In an age long eclipsed, He was accused of being a mere myth, a phantom of faith. But now we know the truth: He did not cease to exist He simply chose never to return. It is a silence so profound it compels us to ask, time and again, if He was ever truly there at all...
Upon the precipice of the pit—a sepulcher where savages are discarded alongside the carrion of the undying.
"Do you crave a drink?" Trux, a knight of towering stature and guardian of the marches, sat in solitude upon the lip of the abyss. The world surrounding him was a void of desolation; no blade of grass dared pierce the surface, no sand shifted, no soil breathed. There was only the jagged stone, the cold grit, and the distant, haunting silhouette of the palace perched upon the mountain's spine. The Protector spoke to a corpse that clawed feebly from the depths, its fingers scraping against the rim.
"On second thought, your jaw and tongue are far too mangled to savor it. Best remain parched." With a clinical coldness, Trux brought his boot down upon the hand slick with putrefaction and bile. The limb severed, the torso detached, and though the creature could not die, it plummeted back into the dark womb of the prison. Below lay a ruin reminiscent of Greco-Roman splendor, save for the vaulted ceilings which had been torn asunder to expose the wretchedness beneath. In that pit of the past, the undying swarmed—some mindless husks, some fresh additions to the rot. Those who clung to a shred of sanity fought to survive, yet their fate was a circle of iron; they would all become carrion in the end.
"I yearn for the thunder of the front lines. The yesteryears I once craved… I fear they have reached their twilight, my King," Trux murmured, cradling his longsword against his chest like a holy relic. He rose, drawing a shallow breath before unlatching his stag-skull helm. He opened his maw wide, and from his throat erupted a torrent of vomit that burned like the fires of Gehenna. It cascaded downward, a slow, molten veil that incinerated everything it touched. His face, sharp and weathered by contemporary carnage, was framed by matted brown hair. His eyes were windows to a soul drowning in nostalgia for a glory that would never again be.
"Trux…" For days, the voices of fae had been weaving through the air—a shimmering dissonance in a place so barren. He sat motionless, one hand pressed against the cold stone. Nothing felt amiss to the touch, yet his mind was a storm of fragments he could not seize. The longer the old warrior remained in this purgatory, the more the past beckoned. If he continued to linger thus, Trux feared he would transcend humanity to become a demon.
"Heh… perhaps being a knight never truly suited me, just as Helm always claimed." He took a draught of the bitter vintage at his side—a spirit distilled from the red straw of the borderlands. The territories shifted like tides, forcing the peasantry to harvest in haste between slaughters. Trux grappled with the phantoms in his skull; his memories felt... distorted. At times, he saw visions of people he did not know. In one breath, he was the Gallant Knight of the tavern, heralded by the common folk.
In another, he stood amidst a sea of children, loved for a gentleness he barely recognized. But the moment he stepped beyond the city gates to drag the corpses of trespassers and heretics, the mask fell. He slew them all, and those souls that failed to dissolve into mana became trapped within his own marrow, never to be released. They haunted him, tethering him to the lip of this pit for days on end.
"Trux…" The whisper grew shrill, piercing the veil.
"My Lord… you must find them." A sharp sting flared in his ears as blood began to trickle down his neck. He struggled to his feet, his limbs heavy and numb. He surveyed the wasteland; there were no footsteps, no beasts of the field. Only the vultures circled above, waiting for the shame of the pit to offer up a feast. "The voices of the fae… why do you persist in whispering to me?"
"They need you, Trux. They need you. He… They… need you. You are the Warrior. You must…" The knight strained to drown out the cacophony. It wasn't hatred that fueled his resistance, but the intrusion; when he listened, the memories of strangers bled into his own, an invasive rot he could not stomach. He searched for the source, but the horizon was empty. He looked back down into the infernal depths.
"Gone. All of them. My fire had not even finished its meal." Trux frowned, his gaze searching the shadows. Suddenly, the sound of three distinct footfalls echoed directly behind him. His instincts, forged in blood, took hold. He pivoted with explosive grace, his blade arcing upward in a savage cleave before he even fully beheld his foe.
Trux recoiled as he saw the thing he had rendered into two. It was an Asura—a creature that had no business manifesting here. Its form was a fluid nightmare; it stood tall as a man, but its arms were longer than vipers, fingers weeping pus and infested with maggots that burrowed beneath the nails. Blood seeped from its pores in a rhythmic pulse. Its head was severed yet remained tethered by a mass of twitching viscera, and its lower half was the jagged stone torso of a Golem, sheared clean by some celestial force. The sight did not stir his gut to sickness, but it signaled a rupture in the natural order.
The Asura struggled to speak, its vocal cords failing, as the brain-like mass atop its neck pulsed. It could not even project a psychic plea, yet the message bypassed the mind: "The shifting of the realms... once more." A century of sorrow flooded Trux's consciousness. He closed his eyes, trying to catch the thread of the catastrophe.
He saw his brothers-in-arms. He saw the peasantry slaughtered in cold blood. He saw the children of the Unholy Church running circles around him. He saw the corpses in the pit… and realized none of it belonged to him. When his eyes snapped open, the Asura had vanished, leaving nothing but the same emptiness as the dead below. He peered into the abyss, and for the first time, it began to change.
The visions overlapped—war, strangers, prophecies. Trux reached for a truth buried in the static. It was a vision of a search for self.
"The arrow… yes!" He reached into his side-pouch and donned his helm once more—the iron visage of the Kingdom. In his hand lay the arrow Helm had gifted him. The mechanism began to hum. Tiny, formless fae flickered at the edge of his vision like ethereal butterflies, whispering warnings, some even pleading for his death. Trux ignored them. The labyrinth in his mind was endless, but the gift from that loud-mouthed archer—given when his memory was a haze—was now his compass. Whether it was foresight or a miracle, he did not know.
Trux raised his sword high… then pointed the tip toward the void.
"I offer the remnants below, those who have withered by divine will, untouched by my flame. But in return… I shall tear open the gate between realms and souls." He gripped the hilt until his knuckles whitened and cast the arrow into the pit. As the malice of the souls below collided with the mana and the primordial forces of the tower's edge, a gateway shivered into existence—a portal forged from pure resentment.
"I never abandoned the war… I am still within it, treading the currents, hunting, searching. I crave it, my King. If you still draw breath, I pray you know that we—your loyal hounds—remain amidst the chaos. Wherever you may be, I will find you. We have never forsaken you. I shall step through this gate… though it cost me these wretched souls and my own."
The incantation drew forth a blinding surge of mana. A void manifested—a triangular fracture with a hollow, circular heart. Flames licked the edges of the geometry, forming ancient runes that no mortal man could ever decipher. Trux stood before it, silent and resolute.
This single step was his crusade to find those who once stood at his shoulder. His mind was a vessel for a thousand lives, but his path was his own. He prepared to descend into a realm where he was unwanted.
"I must do this. Even if my flesh recoils, even if my mind denies it. I shall go, though the world is no longer the one I once knew."
Would you like me to translate the next chapter or refine the specific tone of Trux's inner monologue further?