The thin walls that would induce claustrophobia in all those that had it opened up into quite a large, circular-shaped room. This place had grown from a mere underground tunnel into somewhere that had clearly been designed quite carefully, yet looked as though it hadn't been touched in years. The steady dripping of water nearby was audible to me through the stone walls, and the entire room was covered in a layer of dust so thick I was certain it hadn't been touched in at least a thousand years.

  Not too much of an exaggeration, considering how long ago Isabella had told me Veritas lived. Ten-thousand years… and the history books had said nothing about this so-called hero. The torches illuminated the room well, flickering like a beacon in the gloom of the area. On the walls were inscriptions, of the same type and language as the ones that had littered the walls of the tunnel, written in an indecipherable language unknown to me. At the other end directly opposite me was a large stone door, locked with nothing resembling a handle etched into its surface.

  It would be stupid of me to try and break it. Whoever had hidden Veritas’ tomb had done so with the intention of it never being found, and as such, they likely wouldn't make it so that the door could simply be opened with brute force. However, the fact that there was a door at all and not just a wall implied that there had to be a way to open it. We just needed to find out what that was.

  “Makko, can you use magic to check whether there's anything hidden in the walls?” He nodded in response, closing his eyes and placing his hands up against the stone. A pulse of energy emitted from his fingertips as he searched through the earth for any signs of a clue. I would have done the same thing, if not for my identity as Anonymous. After a moment, he stepped back and shook his head.

  “I got nothing. Sorry, man.” Of course it wasn't that easy. Nothing in this damned world ever was.

  “Over here!” Hearing Mari's voice, I immediately turned to face her, noticing Aaliyah, Nessa, and Anthony having crowded around her, looking at some sort of inscription on the walls. Walking over, I looked it up and down, trying to see just what she had found so interesting about this.

  “It's not perfect… but I think I can loosely translate what the words are saying based on the pictures. Maybe that… maybe that could help us find out how to open those doors, right?”

  Aaliyah smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Mari.” he said gently, and I had to agree. Any clues were better than none.

  “In the beginning, the world was covered by darkness.”

  Upon the wall were images of stick figures, overshadowed by what appeared to be dark clouds. Mari's translation appeared to be at least somewhat right in that regard, I thought, allowing her to continue.

  “Wars raged between the tribes, and demonic beasts raged across the land– by demonic beats, they're probably referring to Elysian Beasts, I think– and the humans were picked off one by one.

  We offered our prayers up to the gods in the hopes they would bring us salvation, an end to the suffering we had endured for thousands of years.

  Our prayers were answered in the form of a child. A child born of light, born to purge the darkness. Veritas. He was– shit.”

  Mari's sudden curse drew the attention of all of us, sharply twisting to face her.

  “What?” Nessa asked, surprise plain as day in her voice.

  “There's… there's no more. It cuts off there… it’s been rubbed from the walls… almost as if on purpose.”

  I should have realised. Whoever had made this place wasn’t going to tell us everything, not immediately anyway. It was up to us to pick up the pieces they had given and put the whole puzzle together. For some reason, I also got the feeling that Veritas himself wouldn’t have liked this to be too easy for us to figure out.

  It wasn’t meant to be impossible, since there was a door. It had to be solvable, we just had to find a way to solve it. But how? Racking my brains as though an answer would appear in the gloom before me, I repeated Mari’s words inside my head a thousand times over. If Isabella was listening in, she’d likely have gotten annoyed, but I felt myself getting closer to the truth. Yet someone was faster than me.

  “A child born of light,” Makko said. “When light is shone through glass, it splits into the rainbow. The elements. And Aaliyah told us that Veritas could use all the elements– so we need to use them all to get through that door.”

  “Ahah, so you can use that head of yours sometimes!” Nessa fired back, though it was in jest.

  “I can be smart… but the only problem is, we don’t have a usable Nature elementalist in here– Mari used up too much energy fighting the horde back there.”

  The entire room fell silent, and I felt the gazes of the Lizards on me. They knew of my powers, but also the fact I didn’t want to show them to the world, at least not when I wasn’t strong enough to protect myself and the world around me from the backlash that awaited.

  —

  Isabella padded forward, her body stepping into the light.

  ‘What are you doing, Isa?’

  ‘You need a Nature elementalist, right? I can do it.’

  ‘...Wouldn’t that waste some of the power you’ve been storing, though?’

  ‘But you guys need it. It’s now or never. If we stop here, we may never find the truth hidden beyond these walls.’

  I let out a small sigh. She was always wasting her energy to heal me, to help me. I was the reason she was nowhere close to regaining the strength she had prior to saving my life, and that feeling weighed on my conscience. In the past, I likely would have shrugged it off as a necessary evil, for my power was needed for keeping the fragile peace, a peace I delusionally believed in for my whole life, a peace built on the suffering of those I refused to acknowledge.

  But I had changed. I couldn’t let her keep saving me forever. Inhaling silently, I looked back to the others.

  “My bond will make up the final element. Mari, take a rest for now.” My tone was sure, confident, and as such there were no questions– or at least if there were, they didn’t ask them then. Mari nodded, exhaling quietly. I could tell being the leader was weighing heavy on her, and now along with the energy she had used up previously, she seemed incredibly tired. Approaching the door, I noticed that there were some small grooves, insignias upon the door where we were to place our hands.

  A flame. Me.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  A plant. Isabella.

  A water droplet. Nessa and Aaliyah.

  A rock. Makko.

  A tornado. Anthony.

  “...We’re gonna go on 3, yeah?” Makko asked.

  “Yes.” Anthony replied.

  “3…2…1…” Mari’s voice echoed around the room, but it was quickly overshadowed by the hum of elemental magic flooding through the room as we all put everything we had into the door and attempted to open it. A burst of light followed, before the magic died down, the door slowly opening into another room.

  All the while, I couldn't help but feel I knew the name Veritas from somewhere before my reincarnation. It was… familiar to me. But I simply couldn't place my finger on it, so I left it be, leading the charge into the next room.

  The room was cloaked in darkness– until I raised a hand and lit a flame in my palm, watching as it crackled and burned, illuminating a circular radius around me. There were no torches lining the walls, at least not from what I could see– which was better than everyone else, thanks to my Kismet passively enhancing all of my senses.

  ‘Can you sense anything, Isa?’

  ‘No. I'm getting nothing.’

  ‘Damnit…’

  It really was just an empty room, yet I could see nothing. Oddly cold, too, the feeling of every hair on my body standing on edge unsettling me. A small light glinted at the edge of my vision, and I turned on my heel to tell the others.

  “I found somethi–”

  The place where they had been was now filled with empty air. My eyes darted around rapidly, attempting to find if they had merely walked off. But I could sense… nothing. No presence– I couldn’t even feel my link to Isabella. As though they all had simply been taken from me. Whisked away somewhere I couldn’t reach before I had realised. And for the first time in a long time, I felt… alone.

  In my past life, I spent many days and nights by myself, merely carrying out tasks as was required of me. I had moulded myself into a weapon of mass destruction, unfeeling, fit to do nothing but be wielded by my master. I was emotionless, and as such, I knew nothing. The future was bleak, and I looked forward to nothing. But now… I had friends, family, people who enjoyed my presence and wanted it. I hadn’t been alone for a long time.

  So it felt out of place to me now. But I wasn’t alone for long. A soothing voice like a siren song, made up of thousands of whispers. The darkness seemed to move around me, cold shadows slithering up and down, pulling at every inch of exposed skin they could find. My breaths came slowly, steadily, attempting to calm myself down.

  “You don’t need to fight anymore, my dear Xeno…”

  —

  My body turned in the darkness, and there before me stood an apparition of a woman I used to know, a woman I could have loved, a woman who had taught me a great deal. A woman who had slipped through my grasp before I had properly understood what she had shown me.

  “M-meryll?” My voice faltered as it came out, cracking within seconds as my vision blurred with what could have been tears. I didn’t let myself break. I couldn’t let myself break. And yet she made me want to more badly than I ever had. The apparition had every one of her features, right down to the way her eyes wrinkled and her lips curled when she smiled the way she always did. It was so real I had forgotten the fact it wasn’t.

  “You can stop fighting now, my dear. You can give up. It will be fine… they will be fine without you.”

  “M-meryll, I– there’s so much I couldn’t tell you, I– I’m so sorry–”

  “Shhh, child. You don’t need to tell me…”

  “I just… I miss you. I miss you so, so, so much. Every single day…”

  “It will be alright.”

  With every passing moment, I sunk further. Even if this wasn’t the reality, I was perfectly content to stay there. Forever, if it meant I never had to face the fact she was dead again. It was like she said– I could give up. I’d been through enough already, hadn’t I? Didn’t I have the right to stop fighting and let someone else take over? I was no main character. This wasn’t my fight to win, this wasn’t my battle. I was just a side piece, a minor player sitting barely within the spotlight taken up by the main actor. That was my role.

  “Ah, but I do have a question… who gave you those earrings?” The apparition inquired, and that was all I needed for the mirage to be broken. If this was truly Meryll, she’d remember. She’d remember all the things she said, and she’d remember that she was the one who gave me such things. I cursed myself for even believing for a moment in this… wraith, for wanting to indulge in a reality I had lost the right to call my own due to my own incompetence and lack of strength.

  “Child, w-what are you–”

  “You don’t get to call me that.”

  Raising a fist, a fire set ablaze in my left hand, growing hotter as every second passed before I released it in an arc and tore through the figure. Its body distorted and began to grow larger and more disfigured before it let out a harrowing scream, exploding in a burst of smoke. And with it, the darkness cleared, and I stood before the final door. Around me, the Lizards and Aaliyah seemed to be waking up, shivering and quite clearly distraught, since I presumed they went through the same thing I did– facing nightmares of the past.

  However, Isabella still remained asleep, twitching, shivering, shaking. Just what had she been through for hers to last so long? I shook my head silently. It wasn’t my place to think about why. Picking her up in my arms, I cradled her body, stroking her fur gently in an attempt to calm her down. I doubted she would feel it from within the nightmare, but I hoped it would aid her nonetheless.

  Turning to Mari, I beckoned her over. Isabella seemed most comfortable with her of all the Lizards, so when she woke up, it would probably be best if it was with her.

  “Could you hold her? I… will go with Aaliyah and see what’s next.”

  “That could be dangerous, Anonymous. Are you sure you don’t want us to come with you?”

  The rest of the Lizards nodded in agreement with her sentiment, but I shook my head firmly in response, determined.

  “No. Someone has to stay here with her for when she wakes up. And it’ll be quick, I promise. We’re just going to scout it out, we’ll be back soon. I can protect myself– and I have Aaliyah for backup if anything happens to me, anyway.” Mari let out a small sigh, before nodding in agreement.

  “Fine. But you had better come back safe, or your bond won’t be very pleased. If you take too long, we will come and check on you.”

  I smiled, but it was hidden beneath the mask. Turning on my heel, I nodded to Aaliyah– and we headed through the door, closing it shut. Through such a door was a rectangular, even larger room than the two previous, but all that lay within was a finely crafted stone statue with another door at the opposite end. The statue seemed to be of the man we were looking for– Veritas– with an inscription that had several layers of dust.

  Wiping it off with my fingers, I squinted. Aaliyah did the same, and he seemed to understand it better than I did, reading it aloud.

  “Here lies Veritas the Ascender. May he forever rest in peace.”

  From the stone statue, I could ascertain his general appearance. A tall man, very-well built, wearing clothes typical of the time, and a simple blade at his side. His hair was choppy, reaching down to his shoulders in a high ponytail.

  Veritas, Veritas, Veritas… where had I heard that name before. And suddenly, my stomach dropped, a cold sweat slithering down my forehead, and I remembered where I had heard it before.

  Veritas. God of War. The Ascender. The man whose reincarnation King Caelus had been looking for all those years ago.

  And with that knowledge came a blistering pain, feeling as though my head was splitting in two. My eyes bulged from my face as I sunk down to my knees.

  “Anonymous?! What’s wro…?! An…ny…ous!” Aaliyah shouted my name, but his voice blurred out, merging with the noises of the surroundings as I collapsed to the floor, everything going dark for a moment. And suddenly, it was dark no more.

  Before me stood a woman, all clothed in white. Her hair was lengthy, black, reaching down to her waist, with eyes a shade of blood-red.

  “Isabella?” Her name was my first instinct, but the woman before me shook her head. She carried none of the warmth.

  “I am not the one you call ‘Isabella’. Though, for now… you may refer to me as ‘Rex’... though, I suppose because I appear to you in female form, the correct term would be ‘Regina’.”