Private Curatrix Maledictum: Memories Past

[Empor]

Of all the wicked things taught through the tulmutious nature of Life and Regret, most horrid are those left inconceivable but for the final moments in which the Breath is claimed by Death. A moment of eternity, an act felt heavy enough to mark the mortal soul with Damnation, in a time in which no error made, or sin committed, allow correction, save the hellish path through the Hollows, down the River in which all face purgatory, only to be cast out yet again through means unknown, by the will of thirsting Gods, or an unloving act of the Force, to befall the same, up until the end of Days, never to cease the galactic spins through the emptiness of the Void. It is worst of all, the fate of those cursed with the fate of awakening, those truly resented by the Force, to remain yet unclean, Wicked, through their drowning in the River, or never to reach the shallow waters, for it is them who shall be damned still, to remember actions never corrected in lives never completed.

The limbs twitched without the mind's will to do so, as if protesting to the timeless stay in stagnation and famine, of which no pain nor anguish nor weakness blighted the shell of flesh and bones and mind and Regret. The Onyx walls devoid of carvings or any a decoration, save for the simplicity through which the doorframe of the hall was made. Ceilings high enough, a chandelier made of bones dressed in silver, illuminating the chamber with pale light, offering no sensation to the eye but the unnatural feeling of tranquility, as if the rules of Realspace had never plagued this barren place.

The sarcophagus in which she lied was placed in the middle of the chamber, the centre of a deformed star made of the same pale light the chandelier poured into the chamber. The star on the floor was made by a single line, forming a Seven-pointed Star, allowing contrast to the black Onyx of which the chamber was carved through. Beyond the doorless doorframe, there was light pouring in, hinting to the many chambers that made the labyrinthic halls beyond the chamber. The white cloth had been embracing the woman in the sarcophagus for long enough to have adjusted to her silhouette, while her ashen hair placed freely, immobile and untouched by dust or wind or Breath.

Miniel​

A voice called... Calm and distant, reverberating across the labyrinth as smooth and with as much ease as would the wind in a seaside structure. Faceless. Formless. Heavy with intent.

Miniel​

There was cold, in the chamber. And yet, though all-consuming in the absence of any warmth of flame, that ethereal breeze did not come as unnatural or hostile frost would, upon the flesh of the Living in Realspace...

Miniel​

 

[asara kata]

The vast darkness unfolds even to the deepest edges of the empty space, swallowing everything in its path even the smallest mollecule of dust. Always moving, always existing. When nothing exists any more, the darkness will be there always creepling, always watching. Ready for its next victim to embrace.

And this is exactly what she sees. Darkness. Emptiness. Falling over and over again, screaming with no sound to be heard. Always falling. Over and over she plummets, her long ashen hair streaming upward with the motion, her hands outstretched toward an unseen savior. Trying to survive. But in the Darkness's embrace there is no hand to grab you. Only gravity, forcefully pulling you to the core of fathomless bottom.


Miniel

Again it comes, the same voice, the same tenderness, yet there is no answer.
Only the echo of her own breath, trembling somewhere between fear and longing. The sound fades into the endless void, devoured by the same silence that has claimed everything else.
Then, without warning, the motion ceases.

The air thickens around her, heavy and unmoving, as though the universe itself has forgotten how to breathe. Her hair drifts slowly around her face, suspended in the stillness, each strand glowing faintly against the sea of black. For the first time, she realizes she feels nothing beneath her body, no wind, no pull, no sound.

Time itself seems to hold its breath.
And in that fragile moment of stillness, she opens her eyes wider searching the dark for the source of the voice, for any flicker of light that might give her the unseen savior she so much yearns for.

 

[Empor]

As the palm eclipsed the starless void, the absence of all became so dominant, it grew flesh and bones and mass and will. And as her eyes reached out to the Darkness, in search of reason and purpose and cause, so did the Darkness glared back at her. Beholding her in an eyeless stare, an impatient urge to enact will upon the absence of all, while her body had forsaken any and all sensation, her mind flooded as the ever-present herald of the hereafter approached her in a manner so distant from the material of Realspace, his cosmic essence took a shapeless presence and revealed Himself to her.

Miniel.

Is Dead.

The voice called out from the depths of the labyrinth of her own mind, now a marionette to forces foul and incomperhensible, the experience carried little continuity than that of an amalgam of present, past and future yet. Each moment passing becoming a distant fragment of imagination, too unreal to be a memory.

Distance. Everything was afar. And yet, all was there, with her, in the sarcophagus of Onyx, whirling around her as if she was the bright Core of the galaxy of memories that spinned around a mind lost adrift.

Killed.

Never Learned.

The blood was still warm in her hands, as the body hit the deck. The vibrowblade dripped, as the gaze of the crimson-haired Sith looked up to the Captain, beholding her in awe and disgust.

"Kill them all." she demanded.

The Captain turned to the line of the captives. None wore but a farmer's cloth, or the merchant's garment, or the nurse's suit, so foreign to the warship's deck, surrounded by grim-clad shadows of soldiers, marked by the Winged Skull.

"You are a monster." said the Captain, stepping back, only to befall to the grip of the soldiers behind him.

Bit by bit, the red-haired Sith shattered into black mist. Each of her steps closer to the captives, furthering her descend into the same void that usurped all.

There was Darkness.

Absence.

Entropy.

The Onyx chamber stirred once again. The black mist sliding over the marked floor, forming a phasma of ethereal shroud, barely the height of the sarcophagus.

Ignis.

Ignis.

Ignis.

The voice bellowed. A chorus of indistinguishable echoes grew in the labyrinth beyond the onyx chamber, as if populated by nothing but Ghosts and memories lost in time foreign to this barren place. Into the far distance, somewhere deep in the labyrinth, the screeching of a lightsaber invaded the ghastly ambience, only for a scream to once again banish the disturbance back into the same outworldly stagnation.

Ignis.

Ignis.

Ignis.

 

[asara kata]

Miniel, Ignis...

Names that fade like whispers from an age long past, an era so distant it feels as though it belongs to another life, another dream. They slip through her mind like mist, just beyond the reach of clarity, barely more than shadows of forgotten memories. A fleeting dance of thought, caught in the winds of time before they vanish, as if they never were.

She tries to call them back, to remember, but she’s frozen, suspended in the void, in the Nowhere. A place that exists only in the space between breaths, between moments, where time ceases to flow and yet, she is still falling. Falling, but never moving. Existing, but not truly being. Phasing in and out of presence, like an echo struggling to be heard, yet destined to fade without answer.

The sarcophagus stands in the Onyx room. Its weight not just in stone, but in the silence it carries within, who it carries. The one who once was. The one who has long since faded from memory. The circle begins again. As it always has. As it always will. An eternal recurrence. A cycle unbroken, where each ending births the next beginning, yet none can recall the start of it all.

She tries to remember, as her body weigtless drifts in the frozen time. What was the beginning of it all? When will it end? Now. She just needs to give up. To close her eyes and dream of distant memories. Of dreams before they fade away. Alas, the Darkness has its claws deep inside her skull. Its grasping on it, intertwine its fingers like vines swallowing an old oak tree.
The cold fingers of Death. Its touch, familiar, inevitable. One might imagine the touch of a Brother to be gentle, reassuring,a comfort in the void. But not hers. For her Brother is Death.
And nothing can escape Him. Even her.

She knows not how she came to be here. She cannot recall her face, her name, the shape of her hands or the weight of her body. Time blurs, fractures into a distant fog, and with every descent, it becomes harder to hold onto the fragile threads of her past. The more she falls, the more the details slip through her grasp the once vivid tapestry of who she was,
now unraveled, thread by thread, into nothingness.

 

[Empor]

A moment...

That was all it took.

A moment of Wrath. A moment of Envy. Engulfed in a lifetime of diseased will and blighted cause, crowned by Death.

A moment of Passion. Toyed and deformed, Manipulated and Denied, never mourned by none, but Death.

And all that was, unmade. All that meant, inconsequential. Null. Until the Void swallowed all yet again, rendering the cosmic tails of the Galaxy the sole entity yet enduring, when all others faltered and decayed, in matter and in ether, in a maelstorm of birth and rebirth, purpose and mindless drive.

It was a moment, chosen by thirsting will and ungrateful Gods, that drove His blade through the Fallen's hearts. The moment lived on, haunting the day the War of Wrath became the first Dawn. A moment to cease the sins of old, yet it birthed in their Death a new breed of horrid repetition, which plagued matter and ether without fail...

A moment, driven by passion and Lust, guided the Seven into disunity and discord, up until the Dawn saw a sunrise of blood, and the rays gleamed of divine sacrifice so perfectly commited, the Force herself wept to is repetition.

A moment. That was all it took. And in their Darkness, in their whirl of errors and sins, those who stood Guardians of All, had forsaken that which they held at bay...

The memories spinned, each a life orbiting the bright star of her mind, yet unyielding to the tide of celestial wind and cosmic tempest. Like meteors, the shards of past bombarded her, as if willing to silence the star into oblivion.

Ignis

Is Dead

The voice sounded again. Its influence an anchor, keeping her mind in place from being driven against the rocky shores of Oblivion, carried by the tidal waves of Loss and Regret.

Killed

Never Learned

The timeless Onyx walls sweat with mist of black ether, offering a glimpse of movement to the ever-static hall. Latched on the floor, the mist split, pierced against the light of the blazing star.

Asara

Asara

Asara

The name reverberated in the emptiness of the labyrinth, as if the structure itself refused to let its sound fade into the same nothingness that defined the hellish place. It was in these echoes, fading and distant, the voice shifted. Though faceless and colourless, in a moment, the voice became twisted into an inexplicably calming tone. Its sound a lover's forgotten caress on the flickering light of her soul, as if calling her from a distant lifetime beyond memory or Life.

Forgive me, my Master​

 

[asara kata]

Within the Darkness’s embrace, she is held weightless, suspended in the hush between heartbeats. The void wraps around her like silk spun from shadow, tender yet unrelenting, refusing to let her go. A whisper of nothingness glides across her cheek soft as the breath of a forgotten god, fleeting as a sigh lost to time. It is almost warm, almost real, and yet made of the same emptiness that surrounds her.
Her eyes drift open, glowing faintly against the endless black, searching for the source of that voice, the one that calls from somewhere beyond the veil. The sound ripples through the silence, familiar and distant all at once, carrying something she cannot name.

Is it… a name?

Asara...

And between these two worlds, the silent void and the whisper of something beyond, colliding for what feels like an eternity, she realizes she is not falling.
She is being pulled...
Drawn by an unseen force, gentle yet irresistible, toward a single trembling point in the darkness, a fragile dot of light, so distant it could be a star… or a memory. It flickers softly, a heartbeat in the endless night, calling her closer with every breath she doesn’t take.

She looks around into the vast emptiness of the cosmic chaos, a place both endless and intimate, as if it stretches beyond all creation yet exists entirely within her. She swears she has seen it before, perhaps in a dream, or in the fleeting space between waking and sleep, and as her gaze drifts across the void, she begins to notice something strange. There is movement, faint and uncertain, and for the briefest heartbeat she believes she can see color.
But no, it is not color...

It is something else. Something far older and infinitely more terrifying than the Darkness itself.
It is…

Mist.

It rolls and sways in the void, twisting like a living breath, shimmering faintly with hues that cannot exist, glowing and fading in rhythms that almost seem alive. A mist familiar, perhaps, she cannot say from where, yet her soul recoils in recognition. An omen, a warning, a whisper that something else is here with her… or someone.
The air, if it can be called air, grows heavy and cold, pressing against her skin like the touch of unseen hands. The silence deepens until it hums within her chest, a low, trembling resonance that feels like a heartbeat not her own. And as the mist begins to curl closer, wrapping the edges of her sight, a shiver of dread blooms within her, vast and suffocating ,for in its shifting depths, she can almost sense eyes watching her from afar.

 

[Empor]

Asara

The voice beckoned. A voice twisted, lost in echoes of timeless chains. The corridors of the Onyx labyrinth swell with intent as heavy as the stars offering the galaxy her immortal glaze. Perhaps in the absence of time, any frequency remained pure across the ether, denied the corruption suffered by time, made any and all sparks of existence coexist in a mutual void, fleshless of all but Dreams. What a purer form of existence, save for that in which all wounds of those that is become alive in absence, abstract in design, followed by none and preceded by naught but the void that consist them? It was in these corridors, in the depths of these halls, all purpose or cause, drive or urge, passion or clarity, denied of all corruption, presented themselves in the sole, naked form they emerged from the timeless fountain, crown of the Rift, bane of all but the never-mourned.

Asara

Is Dead

Never Killed

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Steps. Echoes. Dread. The labyrinth stirred again. This time, the star in the Onyx chamber beamed, as the mist was banished from near the sarcophagus.

Asara

The voice formed anew, a melody sung in loss. Crafted from the flawed synchrony of a thousand echoes, casting a reverberation manifested in an abscent wind, driving the labyrinth's will into the chamber. A soft warmth caressed her skin. Something in her abdomen twisted, foreign; Protesting.

Learned

Motherless

In Birth

A cloud of black mist flooded over the edge of the sarcophagus, whirling into form of skeletal hands, holding onto the onyx. Eyes, devoid and despised, the Darkness staring back to the one who lost her gaze in it for too long. The mist thickened. Bones of darkness formed the silhouette of a being that never lived. Timeless, in its deprived existence, His gaze made of a thousand lives lived in Death, until Death became Him, and He was lost between the glyphs of the shard that fell in Defiance and Regret.

Queen of Pyre

Queen of Cinder

Queen of Shadow

Voices called from the labyrinth's depths. Voices in torment. Voices in sorrow. Voices in ecstasy. All dwarfed, mute to the cacophony of the River made in Essense, the One who Walked the Void. Irrespective of all the sins that preserved His existence, His fingers yet deprived and deformed, baring inexplicable wounds of absence, as if his form could never fully spawn. Marks of biting, gaping and presistent, as if prey to a cosmic Maw, famished and berserk.

Forgive Me


M̴̛̹̱̹̞̠̬̂͋̈́̄̀̾̚̚y̸̨̛̩͉̥͚͓̫͐͗͂͊̍͐̌̆̆͛̎͘͠͝ ̷̢͇͕͎͉̪̺̫̌̇̃̐̾̉͋͒̏̈́̅̐̕͝͝Q̶̛̱͍̭̑͑̐̏̌͒͛̒̿̂̕̕͜͝ü̴̢̡̨͚̳̦̩̗̐̄̀́͒̓̏̿̏̓̚̚̚͝e̵̳̭͇̬̟̾́̑͐̅͒͝ë̴͉̪͍͖́̐̌͝n̴̨̡̡̞̙̻͓̩̼̰͖͍̦̣͓̣̋̉̏̔̎̂̓̀͌͒͂͑́̅̚͘​

 

[asara kata]

The mist throbbed with intent, curling and stretching, reaching as if aware of her gaze, yet unwilling to yield its purpose. Her chest tightened, ribs pressing inward as though the absence of air demanded acknowledgment, and for a heartbeat ,infinite and fleeting, the void itself whispered through her mind, echoing the syllables of the One who Walked the Void, syllables that were not sound but thought, not words but tremors in the marrow of existence.

It beckoned her closer, not with voice, but with inevitability, and as she stared into the mist, with hollow eyes devoid of purpose and life, the shadows began to twist and coil, forming. The apparition did not offer fear, nor peace, but a deeper, more primordial sensation ,a gnawing dread that seeped into her bones, and with it, the raw, unshakable instinct to survive, prickling at her spine and clawing at her consciousness.

The mist pulsed with a rhythm that was not of this world, moving as if aware of her heartbeat, bending reality around its form. Shapes emerged from the darkness, skeletal, fractured, and yet impossibly complete, carrying the weight of lives long vanished, of pain long endured. Its presence pressed against her mind like a tide of cold stars, a pull towards something she could neither see nor name, and yet she knew she could not turn away.

And in this moment between dread and survival, she realizes…

There is no air gliding through her lungs, no ache or tingling to anchor her to her own body, nothing to remind her she is alive. And then her name sounds once more, echoing from everywhere and nowhere at once, and she tries to speak. But no voice emerges from her throat. Or worse, no sound can exist here, in this forsaken realm, where even the faintest whisper dissolves into the void before it can take shape.

Time itself seems to shudder, and the weight of the silence presses against her like a living thing, a presence that watches, unmoving yet impossibly close, knowing everything she is and everything she fears.

Asara...

She mouths the words, unspoken, lips trembling in the void.

G..

Her utterance dies in the nothingness, swallowed by the infinite silence, and she stops, only to realize she is being drawn even closer to the forming mist. Her blank eyes widen, not from fear, but from instinct, from that strange, primal awareness that even in death, she can feel the pull of something vast, something that bends the will of existence itself toward her.


A cycle unbroken.. A Dawn that must be witnessed again.
For to witness the Dawn is to remember all the times she has fallen before, and all the times yet to come.

 

[Empor]

The mist stirred. Another circle had closed. Another life turned to memory. It was in such moments, eternal and abstract, when the amalgam of Dreams took shape, in manner so foreign to all things material, to even comperhend them though experienced thoroughly, was to succumb to insanity so twisted, no memory of it yet remained, outside the timeless halls. Shards of lives past. Shards of emotion, now seeming too foreign a sensation.

You have been through a thousand lives a thousand times, you have lived a thousand lies.

The voice spoke, a chorus of mismatching cacophony, crafted into a coherent song of immaterial weight, enough to crush any a soul, but Her's. The empty gaze fixated on her, as if connected with things beyond matter, beyond Time, marked on stone that stood eternal, though cracked.

Only to learn one Truth, wear one Crown.

Each of the Seven you mended into one, shattering for no glory, nor wrath, nor tale.

The skeletal hand reached out, the mist connecting it to the phantasm wounded enough to resemble barely a continuous entity. Much of itself, now lost in Wounds that did not belong to whatever Force gave Breath to the glooming domain. There could be no Pain. There could be no Fear. All was mendable by nothing but Time, and Time was abscent.

For the Queen those who never died know to see her dusk in darkness and burn in passion until there is but Cinder where there once was Light.

It was in that moment, that timeless shard of existence, when Memory touched the blank canvas of her mind.
Memories of War. Ships made of metal, carrying wrath and fire, hot and heavy, across the silent void that reverberated by the carnage wreaked in the name of idols and immaterial crowns of Fallacies...

Shadow

Where there once was Crown

The banners burned. Blood against Blood, the Two fought as One, for she carried part of him, bound and bleak. And as the skies burned in Wrath, and the seas boiled in Envy, Judgement befell them both. Again and again, life after Life, Death after death, light locked in the cold of silver, forged by blood and darkness into an ode of glory and pride and power and absolution, and yet none of these survived any a trial past that of flesh. The flesh burned, and rot, and petrified, and each time it did, the glory and pride and power and absolution faded first of Soul, leaving the spark chained beneath the bones denied and depraved of purpose and accomplishment and lesson. And each time the River took it all past the berth of Souls, flowing amalgam of loss and decaying dream, the Darkness grew just a little bit more; A gaping Maw, willing to feast upon stars and void alike, until all is dust and cinder and broken dreams...

 

[asara kata]

Shards of memories overflow her mind, shipwrecked in the wild cosmic sea, cutting through her very nerves like invisible knives.
The nerves echo ghosts of feeling, whispering reminders of a life once bound by flesh, a time when agony still had meaning. Now, it is only memory that aches, and memory, she realizes, can wound far deeper than pain ever could. Glimpses of lives once lived, or perhaps lives yet to come, flash before her in fractured moments, impossible to hold, impossible to forget. Each fragment stings, burns, and fades into the next, a cascade of existence unraveling too fast for her to grasp.

Her mind feels like a sealed chamber, locked from within, and only through a gargantuan act of will can she pry it open, if she dares. For behind that door lies not truth nor peace, but the unbearable weight of what she has been, and what she has yet to become.

A cycle unbroken.. Everlasting repeating...
For this is Their nature, this faulty nature They so much falsely convinced Themselves into Godhood. Brother against Brother. Endless wars. Fightning. Dying.
And some things that were never supposed to be forgotten, they are lost. And They all forgot... And They are all Lost... And so, there is a Price to pay...

The color of her eyes shifts , the blank stare no longer empty, but trembling, alive with the faintest shimmer of light. A small glimpse, fragile and uncertain, yet it glows, a beacon of hope cast into the vast Darkness. It flickers against the void like a star struggling to be born, defying the silence that once consumed her.

Her mind, once a labyrinth she wandered without direction, begins to change. Corridors long forgotten stir with faint echoes of memory, and though the path remains unclear, she feels something, or someone, guiding her through it. For the first time in what might be eternity, the darkness does not press against her but embraces her. Welcomes her.

She opens her mouth once more, and a ghostly breath escapes her, soundless, shapeless, a whisper of air that should not exist. It drifts from her lungs, through her throat, brushing the edges of her forgotten voice. But if there is no air, and no need to breathe, then how can she speak when there is no one left to hear?

And yet, she finds comfort in the mist. It glides around her like an old friend, a familiar veil she has known before the fall of time. She moves toward it, slowly, peacefully, her body weightless, her soul quiet. Because now she remembers. She knows what the mist truly is.


And she is certain, He has come for her...

“So the Cycle begins again?”

Her voice echoes into the void , soft, uncertain, yet carrying the weight of endless ages. The sound ripples outward, trembling against the edges of the Darkness, each echo weaker than the last, until it fades into nothing.
But even nothing listens.
For in that boundless silence, something stirs, ancient and patient, like a memory returning to itself. The mist trembles, and the labyrinth exhales.


The Cycle has never ended. It merely waits to be remembered...

 

[Empor]

Time of Life and Time of Death.

Time of Madness and Time of Pain.

Words had lost their meaning, and so He looked at Her in silent contempt. And yet, such was not for her, her state, or the countless lives lived in lies, but for his own making. His own error that allowed such to be achieved, and all the odysseys and turmoil to unfold with little regard to the greater plan laid for all to track, now barely a couple still following.

Remedy, was Inevitable.

The skeletap hand was extended, the mist looming above, as the Onyx Chamber once again stirred in anticipation. How strange, a place, having will and motion on its own, yet those within it none...

Memories trembled, to the sight of the gesture. Urging and dread, as if they too grew conciousness on their own, fed such by powers so twisted and divine, their presence witnessed only in the mark of their deed, never the act itself.

The Cycle shall start again

The Cycle always starts again

A beast famished enough to swallow its tail, in a never-ending cry of desperation. The Galaxy spinned, and through that motion changed all that was and could be into shapes spawned by far beyond and bizzare, the world remained the same; Everchanging...

Until the End Comes.

The mist whirled above. The blackness surrounded the chandelier above, a tempest herald of the coming of Time and of Dusk and of Retribution. The skeletal gaze approached, craving to utter yet no speech endured the foul existence. Echoes voiced the calling in the deep of the labyrinth beyond the chamber.

One to Bring the Seven

The halls of the Labyrinth shook, as if protesting to the very essense of the words. The Calling grew stronger. An inexplicable feeling deriving from the darkest depths of Her soul bloomed, an uchujin of destined Ascension.

One to Bind them

Crawling. Crawling. Crawling. A million legs tapping in a cacophony of shivering horror, begging to be revealed in the unworldly dimension of Onyx and memories lost and shattered... A million legs; A million eyes; A million cries; A million lost lives caged beyond redemption. Vessels, all. For what has never been, and always was.

One to Break them, and against the Chaos rally them

When will you LEARN?​

 

[asara kata]

The lake glistened beneath the sun of Halcyon, its surface shimmering like molten glass. The red-haired woman stood before her master, fear and uncertainty flickering in her eyes. With a single gesture, he beckoned her toward the water and she obeyed without question.The moment her foot touched the surface, his hand answered. Lightning struck, fierce and blinding, its power coursing through her body. The world shattered into light and silence as she fell, senseless, into the waiting lake.

You will learn...

She ruled Halcyon for only a short while after returning from the Kathalla Crusade. Her reign, though brief, carried the echo of battle and the weight of prophecy. Yet, not long after her return, the city awoke to silence.
They found her body on the balcony lifeless, still draped in the pale light of dawn. The winds of Halcyon whispered her name across the marble towers, but no answer came, only the faint hum of the storm that had never truly left her.

You will learn...

The ashen haired woman sat in her chair, her posture composed yet unassuming. Dressed in simple garments, she spoke softly with the man before her, her tone measured, almost patient, as though she were teaching him something he had long forgotten.

You will learn...

Voices screamed in cacophony countless, overlapping, indistinguishable. The sound was not merely heard, but felt, pressing against the walls, vibrating through the air like the echo of a thousand dying stars. Amid the clamor, the beskar armor gleamed under the light of the room, cold, unyielding, a mirror to none but itself. Each reflection in its polished surface flickered like a trapped soul, and in that stillness, the noise seemed to bow before the weight of silence.

You will learn...

Queen of Cinder. Queen of Pyre.

Miniel
Ignis
Thea
Asara
Haldria


“My brothers…” she whispered, her voice trembling like the echo of a forgotten prayer. “They have found me. And now… they are planning to possess us.” The air around her seemed to tighten, the temperature falling with her words. The shadows stirred, listening. Somewhere beyond sight, something moved familiar, and wrong.

You will learn...

“I promise… I will keep you safe,” she murmured, her voice trembling between sorrow and resolve. “But spare me for what you are about to see,for what I am about to become.” The light in the room dimmed, as if the world itself bowed its head in mourning.

You will learn...

She turned one last time, her gaze steady despite the storm rising within her. “Vod,” she whispered, the old word carrying the weight unspoken brotherhood, “it was an honor fighting by your side.”

You will learn..

The casket closes, the sound soft yet final, like the last breath of a dying star. He lingers for a moment, his gaze fixed upon her still face, one last glimpse before the darkness claims her once more.

Another cycle has ended. Another will begin.

And in a thousand years, when the stars have changed and the echoes of this moment have long faded, she will return.And maybe, just maybe, the cycle will break.

All the memories came crashing down upon her mind, bombarding it with millions upon millions of fragments, a cacophony of past lives rushing through her very being like a relentless tide. Each recollection struck with the weight of worlds, each vision breaking against her consciousness like waves against fractured glass. She fell to her knees, if there was even ground to fall upon, panting a ghostly breath that vanished before it could become real. Her mind ached, twitched, froze, thoughts splintered under the pressure. If pain could still exist in this place, it would have consumed her entirely by now, shattering her into dust and silence.

Her long ashen hair spilled forward, veiling her face, her shoulders, her trembling arms, a curtain between her and the void.

And within that darkness, a small glimmer broke through.
A faint light emanated from her eyes, growing stronger, brighter, a color not meant for the dead.


NO MORE!

 

[Empor]

You will Learn

You will Learn
​

The memory of colour a foreign world. The hood red and foul, daemonic and mischievous. It danced and spinned, remanifesting across the shattered remnant of what was once lived. So long ago, it felt like, the very reflection of reality twisted in ignorance and redshift, gradually saturated by the strange immaterial creature that marked it out. Bodyless, and ethereal, it stained the dream with a Red Shadow, dreadful and despised. Or was it loved, and embraced? These mortal feelings had become obscure enough the very idea of their existence nothing but a paradox of colour.

Learn

LEARN

AND LET THE GALAXY BURN​

The Red Shadow cried out, loudly enough to shatter the dream into a hundred fragments, each dyed with yet another shade of Pain. Pain strong enough to cause a glimpse of sensation to the unworldly chamber of Onyx and Regret. The black mist stirred, a building tempest rallying thunder and lightning to sever the ties of heaven and stone. Though time was irrelevant within the chamber, yet the inexplicable sensation of the hour drawing near, the hour of redemption, the hour of entropy, the hour of Shadow.

Miniel, died.

Ignis, died.

Asara, died.

The voice echoed from the depths of the labyrinth. Urging. Guiding. Demanding. As if willing to not explain nor teach, but carve deep into Her mind, to mine out the very memories, the very dreams she already had. Memory accumulated through countless lives, through countless deeds. All now conjoining nearer to the ever truth, waiting in a cage of no time.

To break the cycle, the Chains must be broken.

The chains of Flesh...

The chains of Fear...​

The chains of Regret....​

The skeletal hand reached to the skull, as if to pluck its own face off. And indeed, the face yielded, in its absence, a black mist, vaguely preserving the shape, followed the grip of the hand as if it was made of solid matter.

The Hordes of Chaos are Rising against the Force

Wear the Mask of Death​

Carry the Shield of Light

Claim the Crown of Madness​

Strike with the Hand of Darkness​

The tempest roared in lightning. Pale, shadeless, yet the very thunder caused shook the Onyx chamber. Something strange spread from within Her. A feeling... No. A Sense. Nerves sparking alive. The reflection of a carcass drenched back to Life, bubbling by the forceful flooding of essence to the once empty shell. There was no time to grow roots. There was no material for Life to latch on, and so stayed trapped; Petrified; Suffering the very nature bound on Her.

Do you have the courage for it?

GUARDIAN?​

 

[asara kata]

The word Guardian echoed within her skull, rippling through the storm like the toll of an ancient bell solemn, inevitable. Her essence convulsed, the boundaries of self unraveling as the echoes burrowed deeper. Every nerve screamed in color crimson, gold, obsidian, until she could no longer tell where the agony ended and the awakening began. The storm within her subsided for a breath, not of peace, but of stillness before the breaking. The Onyx chamber trembled, its walls splitting with veins of light, pouring through the cracks like molten dawn. The mist recoiled from her, as if recognizing the force reborn within.

She opened her eyes not in sight but in revelation. Her eyes burned like twin suns drowning in their own gravity. Her hair floated in the charged air, threads of silver and ash shimmering with spectral fire. Every movement she made felt heavy, deliberate ,as though the universe itself held its breath to watch. Her body, no longer flesh, flickered between shadow and flame, her form a hymn to both creation and destruction. She felt the weight of countless memories pressing against her, the echoes of all who bore the name before her, all who fell and rose again. Her veins flared in response. Lines of burning script unfurled across her skin, slow and deliberate, as if etched by unseen hands. They pulsed with ancient memory, the language of creation itself and for an instant, everything was silent enough to hear their rhythm.

She closed her eyes.

A single thought surfaced ,her own. Fragile. Defiant.


“I am what THEY made me. But not what THEY command...”


“I am the memory of fire. I am the Dawn that devours the dark. I am the hand that mends. The flame that consumes."


The words trembled in the air, delicate as glass, then struck like lightning. The chamber grew vast around her. Walls faded into haze, symbols etched in black stone flaring with new purpose. The labyrinth itself seemed to lean closer, as though it, too, waited for what she might become.

She reached out with trembling hands, the golden veins beneath her skin pulsing softly,slow, deliberate ,like the echo of a heartbeat that did not belong to her. Her fingers brushed against her own cheek, a gesture both foreign and tender. It was not her will that guided the motion, but something older, deeper, a force unseen yet familiar, coaxing her toward recognition she did not want.

Moments passed. Or perhaps seconds. Or days. Or eons. Time here was not linear but fluid, folding in on itself like waves upon waves. She remained unmoving a statue in the heart of eternity, forced to watch, though she could no longer see, as the long and broken history of her kind unraveled before her mind’s eye.
And then....a tremor in her throat.

Air, or the memory of it, escaped her lungs, sliding through her vocal cords as though sound itself had to remember how to exist. The words came haltingly, fractured, like echoes of an ancient vow resurfacing after countless lifetimes.

For

I

Am

Death​

The mist stirred at her declaration, drawn to her like a lover returning home. It spiraled upward, coiling in threads of darkness, then descended upon her face. It seeped into her skin, through her eyes, her nostrils, her lips, filling the void where breath should be. For a moment it smothered her, a suffocating embrace of nothingness.
And then it settled.

The mist solidified into form, a mask, pale and fluid, resting over her face like a burial veil. It was cold, but gentle, its touch both a promise and a curse. Beneath it, the faint pulse of the golden veins flickered once more… and dimmed.

 

[Empor]

As light bled the walls, the scarabs crawled deeper and deeper into the corners yet to be washed by the bright light surging from within. The very labyrinth was shaken by a sudden taste of a power that had yet to be inflicted upon the nightmare:

Time.

And time indeed bled open the very shards of will and determination, that now like stars in syzygy, became the conduits of an apocalyptic shift. As the labyrinth stirred, Reality fired through. A sudden explosion of sensations, senses long forgotten in a timeless limbo of existence beyond Reality and Time, now an orgy of manifested condamnation, all bound in a single entity that demanded a body to command.

I am the memory of Fire

The black mist twisted. Reacting to the very statement as if beholding an act unnatural, for the dimension it existed. Echoes of dreams past and future, together cried a plea, each and every one of them having failed what she had just become.

For I am Death.

Her voice a song sung together with echoes foreign and foul, spoken far beyond the onyx chamber. The labyrinth shook and trembled, as scarabs found their way deeper and deeper into the hollows, becoming the moving force behind the solid of the walls.

Each silencing yet another cry. Each devouring yet another of the lost shards of Doubt and Defeat, until only Resolve remained.

Awake, now

Her chest burned. Fire, made of Life, caged and deformed deep beneath the remnants of her skin.

Awake, now

Her bones ached with spiking pain. Each of the lashing of her pale tunic, yet another layer of skin sewed back against the tissue, black and foul.

The ethereal hand pulled, as the Face of Death, now latched on her, grew roots deep in the skull, each a painful slithering fiend, fusing with her very essence, as flesh grows again.
Like snakes, slithering from the dark nest, tendrils, daemoniac and malevolent are slowly plucked out of her mouth, banishing the bewitching presence of whatever devilry sustained her.

The Onyx chamber was gone. Replaced, upon the openning of her eyes, with a blurry, grim hellscape of Obsidian and fuming machines that breathed of the nightmarish fuel of the Netherworld for a timeless eon inconceivable and unbroken, holding onto the remnant of her carrion against an altar, towering over a cruscible filled with boiling blood. Her hands gripped by chains forged by ethereal mist, condensed into metal made of horror.

To claim Life

You must first Walk through Death

The chamber was carved, a mockery of a colossal nave of an archeangel fallen into the pit most dark. Chandeliers hung from above, made of limbs still motioning, only to cast more of the same dark mist into the hollow shrine of Blind Torment. The walls, more hideous than a mind's comperhension, carved open with windows curtained by skin, now nests of winged shadows that cawed to the Awakening of a single person.

No... She was no person. She was no creature.

She was an Entity, summoned from the deepest pits of Oblivion. The Gargoyles screeched in recognition, as if beholding a master long forgotten yet never forsaken.
Her vision cleared. Her mind stirred, as the memories of a thousand lives lived in Death bombarded her, held at bay only barely.

Shattered and Torn, you shall collect your fragments. You shall face your own Corruption, before you walk Upriver.

Her muscles, decayed and deformed, held no power true. Her body a wreck, drenched in weakness.

Power lies Within, not Without. The Netherworld wept your coming. Your banners still fly over the Citadel, for all the Blind to behold.

Their Salvation

Their Guide

Their Queen

The shackles cracked open. The body weighted by pain, left to fly down against the cobbled ground, made of skulls. Voices cried. Voices wept, calling for her from beyond the high gate that separated whichever nightmarish path awaited her beyond the interior of the temple. On the ground of the nave, a strange shadow moved. A deformed entity, black and foul, so hideous to the sight, it barely resembled anything of flesh... It crawled; Struggling to drag itself forth.

Purge the Corrupt.

And all the Netherworld braced...