Date: February 12, 542 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
The chamber smelled of millennial dust and fresh, hot blood. Light entered only in thin needles through ventilation slits, barely dispelling the thick darkness. Elwin worked quickly, his hands smeared with crimson did not tremble, but inside him everything screamed at the realization of his own insignificance.
The young man took out "Bone Glue" and a roll of steel threads from his belt pouch—a standard Order field medic's kit.
"Hold him, Mark," Elwin commanded through gritted teeth.
Ulf, who had lost his arm, was in deep shock. Elwin applied a heating crystal to the shoulder stump to stimulate regeneration and began to tie off the torn vessels. It was a dirty and agonizing job. Regeneration tried to help, but without external support, it only drained the wounded man's remaining strength.
Having finished with Ulf, Elwin turned to Brand. The veteran was wheezing, bloody bubbles escaping from his pierced chest with each breath. The through-and-through wound was clean, but the Pillar's blade had nicked a lung. Elwin poured regenerating compound into the entry and exit wounds and applied pressure plates.
"We... we're just trash, Elwin," Mark whispered, looking at his maimed comrades. His eyes were full of tears. "There are four of us. We're all Warriors. And that piece of mirror crushed us in seconds."
Elwin didn't answer, but his thoughts were even darker. He remembered the expedition to the "Dead Loop" gorge six months ago. Then Iskon, also a Warrior like them, had faced Tork—a Pillar whose power was no less than this Centurion's—alone. And Iskon had won. Cruelly, cunningly, but he won.
"What's the difference?" Elwin thought, feeling his own energy settle on his tongue with a bitter taste. "We trained those same six months. We went through the same marches. But between us and Iskon is a chasm. The four of us couldn't even scratch the guardian, and he... he killed a Pillar, almost dying himself. We're not just weaker. We're the extras who survived only by sheer chance."
This realization weighed on him more heavily than the stones of the Temple. He felt like a child playing soldier while real warriors decided the fate of the world.
Suddenly, sounds from the main hall made Elwin instantly fall silent. A heavy, measured tread of many feet. It wasn't the chaotic running of mercenaries—it was the march of a legion.
Elwin pressed his eye to a narrow crack in the wall. What he saw made him hold his breath. A detachment in black armor, adorned with gold chasing, entered the mirrored hall. Alvost. In the center of the formation moved a man whose figure radiated such a density of power that the mirrors in the hall began to tremble finely.
This was a Herald—one of Alvost's Legates. Around the Legate, the air shimmered with a steel gleam, and his very presence was felt as an endless, oppressive ringing of a taut string.
The Mirror Centurion, sensing a new threat, rushed forward. It again used its instantaneous displacement, hoping to end the fight with one blow as it had with Ulf. But this time, it faced a power of a different order.
The Legate of Alvost didn't even slow his pace. His hand rested on the hilt of a heavy, straight sword.
"Art of Rupture: Polarity Shift," he said in a cold, emotionless voice.
In that same second, all the internal pressure within the Centurion's body, all its compressed energy holding the mirror plates together, suddenly changed direction. Instead of binding its structure, the guardian's power began to push it outward.
An ear-splitting ring sounded, nearly bursting Elwin's eardrums. The Centurion, a Pillar-rank creature, simply exploded from within. Its crystalline plates flew in all directions, turning into sparkling dust before they could even touch the legionaries' armor. The Legate hadn't even fully drawn his blade—he had merely shifted the guard slightly, and this impulse had been enough to destabilize the enemy's essence.
"Fragile perfection," the Legate remarked, looking at the settling dust. "Clear the hall. Move towards the central axis. The Order and Rakesh are already ahead; we must not allow them to take advantageous positions."
Elwin recoiled from the crack, his heart pounding in his throat. He had witnessed a Herald's triumph—easy, almost lazy.
"They destroyed it..." Mark whispered, his eyes wide with horror. "With a flick of his finger."
"Because they are titans, and we are dust under their feet," Elwin replied, sitting on the floor beside Brand. "We cannot go out. Until the Alvost detachment moves deep into the next halls, we will stay here. Our war now is simply to keep Brand and Ulf from dying."
This day brought Elwin more pain than all the previous months of training combined. He understood that in the Temple of True Equilibrium, it wasn't the bravest who survived, but those who knew how to hide in the shadows of the great. His "Tenacious Memory" would forever capture this moment: the gleam of Alvost's golden armor and the ease with which the Herald had turned a Pillar into a pile of shattered glass. It was a lesson in the true hierarchy of the world, and Elwin was prepared to pay for it with silence and a long wait in the darkness.