Part 1: Sunset on Lake Argent
In the year Cleisthenes turned seventeen, the Kingdom of Dikaios was a symphony reaching its most sublime crescendo. Peace was not merely a promise; it was the very air one breathed, which seeped into every cobblestone of the capital, Aethelburg. The wind swept past spires of white quartz, carrying the fragrance of hanging gardens suspended in the mid-heavens. Down in the streets, the rhythmic hammering from the Dwarven Forge District was no longer just the sound of labor; it had become a steady drumbeat accompanying the incantations echoing from the peak of the Scholarium, where mages practiced in deep meditation. The city's lifeblood flowed through canals shimmering like liquid silver, carrying boats laden with Humans, Elves, Demieralds, and even the stoic Tartarians—races that had come together to call this land home.
And it was said that the heart of this symphony was him, Prince Cleisthenes.
Today, he had stolen a morning for himself. With silent dexterity, he had slipped away from General Vlarius and his labyrinthine tactical maps. Vlarius was a brilliant human mind, one of the rare few granted audience and tuition by the Archons whenever they descended from Elysium above. But the Prince did not flee out of laziness. He simply needed to breathe the kingdom's air without the filter of an heir apparent. Dressed in simple common clothes, he strode along the paved streets. His hair, pitch-black as a starless night—a legacy from his father—and eyes the violet hue of twilight—gifted by his mother—made him striking, yet he remained approachable.
He lingered to buy a sprig of lily of the valley from an old woman with gnarled hands, smiling as he watched children chase a luminous wisp. He overheard a merchant grumbling that "the dwarf's beard in the Forge is softer than his promises." But he knew that the smiles directed at him, like every greeting and admiring glance, were for the symbol he carried upon his shoulders. They loved the miracle, loved the balance he represented. Did anyone see the silent chaos churning beneath that surface?
To them, he was Cleis. Not a Nyzarion, the hybrid born of the universe's two polarities. Not a living paradox. Simply their prince.
But within his veins, the legacies of his father and mother were rarely a harmonious stream. They were two opposing oceans, at times placid, at others swirling into a nameless storm right in the center of his chest. He was the embodiment of a fragile peace, and the price was eternal loneliness—belonging neither wholly to the light nor fully to the darkness. He yearned for a connection unobscured by a crown, for a gaze that could witness both the stillness and the tempest in his eyes.
His footsteps wandered aimlessly until he stopped by the shores of Lake Argent. The water was as flat as a silver mirror, swallowing the final shafts of the setting sun. He often came here seeking silence.
And today, that silence wore a human form.
Beneath the argent canopy of the Ancient Silverleaf Tree, a maiden was sleeping.
Her hair was a frozen waterfall of moonlight, spilling over the lush green grass. Her skin was porcelain, her lips parted slightly in the rhythm of steady breathing. Even in sleep, her features radiated a noble steadfastness, like a jeweled sword resting upon velvet. She looked like a white lily forgotten amidst the dust of the mortal world. In that moment, the space around Cleisthenes seemed to freeze.
He had seen her, of course, in the opulent halls of the palace. Wisteria von Constantine Bültzingslöwen—a name as formal and proud as her family crest, one of the most ancient and powerful Demierald lineages in Dikaios. People spoke of her swordsmanship and her gift for magic, but those rumors evaporated before this image: a peaceful, unguarded existence. For the first time, he felt he was truly seeing her—not a name, not a lineage.
Unwilling to disturb such a perfect moment, Cleisthenes simply leaned against a nearby tree trunk. Twilight cast a violet-blue haze over the lake, stretching the shadows long, and he stood there, watching her breathe, watching the shifting light upon her hair, forgetting the passage of time.
Until her long lashes trembled.
A pair of crystal-clear blue eyes opened, still lingering in a haze of dreams, before slowly focusing on him. It was a blue so pure it seemed to hold the memory of the sky before dawn.
Their gazes met, and time seemed to skip a beat. The fog of sleep vanished, replaced by a sudden clarity as sharp as shattered glass. Wisteria bolted upright, the sunset catching the flush that rose instantly to her cheeks.
"Your Highness," she bowed her head, her voice ringing clear as a silver bell in the quiet space.
A faint smile touched Cleisthenes' lips, carrying warmth and a hint of mischief he couldn't suppress. "I did not know celestial nymphs required naps. I assumed you lived solely on morning dew and the whispers of flowers."
The remark shattered the rigid formality, and Wisteria felt the weight in her chest lighten. She looked up, her clear blue eyes no longer hidden behind the veil of etiquette, meeting his gaze directly. "I am no nymph, Your Highness. Merely a truant, though I suspect I am in similar company."
Cleisthenes laughed—a deep, genuine sound without a trace of reserve. "Caught. But I wager your reason is far more poetic. I am merely hiding from a lecture on tactics drier than the salted fish old Dame Ilyas sells at the market."
"And I," Wisteria replied, a smile blooming on her lips like morning sun through the leaves, "am fleeing an embroidery lesson. I would sooner face a stone golem than that tiny needle."
Their laughter mingled, dissolving the invisible distances between them. Under the shade of the Ancient Tree, they were no longer Prince and Lady, just two runaways who had found an ally. Cleisthenes stepped forward and sat on the grass, keeping a distance that was respectful yet intimate enough. The sunset poured hot shades of purple and orange onto the lake. The wind brushed past, carrying the scent of damp grass and cool water. Above, thousands of silver leaves rustled a wordless melody.
Silence returned, but it was not awkward; it was a comfortable void woven from the rustling leaves and their synchronized breathing. It was an understanding that required no words. Cleisthenes found himself unconsciously memorizing every detail: the stray lock of silver hair on her cheek, the way the twilight made her eyes deep as sapphires at the bottom of a lake.
"I have seen you a few times in the palace," he spoke, his voice gentle, the teasing tone gone. "But we never had the chance to speak. Your swordsmanship at the last martial demonstration... was truly excellent."
Wisteria's eyes brightened. "Thank you, Your Highness. I have also watched you train with Lupusnia. The light from it is strangely pure. Just like you."
Cleisthenes went still for a moment. People praised his power, whispered about his origins, but no one had ever used the word "pure" to describe a living paradox like him.
"So, might I know the name of the rare flower that has usurped the finest view of Lake Argent?" He asked, his eyes dancing with amusement.
"Wisteria," she replied, the tips of her ears turning pink again. "My name is Wisteria von Constantine Bültzingslöwen."
At that exact moment, an unnatural vibration surged through the earth. It was not a quake. It was not violent, but insidious, as if a perfect string of reality had been plucked to produce a jarring, discordant note.
To Wisteria, it was merely a shiver, a disturbance that passed and vanished.
But to Cleisthenes, it was a seismic cataclysm within the soul. The Empyrean blood of his mother sang in his veins, reacting to the dissonance in the world's symphony. Yet the Monarch Abyssord part from his father remained terrifyingly silent. It did not resist; it listened, like a predator recognizing a familiar call from across the abyss. The vibration was not an attack; it was an invitation. Cleisthenes felt it with visceral clarity: a hairline crack had just torn through the mirror surface of Lake Argent, an invisible crack on the crystal of Dikaios.
It lasted only a heartbeat, then vanished, returning the world to a deathly stillness.
"What... what was that?" Wisteria whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
"Likely just an apprentice mage at the Scholarium getting a bit carried away," Cleisthenes lied effortlessly to reassure her, and perhaps, to soothe the Empyrean part screaming inside him. He stood up and extended a hand toward her. "It is getting dark. Let me walk you back."
Wisteria hesitated, then placed her hand in his. warmth transferred between them—a sensation that felt real, steady, and strangely peaceful.
They walked side by side beneath a sky that had turned the color of wine and deep violet. The conversation between two souls resumed—about books, about swordsmanship, about dreams left unspoken. But amidst the clear, ringing laughter, Cleisthenes could not banish the image of that invisible fracture. It remained in his consciousness, a cold omen that paradise, no matter how perfect, could begin to crack from the frailest of signs.
Part 2: Cracks in the Mirror
Three years rolled across Dikaios like an endless summer, heavy with fruit and echoing with laughter throughout the capital. But for those hiding in the shadows of power, it was three years of a winter silently tightening its grip.
The love between Cleisthenes and Wisteria did not bloom from grandiose declarations, but sprouted quietly in the cracks of etiquette. It was there in the midst of a raucous banquet when he discreetly conjured a crystalline snowflake in the palm of her hand; the sudden cold made her startle and look up, a secret smile flashing in her blue eyes. It was there in the afternoons stolen in the Royal Library, where she read aloud to him from the ancient sagas of the elves. He heard nothing but the melody of her voice, saw nothing but the sunlight filtering through stained glass, painting dancing dapples of color upon her white hair. Only Wisteria, when looking into his eyes, saw not a prince, not a Nyzarion, nor a living paradox. She saw only Cleis.
"Worry again," she whispered one afternoon as they leaned together against the balustrade of an ivory tower, gazing out over Aethelburg. Her voice was soft as silk, her hand lightly covering his. "Anxiety is carving lines into your forehead, like a general staring at a map of a war already lost."
Cleisthenes did not pull his hand away. Her warmth was the only anchor keeping him from being swept into the vortex of things left unsaid. "Just rumors," he replied, trying to keep his voice casual. "A few caravans obstructed. Some whispers in neighboring kingdoms about a 'surreal' Dikaios. They fear what they do not understand."
He did not tell her the worst of it: the visit of Archon Lysandros from Elysium two months prior. The Archon had not arrived with the usual benedictions, but carried the judgmental silence of a supreme magistrate. His eyes had swept over the quartz spires of Aethelburg not with admiration, but the way one looks at festering abominations sprouting from the earth. In a private audience, he had looked straight at Cleisthenes.
"Lupusnia does not belong to one who bears the blood of the Abyss," Lysandros had pronounced, his voice emotionless, cold as metal found only in Elysium. "It is the embodiment of Order. Your existence, Prince, is a contradiction that Order will not tolerate forever."
"It chose me," Cleisthenes had simply replied, his calm masking a subterranean storm. "And it will serve the will of Dikaios."
Archon Lysandros did not argue further. He merely fell silent—a silence heavier than any declaration of war.
Meanwhile, Skoeidos, his father, sank deeper into his own shadow. The King no longer strolled in the royal gardens or debated philosophy with scholars. He spent his days confined in the Map Room, his fingers tracing borders as if feeling for the slightest political tremor. His red eyes, once glistening with wisdom and a gentle sadness, were now veined with the weary strain of an old beast who knows his forest is besieged.
His mother, Theotia—an Empyrean who had renounced great power for love—sensed the future like a dull ache in her marrow. She could foresee a storm, a landslide, and used what little power remained to warn, to save. But every time she saved a village from calamity, her smile grew more sorrowful. She knew she was only trying to bail water from a ship with a punctured hull, while on the horizon, a tsunami was taking shape.
One night, Cleisthenes overheard his parents speaking. Theotia stood by the window, the darkness swallowing her like a cloak.
"Skoeidos, your brethren are stirring at the southern border," she whispered. "Nightmares are being sown. This is not the work of wandering Fiends. There is a will behind it."
Skoeidos stood before the hearth, his massive shadow consuming the room. "I know, Thea. They are testing me. They want to see if this old devil has shed his claws." He turned, placing a hand on his wife's shoulder. His voice remained steady, but for the first time, Cleisthenes heard a crack in that steel-like tone. "We built this paradise from ash. I will not let anyone burn it down again."
Sleep turned its back on Cleisthenes that night. He recalled the lessons his parents had taught him since childhood. His mother had said the light within him was to nurture, to heal. His father had taught that darkness was not evil; it was emptiness, the potential for an end, and true strength lay in knowing when not to use it. "Balance it, Cleis," his father had said. "It is not standing still, but an eternal dance."
Aimless footsteps led him to the deserted training grounds. He drew Lupusnia. The sword radiated a warm glow, a silent comfort. But for the first time in his life, in response to the external threats, something else rose from the depths within him. A shadow. A primal power, cold and empty, inherited from his father. Void. It spoke no words, but planted images in his mind. It showed him the arrogant face of Lysandros, then whispered of a power that could permanently extinguish the light in those silver eyes. It showed him the persecuted caravans, then offered a simple solution through absolute terror. They fear you, a tone both icy and seductive repeated in his head. Good. Give them a true reason to fear.
He gripped the hilt tighter, the light of Lupusnia flickering like a candle before a gale. The conflict in his veins was no longer a parallel flow; it had become a battlefield.
And then, the day he turned twenty descended, heavy as a sky compressing a storm.
Aethelburg donned a robe of silk. Glorious banners fluttered from quartz spires, and the scent of wine and fresh flowers saturated every cobblestone street. People raised their glasses, danced, and sang songs celebrating the twenty-year-old Prince—the living symbol of their will and their divine icon.
But within the marble walls of the palace, the air was thick enough to cut, heavy with an ominous silence. Generals did not stride; they moved with a simmering urgency. Mages did not chant spells; they silently wove defensive barriers, their lips mouthing soundless words. The festival outside was merely a discordant accompaniment to the taut waiting inside.
Cleisthenes found Wisteria in the garden by Lake Argent, where their story had begun. She stood beneath the Ancient Silverleaf Tree, dressed in a gown the color of the sky before a storm. Her white hair was braided neatly, revealing a proud neck. A smile bloomed on her lips when she saw him, but it did not reach her eyes. Those eyes reflected the anxiety the entire kingdom was trying to hide behind laughter.
"You do not look like a man about to receive adulation," she said, her voice soft as mist. "You look like a king staring at a map of the end times."
Without a word, he stepped forward and took her hands. Her skin was cool, an anchor amidst the inferno burning in his veins. "Wisteria, I need you to promise me one thing."
"Anything, Cleis." Her voice held no hesitation.
"If disaster strikes," he said, every word compressed, urgent. "You must place your safety above all else. Not me. Not anyone. Go to the safest shelter. Promise me."
Wisteria did not answer immediately. Instead, her free hand reached up, her slender fingers lightly tracing his furrowed brow, as if to smooth away the wrinkles of an invisible burden. "You are carrying this entire kingdom on your shoulders, aren't you?" she whispered. It was a statement, not a question. "Then do not ask me to promise to run away. That is a promise a warrior can never speak."
She looked straight into his eyes. In those clear depths, Cleisthenes saw no fear. He saw only a burning loyalty—one that warmed him, yet terrified him. A loyalty that could burn her to ash.
"Let me promise to fight," she continued, squeezing his hand tighter. "I will not abandon our people. And I will not abandon you."
Then she rose on her tiptoes. Time suspended. She placed a kiss on his lips. Their first kiss—not a vow, but an acknowledgment. It tasted of the sweetness of a future that might never come, and the salty tang of invisible tears. A farewell never spoken aloud.
"I believe in you," she whispered in his ear. "We all do."
When Cleisthenes returned to the great hall, the atmosphere had nearly frozen solid. His father and mother stood on the high dais, smiling at him—a smile as fragile as glass about to shatter. He clearly saw the tension in Skoeidos's stance, saw Theotia's fingers digging into her husband's arm.
At that moment.
From the eastern tower, a bell tore through the space. Not the melodious bell of a festival. It was a shrill, rapid warning—metal screaming. The sound of war.
Almost instantly, another bell from the west answered, then the south, then the north. Four death knells combining into a frenzied choir, strangling every sound of the celebration.
And the sky above Aethelburg cracked like a broken mirror.
In the East, reality tore open, exposing a wound of brilliant gold. The Gates of Elysium burst wide, pouring down a meteor shower of judgment. Thousands of Heralds and hundreds of Archons in blinding silver armor, wielding spears woven of light, descended like divine wrath. Leading them, suspended in mid-air with deadly majesty, was Archon Lysandros.
In the South, the earth did not crack; it heaved and retched. Pillars of pitch-black fire from Tartarus erupted, and from the newly opened abysses, countless hideous Fiends surged forth like a filthy flood. Riding atop them, three Abyssords spread their colossal wings, blotting out the sunset, their savage laughter a sound that made all things rot.
And from the West and the North, upon the lush green hills surrounding the capital, a sea of steel rose up. Tens of thousands of soldiers from the Anthromos Kingdoms—yesterday's allies—now raised the banners of betrayal, their swords and spears glinting with greed in the evening light.
All three worlds—Order, Chaos, and Mortal Envy—had simultaneously leveled their spears at the beautiful paradox named Dikaios.
Skoeidos witnessed it all. The mask of calm he had worn for centuries did not just crack—it shattered. A silent roar, a convulsion of primal rage threatened to tear open his chest. Beside him, Theotia went pale as a statue, her hand flying to her mouth, her divine eyes—which had once seen the tapestry of fate she tried to mend—now watching it be torn apart without mercy.
Cleisthenes stood motionless in the center of the great hall, gripping the hilt of Lupusnia so hard his knuckles were drained of blood. His birthday party. His kingdom. His love.
The glorious symphony of Dikaios... had just fallen silent.
And the melody of ashes had played its first note.
Part 3: Resonance of Light and Metal
The melody shattered.
And the first sound was not the roar of a monster, nor the scream of a man. It was Aethelburg tearing itself apart. The quartz spires, the stone harps of the city, buckled and snapped with agonized groans, crumbling into a mournful rain of crystal. Hanging gardens collapsed, cascading soil and flowers into the abyss below. Canals once clear as liquid silver now thickened, a vital artery flooded with the red of blood and the pitch-black of forbidden magic.
Aethelburg was not dying; it was being executed.
Amidst the convulsions of a moribund city, the three figures on the high dais remained the eye of the storm, unnervingly still.
"Theotia!" Skoeidos's voice was no longer that of a philosopher. It was the Abyss speaking, every word compressed by the pressure of a thousand years. "Scholarium! Gather the mages! The Shield of Nott. It must be raised. Guide the flock. Now!"
No words were exchanged between them. Only a single glance, encapsulating an immortal love, a promise, and a final farewell. Theotia nodded, a gesture that severed all attachments. Instantly, a pure light, violent as a supernova, erupted from her. Holy fire incinerated every Fiend daring to approach as she shot away, her white train not the trail of a comet, but the final stroke of God upon a dead sky.
"Cleisthenes!" Skoeidos turned. In his father's burning red eyes, Cleisthenes no longer saw contemplation. There was only a sea of primal fire. "The North Gate is the knife at Aethelburg's throat. Lysandros has sent his two strongest Archons there. Take the Dragonguard. Take Lupusnia. Use their corpses to seal that gate."
"And you, Father?" Cleisthenes's voice was hoarse.
A ghastly smile, a macabre parody of his usual gentle expression, twisted Skoeidos's lips. His shadow seemed to deepen, to thicken, swallowing the flickering light of the torches. "I have a reunion to attend with my kin. It is time to remind them why the night is not merely the absence of light... but an entity."
No further words were needed. Obedience etched into his marrow, Cleisthenes nodded and turned away. His heels strode over cracking marble, but his mind was no longer there. It returned to the garden. To Wisteria. The taste of that first kiss, sweet and salty, lingered like a curse of a future just turned to ashes. A spasm in his chest, sharper than any blade. As long as she breathes, he prayed in silent desperation. As long as she breathes.
The Eastern Front
Theotia took the form of a white flame atop the Scholarium. Below, hundreds of mages, the most learned minds of Dikaios, were now soldiers in a war. Her golden hair no longer flowed; it burned in the gale of energy she summoned.
"Nott!" Her voice echoed, not just as sound, but as will, piercing straight into the consciousness of every soul. "Rise!"
Almost instantly, a translucent blue hemisphere, woven from ancient runes, swelled outward, enveloping the central square—the last surviving island for thousands of lives. Spears of light from the sky and fireballs from the earth hammered against it, creating ripples of shock. The shield buckled, groaning like a tortured organism, but it held.
Because Theotia was its heart.
And then, through her keen sight, she saw him.
An Abyssord, massive, circling like a sickly purple vulture in the western sky. He did not attack. He merely drifted, watching the stream of elderly and children evacuating. He savored the fear like a vintage wine, inhaling the desperation like incense before enjoying a feast of blood.
The logic of an Empyrean screamed in Theotia's mind: The shield is paramount; sacrificing the few to save the many is the cruel arithmetic of survival.
But the heart of a mother, a wife, a queen who had watched her people grow, whispered a different truth. She saw the blue eyes of a crying girl, identical to Wisteria's. She saw an old man stumble, one whose calloused hands had helped build the very tower she stood upon. She was not fighting for some distant law of Elysium. She fought for the home she and Skoeidos had cultivated from ashes.
"Maintain it!" She transmitted her final command to her lieutenant, then, without a shred of hesitation, launched herself from the spire.
No longer a queen. Nor an Empyrean.
She was a meteor of protection.
She intercepted the Abyssord's flight path. "Get out of my sky," her voice was no longer soft, but cold and sharp as the shards of a star.
The Abyssord wheezed a laugh, a sound that curdled the air. "Theotia, the lover of the Abyss. The one who threw away immortality and divine power just to mate with a ghost. Do you intend to use the dregs of that power to protect these insects?"
A dogfight erupted in the heavens. Pure light clashed with insatiable hunger. But he was right. Her energy was now finite, while his rage was not. Every strike she dealt pushed him back, but it also burned away her own life force.
With a voiceless scream, she focused everything that remained into a single point. A final explosion, a miniature sun swallowing a corner of the sky, blasting the Abyssord far away and creating a precious corridor of safety for those below.
But the price of igniting a sun is to become the fuel.
As the blinding brilliance faded, her body began to turn transparent, dissolving into the void. The Abyssord roared in the fury of a predator robbed of its meal, but Theotia could no longer hear him. Her mind did not drift to Elysium, nor sink into Tartarus. It sought only one silhouette amidst the chaotic battlefield. A king of darkness, whom she had loved more than eternal light.
Skoeidos...
Not a name. But a vow. The only warmth amidst the cold of nothingness.
And then, Queen Theotia vanished. All that remained was a rain of shimmering dust, a final blessing silently kissing the land she had loved to the very end.
At the North Gate
The sea of silver Elysian armor resembled a wall of cold light. Amidst them, two Archons stood like statues of judgment. Orestes, with a flaming greatsword. And Lysandros, who bore eyes of an eternal winter.
"Prince Cleisthenes," Lysandros's voice resonated, not as sound, but as the imposition of will. "Your existence is an anomaly that Order must purge. Kneel, and the Demiurge shall judge you within His mercy."
A smile twisted slightly on Cleisthenes's lips, a fragment of the Abyss he inherited from his father. "Your mercy looks strangely like a massacre. I think I shall decline."
He raised Lupusnia high, its warm light clashing violently with the frozen aura of the Elysian legion. "For Dikaios!"
"FOR DIKAIOS!" The answering roar of the Dragonguard was thunder heralding a storm of steel.
Cleisthenes did not rush into the battle; the battle rushed into him, and he became its center. He was not a warrior, but a shifting dance. The flat of Lupusnia slid, deflecting a spear of light with millimeter precision, a technique seen only in master Archons. But instead of countering with a pure strike, a tendril of viscous shadow poured from his cloak, snapping like a whip snake, wrapping around a Herald's ankle and slamming him face-first into the broken stone.
He slipped past Orestes's slash, letting the blade of light carve a deep line into his shoulder. Pain flared, but instantly, a warm energy from within him re-knit every fiber of flesh, every vessel of blood. Simultaneously, his left hand, unarmed, unleashed a pulse of invisible dark energy. Orestes's armor did not dent but fractured from the inside, as if the metal had aged centuries in a heartbeat. Light and darkness were not two weapons in his hands; they were two beats of the same paradoxical heart.
The battle was a jarring cacophony of metal, screams, and magic tearing the air. Hours passed. Cleisthenes's blood had dyed his armor red, yet the most fatal wounds closed of their own accord. Orestes was defeated, his armor shattered, forced to retreat in disgrace.
Now, only he and Lysandros remained.
Their confrontation was a hymn of Order clashing against a paradox of existence. Lysandros channeled all his power into a single strike, creating a colossal blade of light, a slash capable of cleaving a mountain in two. Cleisthenes did not dodge. He lowered his stance, drove the tip of Lupusnia into the ground, and met it head-on.
The moment the two energies collided, there was no explosion. Only a sudden, deafening silence, as if sound itself had been broken. And then, Lysandros's blade shattered into millions of shards of light, like a collapsing galaxy. The shockwave hurled them both backward.
Cleisthenes staggered to his feet, his chest burning, leaning on his sword. Opposite him, Lysandros also struggled up, armor cracked, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He looked at the Prince, the hatred in his eyes now mixed with a glint of awe. A decisive wave of his hand. The Elysian legion, orderly and silent even in defeat, began to retreat. The battle at the North Gate was over.
He had won. A victory tasting of blood and ash.
Just then, a figure stumbled toward him, armor tattered, covered in blood and mud. "Your Highness!" the messenger screamed, voice shattering with despair. "The Queen... at the Eastern Front... Queen Theotia... has fallen!"
Cleisthenes's world stopped.
Lupusnia in his hand suddenly felt heavy as a mountain. Its warm light seemed to turn cold. The screams of the wounded, the orders of the captains... it all drifted away. In his ears, there was only the sound of a hive breaking open inside his skull. The image of his mother, her gentle smile, her golden hair, dissolving into dust of light.
Across the Battlefield
Skoeidos was the definition of a nightmare draped in royal robes. He did not move like a warrior, but like an inevitable law of nature. Midenismos in his hand did not cut; it erased. Every movement carried a deadly calm, an efficiency honed over millennia.
Then a young mage found him, face pale with terror and exhaustion. He stammered out the story of an explosion, of a final blessing in light dust.
Skoeidos stood still, listening. When the story ended, a silence enveloped him. A silence so heavy it distorted the space around him. The mind of a philosopher, of a king, tried to arrange the words "Theotia" and "dead" into a logical order and failed. They were a paradox his mind could not accommodate.
But the Void within him, the abyss he had used Theotia's love to fill, understood.
It began to expand from the inside, not like a wave, but like a black singularity tearing apart every reason, every memory, every thread connecting him to this form. The human shell he had worn for her, for their paradise, was cracking like a fragile egg.
Theotia...
The name was whispered soundlessly, and it was the final word of Skoeidos, the King.
And then, he roared.
It was not the roar of a husband losing a wife, nor a king losing a queen. It was the roar of a universe self-destructing. His human skin shattered. Six colossal wings of condensed night tore through the royal robes. Six obsidian horns, twisted like curses, erupted from his forehead. Scales of black obsidian encased his swelling body, muscles rippling with primal power. His burning red eyes were no longer eyes, but two open gates straight into a hell of loss.
Skoeidos, the Wise King of Dikaios, was dead. Only a Monarch Abyssord remained, transformed by pain into a living weapon.
He no longer recognized friend or foe. Midenismos in his hand glowed a deep crimson from the blood it had just drunk. He charged, a natural disaster in the shape of a demon. A slash swept through an Anthromos regiment, and they turned to black dust before they realized they had been cut. He confronted an incoming Elysian legion, and their holy light was swallowed by darkness as if it had never existed. He slaughtered the Fiends daring to block his path, tearing them apart with his bare hands.
That day, Skoeidos was no longer the savior of Dikaios. He became the verdict, the sinner of all three realms, drowning everything in a frenzied dance of slaughter to avenge a lost love.
And from the North Gate, Cleisthenes, with a heart turned to a block of ice, began his pilgrimage back to hell. He returned to bid farewell to the mother who had turned to light, unaware he was about to face the father who had become the night.
The Throne Room
The path from the North Gate to the palace was a journey through murdered memories, a sense of loss that no language could purge, the warmth from his mother, that love, now unable to continue. The streets he used to stroll were now littered with corpses. The wailing cries were a dirge for a dead city. The messenger's words cut into his mind; every step was a knife thrust. The Queen has fallen.
The Great Hall was cold and ghastly silent. No body. No blood.
On the marble floor, around the Queen's throne, lay a thin layer of light dust, glittering like the first snow. It was the final legacy of an Empyrean, the words she hadn't time to speak, the embraces she hadn't time to give. Every grain of dust was a fragment of a soul.
The surviving Dragonguard soldiers stood behind him, bowing their heads in silence. They had seen their god triumph. Now they were witnessing the human within him shatter.
Cleisthenes slowly knelt. A black hole had opened in his chest, swallowing even his tears. He gently reached out, trying to catch the last falling grains of light dust. They landed in his palm, painfully warm, like his mother's touch. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, a perfect illusion appeared: her voice, gentle as a nocturne, reading him an old story. Cleisthenes still wanted to believe that the gentle mother lived, could still be saved, but where was hope when fate had already been sealed?
The illusion vanished. He opened his eyes. Nothing remained but the glittering ash of a great love.
He stood up, Lupusnia in his hand seemingly dead. Its light was still there, but he could no longer feel the resonance from Theotia.
"Prepare the funeral," he ordered, his voice shattered and pieced back together with frost. "Protect the survivors. Evacuate the city."
Part 4: A Withered Fate
War did not ring a bell to announce its arrival; it came with the screech of steel tearing through the silence. In the forests of the Western border, the smell of decaying pine needles and the metallic tang of blood mingled into the distinct scent of death. Amidst the chaos, General Flavius von Constantine Bültzingslöwen and his daughter, Wisteria, commanded the Griffin Legion in defense of Dikaios. Volleys of silver arrows formed curtains of death, and magical explosions battered the cliffs like the thunderous rage of an awakened god. The old general's shield wall was an impenetrable fortress; Wisteria's agility was a spear threading through every gap in the enemy's defense. They were winning.
From an observation point on a rocky outcrop, Wisteria narrowed her eyes. Something was wrong. An unease crept in, colder than the mountain wind. Far in the distance, behind the battle lines, a pillar of blinding alabaster light shot straight into the sky from the small village of Silvercreek. It was not the benevolent light of Elysium she had heard of. This light was arrogant, a sickly purity concealing rot from within.
"Father!" Her voice was sharp, cutting through the roar of the battlefield. "Silvercreek. I must go."
"No!" Flavius bellowed, his shield ringing loudly as he blocked an axe blow. "Your duty is here, Major!"
But the decision had formed the moment she saw the pillar of light. She could not trade the lives of villagers for a tactical victory. Signaling to her lieutenant, who could only nod in bewilderment, Wisteria dashed off. She moved like a ghostly streak of white light, weaving through ancient tree trunks toward the village engulfed in an unnatural silence.
Flavius's roar tore through the clash of weapons—a roar of fury and helplessness. He watched his daughter's figure, a tiny white speck swallowed by the forest, and felt a chill sharper than any blade that had ever grazed his skin. He saw Iris, his late wife, in that stubborn defiance, and in that reckless heart driven by compassion. That mixture made her the greatest warrior he had ever known, and also her most fatal weakness. Iris, protect her, he prayed silently, before rage surged, swallowing his fear. He turned back, and his sword now carried not just strength, but pure brutality. Every fallen enemy wore the face of the invisible threat stalking his only child.
The village lay dead in silence. In the middle of the cobblestone square, he stood. An Empyrean, clad in armor white as bone, with wings woven from starlight. The halo around him had turned the color of ash, and the smile on his perfect, statuesque face was a crack on a holy icon. Cassius. His gauntleted hand raised, gathering energy to erase everything—houses, people, memories. He did not destroy for strategy. He destroyed as one casually flicks away a speck of dust.
"Stop!" Wisteria shouted, Sanctumflora in her hand reflecting his sickly light.
Cassius turned, a lazy movement. His smile widened. "Oh. A wildflower in a graveyard. How quaint. What do you hope to achieve, little mortal?"
"Show you that even a dying ember will fight against a rotting emptiness like you." Her voice was steel. She charged.
Sanctumflora traced a silver arc, a sting of death aimed straight at the gap in his neck armor. Cassius did not dodge. He simply raised two armored fingers and caught the blade. The grinding sound of metal being held fast chilled her to the bone.
"Fast," he remarked, the smile never fading, "but lacking weight."
A snap of his fingers.
A terrifying force traveled along the sword, hurling Wisteria backward. She staggered. For a split second, her father's voice echoed from a dusty training ground: "Never lose your balance, my little flower! Use the enemy's own force to bring them down!" She spun with the momentum, turning the retreat into a vicious upward thrust. But he had vanished, leaving only a faint afterimage.
"I have seen stars fade," a voice whispered right at the nape of her neck, "do you think this fragile embroidery needle can scratch me?"
Wisteria spun on her heel, swinging her sword in a wide arc to create distance. This time, he raised his entire arm to block. The sword struck the gauntlet, leaving only a scratch faint as a hair.
"Do you know what I hate most about creatures like you?" Cassius asked, beginning to circle her like a beast toying with its prey. Wisteria panted, her eyes never leaving him. "The ridiculous illusion of sacrifice. You believe death will have meaning. That the ants will carve your name into history. Let me tell you a little truth: they will forget you before sunset. Your death is not an epic. It is merely a silent scream in an eternal void."
The ensuing battle was not a duel, but a silent dance of desperate courage. He was not fighting. He was merely enjoying himself. Sanctumflora in Wisteria's hand was a furious silver bee, but every sting was blocked with an indifference bordering on boredom.
"Commendable," he said with morbid amusement, after a casual flick disarmed her, sending the sword flying to embed itself in a wooden door. "You shall have a beautiful death."
With a wave of his hand, he unleashed a blast of white energy, a pure negation that could not be resisted. Weaponless, Wisteria could only raise her arms in a hopeless attempt to shield herself.
The light swallowed her.
No pain. Only a strange stillness as time stopped, and her mind drifted to the final fragments.
Father. His large, calloused hand over hers, showing her how to hold the hilt. Strength is for protection, daughter. His voice steady as a mountain.
Mother. Her slender fingers braiding wildflowers into her hair. Compassion is the greatest strength, my Wisteria. Perhaps Mother was wrong. Or perhaps, this was it—dying so others might live.
Lake Argent. A young man with eyes the color of twilight violet. "I did not know fairies required naps." The first kiss just hours ago, sweet and salty. "I believe in you."
Yes. She fought for all of that. For a calloused hand, for the scent of wildflowers in her hair, for eyes the color of sunset.
Pain ripped back in, a final undertow dragging her mind from the dream.
No regrets.
Cleis...
And the light went out.
Destruction was not enough.
Looking down at the broken form at his feet, the fractured smile returned to Cassius's perfect face. He knelt on one knee, platinum hair falling beside her face, a gesture almost tender if not coming from him.
"And I," he whispered, his cold breath exhaling into the void, "will stay here, to ensure even your silent scream is tainted."
Amidst the silence of a village redeemed by a single life, he committed the final violation. A savage desecration upon death itself. Done, he stood, casually adjusting his gauntlet as if brushing off a nameless speck of dust. Then he vanished, leaving behind only a silent tragedy and the lingering scent of sickly power in the air.
Not long after, the air grew thick with the smell of soot. From the distorted shadows between burning rooftops, a squad of Fiends slithered out. Twisted bodies moving with the silence of ancient predators. They froze when they saw Wisteria's body. A younger one sneered.
"Look at that. A stupid sheep, died for a flock of equally stupid sheep."
But the older Fiend, with a chipped horn and eyes like two pits of glowing embers, raised a clawed hand. Silence. It knelt, not touching her, but its nose twitched as it sniffed the air. "Wait..." Its voice was a low growl, rolling up from the earth. "Residual energy... This is not the mark of a normal Elysian. This girl... faced One like that alone."
The sneer died. The mockery in the Fiends' eyes dissolved, replaced by something else—a grudging acknowledgment, the respect a predator gives to prey that fought to the last breath. The old Fiend looked closer, its fiery eyes narrowing as it recognized the devastation came not just from battle.
"Elysian vermin," it muttered, the contempt in its voice purer than hatred. "Defiling a kill. Unacceptable. Even in the Abyss, we do not desecrate a glorious death."
And then, in the square of death, an unthinkable scene unfolded. They, creatures of the night, humanity's eternal enemies, acted with ghostly solemnity. Gently lifting Wisteria's body, careful as if she were made of fragile glass. Another pulled Sanctumflora from the wooden door, the blade still shimmering with a faint silver light. They knew the story. The whispers of the Prince and the flower of the mortal realm had crossed even invisible battle lines. Carrying her and the sword, the ghostly procession turned, crossing the war-torn land, returning to enemy territory.
The journey ended beneath the silver canopy of the Ancient Silverleaf Tree in Aethelburg, where her promise had been sown. They gently placed her upon the ancient roots.
The task was nearly complete. The old Fiend glanced around, its eyes stopping on a trembling bush.
Milo was only eighteen. His first battle. And his world had just shattered. He had seen Elysians with soulless eyes and Tartarians with their own code of honor. He huddled in the bush, holding his breath, praying to dissolve into the shadows. But a scaled hand, not cold like death but hot as a forge, grabbed his collar and hoisted him up.
Facing the old Fiend, looking into the brutal wisdom in its burning eyes, Milo believed he was about to die. But it didn't crush him. It brought its muzzle full of sharp teeth, reeking of dung and dried blood, close to his ear.
"You," it growled, every word a knife carving into Milo's mind, "will repeat my words."
It whispered a message—more terrible than any blade. Forced him to repeat it, once, twice, three times, until the words became part of him, a malignant tumor in his chest.
"Find the brat Cleisthenes," the monster ordered, its voice dropping to a verdict. "Tell him his flower has been plucked, defiled, and discarded. Tell him who did it, and where she waits for him. Now... get lost."
It threw Milo to the ground like a ragged puppet. The young soldier dared not look back.
He ran.
Ran from the monster, ran from the memory of a white body beneath silver leaves that no one should ever have seen, ran from himself. He was no longer a soldier. He was now a vessel for a message.
A poisoned arrow, fired with absolute precision, aimed straight at the shattering heart of a prince.
Part 5: Gospel of the Nihility
Cleisthenes knelt in the center of the Great Hall, amidst the ash of a collapsed world. Around him, dust of light—his mother's final legacy—drifted aimlessly, the remnants of an extinguished galaxy. Pain was not an ocean in which one could drown. It was a void, where every breath inhaled was a sensation of the chest being shredded by invisible glass.
Then the doors burst open.
A soldier clad in tattered uniform stumbled in, his face a mask of dried mud and sheer terror. There was no scream, only a choked whimper, strangled by horror right in his throat.
"Your Highness..." His breath broke into fragments as he collapsed onto the cold stone floor. "Lady... Wisteria..."
Cleisthenes raised his head. With just that single movement, the air in the hall seemed to compress. The heart in his chest did not clench.
It stopped completely.
The young soldier's account poured out, broken, stumbling, like a poisonous prayer he had been forced to memorize. He spoke of an Empyrean with an ash-gray halo, of a solitary battle against a god, of a flower trampled... and of the humiliation that followed death. The soldier recounted, with a ghastly reverence, that the monsters of the darkness themselves had brought her back, laying her beneath the Ancient Tree by Lake Argent.
The silence that descended was not the absence of sound, but a presence. It had mass; it had its own temperature. An invisible frost began to radiate from the kneeling prince, a cold so intense it made the torches on the walls recoil, their flames shivering as if about to die. The Dragonguard soldiers, men born of fire and steel, instinctively took a step back. They did not understand, yet they felt it. An absolute pressure weighing upon the soul, causing even the Queen's dust of light to suspend, frozen in a sorrow more primal than life itself.
The agony of losing a mother.
The anguish of losing a lover.
The weight of a hopeless war.
The burden of a crown.
All of it... did not ignite. It simply crystallized in a single instant, then shattered into the fine black dust of nothingness.
The Void within Cleisthenes, that abyss he had once tried to bridge with his mother's love, now awakened. It did not expand; it devoured. It devoured the light, devoured the pain, devoured Cleisthenes himself. It was no longer an empty space; it was a distorted fulfillment. It had a face, and a name.
He stood up. Slowly, as if the gravity of a dead world were clinging to every joint. The creak of leather and metal rang out—the only sound in the deathly stillness. The Dragonguard stepped back further, not out of fear, but out of an instinctive awe for what their prince had just become. The twilight violet in his eyes was gone. Only two pools of obsidian remained, reflecting nothing, absorbing all light, all hope.
Without a word. He turned and walked away. Every step was the steady, unchangeable beat of destiny.
It was a short journey in space, but a migration of the soul. From the desolate Great Hall to the shores of Lake Argent, every step was a shedding of his former self. He passed the corpse of an Elysian, silver armor glittering meaninglessly. Before, he would have seen a life extinguished. Now, his mind, with a terrifying clarity, registered it only as the adsurd relic of a lie—a beautiful order masking rot. He stepped past a dead Fiend, its twisted body looking surprisingly honest, a creature of chaos that feigned nothing. He passed a mother clutching her child, her wailing merely a predictable variable in a cosmic equation that had been flawed from its inception.
Every body was evidence. Every sob was a confirmation.
Then he reached the lakeshore. And he saw her.
Wisteria lay there, beneath the canopy where their promise had been sown. She remained delicate and peaceful, as if asleep. If one could ignore the torn clothes, ignore the brutal map of death drawn upon her skin. If one could overlook the traces of violation that even demons had been forced to turn away from. Sanctumflora was placed neatly upon her chest, a final gesture of respect from creatures who likely knew nothing of compassion.
Cleisthenes simply stood and watched. No tears. No scream. Only a boundless emptiness.
This was the final moment of reflection. He looked at her, and he no longer saw his own pain. He saw a universal law.
And the Void within him spoke, not in sound, but in a freezing lucidity poured straight into his soul.
Do you see?
Your mother's love gave you birth, but it was too weak to protect anything. Your father's strength built this empire, but it was too blind to save it. This girl's love gave you hope, and now it lies there, defiled and broken.
Everything you once believed in—Light and Darkness, Order and Chaos, Love and Hate... they are not opposing poles. They are merely gears in the same soul-crushing machine, designed to generate conflict, suffering, and loss. Balance is not the answer. Balance is the disease.
There is only one purification. An absolute silence. A perfect zero.
The only mercy is oblivion.
And Cleisthenes, for the first time in his life, fully agreed. He understood.
Balance was a lie. Justice was a farce. Love was the seed of all torment. This universe, from the arrogant Elysium to the filthy Tartarus, and the wretched Anthromos in between, was nothing but a malignant tumor unworthy of salvation. It deserved to be excised.
His father had gone mad from losing love. But he, in this moment, became terrifyingly sane because he had lost everything.
He turned his back on Wisteria, leaving her with the only peace this world could still offer. Lupusnia, his mother's sword, the symbol of light, slipped from a hand that had lost all sensation. It fell, embedding itself in the damp grass with a dull thud.
Light no longer had a place within him.
Reclaiming his purpose, he walked toward the ancient shrine, where his father had once emerged from the darkness to seek something he could never keep.
He was going to find his father. To claim the other half of his legacy: Midenismos.
And then, he would be the final judge. His verdict was Nullity. The symphony of ashes would play on, and its final note would be the silence of a dead universe.
Part 6: The Silent Death
The storm named Skoeidos was not a battle; it was a calamity unleashed. It was as if a star were collapsing upon itself, swallowing all things into the apocalyptic black hole of its own making.
Across the desolate fields of Aethelburg, a wordless command was etched deep into the sinew of three armies: stay away from that walking death. This was not a tactical retreat, but the instinctive flight of all living things before the wrath of heaven and earth.
Skoeidos, in his Abyssord form, was a tornado of obsidian and tangible agony. Midenismos in his hand was no longer a weapon, but negation given form. Each slash did not merely tear through armor and flesh; it tore the fabric of reality. Soldiers did not die. They were erased. An entire Anthromos legion, once proud of its impenetrable shield wall, turned into a cloud of black dust with a single swing. The dust was so silent that the sound of disintegration seemed swallowed by the void itself.
From a distant hill, Archon Lysandros witnessed it all, and for the first time in a millennium, a crack appeared in his absolute composure. He felt a distant resonance, something he thought existed only in the most primordial myths of Creation and Destruction.
"That is not an Abyssord," Lysandros whispered, his voice, usually tempered steel, now fragile as gossamer. "That is the death throes of a god. And it intends to drag this world down with it."
Even the other Abyssords, those who had come to overthrow a king, now recoiled before a madness more primal than their own nature. Chaos was ambition, opportunity; Skoeidos's chaos was a finality. He hunted with a brutality born of lost love, punishing them not because they were enemies, but because their very existence was a blasphemy against the memory of Theotia.
But even a supernova must eventually fade.
He had fought the strongest of three realms for a time longer than memory. Wounds began to appear on his scaled hide—not cuts, but fissures weeping either holy light or corrosive darkness. The fire in his eyes was no longer a raging sea, but candles flickering in a gale. Every movement of Midenismos now carried the weight of a thousand years of collapse.
With a final roar, no longer of fury but of cosmic exhaustion, Skoeidos drove them all back. He did not pursue. He simply turned, his tattered wings mustering strength for only one heavy beat, and launched himself into the sky.
No one dared to stop him. Three armies stood frozen in silence, watching the colossal, battered shadow stagger through the air toward the heart of his dying kingdom.
He flew back to where it all began. The ancient shrine atop Enstehun Hill. In a blur, he recalled the sensation of stepping through the gate from Tartarus for the first time and seeing the sunset. That beauty, the fragile harmony of light and color, had planted an idea in him: that perhaps Order and Chaos were not enemies. That perhaps beauty could exist in the convergence.
That beauty. The primordial lie.
When Cleisthenes arrived, the silence in the shrine wore a shape of its own, thick as resin and heavy as lead. Cold moonlight filtered through the collapsed dome, illuminating a still life of tragedy.
His father sat there, leaning against the shattered altar. He had returned to his human form, the form Theotia had loved, but it was a broken entity. His clothes were in tatters, his body a map of unhealable wounds. His breathing was shallow and broken. Midenismos lay beside him, its crimson glow extinguished, leaving only the color of eternal night.
Skoeidos raised his head. His eyes met his son's, and through the fog of approaching death, a final spark of clarity flashed—the pain of a father.
"You have come," his voice was hoarse, a whisper amidst the ashes of a voice that once commanded the stars.
Cleisthenes did not answer. He merely stood there, a silhouette cut from the void. His eyes were the mirrors of an abyss, reflecting nothing, only absorbing.
And in those eyes, Skoeidos saw everything. He did not see pain, for pain is still warm, still alive. He saw a stillness emptier than the primordial Void that had birthed him. He saw his own fury distilled into a pure, cold, and infinitely more cruel form.
I taught you balance, a silent scream echoed in Skoeidos's disintegrating mind, but showed you a perfect example of collapse. I showed you that when love is lost, only ash remains. And you learned that lesson too well.
He no longer saw his son. He saw the conclusion of all his actions. He saw the shock of a mason who had spent a lifetime building a tower, only to realize he had erected his own tomb.
"I am sorry... Cleis," Skoeidos whispered. A single tear of blood rolled down his cheek, hot and thick.
Cleisthenes did not blink. "I need the sword," he said, his voice flat as the sea before a tsunami.
Skoeidos looked at Midenismos, then back at his son. He understood. He could not stop this. He could only perform the final act of a father. Gathering his last dregs of strength, he did not hand over the sword. He picked up the empty scabbard lying nearby and held it out.
Cleisthenes hesitated for a fraction of a second, a final reflex of the old human, before taking it. The scabbard was cold, a fitting emptiness in his hand.
Skoeidos nodded. It was a final approval. He was not passing on a curse. He was offering a choice.
His hand, holding Midenismos, went limp. The sword fell to the stone floor with a sharp, echoing clang.
Then his body began to change. His skin hardened, faded, turning to gray stone. The wounds froze. Life withdrew from him like an exhausted tide, leaving behind a motionless form, eternally listening to the echo of pain. The burning red eyes slowly faded, turning into two soulless garnets, forever staring into the space where his son had stood. The Great King of Dikaios, Monarch Abyssord Skoeidos, had turned into a statue of eternal regret.
Cleisthenes stood there, unmoving. He bent down and picked up Midenismos. As soon as his fingers touched the hilt, the sword awoke. It did not roar. It sighed with satisfaction. It sensed a Void more primal and profound than its previous master. It had not found a wielder. It had found destiny.
Crimson light flared, mingling with the color of night—not the fire of rage, but the cold light of a black hole.
He had it. The Sword of the Void. At his hip, Lupusnia remained, present like a relic from a collapsed universe.
He turned his back on his father's statue, without a word of farewell, and walked out of the shrine.
He was no prince. Nor was he an avenger. For vengeance is an emotion.
He was a theorem reaching its conclusion.
He was the imminent end.
Part 7: The Final Hymn
The ashes of Aethelburg were a tombstone for a dream. Yet, upon the fields of Asphodel, amidst the fresh corpses, the soul of Dikaios had not fully flickered out.
They were all that remained. Fragments of the Dragonguard, scarred veterans of the Griffin Legion, apprentice mages whose heads were still filled with books. Hope was a fire long burnt out, leaving only the embers of loyalty smoldering in the wind. They knew of the Queen's fate; they had tasted the King's wrath. Now, the only things keeping them upright were their oaths and their despair.
They did not fight to live. It seemed, rather, they fought to die. To carve their names onto enemy blades, ensuring the dying roar of Dikaios would echo to the ends of the three realms.
Beneath a tattered banner that was now merely meaningless scraps of cloth, General Flavius stood. His armor was a canvas stained with blood, his face a statue hewn from pain. He raised his sword.
"Children of Dikaios!" His voice was no longer booming; it was a sound forced out over the raw agony of separation. "Behind us lies a grave! Before us stand the gravediggers! Victory, today, is a lie. But blood for blood is not! We will make them pay for every blade of grass they trample! Until no one is left standing! FOR DIKAIOS!"
"FOR DIKAIOS!" The answering cry was not a storm, but the collapse of a cliff face—heavy, decisive, and irreversible.
The flood of three realms crashed down. Flavius stood at the crest of the wave, his sword the last jutting rock. He felt nothing anymore. The pain of losing Wisteria had become a crucible, melting down everything else to leave only the cold steel core of purpose. His eyes scanned the sea of enemies, searching. Archon Lysandros, an arrogant order. The Monarch Abyssord, a insolent chaos. And him. Cassius. The Empyrean bearing the halo of a corpse. For you, my little flower. He charged, every slash a word in a silent indictment.
But a single rock cannot hold back an ocean. The defensive line was eroding. He saw a Fiend slip through, its scythe raised toward a young mage. He moved to intercept, but then...
The sky did not scream. It cracked.
A silent fissure tore through the air, and from that void, a figure slowly descended.
It was Cleisthenes, yet it was not Cleisthenes.
He was clad in pitch-black battle armor, but from his back, six wings of living crystal erupted—a paradox given form. The three left wings bore the colors of dawn, white and gold, radiating a light of judgment so pure it was cruel. The three right wings bore the colors of the midnight abyss, violet and black, drinking in light like a collapsing singularity. His left eye was an endless blue, cold as a final verdict from the purest Elysian. His right eye was the crimson of the Tartarian bloodline. In his left hand, he held Lupusnia, its light now sharp as the scalpel of destiny. In his right, he held Midenismos, darkness so dense that space itself seemed to recoil from it.
He was a truth.
Flavius froze. Wisteria... your faith... has bloomed from the ash. A tragic pride, sharp as a shard of glass, pierced his stone heart.
Cleisthenes did not look at his soldiers. His eyes—one of creation and one of destruction—were fixed solely on the enemy.
And the dance of the end began.
He was a whirlwind of light and shadow. With his right hand, Midenismos drew silent cuts in reality. It swept past an Anthromos shield wall. There was no sound of impact. The shields, and the soldiers behind them, simply ceased to be, leaving behind a warped void, a scar in reality.
With his left hand, Lupusnia was an even more brutal executioner. Its light did not kill. It judged. A Tartarian mage weaving a death curse suddenly forgot the very name of reality; meaningless sounds gurgled from his throat until his magic cannibalized him, turning him into a screaming torch. An Archon taking flight suddenly found the concept of the sky rejecting him, and he fell like a stone, shattering upon impact. Cleisthenes was not merely killing; he was erasing the errors of creation by turning their very nature into a weapon against their existence.
The strongest had to intervene. Archon Lysandros, Abyssord Morgrath, and the Empyrean Itherael—Order, Chaos, and Holy Arrogance—attacked simultaneously.
It was a war of laws. Lysandros's spear of light could level a mountain. Cleisthenes did not parry; three black crystal wings extended and caught it, the darkness corroding the light like acid. Morgrath's rain of hellfire roared. Cleisthenes simply raised Lupusnia to the heavens, and destiny decreed that the rain must fall upward, incinerating the Tartarian army itself. Itherael dived from above, a flaming meteor. Three white crystal wings blocked him. The light of arrogance clashed with the light of judgment. Cleisthenes held all three at bay, not through strength alone, but through a terrifying insight.
Inspired by their god of death, the last soldiers of Dikaios fought like lions backed into a corner. But then, a cunning Netherion slipped behind Cleisthenes, raising a blade steeped in curses.
Flavius saw it. Time condensed. That boy. The Prince. The living legacy of my daughter. No.
"CLEISTHENES!" He roared, not a warning, but a farewell.
Flavius lunged. His aged body took the full force of the blade. The pain was searing, yet his mind was strangely peaceful. He saw Cleisthenes turn, his heterochromatic eyes going wide, and for a millisecond, the emptiness within them was filled with something akin to astonishment. In his final moment, Flavius smiled. He had seen it. The love Wisteria had given. He had protected it. His lips moved soundlessly, but he knew the boy would understand. For... my daughter.
Darkness fell.
And something inside Cleisthenes, the final thread holding back a cosmic rage, snapped. His six wings vibrated, producing a high-pitched sound that tore the air. Light and darkness no longer danced. They screamed.
BOOM!
A wave of energy exploded, a frenzied intersection of creation and destruction. Lysandros, Morgrath, and Itherael were thrown back like ragged dolls. Thousands of enemies within a mile radius were expunged from existence.
The battle... fell dead silent.
On the fields of Asphodel, only Cleisthenes stood in a circle of absolute silence. Around him lay the corpses of enemies, and the corpses of the last soldiers who had died for him. He looked at Flavius's body.
There was no one left.
He was no longer a prince. His kingdom was a grave.
He was no longer a son. His parents were memories.
He was not a lover. His love was a tragedy that had already closed its curtains.
He was merely a consequence. A weapon that knew how to mourn what was lost.
He raised his head. On the horizon, the survivors were regrouping, their eyes a mixture of terror and hatred. In the center, he saw him. Cassius. Looking at him with a smile of contempt.
Cleisthenes began to walk, stepping past his fallen comrades, toward the spears and the magic.
Alone.
The final war of Dikaios had begun.
A war of one.
A war of a god against all creation.
Part 8: The Fading Note
War did not end with a scream. It faded away in a single footstep.
There were no horns, no shouted commands, only the terrifying silence of a physical law shifting gears. Cleisthenes walked across the fields of ash and bone. He did not rush, yet space seemed to recoil before his boot heels, and time held its breath, waiting for each footfall to land. He was a singularity in the woven fabric of reality, and the universe buckled to avoid him.
The legions did not shatter before an attack, but before a presence. His existence, suspended in absolute balance between what-is and what-never-was, neutralized all will. Hardened veterans, men who had stared into the eyes of demons without blinking, now let their weapons clatter to the ground. They fled not out of fear, but because their souls had suddenly been hollowed out, leaving them like questions without answers. Mages felt the magic in their veins congeal, majestic rivers instantly running dry.
Cleisthenes was not fighting. He was rewriting.
Lupusnia rose. The light did not explode; it unfurled like celestial silk. A streak of blue swept through the Archon ranks. They did not die. Rather, their divinity was stripped away like a loose thread. Starlight wings crumbled into chalky dust, white armor became heavy as lead, and the sacred tether to Elysium snapped. They fell to the earth, broken birds feeling the cruel weight of gravity and despair for the first time.
Midenismos swung. A crimson-black curve of void licked through the roaring Fiends. They did not scream; they did not vanish. They were returned to zero. Where they had stood, there were now man-shaped black holes—places where the universe's memory of them had been erased.
Amidst this ordered chaos, his eyes—one dawn, one sunset—remained fixed on a single point.
Cassius.
The corrupted Empyrean screamed orders that were now merely echoes, trying to rally the fragments of his army. He saw Cleisthenes, and a sneer of contempt struggled to remain on his flawless face. "Come here, bastard of a filthy union!" he hissed. "Come and receive your judgment, just like your whore!"
In the silence between two of his words, Cleisthenes was there. Right in front of him. No movement, simply presence.
"You are mistaken," Cleisthenes said. His voice was a chord of all things, resonating from every atom in the air. "Her death was not a scream. It was a bell. It awakened me."
He looked deep into Cassius's eyes, and the Empyrean stepped back, feeling for the first time something more primal than fear.
"You are not light," Cleisthenes continued. "You are merely moths terrified of the dark, fanatics extinguishing every other flame to delude yourselves of your own supremacy. This verdict is not punishment. It is a PURGE."
Cassius roared in fury, unleashing all his rotting energy into an orb of light powerful enough to wipe a city off the map.
Cleisthenes did not move. The orb hurtled toward him, and when it was but a hand's breadth away, it was peeled apart, layer by meaningless layer, until it dissolved like breath in the wind.
"Death is a release," his voice was cold as the space between stars. "You are not worthy of it."
His left hand rose. Lupusnia gently pressed against Cassius's chest. The blue light did not burn; it permeated.
"In the name of Existence," Cleisthenes declared, his left eye blazing with the green of genesis. "I judge that you shall never end. Sickness shall forsake you. Time shall not dare to erode you. Even when this universe fades, you shall remain. An eternal witness. You will hear eternity gnawing on itself."
Cassius screamed, the sound swallowed by the horrific truth being etched into every cell. Immortality—a prison without walls.
Then his right hand rose. The tip of Midenismos gently touched Cassius's forehead.
"And in the name of the Void," he said, his right eye blazing with the red of oblivion. "I judge that you shall lose everything. Strength. Authority. I strip away the name Elysium gave you."
Darkness from the sword bled into Cassius like ink into paper. His wings withered and crumbled. His halo winked out. Power was drained away, like a tide retreating from a barren shore, leaving behind a weakness so profound it was nauseating.
Cleisthenes withdrew the swords. Cassius collapsed. An immortal mortal, trapped in a mundane shell, his eyes holding only the madness of a man sentenced to life within his own existence.
The sentence had been carried out. Cleisthenes let his arms fall. The two swords dropped, striking each other with a dry clack—the only sound in the boundless silence.
He had won. He had taken his revenge.
And the fire inside him went out.
The hatred, the torch that had guided him, had burned down to the handle. All that remained was a freezing emptiness, and a truth that emerged, aching in its clarity. The equation had been simplified to the final variable: himself. His existence, in itself, was the imbalance. An intolerable paradox.
To heal the universe, the paradox must expunge itself.
He picked up the two swords, turned, and walked toward the Ancient Silverleaf Tree, now just a white skeleton. He knelt beside Wisteria, silent and gentle as falling snow.
He looked up at the blood-colored sky.
"Mother, Father, I am home," he whispered to the wind, his final human thought.
With the calm of an astronomer calculating the trajectory of a dying star, he raised both swords. Lupusnia of Existence. Midenismos of Void. Both points aimed at the same spot on his chest.
"If my existence is an error," he whispered to the universe, "then erase it."
He thrust.
There was no scream. Only a deep cracking sound, not of flesh, but of reality itself.
Light and Darkness rushed into each other at his heart. They did not destroy one another. They annulled each other in a supreme covenant. From that negation, something entirely new was born.
Not an explosion. A silent exhalation of nothingness. A ripple of a color that had no name—the color of absolute absence—began to spread from him. It was neither hot nor cold. It had no sound. It did not destroy; it dismantled.
The Cleisthenes Tide.
His body disintegrated first, turning into billions of particles of light dust, instantly swallowed by the emptiness. The wave spread outward, but as it neared Wisteria, it curved in a perfect arc, like holy water avoiding a shrine—the final echo of love refusing to defile her.
The ground it passed over turned into a dull gray surface. Plants, corpses, and fleeing survivors—anything touched by the wave had its soul dismantled, leaving behind soulless husks driven only by the ravenous instinct of the void—the Cleistiders—who began to turn back, attacking their former kin. Distorted echoes.
Pitch-black cracks tore open the sky. The Erosion had begun.
All three realms, those who had started this war, had now created a perfect end. A destruction without consciousness, without purpose, simply spreading and erasing.
The Kingdom of Dikaios was dead. Prince Cleisthenes was dead.
The tragedy was not over. It had only just begun, to write the eulogy for an entire universe.
Part 9: Rain Upon the Realm of Tragedy
Night did not fall. It collapsed. Clouds the color of bruised flesh clustered over Dikaios, gathering not to obscure the stars, but to erase them. Then the rain came down—not as drops of water, but as liquid shards of a shattered sky. Thunder did not clap; it groaned, and silver-white fissures tore across the heavens like the scalding tears of a cosmic entity witnessing its own self-destruction. That rain did not weep for the soldiers. It wept for the law that had been violated, for a kingdom of balance now reduced to an unsolvable equation, and for an Arbiter who had chosen to erase himself to correct the error of creation.
The rain dissolved the blood on the paved streets of Aethelburg, yet it could not dilute the agony that had seeped into every crevice. It flowed in pitch-black rivulets across the fields of Asphodel, winding between silent corpses. It fell upon Lake Argent, turning the surface into a broken mirror that reflected nothing but an endless void.
At the edge of the Cleisthenes Tide—a darkness that was not the absence of light, but the absence of existence itself—Cassius sat huddled. He shivered, not from cold, but from the nakedness of the mortality that had just been hurled back at him. In his panicked flight, his left hand had accidentally grazed the indistinct boundary of the tide.
And a horror far surpassing death began to germinate.
His left hand convulsed, fingers curling inward, flesh blistering and warping. From that tumorous mass, a tiny, crumpled Cleistider head emerged, possessing soulless black eyes and a mouth forever gaping as if screaming in silence.
Then it spoke, in a wet, mocking voice—Cassius's own voice, twisted through a lens of madness. "Oh, look who it is. The great Lord Empyrean. You look pathetic. Is it because you just realized you helped create a god transcending than the Demiurge, simply by pushing him to the brink?"
Cassius let out a terrified shriek, grabbing a rock and frantically smashing the abomination on his wrist. But the curse of immortality had been etched into his soul. From the gory mess of pulp and blood, another head sprouted, its grin stretching even wider this time.
"Go ahead," it chuckled. "But you cannot escape. Do you see? He judged you. He turned you into a stage, and I am the play. An eternal tragicomedy about the stupidity of an Empyrean. We shall be one, Cassius? Forever, and ever, and ever..."
Amidst the madness, Cassius felt it. A new energy, dark and distorted, flowing backward from that abomination into his own body. A sickly symbiosis. He had to live to nourish his own torture. He laughed and wept simultaneously, a madman chained to his own tragedy, dragging himself into the endless night.
While the universe began to feel the first symptoms of the terminal illness named Erosion, at the epicenter of the destruction, the last survivors found one another. They were not armored soldiers, but farmers and craftsmen with tattered clothes and hollow eyes. They returned, and amidst the cursed land, found a small oasis, a quiet space untouched by the encroaching tide.
Beneath the white skeleton of the Ancient Silverleaf Tree, Wisteria's body lay, delicate and flawless, as if destruction itself had turned away before her beauty. And beside her, crossed upon the ground, lay the two swords that had determined the fate of a world.
An old woman, who had lost both husband and son to the war, stepped forward. She had no tears left to cry. She knelt, her calloused hands gently touching Lupusnia. It no longer blazed with light, holding only a faint, lingering warmth, like the memory of a sunny day. A young blacksmith, who had lost his entire family, tremblingly touched Midenismos. It was no longer cold, holding only a deep stillness, like pain that had found peace. They did not see weapons. They saw the remains of a King and a Queen, and the sacrifice of a Prince.
Then, with crude tools, they dug a grave together for the Kingdom's Wisteria, right beneath the roots of the tree that had witnessed her promise. They laid her to rest with solemn reverence. The blacksmith planted Sanctumflora atop the mound—a silver flower that would never wilt. Then, together, they lifted the remaining two swords. They were no longer weapons. They were relics. They were proof of the one who had truly protected them until his final breath.
Years, then decades, passed.
The wounds of the war slowly closed, but the scar ran deep into the memory of the universe. Dikaios became a forbidden legend. The kingdoms that had participated in the invasion, to cover their guilt and fear, rewrote history. The myth of a paradise on earth was torn apart and stitched back together into a chapter of horror.
Excerpt from 'The Epic of Heroes at the Battle of Asphodel', compiled by the Supreme Historical Council of the Anthromos Alliance, tenth edition:
"...And thus, as the Allied Forces of Light and Humanity neared their righteous victory, the abomination Cleisthenes, the hybrid spawn of the Abyss, revealed his true nature. Consumed by envy of the heroes' glory, he enacted a blasphemous ritual of self-destruction, unleashing a dark curse upon the world. Therefore, let it be etched in memory, oh future generations, that it was through the Alliance's sacrifice that the Demon Realm of Dikaios was vanquished, and the threat of Cleisthenes, the Harbinger of Erosion, was repelled—though the price paid was an eternal scar upon our universe..."
The "Shards" of Dikaios and their descendants, who secretly worshiped the two swords and the grave beneath the Silver Tree, were branded heretics. They were hunted, forced to live in the shadows of a world that had chosen to forget the truth. The nations that had chosen silence now believed the lie they had allowed to spread.
History was distorted. Cleisthenes's tragedy became a crime. His name became a forbidden word, whispered only in tales to frighten children about a monster that would drag naughty souls into the deep.
No one, save for the outcast heretics, remembered the glorious symphony of Dikaios. They knew only the final, mournful note it had left behind.
A tide was still quietly spreading, an unhurried verdict eroding every edge of the universe, waiting for the day it would swallow everything.