It kept going, until he saweverything.
With open eyes, he watched, as he was transformed. As his entire existence, his pain and his suffering and his dying...
It was all replaced by a beautiful, powerful version of him.
He was the monster now.
He was the darksoul, and the feeling in his veins? Utter bliss.
There was no more weakness in his legs. No, he was so strong he could have run forever, and with his new darksoul claws, he needed no blade. Hewasa blade, a weapon that could not be defeated.
His body wasn’t a cage.
It was freedom incarnate...capable of doing anything he asked of it. Anything he wished, and it would bring glory to the darkness. It would?—
“No!” Kinlear screamed.
He fought against the vision. Against the future, because it was wrong, all wrong.
He served the Five. He served the gods, fought on the side of the light, even if it had done little to love him.
“Don’t fight it, Little Prince,” the monster’s voice came to him from far away. “This is your destiny...to die in order to live.”
So, he was cast back into that vision again, even deeper than before, back to the Acolyte’s cave. He rose before him, and as he did, he suddenly understood the full truth.
The Five were a lie. They were enemies, not saviors.
Everything he’d ever been taught was a lie, and Soraya was right all along. She was right...and she’d died believing in it.
Ezer was horrified.
Kinlear watched from his darksoul eyes as she was dragged away, kicking and screaming, cursing him to the wind, because she did not yet understand what it was like on the other side. The freedom and the blessing and the realization that all his life, he’d been a prisoner.
And now he’d been set free.
He saw the Long Day ending. He saw Arawn, standing on a cliffside, realizing that they were never coming back...
He saw Ezer, pulled from a prison cell, broken. Furious.
He saw himself driving a blade into her chest. He was horrified as he saw his clawed hands shove her backwards into a dark and yawning pit. It was the very same as the one he’d fallen through for years in his Veilborne dreams...but nowshegot the chance to experience it.
“Watch what she becomes,” the monster hissed in his mind.
She rose from the pit...changed. Because she was the next Acolyte.
She was brilliant. A beautiful monster he’d bow to for the rest of his days, and he had been the catalyst. He watched as she soared on Six’s back, went to battle, and was victorious.
The vision ended.
He was left breathless, tears rolling down his cheeks, as he found himself in the forest again, the monster before him.
“Why?” he asked.
The monster only smiled. “Because in the opposite, Little Prince... you both cease to exist.”
Claws drove into him again.
He was tossed back to the beginning of his life.
