Allen awoke to silence.
A dim, sterile light poured across smooth white walls, a perfect cube with no doors, no windows, no seams. The air was cold and dry, heavy with something he couldn't name not despair, not fear, but a stillness that felt wrong.
He pressed his palm against the wall. Solid. No vibration. No give. It felt less like stone, more like reality itself had been carved into a cell.
He sat back, breathing slowly, mind racing. He hated waiting. He hated not knowing.
And then he heard the footsteps. Slow. Measured. Heavy enough to echo where echoes shouldn't exist.
A man stepped out of the far wall as though it were smoke tall, armored in gleaming silver traced with black filigree, his helmet in one hand, his expression carved from stone. His eyes, pale and sharp as knives, regarded Allen like one would study a storm: with respect, and with caution.
"I owe you an apology," the knight said, voice deep and steady. "I should have introduced myself earlier."
Allen stood, muscles tensed. "You think?"
The knight bowed his head slightly. "Sir Orthus Vale."
Allen narrowed his eyes. "Why are you doing this?"
Orthus let out a quiet breath, almost a sigh. "Because Ikki is gone. And I will not follow no one. My loyalty belonged to him alone not to thrones, not to kingdoms, not to hollow crowns." His gaze hardened. "Without him, nothing remains worth obeying."
The words dug under Allen's skin, lighting something raw. "You" He stepped forward, fists trembling. "You're betraying him. After everything he"
Allen lunged.
Orthus didn't move. A flick of his wrist, a single shift of weight, and Allen was on the ground, staring up at the ceiling, the world spinning. He hadn't even seen the blow.
"Calm yourself," Orthus said quietly. "I am not your enemy. Not yet. But you should understand why you are here."
Allen grit his teeth. "Then talk."
The knight studied him for a long moment. His voice softened, just a little. "I once believed only in power. Strength ruled all. But Ikki made me see… something beyond strength. Before I could understand it fully, he vanished. And now I am left with questions and with a truth you deserve to know."
He stepped closer. "Do you know Ikki's true name?"
Allen blinked, confused. "…Ikki's true name? No. I never thought about it."
"His name," Orthus said, "is Ikki Asvarn."
Allen frowned. "I've never heard that name."
"Because it does not exist," Orthus replied. "Or rather it should never have existed. 'Asvarn' is a word from a language long dead. Some call it the King's Tongue. Others, the Fallen God Language. It means…" He paused. "…weakness."
Allen felt the word like a shard of ice. "Weakness?"
Orthus nodded. "Your brother's bloodline is cursed. Every Asvarn shares the same truth: they are the weakest. Not in skill, nor in courage but in what sustains them. The more they use their SERRA, the more they lose it. Permanently."
Allen stared. "I… I don't understand."
The knight's eyes sharpened. "Listen carefully. Imagine Ikki's full power every thread of his SERRA, his life energy is one thousand points. If, in battle, he spends seven hundred, he is left with three hundred. Those seven hundred do not return. Not overnight. Not over weeks. Not ever. He must train again to rebuild them inch by inch, drop by drop. A process that takes months, sometimes years. And every battle shortens the span of his life."
Allen felt the floor tilt beneath him. His chest tightened as the truth settled like lead. "All this time… He was fighting like that? Losing himself piece by piece?"
Orthus's voice was quiet now, almost reverent. "It is unfair. It is cruel. And it is only the beginning."
Allen's eyes snapped up. "What do you mean?"
A shadow crossed Orthus's face the first flicker of something like fear. "The loss of SERRA is not Asvarn's greatest weakness."
Allen's mouth went dry. "Then what is?"
"You will face it now," Orthus said simply.
Allen stepped back. "What are you talking about?"
But the knight was already reaching for him. A gauntleted hand clamped around Allen's wrist, dragging him toward the far wall.
"Even if you are Ikki's brother," Orthus said, his voice cold again, "it changes nothing. The shadow awaits."
"The what?"
"The Asvarn Shadow," Orthus replied. "No one has ever defeated it. Two came close. One destroyed it. Ikki was that one. He proved to me there was something beyond strength. But now… you will prove it, or you will die."
They stepped through the wall, and the world changed.
The white void gave way to a cavernous abyss a hollow sphere of black stone and screaming wind, at its center a pit of darkness so deep it swallowed sound itself.
Orthus stopped at the edge. "You seek the Keys. One of them lies below. But it is in the hand of a god."
He looked at Allen not cruelly, but like a man watching someone step onto a battlefield they could not yet comprehend.
"Good luck," Orthus said, and shoved him into the dark.
Allen fell.
No scream left his throat the wind tore it away. He braced for stone, for fire, for pain. None came.
Instead, when he opened his eyes, he stood unharmed.
The sky above was black and broken, cracked like glass. He was standing in what remained of a grand castle spires shattered, windows torn open, the floor strewn with fragments of a throne that had once ruled something great.
The silence was suffocating. The air felt heavy with centuries of rage.
And then, a sound a faint scrape of metal against stone.
Allen turned.
A knight stood beside the throne, unmoving, a sword planted before him like a gravestone marker. His armor was ancient, the steel warped and blackened by time, yet the presence radiating from him was unmistakable: not just strength, but divinity twisted into something cruel.
The knight's helm tilted slightly, as if acknowledging Allen's arrival.
For a heartbeat, neither moved.
Allen's heart thundered. His fists clenched. The air itself seemed to whisper a warning: You are not meant to be here.
And yet, here he was.