Chapter 31

  “Everything alright?” Vin asked suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  The cold of the Elven Highlands evaporated in the blink of an eye. The blue glow of the Arcane Crystals was swallowed by the aggressive orange of the Rift. The ground beneath my boots was no longer frozen, but dusty and permeated by the vibrations of heavy golem footsteps. I blinked several times, unable to bring the world into focus immediately.

  How long had Vin been standing next to me? She was watching me with a mixture of concern and that intuitive alertness so typical of her. Her vines had retreated into her sleeves, but her green eyes seemed to look deeper into me than I cared for at that moment. I looked past her. Maira stood unchanged, like a statue before the Rift, her spirit lost somewhere in the putrid realms of Erebos. At the communication tables, controlled chaos reigned; reports of the Heartfire Legion’s betrayal were arriving, maps were being updated, and the distant rumble of Drymon’s mana cannons provided the rhythm for this desperate hour.

  Had Wolfsgrund defeated the traitors? Did Thivan have the northern battlefield under control? What about the Titan that had just burst from the earth?

  “Hey Luken! Calm down,” Vin said urgently, placing her hands comfortingly on my shoulders.

  Only then did I realize how tense I actually was. My fingers had dug so deeply into the last remains of the Wolf’s Paw that the hardened meat had almost crumbled to dust. My jaw ached from the tension. My entire body vibrated as if I were still standing on that draughty training ground, waiting for a judgment that had been passed ten years ago.

  “Gravor?” I asked into the darkness of my mind, my voice in the mental plane slightly unsettled. “Is something wrong? Why is all of this surfacing now?”

  My inner demon growled softly. It was a deep, uneasy sound, reminiscent of the grinding of millstones. There was no sign of his usual sadistic sarcasm, which he tended to carry before him like a sharp blade. He seemed almost... caught.

  “We have no time for these memories, Luken,” his voice echoed in my skull, dark and flat. “I locked them away for a reason. They are dead weight. Rust on a perfectly forged blade.”

  My mind stalled for a moment. The implication of his words only slowly seeped through the barriers of my consciousness.

  “YOU DID WHAT!?” I roared back in shock.

  Apparently, the volume or the sheer fury of my mental message had physical repercussions I had completely underestimated. A violent pulse of light and shadow discharged from my body. The astral transmissions above the war table flickered wildly; the blue projections of the battlefields distorted into grotesque grimaces before laboriously stabilizing again.

  The strategists and scribes froze. A dozen heads snapped in my direction, quills stopping mid-sentence. Even the inquisitive researchers who had been pestering Arik with questions just moments ago turned away in alarm. Arik himself narrowed his eyes and tilted his head while his ash-gray skin glowed dangerously. Only the Arcane Guard and Thivan remained unmoved, like the rocks in the surf against which the tide of my wrath shattered.

  Finally, the young king cleared his throat. Thivan looked at me, not with condemnation, but with a strange, almost fatherly patience.

  “Pal,” he said quietly, his voice echoing in the vast portal room. “I must ask you to keep your emotions a bit more... under control. We need stability here, not a second Rift.”

  I stared at him in wonder. Pal.

  No one had ever called me that before. It was an abbreviation for Paladin, but in his mouth, it sounded almost like a name among equals. I was surprised by how quickly Thivan saw in me more than just a useful ally. Was this a quirk of the Caleon nobility? Or did he simply see the man behind the unstable power?

  Regardless, the embarrassment of the situation burned on my cheeks. I offered a curt apology with a nod to the room, turned around, and left the gigantic hall. I had to get out of here. I needed to have a serious word with the thing in my head—without witnesses.

  I strode through the massive archways and stopped on the broad stone staircase leading to the upper floors of the palace. Out here it was cooler; the air smelled of old stone and the ozone of the distant mana cannons.

  “Gravor, you miserable bastard,” I began, pressing my hands firmly onto the stone railing. “Explain this. Now.”

  “Stop your caterwauling, little paladin,” Gravor replied, and this time a nuance of admission resonated in his tone. “I did what was necessary. When I nested inside you ten years ago—back when you were a whimpering heap of misery choking on your own ideals and thirst for revenge—those images were everywhere. Lume here, Lume there. The light hair, the smile, the promise of a peaceful life in the highlands.”

  I felt my breath hitch. Ten years. For almost the entire duration of my journey, he had kept these memories under lock and key. I had known I had a past, but it had always been pale, like a drawing left too long in the sun.

  “These memories hinder us both, Luken,” he continued, his presence spreading through my mind like black ink in clear water. “They make you soft. They may feed your pain, but they feed it with longing. And longing is a useless emotion for what lies ahead. I need your rage pure. I need your hatred aimed like a spear. When you think of the girl, your hand trembles. When you think of the highlands, you doubt the necessity of the destruction.”

  “You have no right!” I snapped at him. “They are MY memories. My identity! You cheated me out of ten years of my own life just so I’d be a better weapon for you?”

  “I AM your identity, Luken. We are one, remember? I hid them because they wouldn't have channeled the anger in the right direction. Not yet,” he added cryptically. His growl returned to a deep vibration. “You aren’t ready to understand how valuable those images will be once they are soaked in real poison. But for now... for now, they are just a distraction. A sweet toxin that makes you slower while Reyn unleashes his Titans on your friends.”

  I felt a deep cold in my chest that had nothing to do with the weather. The scale of his manipulation was terrifying. He had tended my consciousness like a garden, weeding out what he didn't like and leaving only the plants that were thorny enough.

  “You will release them,” I said with a finality that made even Gravor fall silent for a moment. “All of them. I will not let a demon decide what I am allowed to feel and what I am not. If I break under these memories, that is my choice. But you will never—do you hear me?—never lock anything away in my head again.”

  I focused on the bond between us. It was a dangerous exercise. I let my own power, that controlled but unstable current of light and darkness, penetrate deep into the territories Gravor claimed for himself. I rammed my will like a wedge into the blackness.

  Gravor let out a mental scream that felt like someone scratching a nail across a chalkboard. It wasn't a scream of pain, but of indignation. He fought back, trying to rebuild the barriers, but my fury over his betrayal gave me a strength he likely hadn't expected in this form.

  “You’re playing with fire, paladin!” he hissed.

  “Then let us burn!” I countered.

  A sudden jolt went through my consciousness. It felt as if a decade-old dam had burst. Images, smells, voices—everything came flooding back. The scent of fresh snow, the feel of Lume’s hand on my arm, the grueling training under Torv, the silence of the elven forests. It was overwhelming, a vibrant, painful contrast to the gray reality I had inhabited for so long.

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  Gravor retreated. He crouched in the deepest corners of my subconscious like a predator that had lost a fight but was already waiting for the next opportunity. His presence felt heavier, offended, but also strangely expectant.

  “Fine then,” he murmured at last, his tone almost normal again, laced with a trace of bitter acceptance. “Take them. Bathe in your past. Drown yourself in her hair, in her sweetness, if it makes you happy. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when reality catches up.”

  I exhaled shakily and loosened my grip on the railing. My knuckles were white, and my fingers trembled slightly.

  “Promise me, Gravor,” I demanded. “Never again. No locks. No filters.”

  There was a long silence. I could feel him weighing the new circumstances. He was a part of me, and he knew that an open war in my head would destroy us both before we could even leave Drymon.

  “I promise,” he said finally, the words sounding like an oath he swore only reluctantly. “I will never hide a memory from you again. We will see everything together, Luken. The beauty... and what is yet to come. But believe me, little hero: you will yet wish I had broken my promise.”

  I didn't answer. I just stood there on the stairs as the tide of reclaimed images slowly calmed and became a part of me. I felt heavier, but also more complete. The void I had dismissed for years as a "soldier’s soul" had been filled with the life that rightfully belonged to me.

  I turned slowly and looked back toward the portal room. Thivan, Vin, Arik, Maira—they were all waiting for me. We had a war to wage, and now that I knew what I was still fighting for and what had once been a part of me, the weight on my shoulders felt different. Not lighter, but more right.

  I straightened my armor, scratched my head, and prepared to go back inside. Gravor was silent, but I felt his gaze from the darkness. He had yielded, but he had not given up.

  I stepped through the archways again, ready to face the King and my friends. This time as Luken, the paladin from the highlands, and no longer just as the anonymous link between paladin and demon.

  -

  In the metaphysical expanse of Luken’s consciousness, the architecture had undergone a fundamental shift. Where once a gleaming, almost regal villa had stood as a bulwark of mental order—a construct maintained by Gravor with meticulous malice—there now stretched an endless, rolling landscape beneath a leaden sky. Yet, it was no idyllic scenery. In the valleys between the gentle rises, the water was rising. It was no ordinary water; it was the liquid substance of ten years of suppressed longing, a massive torrent made of shining eyes, the sound of laughter, and the scent of a cool mountain wind.

  Gravor stood upon the peak of the highest hill, his ashen-gray form appearing even gaunter than usual in the melancholic light. His long, curved horns cast sharp shadows on the ground as he watched with folded arms while the valleys of his painstakingly erected mental fortress sank into the floods of memory.

  “This is going to be absolutely terrible for our relationship,” Gravor prophesied unhappily, kicking a pebble down into the roaring tide.

  He knew the dam burst had been inevitable the moment Luken started asking questions, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. There was another factor, a far darker reason why he had surgically removed these specific images from Luken’s mind. It hadn't just been about protecting Luken the "weapon." It had been self-preservation.

  As soon as he remembers the end of this romance, Gravor thought grimly, he’ll either hate me with every fiber of his being or be eternally grateful. And both are damn exhausting for a demon who really just wants to enjoy a bit of rage.

  Everything had been going so well. The fury was focused, the hatred for Reyn stable, the cooperation between host and parasite almost... harmonious.

  “Looking for comfort?” a soft, almost impertinently friendly voice asked suddenly from directly behind him.

  Gravor whirled around, his claws reflexively extending and tearing furrows into the mental soil. Beside his thin, ashen frame, a light formed that was so bright it momentarily banished the murky mood of the mind-space. An angelic figure materialized on the hill. His body seemed cast from liquid gold, and the wings tucked tight against his back shimmered like mother-of-pearl.

  Gravor immediately crossed his arms again, this time in a defensive, almost insulted stance. “What are you doing here, Ragiel? Are you even allowed to be here? Doesn’t Luken sense your presence? His brain is currently flooding with hormone-heavy kitsch, but he isn’t that blind.”

  The angel smiled gently, an expression that usually would have prompted Gravor to set something on fire. “The Paladin is preoccupied enough not to notice my secret intrusion, Gravor. Demon portals, war, grief, responsibility, forgotten memories... a difficult time for everyone involved. He is currently struggling with his own identity; he isn’t paying attention to a quiet echo in the upper spheres of his consciousness.”

  Ragiel’s gaze swept over the drowning valleys. Then he added with a nervous side-glance upward: “And no, I am absolutely not allowed to be here. If Metatron finds out about this, I’m finished for good. He has no sense of humor when it comes to unauthorized trespassing into occupied souls.”

  Gravor snorted and stepped aside to avoid standing directly in the angel's glow. “Metatron... that old bookkeeper. He’d probably request a triplicate copy of your downfall before casting you out of heaven. So, cut to the chase, feathered one: Why are you risking your pretty golden backside for a visit to this damp ruin? Are you homesick for Hell?”

  Ragiel laughed softly, a sound like small silver bells, which only worsened Gravor’s foul mood. “Hardly, Gravor. But the situation is more serious than even you two—you and your Paladin—realize. You think this is about a fortress in the north and a bit of betrayal by a few lizard-men.”

  “It’s about a portal, Ragiel. We’re not stupid,” Gravor growled. “Reyn wants to open the floodgates. We’re trying to keep the plug in. Classic good-versus-evil scenario, except ‘Good’ is currently chewing on a meat bar and ‘Evil’ is bringing stones to life.”

  The angel turned grave. The golden glow of his body pulsed in a slower, deeper rhythm. “It is far more vital to protect the portal than you believe. It’s not just about a few Outcasts spilling into this world. If this portal is fully stabilized under Reyn’s control, it’s not just Caleon that collapses. The resonance will weaken the barriers between all planes. Even the planes we inhabit. The Order for which Metatron keeps his ledgers and the Chaos from which you crawled... everything will mingle.”

  Gravor tilted his head. “A cosmic scrambled egg? Sounds like a party I’d actually want to attend.”

  “You’re lying,” Ragiel said simply. “You’ve made a home in Luken. You like this world. You like the way the snow smells and how human anger feels. If everything collapses, there are no more nuances. Only annihilation. Even for you.”

  The demon remained silent for a moment, staring at the rising water in the valley. He hated it when angels were right. It was so... unseemly. “Fine. We protect the plug. Message received. Now get lost before you glow up the place with your halo.”

  Ragiel, however, made no move to leave. He took a step closer to the edge of the hill and looked at one of the floating memories—a scene where Lume was handing Luken water after training.

  “You hid them well,” the angel remarked quietly. “The hair. The smile. You knew this was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.”

  “I knew it would kill him to see the end of the story while trying to save the world,” Gravor countered harshly. “Luken is an idealist. He needs a goal. If the goal lies in the past and is already burned to ash, what is he supposed to fight for in the present?”

  “Perhaps for the chance to do it better this time?” Ragiel suggested.

  “In a world of demon portals and shadow lords, there is no ‘doing it better,’ Ragiel. There is only ‘surviving,’” Gravor hissed. “He will hate me when he sees the rest. He’ll believe I stole his hope, when I only spared him the pain he couldn’t carry.”

  Ragiel very carefully placed a golden hand on the ashen-gray shoulder. Gravor flinched as if burned but didn’t pull away.

  “He is stronger than you give him credit for, Gravor. And you are... more caring than is good for your kind,” the angel said with a sharp smile that seemed almost human. “Watch over him. And watch over these memories. They are the anchor that keeps him from becoming entirely what you are.”

  “I am a charming, handsome demon with an excellent sense of irony,” Gravor grumbled. “What’s so bad about that?”

  Ragiel chuckled and stepped back. His body began to dissolve slowly, the gold fading into a soft shimmer that merged with the gray mist of the mind-space.

  “Stay vigilant, Gravor. The shadows are growing longer, and Metatron isn't the only one with his eyes on this Paladin,” the angel warned. “And about the girl... tell him the truth before the memories do it for you. It hurts less when it comes from a ‘friend.’”

  “We aren’t friends!” Gravor shouted after the vanishing light. “We’re a partnership of convenience with shared rent!”

  The light was almost gone, only a sparkling dot in the distance of the consciousness.

  “See you, fallen angel,” Ragiel’s voice breathed one last time through the valley, gentle as a breeze rippling the surface of the memory-water.

  Then he was gone.

  Gravor stood alone on his hill. Silence returned, broken only by the rhythmic gurgling of the floods, which had now almost reached the top of his position. He looked down at his reflection in the water—an ashen-gray being with horns that didn’t seem to fit the hilly landscape at all.

  He sighed deeply, a sound that seemed strangely lost in the void of his mind.

  “Fallen angel...” he muttered, shaking his head, his horns brushing softly against the cold air. “Why do they always have to be so dramatic? As if one couldn't just be a perfectly normal demon doing his job.”

  He sat down on the ground, legs dangling over the abyss of memories, and waited for Luken to take the first step back into reality. He had made a promise—no more locks. That meant he would soon have to explain why the beautiful hair in Luken’s head had one day been soaked in blood.

  But not now. Now, there was a war. And war was at least something Gravor understood.

  “Go on then, Paladin,” he whispered into the darkness. “Wake up. We have Titans to slaughter and a king to impress. We’ll handle the rest when the mud has dried.”

  He lay back and stared into the gray sky of his own construct, waiting for the physical world to pull Luken fully back into its grasp.