The Lake of the Weeping Moon breathed with cold breaths, swallowing the last traces of light from the night sky. The fire between them was slowly dying, leaving red embers flying like ghosts of burnt memories.
The lake's moisture seeped through the night air, carrying whispers of a distant past.
Evelyn was looking at him, her blue eyes like a cloudy sky, moments away from overflowing with rain. Her fingers tightened on the edge of her cloak as if searching for an anchor in a sea of shock.
"You ate... your friend?"
She wasn't asking but repeating the words like a desperate attempt to grasp the magnitude of the disaster. Her voice trembled as if the words themselves were burning on her lips.
"So it wasn't a metaphor after all."
Arion looked at her for the first time with no emotion on his face. All his masks had shattered from his self-revelation, and what remained was only a deep, bottomless well, staring directly into the depths of her soul. His hands were trembling slightly, so he clenched them tightly to not betray his weakness.
"I told you you wouldn't want to be friends... didn't I?"
His voice was flat like the surface of a frozen lake, but his eyes hid a storm of conflicting emotions.
Evelyn's hands trembled as she caught her ragged breaths. She looked around as if searching for the right words in the darkness of the night. "Do you think that by pushing me away you'll accomplish something, Arion? Let me tell you... humans need compassion. No one can live alone in this world of ours."
Ariyon's face became devoid of emotion, then he uttered a dry, sarcastic laugh: "Compassion?! Do you know what I hate most? Being pitiful. I don't need anyone's pity."
He turned his back to her, his shoulders stiffening like an impenetrable barrier. "Compassion won't bring Jacob back. Pity won't erase what I did. It will only make me look weak... and I hate weakness more than I hate myself. Getting close to others makes you fragile. The more you care for them, the more weaknesses you have."
But Evelyn did not relent. She took another step forward, her voice dropping to a firm whisper: "It is not weakness to ask for help; it is courage to admit that you cannot bear all this burden alone."
Arion laughed a bitter laugh while his eyes followed the waves of the lake breaking on the shore: "Do you think I'm carrying a burden? I'm not carrying any burden... I am the burden itself, and Jacob was the first to bear its price.
The villagers were always right. The devil's son should have been burned at birth. Unfortunately, I didn't understand that until after Jacob's death."
In his eyes, Evelyn finally saw what he had been trying to hide: it wasn't just guilt but a deep-seated conviction that he was a curse upon anyone who got close to him. He wasn't rejecting compassion out of hatred for it; he was protecting her from himself.
Evelyn paused for a moment, then said in a quiet voice carrying deep understanding, "Do you know what Jacob would have felt if he saw you now? Would he have wanted you to live forever burdened with guilt, or would he have wanted you to learn from your mistake and carry on?"
Arion fell silent, as if her question had struck him with force. He saw in her eyes something he hadn't experienced in years—genuine understanding without pity.
"You weren't conscious when it happened... are you truly to blame for what you did?"
She took another step towards him, her eyes not leaving his face. "You told me about Isaac and how your relationship seemed to drift after you returned from Jacob's village. But from what I see, you're the one who tried to push everyone away. Even Isaac's last visit to you to give you this sword... does that carry any meaning other than that he still cares for you?"
Arion's breathing grew heavier. Evelyn gently pulled Jacob's necklace from his pocket, where it glimmered in the moonlight. "Haven't you ever thought about how this change in you affected Julia? You said she was like a mother to you. In the name of protecting them, you are hurting everyone who cares about you."
"Arion, the real monster is not the one who ate his friend while unconscious... the real monster is the one who refuses to forgive himself and destroys everyone who tries to help him."
Arion froze for a few moments. For a second, it seemed as if he was carrying a mountain on his shoulders. Then he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, a faint smile appeared on his face, but his smile had not yet reached his eyes.
"I suppose there is some truth in what you say." He mumbled weakly.
He felt as if his body was collapsing under the weight of this admission. Years of resistance and repression crumbled in a single moment. He lifted his gaze towards the shimmering lake under the moonlight, where the waves broke against the rocks with a calm rhythm.
"Words... are too heavy..." he whispered, feeling a fatigue overwhelming every cell in his body.
"Anyway, I've had enough for now. I think I'll sleep a little."
He lay down on the damp grass, closing his eyes while Evelyn's words swirled in his head like a storm. Before he completely sank into sleep, he saw a blue glimmer shining from the depths of the lake—not Jacob's ghost, but a mysterious light pulsing like a living heart.
Evelyn looked at him deeply, then sighed and shook her head, unaware of how many times Arion repeated her words in his head before he submerged into sleep.
And in his dreams, he did not see Jacob's ghost this time. Instead, he saw the reflection of his face in the lake water, and his eyes—for the first time in years—did not carry that deadly coldness. And he felt as if Jacob's necklace in his pocket warmed slightly, as if agreeing to give him a second chance.
Ariyon sank into a restless sleep, as if Evelyn's final words had opened a gate in his consciousness. Suddenly, he found himself standing on the edge of the Lake of the Weeping Moon, but everything was different.
"Two shadows moved where infant stars are laid,
While fate, unseen, their destined thread was spinning..."
He heard the voice echoing in his head like a distant echo. It was a soft, feminine voice carrying the wisdom of centuries—a voice he was too familiar with by now.
It's the same voice he had always been hearing with those hallucinations.
Then something shot from the lake to the sky, and the lake's water stirred and rose, following that thing. From afar, the lake's water felt like a single drop falling in reverse.
The lake's waters rose to the sky, transforming into a liquid curtain of light. Arion watched time reverse its course: droplets rising from the ground to the clouds, leaves returning to their branches, and stars retreating in their paths.
"Two lights embraced where time and space both fade,
Not knowing they were ending and beginning..."
Suddenly, a girl appeared in the middle of the once-filled lake. She was a beauty that dazzled the entire universe; even the stars were ashamed of her radiance. Her silver eyes shone with the wisdom of eternity, and her red hair flowed like a waterfall of molten copper. Her long, elven ears harmonized with indescribable elegance.
But what made him freeze in place was the tattoo on her arm—a complex geometric shape similar to his but different. The tattoo pulsed with a soft blue light, alive and breathing with her breaths, as if it were a second heart beating under her skin.
She smiled at him, and her smile combined the tenderness of morning dew with the wildness of untamed wolves. Her gaze held the knowledge of a thousand centuries, as if she had known him since the beginning of creation.
"Where eternity's last breath is drawn,
Aether met the Moon in stellar fire..."
The world around him began to crack. Cracks appeared in the sky as if it were broken glass,it seemed like reality itself couldn't bear the weight of her presence. Stars fell like the tears of the universe, and the sounds of breaking time filled the spaces.
"She asked, 'Have you walked the path alone?'
He said, 'I am solitude's own sire.'" The strange voice continued as if restructuring a poem.
The girl raised her hand towards the cracked sky, and her silver eyes glimmered with deep recognition. It was as if she had known him since eternity, as if she had been waiting for him since the beginning of creation.
"So when the shadows seek their mother's breast,
And every shard returns to its first source..."
The world completely shattered. Everything turned into shimmering shards of light and darkness. And in the moment before he awoke
he heard the final words
"Know, the truth all truths attest
That every ending is a new beginning's start."
Arion suddenly woke up. His heart beating like a drum. The dawn light was gleaming on the horizon, but the images of the dream were still etched in his mind , the girl with the silver eyes, the floating lake, the shattered world... and the poem that seemed to weave the threads of destiny with each word within its verses.
He looked at the sleeping Evelyn, wondering if her words were the trigger for that strange dream...or if it was something else entirely. And for the first time, he felt that Jacob's necklace in his pocket was not a weight he carried but a gift from a friend he thought he had lost forever.
And at that very moment, hundreds of miles away, in the depths of the dark Kadianth palace...
Alister sat on his throne of intertwined bones, his red eyes staring into a black mirror. In its reflection, he saw the image of the young man sleeping by the lake and the girl looking at him with a complex gaze.
"Finally... he begins to awaken."
Alister whispered, his voice carrying a strange mixture of pride and pain. His fingers pressed on the arm of the throne until the bone nearly cracked.
"I heard the whole story."
He remembered how the vibrations of Ariyon's pain had traveled through the blood.
"That boy's story... Jacob."
Elister let out a muffled laugh carrying the bitterness of centuries.
"How familiar...to lose the one you love for the sake of survival."
He raised his crystal goblet filled with ancient blood and contemplated the crimson liquid as it rippled.
"But you do not yet know that every sacrifice carries its price. And the guilt you carry now... will one day be your weapon."
In his red eyes, the flames of centuries of painful memories flared. He remembered Seraphine… how he sacrificed everything for her and how he lost her in the end.
"Now it's time... to learn the hardest lesson."
He whispered as he saw the reflection of Evelyn sleeping beside Ariyon.
"That love is no less deadly than hatred."
He closed his eyes for a moment and felt the blood bond twitch like a hungry snake.
He knew the moment he had been waiting for was approaching...the moment of confrontation that would determine the fate of the entire world.
"Prepare yourself, Arion... the time for our meeting approaches."
And by the lake, the sleeping Arion had confessed his greatest sin... but his worst secrets were still hidden.