NIGH

I knelt in the sand, the rising sun casting a long, lonely shadow behind me.
The ornate, empty armour of the Veiled Knight lay where she had dissolved, the sorrowful, masked helm clutched in my hands like a sacred, terrible relic.
Kathuria.
My wife.
My love.
Found and lost again in the space of a single heartbeat.
The grief was not the hot, explosive rage that had followed Yui's death.
It was a cold, dense singularity of pain in the centre of my soul. I felt tremendously empty.

The sound of running feet broke the stillness.
Tulote, Cassandra, and Xerta crested the dune, their faces a mixture of relief and confusion, which quickly turned to shock as they saw the empty suit of armour and the look on my face.

"Arda...where is she?" Cassandra asked, her voice soft, her eyes darting around as if expecting our enigmatic ally to phase out of a shadow.

My throat was thick with a grief so incredible, it felt like I was swallowing glass.
I tried to honour her wish for secrecy, to protect them from the impossible, jagged edges of the truth.

"She's gone," I said, my voice flat, distant. "She paid the price for defying Dietha. The contract that bound her was broken. She.. Unravelled."

Xerta stared at the empty armour, then at me, her usual cynicism gone.

"Damn it all," she muttered, her voice a low rumble. "She was a demon, but... she fought for us. She fought for you."

Tulote placed a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"Another good soldier fallen in this cursed war. We will honour her sacrifice by finishing what we started."

His words, meant as a comfort, almost destroyed me.
A soldier?
She was not a soldier.
She was a universe.
She was MY UNIVERSE.

The fragile wall of my composure crumbled.
But before I could speak, before I could scream, the world dissolved it.
It was a gentle, grounding sensation, as if the very atoms of my being were respectfully reassembled elsewhere.

I stood once more in the realm of Erton, on the infinite, polished granite floor under a soft, golden llight.
The creator God was waiting for me, his kind, weathered face had the weary sadness of a father who had seen too much.

"I am sorry, Arda Nebula." he said, "I felt her essence return to the great void. She was a brave soul."

"Brave?" I snarled, taking a step towards him, the Gladius Nobellus flaring to life in my hand.

"She was my WIFE! You speak of her like a pawn in this GAME! Was she part of your plan, too? Did you know she was here? Did you know what Dietha had done to her?"

Erton did not flinch.
He simply absorbed my rage, his ancient eyes filled with a pain that mirrored my own.

"I did not know it was her, not until she revealed herself to save your children. The games... they are not mine. They are the desperate strategies of a mother lost in a grief so vast it had broken her mind. To understand how to end this, you must understand how it all began."

He raised a hand, and the golden light of his realm swirled, forming images around us, echoes of a time before time.
He told me everything.
He spoke of a time when he and Dietha were not enemies, but a family.
He showed me their four "children," beautiful, swirling nebulas of pure cosmic energy.
He explained Dietha's descent into a possessive madness, her desire to consume their children to achieve a state of perfect, untethered Chaos.

I watched, mesmerized and horrified, as Erton created our world - a sanctuary of physical laws designed to shield his children.
I saw him give them mortal form as the First Four, the Progenitors of the great races.

"They live on, through their creations, through them all, each new child that is born, carries their essence."

I felt his pain as he recounted that with the annihilation of the Half-humans, his child was lost.
The loss that shattered what remained of Dietha's sanity and twisted her grief into gross annihilation.

"You cannot fight her grief with anger alone," Erton explained. "You must fight her with the combined hope of everything she seeks to destroy."

He presented me with the four relics of his children.
The Heartstone of the Dwarf.
The Seed of the Elf.
The Breath of the Human.
The Echo of the Half-Human.

He explained that they, when united through the Gladius Nobellus, would grant me the power to unmake a god. But there was a catch.

The power would take time to channel, a ridiculously Ludacris amount of time given the status quo.
The risks were evident.

The bitterness returned.

"You speak of losing your family over eons. I just lost my wife for the second time less than a day ago! I am TIRED OF THIS. WHY HER? WHY US? WHY DO YOU GODS PLAY THESE GAMES WITH OUR LIVES?"

Erton's countenance did not show anger.

"I do not play games, son of Adam. I am a father who has spent millennia trying to stop a mother from destroying everything in her grief. I chose you because I saw in your heart that same, fierce, protective love. I cannot take away your pain. All I can do is give you the means to end its cause."

He placed a heavy, grounding hand on my shoulder.

"I am sorry for your loss. More sorry than you can ever know. Now go. End this war. Avenge your wife. Save this world. Do it for all our children's sakes."

The golden light intensified, and I was back in the desert.
My companions were staring at me, their expressions alarmed.
I must have gone for only a second in their time, but an eternity had passed for me.
In my hands, I held the four relics.

"Arda, what happened?" Tulote demanded. "You... you were glowing."

I looked at their faces - Tulote, my brother in this hellscape; Cassandra, the sister I never had; Xerta, the embodiment of honesty in it all.
I looked at the empty suit of armour on the sand.
I could not carry this alone.
Kathuria's promise was about our children.
These people... they deserved the truth.
They had earned it in blood and loyalty.

"Swear to me," I said, my voice rough and cracking.

"Swear on whatever you hold sacred that what I am about to tell you will never, ever reach the ears of my children.

So I told them.
I told them everything.
I spoke the name that had been a holy word on my lips for twenty years.

"Her name was Kathuria... she... she was my wife."

I recounted her story, everything she said to me in her final moments.
Of Dietha, the twisted pact, her reforging into a Herald of Ruin.
I explained her long, silent rebellion, the way her true self fought against the status quo.
I told them of the moment on the mountain, when the sight of our children had shattered her conditioning and led her to defy a god.
An act that had sealed her fate.

Xerta was the first to react.
She fell to her knees in the sand, her head bowed, a single, choked sob escaping her lips.

"By my ancestors. To go through all that... alone." she wept.

Tulote strode to my side and pulled me into a fierce, grounding embrace. 
Tears streamed down his own face, mirroring mine.

"To lose a loved one is a pain I know all too well, my brother. But to find them again, twisted into a servant of the very darkness you fight, only to lose them once more... that is a cruelty beyond measure."

He pulled back, his eyes blazing with fury.

"Her name was Kathuria, and we will add it to the list of those for whom we demand retribution. The Irene Desert will be her funeral pyre, and Dietha's soul will be the offering."

Cassandra, her own eyes shimmering with unshed tears, placed a gentle hand on my arm.

"She was a queen in her own right, Arda," she said softly.

"A queen of a world we will never know. Her love was strong enough to break a god's hold. We will honour her memory by ensuring her sacrifice was not in vain.

.

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.

What came next, required way more will power than I would like to admit.

"She saw you Xerta... she saw your strength. Your honesty. She... she told me that she approved of - you know what I mean."

Xerta's face crumpled again.
She walked over to me and embraced me.
For what seemed like forever, we sat there, and I cried on her shoulder like a baby.
To find love through the very love you thought was lost is a bittersweet thing.

Her rough hands held my face.

"It'll be okay, we'll get through this alright? We'll kick the boots off Dietha, then we can figure out things as they come."

"But... might I ask why? Why me? I've never had a pretty face, and most would never consider me mother material, so tell me Mr. Nebula, why me?"

"You're honest, down to earth, amazing to be with, and you remind me of myself, of home, of what it is to love again. I would give my all to feel that, and here it is, embodied through you. I am forever grateful."

She tussled through my hair and lifted me over her shoulder.

I will never speak of that again.

—

I finally revealed the relics Erton had given me, and explained what they were.
I told them of their immense power, but of the catch; the charge up time.
In our last stand scenario, I hoped it was viable.

Our quest was no longer for the Imperium, or for the world.
It was now a personal vendetta.

No one messes with my family.

I gently packed Kathuria's empty armour and her masked helm.
We stood together and turned south.

The final battle was nigh.