This was… an unexpected end.
Or perhaps “end” wasn’t the right word, not yet. As his form twisted, as his once-human features melted away into something otherworldly, Luke found to his mild surprise that his sense of self didn’t vanish immediately. He was still here. Still Luke.
But with each passing second, he felt less so.
It wasn’t death, he had imagined death countless times over his near two century of existence. He thought it would be abrupt, a severing of all thought, all awareness. Instead, this felt like growing up, but in reverse. A slow unravelling of the layers that made him “him.”
Growing up meant adding, more experiences, more emotions, more intellect.
This… this was the opposite.
He floated soundlessly through the dungeon’s vast hollow spaces, the path instinctual, though he barely noticed when he had begun moving. His mind, what remained of it, drifted through memory. Like a drowning man seeing his life flash before his eyes, he found himself walking back through the years.
Strangely, it was serene.
Maybe because he had already lost the capacity to fear the loss of himself. Or maybe because there was a certain clarity in knowing there was nothing left to fight.
One hundred and fifty years… he thought.
He remembered the Citadel, the vast marble halls, the intricate glyphs, the hush of scholars in pursuit of forbidden knowledge. He had devoted a century and a half to mastering ScriptForging. It had consumed him utterly. Did he regret it?
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No.
He had pursued what he loved. He had pushed the limits of what was possible. Even if no one else valued his work, even if they whispered his name like a curse.
He remembered the Church, the forty-two years he had spent as a cleric of the faith. The endless sermons. The ritual prayers. The fervor of belief. At first, they had been his family. But the memory soured. He could still see the disgust on their faces when he turned away from them, when he became one of the things they abhorred most: a Highbreed who achieved angelhood outside the sanction of the Faith.
A non-faith affiliated angel, one of the ultimate heresies.
And yet… he could not blame them.
He dug deeper, trying to recall a life outside these two institutions. A lover? A child? Family?
Nothing.
Not because he had forgotten, but because there was nothing there.
Like most Highbreed bastards, he had been raised by the Church. No roots. No blood ties. He had convinced himself back then that he did not need them. That his work, his studies, would be his legacy.
“Foolish,” he thought now. “I should have fathered a child or two. Left something of myself behind.”
If he'd to have a regret it would be that, but that regret did not linger, for the simple reason that he began to forget.
As his thoughts flickered and dulled, what remained of his consciousness finally turned outward. He realized he had not been paying attention to the real world. At some point during his internal drifting, he had reached the entrance of the dungeon.
Or from his current perspective, the exit.
A few meters ahead lay the threshold, beyond which the verdant plains of the dungeon gave way to a cold, expansive cave. The air shifted. The colors dulled. The dungeon’s false world ended, and the real one, Fiendfell, began.
He did not hesitate.
He floated past the threshold.
The verdant light gave way to shadowed stone and chill air. He was inside a cave now, vast and silent.
And then he saw her.
A figure stood in the gloom. Familiar, yet horrifyingly unfamiliar.
His thoughts, frayed and fragile, reached for their identity.
But there was nothing. A blank. A yawning gap where their name, their face, their meaning should have been.
Yet deep within him, a flicker of recognition remained. The sense that he should know that person. That he must know them.
His voice came out strange, hollow even to his own ears.
“Y????o?????u????…???? …w????h????o???? ????a????r???e??? ???y???o???u????”
