Lucius found himself floating in the endless black void once more.

  Naked. Weightless. Suspended in a space that had no dimension, no anchor, no connection to the world of the living. Around him stretched absolute nothingness, a darkness so complete that it seemed to have texture, as if he could reach out and touch the absence itself.

  And through that void, a single word echoed and re-echoed, burning like a brand:

  Lightbringer.

  Lucius Lightbringer. The name stung in ways he could not articulate. It was a name that carried weight, that spoke of an identity he had buried beneath centuries of wandering and forgetting. The more he heard it, the more he felt the truth of it settling into his bones like a curse. He thought of dying rather than fighting that duel. Thought of simply accepting Veynar's bullet as merciful release rather than continuing this endless cycle of death and resurrection and purpose he could not escape.

  Then a voice came.

  Seris. Not present in form, but speaking as if from across an infinite distance. His words carried the weight of experience hard-won through witnessing others' paths:

  This road leads to only a single destination.

  The words hung in the void, unanswered and unanswerable.

  Lucius closed his eyes.

  And behind his eyelids came a memory—agonizing in its clarity, terrible in its specificity. Sable standing on the execution platform. The axe rising. The moment between life and death, suspended and infinite. And Sable's final words, spoken with the absolute certainty of a man who understood what he was asking:

  Give them hell, Lucius.

  The memory burned.

  Then he felt it—cold arms wrapping around his shoulders. Cold cheek pressing against his left cheek. The familiar presence of someone who existed between worlds, neither fully alive nor dead, neither fully present nor absent.

  He opened his eyes.

  She was there. The woman with blue eyes. Ethereal beauty given form. As if moonlight itself had been compressed into human shape and then set loose in the void. Her eyes held no emotion and every emotion simultaneously. Her presence was both comfort and terror in equal measure.

  They floated together in the endless darkness, two beings suspended in a space that transcended the physical world.

  "So you came to see me once more," she said, her voice like wind through empty halls.

  "I did," Lucius replied. "After all, you are the one with whom I find solace. The rest of the time, it's like going down a path knowing there is no redemption. Just self-destruction. Just the endless cycle of waking and dying and waking again."

  She tilted her head slightly, considering him. "And what about the time you thought that you had left your vengeance behind? When you were forging weapons in that blacksmith's shop, telling yourself you could build a new life?"

  Lucius kept staring into the void, unable to meet those blue eyes directly. The question was too sharp, too true, too revealing of the lie he had told himself.

  "I don't remember anything," he finally said, his voice hollow. "All I remember is your cold touch. Your eyes. Everything else—the Brotherhood, the execution square, Sable's words, my own purpose—it all fades when I'm here with you. It all becomes secondary to the simple fact of your presence."

  She moved closer, her arms tightening around him slightly. In the void, there was no temperature, no true sensation, yet her touch felt colder than anything in the physical world. It was the cold of oblivion. The cold of release. The cold of a peace that could only come from surrender.

  "Then perhaps," she whispered, "you should stop fighting. Stop trying to remember. Stop clinging to a vengeance that has already consumed everything it touched. Stop being Lightbringer and simply be."

  And in the darkness, Lucius felt the terrible temptation of that offer. To let go. To fade. To become nothing more than a spirit drifting in the void with this ethereal being who seemed to understand him in ways no living soul ever could.

  But somewhere, buried beneath the weight of the void and the seduction of surrender, a memory persisted. Not his own, but borrowed from Sable:

  Give them hell, Lucius.

  And Lucius understood, in that moment, that he could not rest. Could not surrender. Could not simply fade into the void, no matter how tempting the offer might be.

  The woman held him in the void, her cold arms wrapped around his shoulders, her ethereal presence the only constant in a space that contained nothing else.

  "Why don't you stay with me here forever?" she asked softly. "I know you want to. Then why don't you?"

  Lucius stared into the void, then turned to look directly into her blue eyes—those infinite pools that seemed to contain both everything and nothing.

  "Is it really what you want?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "Would you be able to accept me as I am? Nothing but a hollow husk. Someone who can't pass on nor be left behind. Can you really accept me?"

  The woman kept staring into his eyes—black and void of light, yet somehow reflecting her gaze back to her with terrible clarity. For a long moment, she did not answer. Then she spoke:

  "What if I said yes?"

  Lucius felt something shift inside him. A possibility. A doorway opening in the darkness. "If you truly desire it, I can maybe live here with you for eternity. We could exist in this void together, beyond the reach of vengeance, beyond the weight of obligation, beyond the endless cycle of death and resurrection."

  "You can," the woman said. "And you would."

  But then her expression changed. Her eyes shifted toward a direction behind Lucius, and when she spoke again, her voice carried resignation:

  "But he wouldn't let you."

  Lucius turned.

  A figure approached through the void.

  It was himself. Another Lucius. But this version carried a katana—not the brusnium revolver, not the rusted blade from the graveyard, but a katana from a time so distant that he had buried the memory of it beneath layers of centuries. The blade shone with an otherworldly light, and when it moved, it cut through the void itself as if reality were made of cloth.

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  Lucius's body froze.

  Recognition. Terror. The understanding that he was facing not an enemy but a reflection. A part of himself that refused to be buried, that refused to be forgotten, that had persisted through every death and resurrection and void-drowning.

  The woman disappeared.

  She simply ceased to exist, fading like smoke dispersed by wind, leaving Lucius alone with his other self. The sword-bearing Lucius stood before him, his face obscured in darkness except for his eyes—glowing red, not the absolute crimson of fire, but the dull copper-red of blood that had oxidized, of metal corroded by time and violence.

  The other Lucius picked up his katana with deliberate slowness.

  "No," the naked Lucius whispered. "No, wait—"

  But there was no negotiation. No pause. No mercy.

  The blade came down in a single, perfect arc. Not a thrust. Not a complex technique. Simply a vertical slash that split the naked Lucius in half—left shoulder to right hip—separating him into two pieces that fell into the void and began to sink into the darkness.

  The sword-bearing Lucius turned without acknowledgment, without celebration, without any emotion at all. He simply walked back the way he had come, his footsteps silent in the void, his katana trailing blood that dissipated into darkness before it could fall.

  And the naked Lucius, divided and falling, watched his other self disappear back into whatever depths of memory or consciousness had spawned him.

  In the darkness, there was only the sensation of separation. Of being unmade. Of the void welcoming him back into its embrace.

  And somewhere, in the distance of that infinite black, a woman's voice whispered something that might have been a goodbye, or might have been a promise, or might have been nothing at all but the echo of his own despair given voice.

  As Lucius floated in the void, his body bisected, he felt no pain.

  Only memory.

  A farmhouse bloomed in his consciousness—vast and sprawling, filled with the warmth of life. Cattle in the fields. Horses in the stables. Dogs and cats scattered throughout. Everything a child could want. Everything a child could love.

  And Sable.

  But Sable's face was a dandelion—features obscured, identity held only in the feeling of his presence rather than in visual clarity. Behind Sable stood two more figures, equally obscured, equally rendered as dandelions. His mother. His father. Both rendered as blurred shapes, as if the specific details of their faces had been deliberately erased from memory, leaving only the emotional residue of their existence.

  Lucius saw himself as a child, playing tag with Sable.

  The sun shone bright. The breeze was cold against his skin. His lungs gasped for air as he ran, trying to catch his brother. Laughter. Joy. The simple happiness of a child who had not yet learned what weight his name carried.

  Then Chyros appeared.

  Another child. Running with them. Chasing a butterfly across the farmhouse grounds. The game of tag forgotten in the pursuit of something beautiful and fleeting. Three children, unified in purpose, chasing the impossible.

  The land shifted.

  He was inside the farmhouse now. Sable stood to his right. Chyros to his left. And he understood, in that moment, that Chyros was the child of their house help—a boy who rarely spoke but whose words, when they came, contained wisdom beyond his years. A boy who, despite his youth, carried knowledge that seemed to have been born with him rather than learned.

  His father approached.

  The dandelion-faced figure held out a katana. The same blade. The one carried by the Lucius in the void. A black katana that shone with its own inner light, as if containing something luminous within its metal. His father's hand rested on his shoulder—a weight that felt like destiny itself being pressed into his bones.

  "Lucius," his father said, his voice clear despite the dandelion obscuring his face, "we are House Lightbringer. This is our destiny. We guide the kings of Marrowind to righteous paths. It doesn't matter how far a king strays—we guide them back to the right track."

  The hand on his shoulder grew heavier.

  "Once you are old enough, you will carry this responsibility on your shoulders. This is a big responsibility. Make sure this responsibility doesn't get passed down to your brother. You have to protect this family and kingdom. This responsibility is too much for your brother. He might get crushed by this weight. You alone have to carry this."

  The land shifted again.

  Suddenly, he stood in a village consumed by massacre. Houses burning. Children crying. Mothers weeping. The sky filled with smoke and the smell of charred flesh. And in the midst of it all, a corpse.

  His father.

  Hanging from a wooden pole. Dismembered. Killed by a sword driven through his head. A sword wielded by hands that Lucius recognized as his own.

  He held the black katana. He was slashing. No mercy in his eyes. No restraint. No thought beyond the raw need to destroy everything in his path. The rage consumed him utterly. It was not directed. It was not purposeful. It was simply destruction given form.

  And in that rage, he struck down a king.

  He did not recognize the face—it was rendered as a dandelion like all the others—but he knew by the crown that adorned it, by the throne it had been sitting upon, by the authority it had attempted to wield. A king. The one responsible for the massacre. The one who had ordered his father's death.

  He killed him.

  But the rage was not satisfied. It burned hotter, hungrier, demanding more. He kept swinging. Kept slashing. Kept destroying everything around him, unable to stop, unable to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.

  Then clarity came.

  In that moment of terrible recognition, he saw what he had done. His sword was lodged deep within a child—left shoulder to right hip, the same bisecting cut that the void-Lucius had just given him. The same cut that would define him across centuries.

  The child held out a hand toward him.

  A small hand. Innocent. Bleeding. Reaching not in accusation but in supplication, in the desperate plea of a dying child seeking comfort from the one who had destroyed him.

  And the child spoke a single word:

  "Lightbringer."

  And Lucius understood.

  This was the sin he had buried. This was the memory he had tried to forget. This was the reason why his brother Sable had not been worthy of the House's responsibility—because Lucius himself was the one who had been shattered by it. The weight of protecting the kingdom had transformed him into a weapon. The duty to guide kings had turned him into a killer who could not distinguish between justice and slaughter.

  He was Lightbringer.

  His lungs filled with water.

  Lucius tried to gasp for air, but the void had transformed into an ocean. Water poured into his mouth, his nose, his throat. He thrashed, but there was nothing to push against, nothing to resist. Only the endless, suffocating crush of liquid pressing inward from all directions.

  He struggled. Fought. The darkness consumed him.

  Then his eyes opened.

  Veynar sat before him on a chair, watching with the calm patience of a man who had all the time in the world. The head of the King's Guard was relaxed, almost casual in his posture, one leg crossed over the other, his polished revolver hanging at his hip. But his eyes—those eyes held the weight of centuries of understanding.

  "So," Veynar said quietly, his voice carrying the tone of someone who had been waiting for this exact moment, "did you see what you left behind?"

  Lucius gasped for air, his lungs still burning with the memory of drowning. Around him, the space had changed. They were no longer in the void. They were no longer on the execution platform. They were in a dark room.

  Lucius tried to speak, but his voice was raw, broken, barely functional.

  Veynar leaned forward slightly, his expression unchanged.

  "The farmhouse. The dandelions. Your father's words. The village. The child you killed with that same blade you've carried for centuries." Veynar paused, letting each memory settle like weight. "You didn't just bury those memories, Lucius Lightbringer. You buried yourself. You became so focused on avenging your brothers that you forgot what you were avenging for."

  The implication hung in the air between them.

  "You were meant to guide kings," Veynar continued. "That was your family's purpose. That was the weight your father placed on your shoulders. But instead of guiding, you destroyed it. Instead of protecting, you murdered. And when that weight became too much, when the guilt threatened to drown you, you buried it all beneath a hunt for revenge that could never satisfy the hunger inside you."

  Veynar stood and walked closer to the broken form of Lucius.

  "Gazer did corrupt the kings of Marrowind, Lightbringer. Gazer liberated them from the protection of House Lightbringer's 'guidance.' Gazer gave you freedom from the weight of your family's supposed destiny."

  I… i don't know why he said that gazer freed me. It was like killing a child when he is just born and then saying to his mother that we did mercy to his child because world is an unjust place.

  What happens when the man defects on whom the whole kingdom relies?

  He unleashes carnage, he hunts, he kills and worst of all he defies.