Chapter 556 Maddened Audience
Kieran's somber gaze never left the widening rift, even when gripping his head and howling in agony. He didn't know why, but after the rift grew large enough, it became as if he could no longer extricate his gaze from what was to come.
It was far too important, far too… spellbinding in a destructive sense. Kieran was equally terrified and mystified. What level of power did this presence represent?
If unleashed, could that presence roam unchallenged across the Xenith? The thought was dreadful and alarming, bringing Kieran to muster enough clarity to speak to the Flame.
'Flame… what the hell is that Hollow Body of Ruin? WHO is it?!'
An amused chuckle echoed throughout his already traumatized Realm, adding insult to an injury Kieran could barely endure.
"Who, my child? That's the thing. It is without a name. It just is, aimlessly wandering until it can find purpose again. Its name has been lost, broken by its enemies. Though, I suppose calling it a Hollow Body is a mistake. It is no Body at all."
Was the Flame lying to him or telling the truth this time? Was this destruction incarnate truly without a name? No, it wasn't that it didn't have a name. The name was lost, and the body could not remember its name alone.
As he thought about the meaning of this, Kieran reflected on the Trial, feeling that its end was… well, unbeatable. How could he contest a threat capable of destroying reality? He couldn't. The Inheritors couldn't. And the Followers of War also could not accomplish the task.
With that unfortunate realization came the understanding that the Trial itself… was over. In his opinion, the Inheritors had endured all they were intended to.
The Creatures of the Dark had been repelled successfully. And Kieran said that confidently because what stepped through reality was no creature. It was a cataclysm given form, an unstoppable monstrosity walking.
Kieran felt he had resisted until the bitter end, and perhaps all of his efforts had been recorded, analyzed, and were ready to be judged. But the conclusion that Kieran so very desired, pleaded for… did not come.
Which felt insane to Kieran. Why were they not ejected from the Trial? Did the administrator wish to see them perish?! This was no longer an event meant for the Inheritors to resolve.
Kieran understood it, the Inheritors understood it, and the Followers of War… they resigned themselves to despair, powerlessly dropping their limp arms. But they could not drop their weapons.
To lay down their weapons was to blasphemy their God.
War could only end in triumph or death. Those who followed the tenets of War knew no surrender aside from death. Yet, neither Draegerys nor Rhaenys could move from where they stood.
A primal sense of self-preservation gripped their devotion to their deity, overpowering it. However, they knew all too well that wanting to survive and surviving were two completely different things.
Desire welled inside of them, but without the power to realize that desire… it became poison that ate away at their minds, somehow leading them to go mad.
They looked at Adeia with eyes burning with hate and dashed toward her in unison. A whirlwind of deathly energies, cacophony of steel beating against steel, and roars of desperate straits rang out across the Ravaged Lands, causing blood and stone to upthrust and break.
Before Kieran's eyes… he saw utter madness.
'They're going mad.'
Kieran turned around, watching the Inheritors fall to their knees, eyes distant and hollow. In these final moments, Kieran could not understand why the person responsible for this Trial would force such an abhorrent struggle upon them.
No, that was not right. He did understand. Kieran understood it all very well, in fact.
Or, perhaps his anger caused him to view everything wrong. Everyone was an audience to the madness.
'The Trialmaster is insane. Clearly, it's so very insane. We are no Masters, Archmasters, or anything like that. Yet, we are to be challenged as such?'
Kieran scoffed.
This entire situation made no sense.
What was the purpose of having them grasp the meaning of the Advancing… only for it to all be for naught? Did the administrator wish to teach them how fragile the power they wielded was? That against a grave threat… all was meaningless?!
Kieran gritted his teeth with a dark look in his eyes.
'Maybe.'
Despair would serve as a sublime test. It would reveal the truth about all. Yet, Kieran refused to believe that the ending of the Trial would be so simple.
More than that, it felt demented, so far out of left field that Kieran reckoned no one could resolve the calamity to come.
It would be an upheaval of the highest order — the destruction of the microcosm known as Xenith. But Kieran understood this was desperation overtaking the better part of his reasoning.
Xenith stood until his day. This was not its end. It was merely a blip in its history where its fate had been imminent and perilous. However, was it the only time its demise had been imminent?
Unlikely.
This was a close reiteration of the Failed Reckoning, which Kieran still didn't understand in great detail. The Failed Reckoning had turned the Wildes into the Land of Ruin it was now… but who had resolved that issue?
It was an ancient affliction. And only an entity bearing equally ancient and mighty power could quell the turmoil ravaging the lands. Not without consequences, clearly.
Ruin had been the consequence. And Destruction had been the onset. And Death was the frightening catalyst.
The Testament of a Fiend's Defiance and Furthered Scales of Balance fractured, motes of strange power seeping out of Kieran's Realm and dissipating from where it had no business belonging.
Kieran didn't understand how any of this was happening.
His grasp on reality waned, deteriorating quickly at the hand of the energies spilling of the colossal figure ripping apart reality itself. With his fading vision, Kieran made out strange markings across the figure's body, primarily their face.
Primal, abysmal, and ruinous, those marks invoked a turbulent Madness.
Each stroke of the Mark inspired dread, capturing the essence of terror and imposing the culmination of malice. Kieran could feel all of the Hollow Body of Ruin's emotions as if they were his own.
As if they rightfully belonged to him. The sensation was strange and jarring, but Kieran didn't denounce it. He couldn't anymore. The remaining thread of his sanity told him so. More precisely, a voice that could not be defied told him so.
<nullb>Bear witness, Fiend. You travel the path of a Truthseeker, and you wield it in an attempt to neutralize what you are, but your challenge never ends. A Fiend bears witness to the Condemned's long journey, steepened more than most. Every step is weighed with burden, laden with duty.
That body hated everything. Kieran could feel it. He could see what appeared to be broken shackles around its wrists and neck.
Eyes burning vengeance, partially obscured by matte hair and twisting of horns forming a profane crown of ornate power.
It was why Kieran remained spellbound, unable to look away from the advent of Destruction.
The Mark of the Maddened.
Not the sorry simulacrum of the Mark that True Berserker wore as a test of character… not the facsimile that Fiends wore… but the original. Kieran could feel it.
With the portal ripped open, Kieran watched the Hollow Body of Ruin drift its massive silhouette through the air, shrinking until it towered above Kieran but not too greatly.
Then, with a wicked grin, it head-butted Kieran painlessly, all of it flowing into Kieran's body.
Ruinous power surged through him, moving in an unending torrent. He felt broken, forged, shattered, reforged, and tempered in an endless cycle.
"My child. You should have remembered by now. With your Hollow Body filled and a Mind given to you, what is the new name born from the union? Speak it freely. Give it power. Who are you, my child?"
A guttural voice sounding like death itself rumbled from Kieran's throat. The world quivered at the sound of it. And the name… the name was simple and dreadful.
"I am... Argexes."
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