The metallic blue fog darkened, turning into the heavy, suffocating grey of a world without hope. The shared consciousness pulled them into the final, most tragic chapter of Alaric's past—the moment he ceased to be a knight and became a ghost.
In the memory, Alaric didn't leave Eveline burnt body hanging from the Holy Tree for the crows. With a strength born of pure, shattered adrenaline, he climbed the white bark and cut her down. He didn't let her hit the stones; he caught her, her body as light as a fallen petal.
He didn't take her to the Cathedral. He carried her out of the city gates, past the silent, judging guards, until he reached the overgrown, golden fields where they had played as children before the weight of their titles had found them.
"I promised you'd always be safe here," Alaric's real voice whispered in the dark.
They watched as he dug the grave with his sword and his hands, burying the Saintess beneath the soil of their happiest memories. He wept for hours, his forehead pressed against the fresh earth, blaming his pride, his duty, and his absence. He begged the silent sky for a punishment that wouldn't come.
When his tears finally ran dry, a cold, jagged resolve took hold. If the Saintess was gone, he would find the Lady. He would find Seraphina and use his life to guard what was left of their circle.
But as he returned to the city, the whispers in the taverns and the cold decrees on the walls told him the truth. Seraphina hadn't just been arrested; she had been the first to fall. She had died months ago in the darkness of the pit, alone and forgotten by the world he had been busy "saving."
Alaric walked aimlessly for days. He was a hero with a chest full of medals and a soul full of ash. He found himself drawn to the Astra Duchy, standing before the iron gates of the ancestral cemetery. There, he saw a fresh grave marked with the Astra lion.
He stood before Seraphina's headstone for a long, agonizing pause. The wind howled through the dead leaves, but he felt nothing. No anger, no drive for revenge—just a hollow realization that the sun had set on his world, and it was never coming back.
His feet, moving by some cruel instinct, led him back to the capital, down a narrow, filth-streaked alleyway far from the golden palaces.
In the memory, Alaric leaned against the damp brick wall. This was the spot where a young, defiant Seraphina had once stood between him and a group of thugs. This was where Eveline had first healed a scrape on his knee. This was where they had formed their secret pact to change the world.
Alaric looked at his hands—the hands of a "hero" that were stained with the blood of strangers but clean of the blood of his friends when they needed him most. He realized his life no longer had a purpose; it was a book with the middle torn out and the ending already written in ink.
He drew his dagger—the one Eveline had gifted him for his first campaign. He didn't hesitate. In the very place where their bond had been born, he ended his own story. He slumped against the wall, his eyes fixed on the patch of sky between the buildings, waiting to see if they were on the other side.
The vision dissolved into a blinding, white-hot flash.
The four of them erupted into the present, gasping and clutching at one another on the Temple floor. Alaric was shaking violently, the phantom cold of the alleyway still in his bones. Seraphina threw her arms around his neck, holding him with a strength that proved she was real, she was warm, and she was here.
"Not this time," she sobbed into his shoulder.
"You aren't alone, and the story isn't over."
Killian stood over them, his hand resting on the hilts of his swords, his eyes wet but fierce. Eveline reached out, her hands glowing with a soft, steady light that chased away the grey of the past.