Yanis felt himself suspended in the air, within darkness as the regal, cold voice spoke again:
[ Welcome to the lands Beyond, Destitute! Your ascension trial shall begin shortly. Survive it, and you may rise to the esteem of the Honoured. ]
A pressure began to build behind his eyes, like the onset of a migraine, as a large chamber stretched before his vision and a strange darkness festered within it.
Torchlight flickered, and he noticed the shadows pooling in corners that hadn't existed a moment before, and suddenly, there were things he couldn't recognise lurking within that darkness.
He tried to step back to put distance between himself and the very wrong sensation of the chamber that was constructing itself before him, but his body wouldn't respond. His legs and arms were locked in position, with him hanging in the air, and his lungs strangely refused to draw breath.
Thereupon, the stone of the chamber that had just constructed itself began to crumble, as if it were worn by time while in some places it almost looked as if it was being broken forcefully.
And abruply, without warning, he felt something pull violently. It caught and yanked him by his back of his head as if a hook had caught itself deep in his skill.
Then he was dragged, unable to scream, move or shout at all, through tenebrosity, and then, at some point between that moment and the next moment, he felt as if he was moving through air again as a myriad of images, depictions of scenes and ages blurred past him rapidly.
Eventually, within the next few seconds, he was finally allowed rest. He found himself frozen before the depiction of a singular scene, then he was pulled into it.
And the regal voice spoke once more:
[ Withstand the Night of the Eclipsed Throne. ]
Yanis found himself to have been sent into a grand chamber filled, again, with darkness and pooling shadows, different from whatever he had initially been in, and he could swear and damn on the soul of whatever you put before him, that there were indistinct things moving within it. He had seen them in the chamber before, and here they were again, moving persistently at the peripheries of his vision.
Thereupon, his attention was drawn to the ceiling arched high overhead, painted in gold, crimson and black colours and shades of those same colours.
Murals depicted scenes of festivity, with the people captured in revelry of whatever grand occasion. Mingled amidst those was the art of coronations, where figures in imperial regalia stood majestically before wide audiences across different eras; there were cathedrals and masses, acolytes who bore religious tools. There as well, were images of great wars and conquest, of construction through the ages and seemingly, the beginning of it all, where a lone figure stood.
The paint of them all shifted unsteadily in the torchlight, as if they were still wet, being swirled and illustrated by the artist's brush.
Herein, Yanis, who was still unable to speak, felt his chest rise and fall as it gradually eased. His eyes strained into focus on the details of it all. He was definitely far from being someone that knew much about painted art, but he could at the very least appreciate something that had clearly taken the dedication of someone, or people even if the artists were long dead.
Suddenly, three shapes crossed the chamber floor below with unhurried, echoing footfalls.
The torchlight was swallowed away into a barely visible glimmer the closer to the ground one got, and despite that, Yanis could distinguish the black garb they wore easily. His eyesight in the darkness was remarkable; it was as clear as day to him.
And thus, he also saw the blood-slobbered corpses of guards strewn across the room, and before all of this was the figure of a bloodied, broken and unbowed young man, whose hands were bound behind his back and knees had been forced into the ground.
He tried to speak again, to call out a warning, or something that would ease his conscience, and his voice made no sound.
The young man's shoulders were still, and the way his posture looked like it had fixed itself, Yanis could tell he had been kneeling for a long time now, and that more than just that, he was also being weighed down by a force that kept him there.
Yet, there was no fear in his eyes or anger, nor was there any desperate hope for rescue. Simply the grim solace of knowing that what he faced was inevitable, and having made peace with his weakness before it, balmed him countenance.
Abruptly, the surrounding darkness moved, taking shape and lancing forward, and at the same time, congealed slashes of it cut through the air.
Blood sprayed across the floor in a wide arc, and Yanis watched the young man's headless and dismembered corpse, pierced through by several lances of darkness, kneel upright without its arms as the tranquil head rolled away.
Soon, it stopped, and Yanis found himself staring into the lifeless, dimming light of the young man's black eyes.
Then, suddenly, as the last of the light died, the darkness that had overtaken the headless eyes erupted and consumed the chamber, and he was falling again into an ocean of darkness.
~~~~ ✧✧ ~~~~~ ⚜ ~~~~~ ✧✧ ~~~~~ ⚜ ~~~~~ ✧✧ ~~~~~ ⚜ ~~~~~
Yanis gasped and staggered, catching himself against rough stone that scraped his palms. Warmth pressed against his face and his brows furrowed deeply.
'Sunlight?' he quickly recognised, and he blinked until his vision cleared.
He was in a courtyard with high walls of dark stone that were topped with short stone sculptures that cast long shadows through the courtyard as the sun descended toward the horizon.
Guards walked in pairs across the ground, with their polished armour glimmering against the fading light of day. At the same time, servants hurried between buildings with bundles in their arms, utilities and supplies.
Meanwhile, somewhere beyond the walls, a bell was tolling the hour.
Yanis was now wearing a simple but decently well enough made light leather armour that didn't cover his entire body. It protected mostly his chest with other pieces that didn't enclose his figure, like his legs that were left clad only in coarse trousers.
Then, he carried a sword at his hip that felt natural there despite the fact that he'd never held a real blade in his life. And yet, the weight of it and the sensation of the pommel's leather wrapping as he reached for it felt so unnaturally familiar. Weirdly, he felt very calm about it.
He recognised then, as his eyes widened a little, that he had lived for years that he couldn't remember, with a blade.
'This feels almost like being in my body…except, it's more like the slight daze I feel when I'm just waking up.' Yanis remembered the descriptions of the game that Julius had given him and he for a brief moments felt like he, and the sneak peeks he had seen on Fredd and other platforms, really had not done this justice.
Suddenly, messages were elegantly embellished on a dark screen, in white, before his vision. And the strangest thing was that the symbols that it wrote its script in were entirely foreign to him, but he understood them regardless.
Remembrance: [ Night of the Eclipse of Thrones ]
Role: [ Palace Guard ]
Location: [ Imperial Palace Alonellónë, Empire of Alonellónë ]
"Ah…loh… Huh?" Yanis mumbled to himself, seeing the name of the Palace.
He felt like he knew how to say it, but whether it was because his brain hadn't yet caught up with the sensation and feel of who he was now, or something else, he couldn't quite wrap his tongue around the pronunciation. Shaking his head to himself, he grumbled, "Whatever."
Therein, the voice regal voice muttered:
[ Fare well, poor destitute, for your lives are dependent on it. ]
His gaze lingered over the notification, and a cold clarity washed over him.
The script and the screen dissolved into nothing, and Yanis glanced around as he leaned against the pillar he had caught himself with earlier, and he crossed his arms.
'Night of the Eclipse of Thrones…' his mind, strangely calm despite the nervousness he could feel in the peripherals of himself, thought back to the sight of the young man who was decapitated.
He remembered the paintings, the darkness, and the crumbling chamber filled with wrongness. And he remembered the dozens of corpses carpeting the ground, and the things he couldn't recognise lurking in the darkness.
'But how did I end up as a palace guard? I wouldn't think this is the kind of thing my chosen Backgrounds would dictate as most fitting to put me in…'
'Whatever, I guess.' He shook his head faintly, 'I should just try my best…'
Then he Hecate's advice came back to him, 'Best way to survive this is probably to get out of here.'
Unexpectedly, a realization that he knew was born from this body, with its strange origins, came and dismissed it, 'I won't be able to survive alone, navigating that deathtrap of a forest.'