As the chilly unforgiving wind blew on the mountain, Shbriri wait for Tarnished answer but he saw the hesitation in the Tarnished's eyes. Even through the layers of scorched grit and hardened silence, the flicker was unmistakable. It wasn't just doubt—it was something more fragile, something painfully human. A moment of fracture in a soul that had known only steel and fury, rage and ash. The hesitation wasn't loud, but it echoed deep—echoed like the quiet before a landslide. For the first time in a long while, something deep inside him wavered—not from fear, but from the heavy burden of truth beginning to split through belief. The kind of truth that comes not with revelation, but with rot—the slow unraveling of a foundation laid on centuries of illusion.
He remembered Melina's face, still and unreadable. He remembered the burned village where a boy wept not for his family, but for the silence that followed. He remembered how the Golden Order's promises always ended in ash and screaming. These weren't the visions of a rebel. They were the memories of a man who could no longer ignore what he'd seen.
Shabriri tilted his head slightly, his presence more force of will than flesh and blood. He did not grin, nor mock, nor push. His eye glowed with unnatural calm as he spoke—like a flame that knew it had already caught the edge of dry paper.
"You've seen the beasts. You've slain the false gods," Shabriri said, stepping forward with the ease of a shadow slipping into flame. "You have fought, suffered, and survived. But what do you know of the world you fight for? Of the Order you were told to restore? You've seen only the surface. But beneath, the roots rot. The Golden Order is not salvation—it is sediment, hardened by centuries of lies. Lies repeated in scripture, carved into stone, enforced by blade and fire. It is not a law of the cosmos—it is a prison of the mind."
He began to pace slowly, voice gaining weight with every syllable, drawing the air tighter around them. "Tell me—have you seen the unmarked graves left behind by its wars? Graves of entire bloodlines erased for worshipping in the wrong language. Have you heard the silence of tongues cut out for heresy—not because they cursed the gods, but because they questioned them? Have you watched faith wither in a child's eyes because the gods they prayed to never answered? Not once. Not when their families starved, not when their villages were burned in the name of order, not even when they screamed into the night for salvation."
He paused, and in that breathless moment, his voice dropped lower, like a whisper made of knives. "And still the Order asks for more. Still it feeds. And you were ready to feed it. Without ever asking why."
His gaze locked on the Tarnished.
"You were given a purpose. But never the full story. You carry a blade, not because it's just—but because it was handed to you. Given, without question, as if obedience were virtue. But now, you can put it down. You can look. Truly look. Not as a pawn, not even as a hero—but as yourself. And then decide what it is you stand for."
The Tarnished didn't respond. He stood still, but his knuckles tensed around his sword's hilt, not in preparation—but in memory. The weight of battles long past flooded his senses—Limgrave's golden fields marred by blood, the eternal night in Nokron, the shrieking horrors of the Haligtree. And through all of it, he had fought forward. Not because he knew the truth, but because he was told there was one. Told by light. By voices. By fate.
Shabriri's voice coiled through the air again, patient and pressing. "Walk with me no further if you must. Turn your back on me and take the throne you were promised. Fulfill the prophecy handed to you like a relic passed down through blind generations. But before you do—take a detour. Go where no grace lights the path. Walk the shattered veins of this land. See the world not through prophecy, but through its wounds. Through the scars hidden beneath its golden veil. See what the Golden Order truly preserved... and what it destroyed."
He leaned closer, his one remaining eye glowing with unsettling serenity. "Witness it. And then decide whether you still wish to speak with me. Whether you wish to carry this fire, or merely inherit ashes."
The Tarnished did not answer right away. He turned his back to the prophet, jaw clenched tight, and took a few deliberate steps away before halting. Something within him stirred—not the fire, but something quieter and heavier. It wasn't rage or fear or divine duty. It was the lingering ache of choices not yet made, questions not yet faced. He could not walk this path without tying off the last thread that still tethered him to who he had been—who he might still be, if only for a moment longer.
He looked over his shoulder once, as if expecting Shabriri to call him back, to press further. But the prophet said nothing. The silence was permission enough.
Before vanishing into the crimson dusk, he found Melina.
She stood near the edge of the ruin, her back to him, her gaze locked onto the distant silhouette of the Erdtree—no longer radiant, but slumped and scarred, bleeding light into the clouds like a wounded god refusing to fall. The wind tugged at her cloak, her posture rigid, as though bracing herself for something unspoken. Her stillness carried more weight than a battlefield, more final than any farewell. Though she did not move, he could sense she knew he was there, could feel his approach, and had chosen not to turn.
"I need time," he said, his voice low, barely cutting through the silence between them. "There's something I must see with my own eyes. Something outside this throne, outside this fire."
Melina didn't turn. Her shoulders rose with a breath that seemed too heavy for her thin frame. "Then I will wait," she said after a pause. "But not forever." Her voice was soft, but final—like the last line of a forgotten song. The kind of promise that carried both hope and resignation. Her hands remained at her sides, unmoving, but her posture spoke of tension tightly bound, like a bowstring not yet loosed.
He hesitated. Part of him wanted to ask her to come. Another part knew she wouldn't. Perhaps couldn't. There was a distance between them now, built not by malice, but by diverging paths neither could fully bridge. He thought of all they had shared—silent campfires, blood-soaked battlegrounds, brief glances heavy with unspoken meaning—and he realized words could no longer carry the weight of what had changed.
"I'll return," he murmured, though the words felt like they were swallowed by the wind as soon as they left his lips.
Still, she did not look back. Her silence was not cruel—it was an act of faith, or maybe defiance. A silent vow to remain who she was, even as he risked becoming something else entirely.
He left without another word, his footsteps muffled by the ash beneath him. But the silence between them lingered like smoke, curling around his memory, refusing to fade.
Continued in Chapter 2: part II soon..