed as a thin cyan aura leaked from his skin. He charged. His hand armored over in silver as he hurled himself forward at top speed, voice gone raw with strain. The priest intoned words in an ancient tongue. Each line struck him in places words were not meant to reach.
The priest's declaration rolled through the chamber, slow and terrible.
"Noirwraith, reaper of identities and power. Your time has come. Judgment for your perversion of the laws of our reality and for its exploitation. You are an anomaly to be extinguished. You stand accused for your crimes.
Just as Lord Jura was eradicated, so shall you be made to perish. Just as Akumo, usurper of the Axate, faced loss, so shall you lose. Just as those you killed despaired, you will taste despair.
Fall!"
The word crashed through him like a physical thing. The chamber seemed to lean as gravity rearranged itself. Bones in his body sang with the pressure of the command. He hit the ground hard, the world tilting, and everything went into motion.