Graveyard of Memories

The bronze giant door slammed shut behind the three of them, sealing off the fungal, musty odor of the Abyssal Corridor. Beyond the door, the space resembled a shattered kaleidoscope of the divine—stardust flowed slowly through the void, and meteorite tombstones floated within, their inscriptions formed from solidified, teardrop-shaped crystals. Kane's boot ground over the stardust, the faint friction transporting him back to the rainy season at the pottery workshop—when Lia would always run barefoot through puddles, splashing mud onto the raw clay, which she cheerfully called "the kiss marks of the stars."

Ash's greatsword brushed against one of the tombstones by accident, and in that instant, the teardrop crystals erupted into a burst of scarlet mist. Within the haze, an image materialized—a blonde woman executing captives with her sword; the blood-red rose crest burned on her chest, and the prisoners' agonized screams melded with the lullaby from Alice's memories, morphing into a grating hum.

"Mother…"Alice's ice blade trembled in her palm. She recalled the night of her seventh birthday when Elena hummed that very tune as she fastened a four-leaf clover earring onto her, and the candlelight cast her mother's shadow on the wall like a guardian beast.

Ash tightened his grip on the sword's hilt with charred bandages, his burnt knuckles turning pale from the strain. "Don't touch the tombstones," he rasped. "These memories will burrow into your mind like leeches—by the time you notice, they'll have gnawed into your marrow."

A tremendous clatter of breaking chains echoed from deep within the cluster of meteorites. In the starlight, the figure of the first-generation Godslayer coalesced—his white hair cascading like a waterfall, his features eroded and blurred by time, save for the bony blade of his right hand, as sharp and clear as a crescent. With each step he took, the stardust gathered into a staircase, its final step pointing directly at the four-leaf clover earring cradled in Kane's arms.

Alice's ice blade was the first to strike. Her swordplay should have been as precise and elegant as the sacred texts described, but now it carried a disordered, ragged whistle—while the image of Elena executing captives in the mist still seared her retina. The moment the bony blade clashed with her ice blade, the first-generation Godslayer's visage suddenly contorted into Elena's likeness, his lips parting as he murmured, "Alice, my dear daughter…"

For a brief half-inch, the ice blade hesitated.

In that moment, the bony blade lunged toward her throat. Alice closed her eyes, bracing for the searing pain of the strike, but instead she heard the crisp shattering of ceramic—the crash as Kane's ceramic shield intercepted the deadly blow, spiderweb-like fractures radiating in his eyes. He tugged at her cloak as he retreated; his mutated right arm's scales peeled away, and silver blood hissed as it splattered onto the stardust. "Losing focus now means death," he panted, his Adam's apple rolling as he swallowed the taste of blood. "If you want to repent, you'd better live through tonight!"

Ash's greatsword, wreathed in fierce flames, plunged into the first-generation Godslayer's shoulder blade. Yet from the wound, silver maggots emerged, ravenously devouring his fire. He severed his left sleeve, revealing bulging black veins on his forearm. "Kane! I need your blood—"

Kane slit his palm, letting his silver blood drip into Ash's wound. The searing pain surged through his nerves like a tide of darkness, as chaotic fragments of memory flashed before him: at the knighting ceremony of the Temple Knights, a young Ash knelt on one knee as the High Inquisitor draped a sword over his shoulder; at a celebratory feast, wine glowed with blood while Elena pressed the rose family crest into his hand, saying, "Protect Alice for me… no matter what the future holds."

The scene shifted to a pyre execution. Ash's sword hovered above Elena's head, her crest stained with blood. "Make your move," she smiled, "but don't let that child see."

At the moment the flames engulfed the woman, the cry of five-year-old Alice pierced the air.

The shriek of the first-generation Godslayer snapped Ash back to reality. His irises alternated between golden and jet black as silver and black blood clashed within his veins. Kane's blood carried the scent of Lia—sweet almond and the fragrance of clay—that reminded him of Elena's scorched cookies.

As the bony blade swelled and lunged toward Kane's heart, Ash grasped its edge barehanded, his palm charred and burnt. "Kid, I owe your mother a life… and now it's repaid."

Alice's ice blade then pierced the first-generation Godslayer's brow.

Stardust burst forth, and teardrop crystals fell into Kane's palm. The truth from ages past flooded his mind: the Godslayers were the spark of humanity, yet had been demonized by the rulers of fear. In a memory, Elena cradled baby Alice, sewing a four-leaf clover earring into the folds of cloth, saying, "Your blood is not a curse… it is a spark."

A vortex of stardust coalesced above the altar, within which Lia's incubation pod floated, its spinal conduit and nerve bundles intertwined like lovers. Ash pressed Elena's teardrop crystals into a recessed slot, as a countdown burned scarlet numbers into the stardust: "30 minutes."

"Either sever the nerve bundles to save her, or use her to activate the altar and destroy the Church." Ash's broken sword was wedged into a fissure in the altar as he laughed hoarsely. "The traditional options for a Godslayer always end in death."

Kane's hand hovered over the control panel. In the incubation fluid, Lia's eyelashes trembled, reminding him of that fateful dusk when, at five, she almost drowned—when he rescued her from the pottery workshop's water tank, and her first words were, "The mud at the bottom looks like stars."

Alice's hand covered the back of his, cold seeping into his veins. "I'll help you."

And then the stardust began to flow backward.