"Your friend is too clever for his own good."

When the girls stepped out and didn’t see Andor, Paroti leaned on the doorframe like a tired tree and told Raven.

"What do you mean, Paroti?" Her voice was tight as a drawn bow.

"Just that line. This way. Move now. A Hero shouldn’t chat with a heretic like me." His smile was bitter, like tea gone cold.

He pointed the other way, a finger like a signpost in fog.

"Isn’t that the way we came?" Her doubt fluttered like a sparrow.

"Better take this one. Go straight. Don’t turn," he said, a blade-straight answer.

"Wait—what about you? You’re badly hurt—ah!" Her words stumbled like loose stones.

"Raven, go. Don’t look back. These weights aren’t yours." He waved, and walked away down the path they came, his figure swallowed like a candle’s last smoke.

"It’s about time. Self-destruct, start." He fed mana into an arcane component like pouring oil into a lamp.

Soon, the earth rumbled from below, a sleeping beast turning in its cave.

The whole Hall of Truth shuddered; rune-lines on walls and floor snapped like veins, burned, and spiderweb cracks leapt.

An ancient breath seeped up from the fissures, cold as air from a sealed tomb.

Looks like a monster tearing free of chains, Paroti thought, a wry ember in his chest.

He kept walking, stepping past Cassio’s body, as if wading through a black tide.

He passed Brown and his legion of Constructs, rapped the breastplate of an arcane suit, and moved on like a night watchman.

Until he stood before Fi. Even dead, this one looked lazily sun-warmed, like a cat on a sill.

"The Hero and the champion should be gone by now…" His voice was a low wind through reeds.

Almost all his mana held his spark; the rest of him was meat and grit, a paper lantern in rain.

He grunted, hoisted the corpse with naked strength, and staggered back, a lone ant dragging a branch.

"I hate you, you fool. You knew Cassio liked you, yet you dragged it out, day after day.

"Reject or accept, pick a road, idiot. Now look, no confession in the end." His anger rang like a struck bell.

He panted loud, breath sawing like a bellows, back bent under the dead weight like a bowed bow.

He was a scholar, not a fighter. Opa and Eve once urged light training, words like morning drills.

Most Arcane Engineers, him included, said gear was enough. Why lift iron when runes lift mountains?

"And now I pay for it…" The words fell like stones into a dry well.

He had sat long with Head and learned of what lies beyond the world, like staring past the horizon’s line.

He knew this was useless. All souls return to endless rest, rivers running to sea.

Carrying a body only soothed a petty wish, a candle cupped in a storm.

Let Fi and Cassio meet one last time, two stars brushing at dusk.

Chips of stone rained from the crumbling walls; the stairs splintered, jagged as broken teeth.

Then strength emptied out of him, sand leaking through a cracked hourglass.

His rotten heart lagged the blood’s tide; his thoughts slowed, frost spreading on glass.

Time’s up, he thought, a bell tolling in a hollow room.

"Damn it, already? I was so close!" He bared his teeth and shoved a dark-red component into his heart, like driving a nail into wood.

Battle-cry magic: Angerflame. Burn the body to buy a few breaths, fuel on a roaring grate.

Only orc warriors with iron will endure that scorch; they use it when the field is their chosen grave.

His body turned light. Physically so—his heart was ash, a hearth gone white.

A slow fire crawled outward from his chest, eating him by tiny percents each second, moths in silk.

Cold sweat beaded from pain and vanished in a hiss, steam kissed off by flame.

Paroti sucked a sharp breath, clenched his teeth, and walked like nothing’s wrong, legs trembling like reeds in wind.

He carried the corpse back and returned to that first room, a circle closing like a snake biting its tail.

He laid Fi by Cassio, careful hands arranging her like a noon nap, leaning on him like a gentle hill.

He remembered feeding the crew when big experiments ate their days, a hearth blazing in winter.

He cast support spells, tucked blankets, tended sleepers as if guarding embers in ash.

He’d straighten a neck here, a shoulder there, to fend off colds and stiff mornings like a mother hen.

"There. All right, Cassio, happy now?" He planted his hands on his hips, proud as a rooster; then the pose soured to dust.

Talking to the dead is empty wind, smoke through fingers you can’t hold.

He gave them one last gentle smile and turned away, a step light as ash on air.

This room was their bridal chamber; it shouldn’t be his pyre, not his end.

Fire already licked his shoulders like hungry tongues, yet his body hadn’t fallen to cinders.

"Fine. Seems I have a little time left." His voice drifted like embers on a draft.

As his steps faded, the ceiling finally gave and crashed down, a thunderhead of stone.

It buried that room—and the two champions within—like a cairn no one will name.

He shouldn’t have died. Andor had been startled by that at the start, a chess line broken.

He suddenly recalled what Head had told him about this man’s future, a map unrolled by moonlight.

Paroti Hiris, by rights, should head to Skyward City Atlante in forty years and found the Truth Tower.

He’d gather scattered Arcane Engineers like birds to a bell, and gift them tech far beyond their day’s horizon.

Later, the Truth Tower would overflow with famed Arcane Engineers, sparks thrown bright into the Demon King wars.

In the Truth Seekers Assembly, he kept a low presence, a shadow at noon, easy to miss.

Most didn’t even know Nagash had such a disciple. So when the Heretic Inquisition struck, he alone fled with the most precious data.

To become Tower Lord, a founder—what a good fate. He’d thought so, when Head finished speaking, like sunlight on stone.

But when Fi died first before him, Paroti’s heart veered, a compass jarred by lightning.

Friends were killed one by one, falling like late leaves in an autumn wind.

Maybe they’d had knots and fights, but when death lands, a chunk is carved from your chest, wood split by wedge.

Maybe that’s a real friend. The realization came late, dawn after long rain.

One by one, the people who remembered his name left. Who would know he existed in this wide night?

That was why he was chosen; now he tasted the loneliness, cold and deep as a well.

So he wanted to die. Maybe his friends’ resolve stained him, ink blooming in water.

Maybe he feared that cold and passed the burden to Raven, a torch thrust into new hands.

Maybe he just wanted to be with them again, a fish diving for old depths.

Who can say? Either way, his fate is sealed, wax beneath a signet.

"Ah, this one’s good. Clean design." The corridor was lined with decorative paintings, a river of frames.

He’d always hated this hallway for being too long. From mess to lab felt like a pilgrim’s road.

Now it looked truly beautiful, a scroll unrolled in spring light.

Seated Lady—who painted this? Maybe from a Truth Seekers Assembly contest, someone…

A slab of ceiling slammed down and buried that stretch of wall, a lid dropping on a coffin.

I should’ve admired them before, he thought, with a dry smile like dust on lips.

Half the Truth Seekers Assembly had already evacuated. That Demon King, Andor, sensed it early and probed me, fingers tapping a wall.

Just as he said, they cleared civilians before the assault, a tide flowing out before the storm.

The gifted, the inventive, the Arcane Engineers not bound by oath left with the crowd, seeds on the wind.

Those who left will remember today and pass on the Assembly’s spirit, a lamp handed from palm to palm.

Those who stayed are offerings. Someone must die to quench a Divine Being’s wrath, rain on a wildfire.

The falling stones grew many and large, drumming his skull until blood threaded his face like red ink.

His mind fogged at the edges, breath on a mirror, yet he kept walking, a ghost on duty.

Maybe he wanted to remember, or to recall something lost. Who knows, in all this smoke?

The Hall of Truth stood by the Ironwood Forest’s edge for six hundred years, a cliff against storm tides.

It met Demon Kings of ages and did not fall, a spear planted deep in earth.

Today, under mortal assault—everything came down like a hillside landslide.

The tallest tower cracked from the base and buckled, crashing onto the main roof, thunder of stone and dust.

It was only the beginning. With that fall as a cue, the surrounding keeps split and tumbled like dominoes of granite.

The entire Hall of Truth failed from the bottom up, craft to rubble, treasure to trash in a breath.

"Ten minutes. That’s all it takes," a voice murmured, words thin as smoke.

A boy in a patient’s gown sat cross-legged on a jut of rock, gazing at the castle like a monk in dawn mist.

His eyes were flat gray, blind as winter sky, yet his will fixed on the Hall of Truth like an arrow.

"Head, what are you doing?" A breathtaking woman, draped in only a few silken ribbons, appeared behind him like a breeze.

She felt as if she belonged here; her presence made the scene click into place, the last tile in a mosaic.

The world is self-consistent, and she proved it by being, a theorem made flesh in sunlight.

Established. Certain. Like seals pressed into clay.

Because she was part of the world itself, the root of ten thousand things—the concept of Strength given body.

"Bel, you’re here?" He smiled like a tired sun behind cloud.

"Yes. I came to find you, to ask something. And you—what are you doing?" Her voice flowed like cool spring.

"If I had to name it, I’d say witnessing," he said, slow as tea cooling.

"Witnessing what?" Her words were clear, a blade in water.

"A banner falling. A thought catching like dry grass. A hero’s struggle and fall. A villain’s malice—and his respect."

"I don’t understand," she said, brows like drawn willow leaves.

"All right, another way. Today, a hero died. Or rather, someone who could have been one. But he died."

"You say could have. Wait—who altered the future?" Her gaze narrowed, a sickle of moon.

"It doesn’t matter who. What matters is he chose death," he said, pointing to the stone where she stood.

"He should have stood right here, with me, watching that castle topple, stones like rain.

"He should have wept, lamented, then gathered himself and gone east to the Phoenix-Cry Mountains.

"But he died instead. Not because he must, but because he believed he should die there—with his friends, mentor, and lover—buried in a nameless cairn."

"This ‘he’ of yours—he’s a heretic too?" Her tone was cool as jade.

"Heretic? Ha. What right do we have to brand them heretic? Because we’re Divine Beings?

"Bel, when did we, the gods, grow so proud?" His laugh was hollow, wind in a jar.

"Because we are always correct. How can correctness be pride?" Her answer struck like a hammer on anvil.

"Is Sane correct? Am I? Are the gods who question me?

"Absolute Justice died. We stood beside it and watched Saster spear it through. Since then, no one can call themselves just."

"But we split justice among us and tangled it together. Why can’t that be Justice?" Her logic coiled tight as a knot.

"Because I’m not you, and you’re not me. The gods’ spirits don’t merge and can’t.

"Our justice differs and grinds like mismatched gears," he said, voice low as thunder beyond hills.

She ran out of words and lifted a fine brow, a stroke of ink on paper.

"Then can the Truth Seekers Assembly be called just? Such skewed doctrine—I deny it," she said, cool as dawn dew.

"Your denial is inevitable. Yet they may still be just, only ill-fitted to this era.

"So I said, witness a banner falling," he answered, like a judge closing a worn book.

"Someday, when our age passes, they may be just. Is that why you let them go?"

"Exactly. I set some of them free.

"Tomorrow, next year, or far later, their iron will can wait for the day they become just.

"So I said, witness a thought on fire," he said, eyes glowing like banked coals.

"And the rest—‘a hero’s struggle and fall, a villain’s malice and respect’—has That One arrived?"

"The Endless Demon King. He did change the future, yet he paid back with respect.

"So I wonder if I can write a new page from that thread," the boy said, cheek propped, a lazy sigh drifting like smoke.

"But he should’ve stood here. He shouldn’t have died," he whispered, a smile on his face and rain in his eyes.

She meant to comfort him, then saw the tears stream while he smiled, sun through rain on stone.

"Head, why…" Her voice softened, a hand poised like a petal about to fall.

"Bel, the joys and sorrows of children—you don’t understand," he said, words light as feathers on water.

"I can grasp them, but…" Her hesitation hung like mist between pines.

"But you can’t truly taste them.

"To limit your own strength, to bridle your mind, to shackle your greatness.

"To be as a child and savor love and hate—that’s intoxicating, and it’s frightening," he said, eyes far as a gray shore.

"I followed your guidance. I never walked the world as a child would. So I don’t understand," she nodded, sincere as clear spring.

“This is right, as clean as a bell in cold air. Such a light, dismissive feeling is a dust mote to the gods. But when you truly step down from your station, you wear a child’s body and move as a child. You steer a child’s future, and then that feeling hurts like a cold blade under the ribs.”

“He shouldn’t have died…”

A fresh ache welled up; he sighed again. He watched smoke rise from the ruins, uncoiling like incense toward the pale sky.