Chapter 13: The Core of Ruin
They stood at the edge of silence.
The Heart of the Tower floated before them—an immense crystal suspended in endless dark. It was black, but not empty. It pulsed faintly, cracks glowing deep within like veins through obsidian. And inside it, curled in an eternal stillness, was a figure.
He was perfect.
Anterz stared at him—at himself.
Not as he was now—scarred, half-remembered, forged in ash—but as he once must have been.
Golden eyes closed.
Dark hair sweeping back like a flame unlit.
A black blade resting across his chest, identical to Valteris, but longer. Older. The original.
Elaria stepped to the edge of the platform, her voice hushed and cold.
"That's not just a reflection."
Anterz nodded slowly. "It's the version of me that never broke."
---
The crystal shifted, faint lines of motion spiraling from its surface like echoes of breath.
Rayn stood behind them, arm wrapped in cloth from his fall, blood crusted to his jaw. He didn't speak for a long moment.
Then: "We thought the Ruin Lord vanished. That he died in the Fall."
He pointed at the sleeping figure.
"We were wrong. He sealed himself. Not just in memory. But in flesh."
Anterz whispered, "So… I was him?"
"No," Rayn said. "You were what was left after he cut himself away."
---
Elaria turned sharply.
"He split his soul."
Rayn nodded.
"Locked the purest piece here. Behind Teeth and Mirrors. Buried it under names and lies. He tried to become less than himself."
Anterz's voice was hollow.
"And the rest… became me."
Valteris pulsed along his back.
> "He was too powerful to kill. So he became forgiven. And you—Anterz—are the cost of that lie."
The words echoed inside Anterz's bones.
He had never escaped destiny.
He had been made from it.
---
The crystal pulsed again.
The figure inside opened his eyes.
Gold. Burning. Divine.
He did not move.
He only watched.
Elaria took a step back, shaking. "He sees us. He sees you."
Rayn raised his blade, but didn't approach.
"I don't think we're meant to wake him."
"No," Anterz said quietly. "But the tower does."
A low hum filled the air—deep, resonant, impossible to place.
The runes on the chamber walls began to glow.
The Tower Heart had acknowledged its bearer.
---
Elaria's voice trembled.
"If he wakes—if the original you rises—what happens to the world?"
Rayn answered, bitter. "It falls again. But this time… not in fire."
He turned toward Anterz.
"But in memory. He doesn't destroy with war. He reverses. He'll pull the world backward, to the moment before the Fall. Before magic broke. Before gods died."
Elaria stared. "He'll rewrite everything."
Rayn nodded grimly.
"And everything that's lived since—including you, Anterz—will be erased."
---
A slow breath filled the chamber.
It wasn't from them.
It came from within the crystal.
The figure's hand twitched.
The black blade across his chest shifted.
A pulse of pressure struck the chamber—glass cracked. Stone bent. Elaria fell to her knees.
Anterz barely stayed standing.
The voice that followed wasn't spoken aloud. It was placed directly into their minds.
> "I remember you."
> "I remember myself."
> "And I am not pleased."
---
Anterz staggered.
The voice was his.
And not his.
A deeper, older version—calm, cold, filled with purpose stripped of hesitation.
"Why?" Anterz managed. "Why seal yourself?"
The figure inside the crystal closed his eyes again.
> "Because I was too complete. Too certain. I could not change. And so I became a threat even to the gods who built me."
> "So I chose to fracture. To scatter. To suffer. So that what remained might feel again."
Elaria whispered, "You created a new you."
> "Yes," the voice replied. "A version with weakness. And through weakness, choice."
Anterz fell to one knee, shaking.
"So I was never free."
> "You were more free than I ever was."
> "And now you are here."
---
The crystal's cracks deepened.
A second pulse rocked the chamber.
Rayn backed away. "He's waking."
"No," Valteris whispered. "He's choosing."
Anterz looked up.
"What choice?"
The voice returned.
> "You are the last piece I lack. Memory. Regret. Doubt."
> "If I reclaim you… I become whole."
> "And if I do… there will be no war. No more death."
> "Only the correction of the world."
---
Elaria screamed, "Don't listen! That's not peace—it's erasure!"
The crystal glowed.
Anterz stood.
Torn.
Everything in him screamed to resist.
And yet… part of him yearned to be whole. To stop hurting. To end the war within himself.
He stepped toward the crystal.
Rayn raised his blade. "Think."
Anterz didn't stop.
Elaria ran to his side. "If you merge with him, you end. And he—he's not mercy. He's perfection without feeling."
Anterz turned to her.
"I've killed. Bled. Lost everything I never knew I had. What if I am the mistake?"
She stepped closer, placed a hand on his chest.
"You're not the mistake."
"You're the answer."
---
The crystal cracked once more—then paused.
For a breathless moment, all sound ceased.
Then the voice spoke one final time.
> "Choose."
> "Join me—and end the spiral."
> "Or refuse—and face what I left beneath the Heart."
The chamber rumbled.
Something else stirred below.
Older than either version of Anterz.
Elaria whispered, "He buried something. Something even he feared."
Rayn's face went pale.
"Oh gods…"
A second vault opened beneath the crystal.
Black flame poured out.
Something rose.
Something not Anterz.
---
Anterz turned away from the crystal.
Faced the dark.
His voice was steady.
"No."
"I choose myself."
He pointed Valteris downward, toward the rising void.
"If this is what you feared, then it's what I'll fight."
The voice inside the crystal laughed.
Not cruelly.
But… relieved.
> "Then you are ready."
---
The platform shattered.
They fell.
Into the flame.
Into the pit.
Into the final gate.
And far above, the Tower shuddered.
Its crown cracked open.
And a name long buried beneath fire began to speak itself again—
One that could not be unmade.
---