Artist
Artist
A resonance rolled through the air.
The sound struck Aslan's ears, dragging him back to consciousness. He listened.
He heard the seething roar of flames tangled with the clang of metal, the acrid reek of burning poison riding the swell.
Clang. Crash. Screech. Two killing intents ground against each other, pressed forward, recoiled, and clashed again — sharp and relentless.
His sight was a blur. One eye saw nothing. Cold tears of blood had soaked his face; whenever the wind rose, his skin felt frozen solid.
His hearing still worked, but a dull pressure lingered, maybe a concussion's aftershock. Hard to tell if his eardrums had burst.
Touch gave him only a raw, needling sting — the venom his body hadn't metabolized. Without the chill of drying blood, he doubted he'd feel anything at all.
Smell was intact, but the dense poison fumes filling the chamber left him with nothing beyond that chemical reek.
His senses, then, had been replaced entirely by luck and instinct. A heavy, muffled presence settled like a moth on a hot lamp, the only thing filling his awareness.
And within that awareness, two priests were fighting.
An axe wreathed in fire struck and struck again, guarding its master without pause. A mace steeped in venom moved with fluid elegance, singing of death.
All of it felt severed, trembling on the far side of a thin membrane he could not breach.
He might as well have been reaching into another world, watching events inside a game.
Languid. Drained. Utterly spent. Aslan let his crushed left ankle drag across the floor and closed his eyes.
He withdrew from the distant spectacle and sank inward.
It was an instinctive retreat — pulled by something that refused to release him.
He sank until he touched his unconscious.
A brilliant white landscape bloomed there, nothing like his ordinary dreams.
In the center stood a monument carved with writing he could not read, though its meaning settled into his bones at a glance.
A blank stone packed tight with engraved phrases. Aslan traced the lines and thumbed through his own past.
The act came as naturally as breathing, as blinking.
The man who still wanted to believe he'd once been Lee Hyun-woo, the man who had wandered for twelve years through a land both familiar and foreign, called himself Aslan. That was who he was now.
Lee Hyun-woo turned over the twelve years he'd lived as Aslan.
He summoned what he'd done during those years.
And as he did, memories slipped from behind his eyelids and swam through the void.
Phrases drifted free like fluttering moths. Aslan gathered them with his eyes and read them down. Read them down, and thought.
Over twelve years, Aslan had seen and endured a great deal.
He'd witnessed loss, survived grief, and had his fill of pain.
Often, he'd buried people who'd lost everything because they couldn't even protect their own lives — people who had nothing left to lose.
In memory, and in Geladrion.
Only when the traces of those burials had faded to nothing could he finally set out on the road again.
On that road, at one turn after another, he'd had to kill.
Sometimes monsters instead of people. Sometimes priests. In every case, he'd cut down those who came at him meaning to kill first.
Among those he'd killed, one had been a Lesser Deity.
An Evil God, betrayed by humans and giants, screaming vengeance against them.
Aslan had killed her, and he'd grieved while doing it.
He'd killed a man who'd fought desperately to fulfill a chieftain's duty, scrambling to survive a changing world.
Aslan had killed him with a heavy heart.
He'd killed a man who simply wanted to fight, to grow stronger, to reach the heights someday.
That man had adapted to this rotting world, had changed, and had died by Aslan's hand.
Aslan had mourned his death.
And, lastly.
Aslan had seen the Forest Keeper.
A priest, used and twisted, a pitiful man Aslan had been forced to kill.
Different deaths, all of them, but deaths piled close together in time.
And every single one a death Aslan regretted, and did not regret.
The ambivalence swarmed through that white-stained void and collided, and a flickering phrase rose from behind them to ask:
'Were those deaths righteous?'
The voice belonged to the Forest Keeper. The man who'd raged that he wasn't even allowed to mourn his own family.
Aslan softened his gaze at the sound, and the Forest Keeper's shape shimmered into form.
'He sought revenge for his family. Even if it was part of a scheme, he was still a man with a will of his own. You forced an unwanted truth on him and killed him. Was that righteous?'
Aslan considered it. The consideration stretched. But his mouth opened. The words surfaced and spilled out on their own.
"It was. The man's will was real, and his cause might have been just. He'd still have gone on killing people. I mourn having to stop him by killing him, but I believe it was righteous."
The Forest Keeper's shimmering shape shifted. It resolved into a wild mage with weeping sores and eyes that rolled and bulged.
That giant wild mage, the Burial God, spoke in a splitting voice.
'This child was deeply wounded by giants and men. Because of that, she desired vengeance. Her will was fouled, warped into evil, yet she held no malice toward you. Even so, you killed her. Was that righteous?'
A question. A whisper devoid of emotion. This time, Aslan didn't deliberate.
"It was. People shouldn't be killed for crimes they didn't commit. For sins their ancestors supposedly committed. I judged that death shouldn't come on anyone for reasons they don't even know."
The form in front of him vanished without a trace. As it faded, something like a presence brushed against his senses.
One step. Two steps. The approaching footfalls were familiar.
He turned his head, and Ereta stood there.
Ereta's shape.
She smiled softly and spoke in a clear, carrying voice.
'This woman has killed. She is, beyond any doubt, a priest of the Evil Gods — a sinner with a debt still outstanding. You took this woman in and made her your companion. You feel something like affection for her. And that...'
The shape of the woman. The gentle smile. A wave of vertigo washed through Aslan. He closed his eyes, and the voice struck his ear again.
"Is it righteous?"
Aslan opened his eyes. With his eyes open, he lost his words for a moment and just thought.
There wasn't much to say. Not much he could do, either.
But he didn't hesitate.
"It isn't righteous."
The woman's face held a faint, warm smile. Aslan looked at it and spoke.
"Sins don't vanish. It's a fact that Ereta killed people. That she was a priest is also a truth beyond dispute. My taking her in isn't righteous, either."
The shape of Ereta gazed at him in silence. Aslan acknowledged it and added more.
But.
"It isn't righteous... but I can't punish Ereta."
The shape seemed to ask for his reason. Aslan met its eyes.
"I'm not saying I'll overlook a small evil to stop a greater one."
"Then?"
"Ereta can no longer commit wicked acts. No one else will die because of her. And I don't have the right to punish her past crimes. I don't have the heart for it, either. There are only two things I can punish."
The shape kept its gentle smile and tilted its head. Go on, it seemed to say.
"Those who are trying to kill people right now. And those who will kill people in the future. Only those two. That's my order. And I need Ereta to uphold that order — to stop the Evil Gods who will slaughter far more lives and trample the world."
Law and Order returned the question.
"How can you guarantee Ereta will never harm the innocent?"
At those words, Aslan looked at the shape of Ereta.
"I can't guarantee it."
The shape's face stiffened, a moment of confusion flickering over it, and Aslan spoke.
"But I can be certain of one thing."
He walked toward the shape. Standing face to face, he let his eyes blaze with an unshakable certainty.
What burned in those blue-green eyes was will.
"If the day ever comes when Ereta chooses wrongly, when she tries to harm the innocent..."
An image surfaced: Rowena. A mistake he would never repeat. Aslan chewed over that mistake and let his eyes burn brighter.
"...I will not look away."
Law and Order watched, listened, and understood.
That those words were the truth.
That he had already proven it across twelve years.
The shape's expression shifted. As it slowly faded, Aslan reached out. He closed his hand.
Lightly, as if gripping a sword, and from that hand something began to reveal itself.
Purity.
The proof granted by the Ancient Gods. Their final arrangement to oppose the Evil Gods.
A divinity that blazed even whiter, as though painting over the white space itself.
Holding that divinity, Aslan spoke.
A voice outside reason filled the world, and in the collapsing white realm, that voice alone burned bright.
"Purity."
The world began to crumble under the weight of the divinity.
The white backdrop fell away. The sins Aslan had let slip and their weight fractured and collapsed. Through the fissures, something shone vividly.
A scale.
The Scale of Order, blazing in pure white.
The instant the scale melted into Purity, seeping inward, a system window surfaced.
[Effects of Purity]
[Can sever the connection between a god and its priest.]
[Will not be extinguished so long as the wielder's fighting spirit endures.]
[Heart of Sorrow — Can cut through divinity and spirit bodies.]
[Sword of Fire — Cuts whatever the wielder wills and breaks under no circumstance.]
[??? ## ########]]
[Grows stronger as it resonates with the divine power of the Ancient Gods.]
The letters on the system window began to flake away, as though fading under time and wind.
[Scale of Order — Can withstand any attack and endure.]
What supported Purity's colossal Sword God was a scale and a cross block.
The light of order, unbleached by any chaos or agony.
Aslan gripped that order and slowly opened his eyes.
Kaaaang!
Sound fractured outward. When his eyes opened, he saw a depthless darkness, and the noise billowing around him was a chilling death.
"Ha... hahaha!"
The Artist's laugh. Ereta's shout answering it, her fire-wreathed axe carving arcs. The roar of the blaze. Aslan felt it all and murmured:
"Equalization."
The tattoo flared blue. Aslan's smashed arm began to regenerate, as though time itself were rewinding.
But it wasn't whole. The left arm that re-formed had no skin — just exposed muscle. A limb barely better than a deformity.
His crushed ankle hadn't properly regenerated, either. Healed while still mangled, it showed clearly that he had no margin left to distribute the damage. Even reading that signal, Aslan rose without hesitation.
His gait was unsteady, threadbare with life. Dark blood wept from him.
But he could move. And if he could still move, there was something he could do.
An arm with no skin. An arm that wouldn't so much as twitch a finger. Aslan felt it moving on its own and looked at what it held.
The spear had lain atop a thin carpet of ash.
Its blade was broad, but its shaft was slender, lending it the look of a long spike.
Currents of electricity slithered along the blade and crackled across the floor. Aslan recalled the spear's name.
Verdict.
He forced his unresponsive arm to move, gripped the spear, and stepped forward.
Whump. Caang!
Ereta was wielding fire, axe cloaked in flame, weeping as she fought through wounds.
Against her, the Artist looked composed and thoroughly entertained.
He splashed venom in every direction and swung his mace with oily smoothness. Each touch cost Ereta a wrist, an ankle, a shoulder.
The gap in power was stark.
Even with the certainty that Ereta had regained her strength after meeting the Spider...
Perhaps the Artist had already discovered Aslan's lie.
Perhaps he'd come to hate Aslan, too.
Even so, Aslan had to help her.
Ereta was his companion. He was hers.
Whatever happened, that one thing wouldn't change.
Dragging Verdict across the ground, letting Purity hang low, Aslan walked forward.
His armor grew sodden with the blood weeping from him. Blood slicked from his mouth as poison seeped into his body. Still, Aslan advanced.
"Haaap!"
Clang!
The Artist had ascended to the full rank of a high priest.
Facing him alone was simply too much. Ereta took a blow and lost her grip on her axe.
"Tch...!"
The weapon wrenched from her hands and planted itself in the floor. As Ereta dropped to one knee, the Artist raised his mace high.
"And now — the end!"
The venom churned. A strike that, earlier, would have pulverized the entire right half of Aslan's body if he'd tried to take it head-on.
Aslan stepped into that strike and raised Purity.
THOOOOM!
A shockwave boomed outward. The pools of poison around them were hurled back in unison, soaking the ground like a tidal surge.
In the landscape of receding and crashing venom, Aslan stood firm.
"...What?"
Screech. Grind.
Overwhelming physical force. Poison that would horrify anyone.
All of it was useless against the order that had endured for so long.
Purity held without yielding. It stopped the mace cold.
Aslan did not die.
Kaaaang!
A parry and riposte, forcing the weapon aside.
The mace was thrown wide. The Artist staggered backward, then steadied himself and stared at Aslan.
The man was barely alive.
His body seized in fits — maybe venom crawling upward from the crushed ankle.
And his arm: still gripping Verdict, but stripped of skin, muscle and bone laid bare.
Blood pooled at the corner of his mouth. Death brimmed in his eyes. The Artist recovered his composure quickly.
"That swordsmanship from a dying body — remarkable. Truly artistic. When you're dead, might you leave me that skull? I'll do my utmost to—"
Aslan didn't dignify the bait with an answer.
He simply shifted his locked arm and lifted Verdict high.
From that raised spear-blade, lightning kindled.
"You...?"
"As...lan..."
The Artist, mid-monologue, fell silent. Ereta stared at Aslan's back.
Aslan reversed his grip on the spear, held it underhand, and drove it into the ground.
Thud!
Current raced down the planted blade. The golden glare crawled across the floor, and Aslan spoke.
"Verdict."
A voice outside reason swelled to fill the space itself.
"Heliax van Luminox. From this moment, what is laid before you are the sins you have amassed."
And the golden lightning blazed.