"Huh. Who was that?"
Lucius blinked.
There was no fire. Only dull silence. His voice boomed like it wasn't his — far away, hollow. Uncertainty wrapped itself around Lucius like fog. His body wasn't hurting, but it wasn't whole either.
He tried to sit up. His body was light, kinda detached. The blood and the pain were gone, but so was the weight and the warmth of living.
Lucius looked around.
Ash still lingered in the air — but slower, as if frozen in thought. The world around him was of shape, but not of substance.
"Am I dead?"
No voice answered — not divine, not demonic.
Then something shifted. A presence behind him, indistinct — although, the indistinctness wasn't quite literal — it was the only thing he could sense.
Lucius turned.
There, indistinctly visible through the fog, stood a figure. Cloaked. Unmoving. Watching.
Not the swordsman — something, someone else.
He frowned.
"...Did you bring me here?"
The figure did not respond, but the air cooled. The Mark on his chest moved — not burning this time, but pounding. As if it sensed whoever — or what — stood there.
"Who are y—"
"You begged the angels for mercy."
The figure spoke — not aloud, but into Lucius's mind. The voice was neither male nor female, young nor old. It was truth.
Lucius winced. The words stripped something open inside him.
"They heard you. They simply did not care."
The ash thickened, churning in slow, deliberate circles. The world around them darkened, as if drawing away from the words.
Lucius swallowed.
"Then who are you?"
The figure stepped closer, just close enough for the fog to recede. Its face covered by a shroud of black yarn, which continuously writhed — as if made up of fibers of forgotten names. No eyes. No mouth. But Lucius felt its gaze.
"I am the one who did care. The one who listened when Heaven turned away."
Lucius's own hand went to his chest, where the Mark pulsed with something ancient.
"You did not fall out of favor, Lucius Clockwell. You were spurned by it."
It paused.
"And I caught you."
Lucius breathed — or the afterimage of breath. His voice shook.
"...If you are not an angel, then what are you? A demon?"
The figure cocked its head, the whirls of its veil undulating like smoke on a languid breeze.
"Do you think Hell is the sole location Heaven spurns?"
The fog grew heavier, swirling in around them. Shapes floated away — memories, regrets, ghosts — Lucius couldn't tell. The Mark on his chest throbbed once, like a pulse in a dirge.
The figure drew nearer.
"I am not demon. I do not tempt, or chastise. I do not sell souls, or give lies for sin. I am older than those shallow parts. Older than your books. Older than the war between Light and Dark."
Lucius frowned.
"Then... what are you?"
The figure paused — not as if in doubt, but in an attempt to allow gravity to settle on the moment.
Then it replied:
"I am the Requiem."
The name rang out over the vacant sky. The ash was suspended in mid-fall.
Lucius felt the Mark respond — not with warmth or pressure, but with awareness. It knew that name. It had known it always.
"I do not bring salvation."
It continued.
"But I bring purpose. And purpose is harder to come by than mercy."
Lucius looked at the figure swathed in the shadow and starlight.
"You're not what I expected," Lucius said quietly.
Requiem tilted its head. No face, no eyes. And yet, Lucius felt its attention hone, like a knife against flesh.
"I am not here to fulfill expectations," it said. "But to give truth."
Lucius stood — or rather, he tried to. Gravity did not actually exist here. Neither did time. He floated by sheer will, the Mark smoldering faintly beneath the tear of his tattered shirt.
"What truth?" he demanded. "That the gods are lost? That angels have abandoned us?"
Requiem's silence was reply.
"No," it spoke finally. "That they were never coming back."
Lucius felt something within him crumble. A hairline fracture along the spine of his faith. Maybe it had fractured long, long before.
"And what do you give me?" he spat. "Power? Revenge? A second chance?"
Requiem stepped closer. The ash receded from its contact.
"Not revenge," it replied. "Resonance. The world is shattered, Lucius Clockwell. Divided upon fault lines men cannot see. But you. You possess a voice so great that you can be heard on the other side of the world."
Lucius frowned.
"What are you saying?" he questioned.
"It means," Requiem went on, "that you are not merely marked. You are becoming."
The Mark beat again. This time, Lucius fought — a burst of images firing behind his mind: wars yet to be won, skies torn asunder by light, kingdoms collapsing beneath the weight of judgment.
He stumbled.
"You want me to be a tool."
"No," Requiem said. "I want you to be a voice."
Lucius looked up. His chest rose and fell, though no air entered this vacuum. He'd died, hadn't he?
"What do I pay? For this..." he asked.
Requiem approached.
"You've already paid."
And the world tilted on its side. Lucius watched the ground beneath him give way — and the emptiness fill in to consume him, all he saw was the Requiem, and its final words:
"You are no longer Lucius. You are... Low, one of the Sundered of this godforsakened world."