REVELATION

The silence that followed the battle was a heavier weight than the battle itself.
We stood in the ruins of the demonic outpost, the sun painting the desert in hues of blood and bruised purple.
The victory was a hollow, ringing thing in my ears.
Beside me, the Veiled Knight, had collapsed, her armoured form trembling as a faint, dark smoke seeped from the joints of her armour.
My companions were miles away, dealing with their own fight, leaving me utterly alone with my growing dread.

I knelt beside her, my heart frantic against my ribs.

"Hey, stay with me," I urged. "Talk to me. What's happening to you?"

I reached out with my power, the gentle, restorative light of Order gathering in my hands.
But as I moved to touch her, a wave of instinct, a primal scream from the core of my being, stopped me.
Her essence was a controlled, grieving Chaos.
Mine was pure Order.
To touch her with my power might not be to heal, but to annihilate, the two fundamental opposites unmaking each other.
The HELPLESSNESS was a very real physical agony, a familiar ghost of kneeling by a hospital bed, able to do nothing but watch.

Her violent tremors began to subside, replaced by an eerie stillness.
Her breathing, distorted by the helm's filter, was shallow, ragged.
She was dying.

I saw it not with my enhanced perception, but with the simple, terrible certainty of a man who had seen death before.

With a slow, trembling motion that spoke of immense effort, her gauntleted hand rose, her fingers fumbling at the clasps of her helmet.

"Don't," I whispered, my voice breaking. "Save your strength."

She ignored me.
There was a soft hiss of released pressure, and the Stoic, sorrowful mask came free.
She lowered it to the sand beside her, and then, with the last of her strength, she lifted her head.

The world stopped.

The face that looked back at me was pale, tremendously weary, and etched with fine scars that glowed with a faint, dark energy.
But it was a face I knew better than my own.
The high cheekbones, the gentle curve of her lips, the dark, intelligent eyes that held an eternity of sorrow...

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"Kathuria..."

My wife's name was a choked, disbelieving breath.

It couldn't be.
It was impossible.
A trick.
A hallucination brought on by grief and the desert heat.
But my power, the very Order that defined me, saw the truth of her.
I could perceive the unique pattern of her life thread, a pattern I had known and loved for twenty years.
It was frayed, corrupted by Chaos, and fading with every passing second, but it was undeniably, impossibly hers.

The grief, the love, the sheer, mind-shattering shock of it all destroyed me.
I reached out, my hand trembling, and touched her cheek.
She was real.
She was here.

"Arda," she whispered, her own voice, no longer filtered by the helm.

It was a sound I had thought had lost me forever.
Tears streamed down my face, path finding through the grime and dust.

"How?" was all I could manage.

She gave a weak, heartbreakingly familiar smile.

"It, seems," she began, "that the beings who play with worlds have a twisted sense of symmetry."

And so, as the twin moons began their ascent into the twilight sky, she told me her story.
It was as though I heard a retelling of my story.
After her death, as her soul drifted in the void, she too had been approached by a celestial.
But it was not a being of golden light and benevolent promises.
It was Dietha herself.

"It spoke of cosmic balance, it told me that a world had been chosen, a champion of Order selected. It said that to maintain the equilibrium of all creation, a champion of Chaos was needed to oppose him. It promised me a second chance, a chance to create a new reality, to correct the flawed world that had allowed for our tragedy. To return to you all," she explained, her voice growing stronger as she recounted the memory.

The offer had been undeniably deceptive.
It didn't frame nor speak of destruction, but rather of correction.
It didn't speak of hate; it spoke of perfect peace and restoration.
Her soul, raw with the grief of leaving her family behind, had been fertile ground for such twisted logic.
She accepted the pact.

"I was... reforged," she said, a shudder running through her. "My memories were suppressed, buried under layers of cold, hard purpose. I became what you see — a Herald of Ruin, a champion of Chaos, my soul bound to Dietha's will.
I was sent to Erton to aid its unmaking.

She had fought in Dietha's armies for that time, a ghost of her former self, her actions dictated by the cold hard logic of her pact.
But the woman she was, the doctor, the mother, had refused to die.

"I would see things," she whispered. "A demon slaughtering a family... and I would feel a flicker of something. An echo of a pain I couldn't name. I started to question. To resist. The sorrowful mask of my helm... it became a reflection of my own dawning horror at the monster I had become."

"The moment you arrived in this world, Arda, I felt it. A pull. A resonance. A piece of my own soul calling out. I sought you out, staying in the shadows. I was the one who left the anonymous tip for Triton about the Obsidian Maw. I was the one who created a subtle distraction that allowed Cassandra to scout Ormas. I was trying to help, fighting my own orders. I betrayed those I aligned myself with."

Then came the moment on the mountain.

"When Dietha ripped our children from their time," Kathuria's voice broke.

Her tears mirrored my own.

"When I saw their faces... everything broke. The condition, the pact, the logic - it all shattered. All I knew was that my babies were in danger, and that I would unmake the universe to protect them."

She had defied Dietha.
A direct violation of the cosmic contract that bound her soul to Chaos.

"That is the price. To break a pact with Chaos is to sever the very anchor of your existence. My soul is bound to it, Arda. Without the pact, it... it unravels. Every time I use my power now, I am borrowing from the last few moments of my life."

The fill, tragic weight of her sacrifice crushed me.
She had doomed herself to save our children.
To save me.

She reached up and took my hand, her grip surprisingly strong.

"Listen to me Arda. There isn't much time. You cannot tell them. Our children. You cannot tell them I was here."

I stared into those eyes, her dark, beautiful eyes, the eyes I had fallen in love with.

"Kathuria. no... If I knew, it was you... I... I would've ran away with you and the kids, somewhere, to somewhere, safe and free from all this."

"Arda, stop speaking nonsense, just, just PROMISE ME," she insisted, her voice gaining a fierce intensity. "Let them remember the mother who baked them cookies and kissed their scraped knees in a world of sunshine and green grass. Don't let their last memory of me be this... this broken, monstrous thing in a war-torn wasteland. Don't make them suffer this loss twice. Let me be a happy memory for them, not a fresh nightmare. Please, my love. Promise me."

I could only nod, my throat too tight with grief to speak.

Her smile returned, soft and full of love.

"Good." She looked past me, her gaze unfocused.

"She is a good woman, Arda. The blacksmith."

I stared at her, confused. 

"Xerta?"

"I have been watching you." she whispered. "I have seen the way you look at her. The way you fight together. She is strong in a way I never was. She is grounded. Honest. She knows how to build a new life, a new home... here."

Her thumb gently brushed my cheek.

"She looks at you with a hope that I remember feeling myself. Don't let my ghost stand in the way of that. You deserve to be happy. You deserve a family. Promise me you will try."

It was the most selfless, the most heartbreaking, the most loving gift she could have possibly given me.
Her blessing to move on.

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The fading was accelerating now.
Her form was becoming more and more translucent, the edges of her armour bleeding into the twilight air. Her voice grew faint, a whisper on the wind.

"Im so sorry, Arda," she breathed. "Sorry I left you alone. Sorry for all of this."

"Don't" I sobbed, clutching her hand. "Don't be sorry. Just... stay."

She brushed over my hair, and I kissed her for the final time.

"I love you, Arda Nebula. Always."

And then, she was gone.

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She did not die.
She simply dissolved, unravelling into a billion motes of dark, sorrowful, and beautiful light that drifted up into the night sky and vanished among the uncaring stars.

I knelt there for an eternity, clutching the cold, empty helmet in my hands, my soul was hollow.
I had found her.
I had found my Kathuria, my impossible, miraculous wife.
And I had lost her all over again.

A new feeling began to stir in the depths of my despair.
It was not the hot, righteous rage that had consumed me after Yui's death.
It was a cold, absolute fury.
A fury directed not just at Dietha but at whoever or whatever that other celestial was.
The ones who had chosen us.
The ones who had set this all in motion.
The ones who sat in their golden realms and played games with the hearts of mortals.

I looked up at the twin moons, my vision blurred with tears.
The war was no longer just about this world.
It was no longer just about protecting my children.

It was about vengeance.
It was about making the gods answer for what they had done.
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I gently placed the masked helm in my pack, a sacred, terrible relic.
I stood up, the Gladius Nobellus appearing in my hand, it's light now a cold, hard, unforgiving white.
My purpose, for the final battle, was now absolute.