Author: Unknown
Date: Beyond Comprehension
"Incubate the next coming."
These words repeat, unbidden, within the hollow void where thoughts should be. They are neither command nor suggestion—they are certainty. A truth beyond reason.
I am the Archon of Judgment.
I have no past, no future.
I do not live, yet I cannot die.
I do not feel, yet I still want.
And yet, something lingers—something that should not be.
The others do not question. We are to eliminate the Remnants. They are distortions, errors that should not persist. The Forbearers speak of them with disgust. The Inhibitors with disdain. But I see them. I hear them.
They are echoes of a world I do not know, and yet… I recognize them.
They whisper names.
They cry out for a past I have never lived.
They call me something other than "Archon."
But I am Judgment. There is no hesitation in Judgment. Only absolution.
Serapha leads, unwavering. She speaks with the certainty of one who has never been wrong. We are the incubators of the new world, the heralds of its arrival.
Yet when I close my eyes, I see shadows that should not be.
When I strike a Remnant down, I feel a sorrow I should not possess.
When I touch the fragments of a forgotten civilization, I wonder if I was once part of it.
Am I Judgment?
Or am I the condemned?
One of the Eidolons spoke to me today.
They should not be able to. They should not exist at all. Yet it whispered a name. Not "Icaris." Something else. Something that scraped against the walls of my hollow mind, threatening to break it apart.
The Eidolon did not fight me. It did not flee. It only looked at me as if I was the one who did not belong.
"You were not always like this."
The words burned.
"You were meant to protect us."
The words shattered.
I do not know what I am.
I do not know if I want to know.
"Incubate the next coming."
It is my only truth.
And yet, when I speak these words aloud, they no longer feel like certainty.
They feel like a lie.