Prologue

His eyelids were heavy. His head lowered on his chest, his back sore and every limb yearning for respite. Yet he had to keep going. As he had done day after day, month after month, year after year. An unending cycle, an eternal loop in which he dwells, deprived of will. His thick mask is hiding his tired traits, the wrinkles that must run along the curves of his face. His own face, one he hadn't seen for so long. Ever since he took this position. The seat that drained him of everything, the seat that granted him everything the men of these lands were yearning for. Some of them were consumed by greed, kept advancing claims on what he is, what he became long ago. He had wished to say, "Take it!" yet the only words that came out of his mouth were condemnations, and his burden never left his aged shoulders.

As he reminisced all those that groveled before him, and those who raised in defy, his lonely steps echoed on the marble floor. Their faces, their lives. He saw them age, fall in decadence, and crumble before time.

Humanity's greatest predator. The time that could never stroke his skin, never take away his soul, but that witnessed the path he carved through words, blades and prayers. No more candles were still lit, and he now delved in darkness, cloaking himself in the shadow of what was once a proud palace. Luxury and ostentatiousness have left the place, together with the last remnants of devout piety, the very one that made his throne the beacon of the human lands.

Clouds were covering the sky, filtered moonlight shining through the split curtains. The silvery rays were revealing his destination, wringing him out of the black tendrils that had enveloped his body.

The rusty lock falls by itself when his gloved hand pushes the door. Finally, he'd arrived. He could now leave behind that hallway of sick and tormenting memories. He had long decided that it was time to put an end to this vicious cycle, to free himself from the restraints of what laced every fiber of his body.

Yet he never carried out the sentence, never had the courage to cross that place. To walk past that grave, past those portraits, past the memorial of the embers of passion that once burned in his flesh. But no matter how much he wished there was another way, he still had to walk in, to keep his eyes open and behold what he had decided to witness every second during those mourning days.

No matter the weight of what he carried, the steps he took did not falter and after a long moment, during which the silence seems to stretch time itself, he attained what he sought. The small shrine that stood in a corner, cloaked in a gloomy atmosphere, dedicated to the true facet of the god he follows.

His parched lips opened, his dry throat uttering words for the first time in years:

"Kald, the one that care for the deceased' souls, god of death and withering, the end of all things."

Yet his eyes were drawn to the back of the small idol, on which the same androgynous face was engraved.

"Cerun, the one that brings vitality onto lands and people, god of life and light, the beginning of all things."

He murmured these two names time and time again before opening the slight recess underneath the alter. There lied his salvation, the only thing that may grant him peace. His lips stopped muttering as he brought the tip to his forehead, and the slight pressure he applied was enough to split apart his white mask.

There were no mirrors though and the purple blade had no shine nor reflect. But he hadn't come that far to take a look at what he became.

He was here to stop it.

Once and for all.

The sharp metal caressed his skin as life left his body. It is no sacrifice, no deliverance. Just a step towards his destiny, that lies further ahead.

He would go back to divines' embrace, like he did when they decided he had to ascend. Now, as his lifeless body falls heavily to the ground, all nobility and regalness shed away, he remembered how people used to call him.

The name that came before those hateful words, "Divine Son".

Luka.