"Truly, you are beyond expectations," Val said.
Amon and Flaw turned at once to face him.
"You bastard," Amon growled, pointing a finger at him. "You left us there to die."
"But look at you," Val replied with a warm smile. "You have grown stronger. Check your status window."
His eyes lingered on the strange aura now radiating faintly from Amon.
Amon was still annoyed, but despite his frustration, he was eager to see how much he had grown since the battle. Hearing those words from Val only sharpened his curiosity.
"Status."
At once, the same bright translucent window appeared before his eyes.
== << [| STATUS |] >> ==
Name: Amon
Age: 17
Titles: The Gunman | The Dancer of the endless, green land.
Class: ?????
Talent: ??????
Unique Aspect: Ecliptience | ??????
Existence Classification: ??????? Human
Dominion: ????????
Origin: Being
Physique: All That Was, Is, Will Be
Paths: The Unknowns | Balance | Identity | Existence | Infinity | Writing | The Meanings | ????????? & ???????
Alter Ego: Flaw
Flaw: Inner Positivity and Outer Negativity
Powers: The Narrativity | ??? | ???? | ???? | ???? | ???? | ??? | ????
Realm: Mortal | Rank: FFF | Level: 3
== << [|---------|] >> ==
"It seems I have grown stronger than before," Amon murmured, flexing his wrist as he stared at the window. "Yes... I am definitely stronger than I was. Even so, I still have a long way to go before I can ever reach your level."
"Indeed," Val replied with a quiet laugh.
Then his expression settled.
"Let us leave. We need to report this incident to the Ancients and submit the necklace to them. Whatever this artefact is, for it to appear here means it does not belong to the Southern World. It may be tied to the Endorian Empire. We also cannot risk others learning about our mission, or the reason we came here in the first place. This is a land where even the Sun holds little influence."
Amon frowned, bewilderment slipping into his voice.
"The Endorian Empire? Was that not the empire that was banished and wiped out from the Southern World hundreds of years ago?"
Val nodded.
"Indeed. Yet their legacy remains. Their disciples, the Endorians, and their descendants are still scattered throughout the Southern World."
Amon knew that much.
He knew the Endorian Empire had been destroyed and cast out, but little more than that. Most of what he understood had come from his parents, fragments of history rather than history itself. He knew neither their true origins, nor the full reason for their exile, nor what kind of people they had really been.
Even so, he understood enough about the Southern World to feel the weight of Val's words.
Curiosity stirred within him at once, restless and unsatisfied.
"Who are the Endorians?" he asked. "And why were they banished and wiped out?"
Val said nothing.
Amon frowned at the sudden silence but let the matter go almost immediately. Truths were rarely revealed through impatience. When the time came, they would surface on their own, guided and overseen by fate.
Then Val's gaze shifted.
For the first time, his attention settled fully on the entity standing beside Amon.
He frowned.
What on earth is that disastrous presence?
A glitching, formless aura of black, grey, and white bled from Flaw's body. It was unstable. Distorted. Wrong in a way that seemed to offend the natural order around it.
How was this boy able to acquire an Alter Ego like that? Val wondered.
At last, he turned away.
"Come on. We are heading back to the Temple."
Outside, the same carriage from earlier waited in silence, its presence unchanged, as though it had never left at all.
"Go back," Amon commanded softly.
Flaw responded at once. Its form dissolved into flickering, formless glitches, then vanished without a sound, leaving the air faintly distorted where it had stood.
Amon walked forward in silence and entered the carriage, settling into his seat as Val followed after him. With a muted creak, the doors closed. The carriage lurched into motion, and the world beyond the windows blurred and bent.
They were already on their way back to the Temple.
| Temple |
The carriage rolled to a halt before the gates of the Temple.
Amon stepped down beside Val and felt solid ground meet his feet once more. For a brief moment, he lifted his eyes to the sun and allowed himself a faint smile.
"At least the sun still reigns over this land."
"State your purpose, and identify yourselves," one of the guards called out at once, his hand resting near the hilt at his waist.
Amon's gaze moved across the gatehouse, searching almost instinctively.
Where is the man from earlier?
A slight irritation stirred within him. He had expected to see that guard again, especially now that chance had placed him here once more, yet the man was nowhere to be found.
Without speaking, Amon extended his hand and let the sleeve of his robe slide back.
The sigil upon his wrist was revealed.
The guards froze.
Then, as if struck by the same thought at the same time, both men bowed deeply and shouted in unison, "We greet the Eriths!"
Amon's eyes flickered with quiet interest.
So this symbol truly holds power.
Val stepped forward, seemingly prepared to speak for himself, but one of the guards hurriedly lowered his head further and said, "There is no need for you to reveal yourself to lowly beings such as us."
The reverence in his voice was immediate and sincere. Merely seeing the sigil of the Eriths upon Amon's wrist had unsettled them. Realising that the man beside him was Val Erith himself, son of the Erith line and Head of the Awakeners, only deepened their shock into near worship.
Val smiled faintly at their reaction. With casual ease, he tossed two golden ingots into the air.
The guards caught them by reflex.
At once, both bowed even lower.
"We thank the Head for granting us such a blessing."
"Come," Val said, tilting his head slightly as he turned toward the inner grounds. "We need to make our report."
"Wait," Amon said. "I need to ask something."
Val paused, though only barely.
Amon looked toward the guards. "Have you seen a guard here, brown hair, blue eyes, tall build?"
One of the men thought for a moment, then nodded. "No, not now, but I remember him. His shift has already ended, so he has gone home. You may see him again tomorrow. If you wish to find him, he lives at 67 Adeel Close in the Astralis Citadel. It is not far from here, within the Valereith Citadel."
He hesitated, then added, "His name is Vell."
The guard raised his head slightly, reached into his coat, and held out a folded paper.
Written upon it was an address and a telephone number.
Amon took it with a small smile. "Thank you. I appreciate it."
He slipped the paper into a narrow inner pocket of his robe.
At once, the guards pulled open the gates and stood aside.
"Thank you for your kindness," they said together as Amon and Val passed between them.
The temple plaza stretched wide beyond the entrance, lined with stone paths and bathed in a fading light that made the marble seem softer than it truly was. Awakeners crossed the grounds in scattered groups, some speaking in low voices, some standing alone in thought, some merely drifting without direction after the strain of the day. Their conversations rose and fell in fragments, too distant to be clear, yet numerous enough to form a living murmur that seemed to hang over the plaza like a thin veil.
As they walked through it, Val spoke in a voice so low that it almost seemed meant for himself.
"Murmurs, whispers, chatter. Voices rising and falling until they blur into one another. Stay in that noise long enough and it begins to sound like a song. Lies work the same way. Let a man hear the same lie often enough, and in time it no longer sounds like falsehood. It begins to sound like truth. Then, little by little, it becomes truth in the minds of those too weak to resist it."
Amon leaned slightly closer. "Huh. I did not quite catch that."
Val did not look at him. "Do not worry about it."
They ascended the short staircase leading to the temple doors. The great golden panels stood before them like the sealed jaws of some sacred beast, bright even beneath the dimming sky. The moment they crossed the threshold; Val snapped his fingers.
The world turned.
The courtyard, the stone, the voices, the air, all of it folded inward and inverted, as if reality itself had become a page and some unseen hand had chosen to turn it.
Then Amon stood once again within the Realm of the Ancients.
Beneath his feet rested the familiar black circular platform, suspended in a vastness too grand to be called mere space. Around him hovered the other platforms, each crowned with a throne. Constellations drifted beyond them like slow-burning thoughts, and clusters of stars pulsed in distant rhythms, as if the heavens themselves possessed a heartbeat. A pale grey-white mist shimmered across the void, thin in some places, dense in others, granting outline and identity to everything it touched, as though the very atmosphere of this place remembered the shape of all things and refused to let them dissolve.