My Regalia, at its core, acts as a reducer.
It is not merely an ability, but a principle. A dogma that demands all things placed before it must regress.
Its reach does not discriminate by nature.
It does not matter whether something exists beyond time and space, or whether it is an object with no past and no future.
It can be anything. It can be all things. And all of it will return to the Root, which is itself all things.
The idol, the one revered as divine, is indeed a being of creation.
All that exists in this world has been brought forth through that dream of existence.
And yet, to return all things to the Root that underlies creation itself is the function of my Regalia.
The Root is not an ideal. It is not a place, nor a thought, nor a feeling.
It is something prior to all of those. Something that does not ask to be believed in.
Its depths are perceived as something beyond even the uncaused. Not because it defies logic, but because it fulfills it too completely.
For something that is born eternally, and born without cause, must precede even the idol who dreams the world into being.
This was the dogma written into that dream.
The Root is the source from which all things arise, and to which all things are already returning.
Only upon awakening in Heaven does one move fully beyond the Root.
Until then, all things living and dead, present and absent, existing and forgotten, remain subject to its will.
And subject to its worth.
My Regalia was impossible to beat, and yet before I could do anything else, I could already feel its effects taking hold.
My thoughts dulled. Meaning began to slip. I struggled to remain sane as pressure built in places thought should not reach.
I used every fragment of my remaining power to force the exhaustion of my will, not to resist, but simply to endure.
Only then was I able to fall to my knees.
Only then was I allowed to live.
"Horia, you will die here, the very idea of your heart, which is how you exist, has been cast away."
He looked up at me, his arm reaching out.
"I do not wish to die, I will not let this lie sink into the truth!"
He tried to fight it, rewriting reality, law, idea, fact, and falsehood alike, but all of it collapsed the moment it was formed.
It was all meaningless in the long run, and for a brief moment, I am certain he realized that.
"I can't lose here, I can't die here, for I must save this world, I must give this world peace."
He looked up, tears in his eyes.
"Don't you see, Mirabel! The reason this had to be done!"
I could barely speak. My tongue felt bound, as if forming words would summon True Names that should not be spoken.
The effort was made in vain. My thoughts filled with abstraction beyond time and space, shapes without edges, meanings without anchors.
It compelled me to dive inward.
Dive into the madness. Dive into the pool that was my wrath.
It was primordial. A great wrath. A cold wrath.
"Mirabel! Wake from those foolish thoughts and answer me!" Horia screamed.
My eyes locked onto him as he continued.
"This world will fall, and trust me, this fall will not lead to Heaven."
His arm fell. "Griffin has warned us, Midir has rejected us, Rosen has accepted us."
I struggled to cast out my words. "What do you mean? Who could know such a thing?"
He laughed weakly, clinging to the dirt. "I have seen it, I have heard it, the Great Authority Beyond."
His lips began to break apart as his shell shattered, revealing a small, frail child beneath.
He was cold, shivering against the wind. "This world is so beautiful, I wished to follow His will."
He looked at me, tears forming in his eyes as his voice grew lighter.
"Do you believe, Mirabel?"
I coughed. Blood spilled from my mouth as my heart slowly eased.
"Believe what?" I asked softly, unsure whether I felt pity or despair.
His eyes sparkled. They still held life. Life beyond this moment.
"In the Resurrection, the Resurrection is real, Mirabel."
The world began to tremble. It shook beneath his next words, as if the act of speaking them was against some deeper rule.
"This world is so small and so weak, and we are so big and so strong, and yet you ask me why we must submit."
His tongue faded, but his voice remained.
"We are trapped, Mirabel, trapped inside the Haze in which all things must hide."
I reached out, trying to heal him, trying to reclaim what could never be reclaimed.
But his final words rang out. They tore through what remained of me.
"Stand up, Yoru-Balbateer, you will not be broken here."
I stumbled forward into an open red sea.
I slowed, then stopped, turning as if something might be behind me.
I searched for it without knowing what it was meant to be.
Some anchor. Some rule. Some thin thread of rationality that should have followed me here.
It was gone.
I looked around again, and understanding came not as clarity, but as weight.
This place did not respond to thought. It accepted it.
This was my will. My worth. My root.
The temple where things were not decided, but first allowed to exist at all.
This was my Inner Field.
Just as the Inner World was the body, this was the mind that governed it.
It reflected that Inner World imperfectly.
A vast red sea stretched endlessly in every direction, hemmed in by walls that rose higher than sight could follow.
They did not feel distant. They simply did not permit an approach.
There was no edge to this place. No boundary to what it could hold. No ceiling on the madness it demanded.
And it demanded much.
I was mad.
I clawed at my chest, fingers digging in as if I could reach beneath flesh and tear out the source of the irritation that burned there.
The mark answered with a dull throb, persistent and unmoved.
I could not touch it.
It was an itch beyond myself, beyond will, something that existed whether I acknowledged it or not.
I struck the sea in frustration, then turned and slammed my hands against the walls I could not reach.
My palms stung, but the sound vanished the moment it was made.
I ran. I screamed. I cried. I begged.
I pleaded to be let out, though I did not know who I expected to hear me.
No answer came.
I did not answer myself either.
I was trapped. This was the root of wrath. Not something I carried, but something I stood inside of.
Something that had always been waiting.
This was me.
And yet, standing here, I felt thin. Like a reflection pressed against something deeper.
An echo thrown back by a vastness that did not fracture the way I had.
I collapsed, knees sinking into the red sea as if it were more burden than water.
I tilted my head back, tears spilling freely as my breath caught and broke.
I curled inward, arms wrapping around myself, trying to hold on, trying to preserve what little warmth I could still feel.
"Nicholas, you must save me, you must definitely save me."
The words left my mouth without hesitation, spoken with an urgency that assumed they deserved an answer.
As if I were owed one.
The thought sickened me even as it lingered.
A creature like me had no value. No right to demand anything. No justification to hope.
And yet I still missed him.
I still wanted to see him. I wanted to hold him close and never let go, as though that alone could keep me from dissolving into this place.
So I screamed his name. Again. And again.
I filled the Inner Field with it, forcing the sound into the sea and the walls, desperate for it to be heard.
It was not.
That was when realization set in, slow and crushing. Something terrible. Something unavoidable.
They would have to face me. The part of me that did not hide.
The part that did not hesitate. The first shape I ever took, before fear learned how to speak.
And the other.
The one that carried what could not be endured. The one reduced to madness and darkness and necessity.
The one that bore the weight the first could not. Both stood here.
I called out once more, my voice thinning as it broke against the air.
"Nicholas, you must save me, please, please save me."