In the valley the morning broke hesitantly draped in grey. Fog wrapped around the pine trees like thread while the sole noise was the far-off reproachful rumble of the Muota River churning deep within its ravine. Alexander stood in front of Walter's chalet, re-equipped. The heavenly gold of his armor appeared muted in the light the mark left by Duncan's sword a lasting blemish, a contusion, on his sacredness. The Penitent's Blade marked a gash across his back.
Walter and Marta lingered at their threshold not to say goodbye but to observe a leaving. Several other villagers had assembled at a distance their visages faint blurs in the fog. Nobody uttered a word. The quiet was weightier, than any cry.
Alexander's mission smoldered inside him a glowing ember. Gather the Trinity. Close the Abyss. The Angel's voice drummed relentlessly in his mind overpowering the memory of the man's story the girl's shaking entreaty the knight's weary sigh in the shadows. These were fears. They were the trial. The course was set: south and east toward the wind-beaten peaks of the Drunengalm Mountains, to the Chalice of Echoes.
However his feet remained stationary. Did not head toward the southern entrance.
His eyes were drawn, as if magnetized by a source of fear to the winding hunting path ascending through the moist forest to the foot of the steep cliff. To the crevice, in the stone. The Hölloch. Hidden from view here cloaked in fog and foliage. He sensed it. A soft steady breath of chill air.
The villagers mirrored his stare. A shared intake of breath caught.
Walter moved ahead his cane pressing into the soil. "The route to the south lies there " he murmured, gesturing with a finger, toward the valley's open edge. "The path is unobstructed. Your upcoming challenge is ready."
Alexander cast his gaze toward the trail. It lay unobstructed sunlight filtering through where the fog had lifted tracing the incline of the valley. It was the route. The dutiful route.
He glanced back at the entrance of the forest ascending ahead.
"He told me I lacked penitence " Alexander caught himself saying, his voice unfamiliar, to him. "That I only followed orders."
Marta produced a piercing noise, similar, to a muffled scream.
"The knight's speech is venom " Walter stated, his tone firming. "A ploy to shake your faith. To make you glance behind. Do not offer the mountain another morsel of yourself, Messenger. It does not crave your body. It hungers for your awe."
The mountain provides tranquility. He embraced it.
The recollection of the tale of the knight's lament merged with the recollection of the deep wrenching sorrow of the Penitent's Blade. It was not a tool for triumph. It served as a device, for truth.. What was the reality of his submission?
This was not his decision. Instead he was selected. He had embraced it shielded by a belief that wasn't his but borrowed brilliance. The initial strike of the sword revealed this truth. To retreat now toward the relic would mean accepting that wound without gaining insight. It would mean continuing as a tool deliberately oblivious, to its intent.
This was not part of the directive. Michael had provided him with three sites, three artifacts. He had mentioned nothing about going to a trial he had already in fact cleared.
A sharp unmistakable spark of resistance formed in his chest. It wasn't yet a revolt, against the Angel. Rather it was a defiance of the script itself. A refusal to blindly obey commands. If he was to be destroyed and reconstructed let it happen through his choice not simply by the artifacts he was tasked to retrieve.
He faced away, from the sun.
A murmur spread across the gathering. Walter's expression twisted into a feeling, than fear—it was intense disillusionment. "Fool " the elder murmured, the word lingering in the atmosphere. "Arrogant radiant fool. It summoned you. You are returning."
"I have a question that wasn't answered," Alexander. That was the truth.
"It responds with silence!" Walter yelled, losing his composure. ". With a calm as cold, as death! Your shadowy reward awaits! Leave!"
Alexander paused, his hand moving to the hilt of the sword hanging at his side. The known, weight of it. Then his second hand lifted, by instinct and grasped the leather-bound handle of the Penitent's Blade strapped to his back. The chill penetrated his gauntlet.
He did not pull out anything. He just spun around. Started heading toward the trail through the woods.
The villagers remained silent. They observed him leave, a living funeral march, for a man they thought was heading towards the resting place of his spirit. Marta turned around. Entered her house closing her wooden door with a gentle definitive thump.
The fog engulfed him swiftly. His surroundings shrank to the root-twisted trail the aroma of damp pine and rotting fern, the subdued stillness. With each step climbing the heavenly drumbeat in his thoughts dimmed, as though the mountain's exhale was drowning it out. Replacing it came a silent lucidity.
He was not coming back to demand anything. He was coming back to inquire.
The entrance to the cave emerged, blacker than the forest shade. A chill breeze drifted out touching his face. He paused at the opening the moment of no return genuinely passed now. He wasn't here, by command. He was drawn by his fatal inquisitiveness.
He unsheathed the Penitent's Blade. Amid the forests shadows it appeared to ooze a void, an abyss, in the realm. He did not call forth his radiance. His helmet remained fastened to his belt.
Inhaling a breath that seemed like his one after many years Alexander Magnus, the appointed Messenger retreated once more into the mountain's cavern. Not, as a victor. As a pursuer of artifacts.
He entered as a person.
The darkness greeted him not through murmurs. With a deep vigilant quiet. It awaited him. It had expected his comeback.
Inside in a rocky room that held the memory of long-gone oceans General Clement Duncan remained still one hand pressed against the wall as though sensing a heartbeat. The plain helmet lifted slightly. A subtle inaudible buzz resonated through his dark armor.
Within the Abyssal keep Queen Brianna Calliope lightly ran a finger along the border of an obsidian mirror offering a subtle sharp-toothed grin. "Ah " she whispered. "The initial fracture. Not caused by our force. By his own burden. How… delightfully human."
And in the realm of blinding radiance, the War Angel Entity, Michael, sensed a flicker—not of failure, but of deviation. A single note out of place in the celestial symphony. The light around him did not waver, but it grew, for an infinitesimal moment, intensely, perfectly cold.