Trembling so violently he could barely keep his balance, Kritos slowly turned to face the entrance. The Demon of Rovia towered over them—majestic, beautiful, and practically radiating a lethal, suffocating pressure. His narrow eyes locked instantly onto Kritos, and the mortal felt his knees turn to water.

"You arrived, Guardian. I have been expecting you," Niota purred, his deep voice practically vibrating with dark amusement.

"Yes. I came," Kritos forced out, his voice sounding thin, reedy, and entirely unfamiliar to his own ears. He had to choose his next words with precision so Thasos wouldn't catch his lies. If only he had some time, he would have arranged to be alone with the Demon.

"Did the medallion call to you?" Niota asked, tilting his head.

"It calls to me, yes! The gods demand justice!" Kritos shouted, trying to sound authoritative.

Niota’s laughter boomed violently. "What could the gods possibly know of justice? Only mortals can impose balance upon this wretched earth. Wouldn't you agree, my Guardian?" the warlord smirked, his eyes flashing red.

"The gods forged the Star! The gods command its wrath!" Kritos’s voice cracked with terror.

But before Niota could answer, Thasos stepped fiercely in front of Kritos, shielding him with his own body. What was the reckless idiot doing? Thasos was trembling, his face as white as the boiled linen rolls he scrubbed every afternoon.

"Lord Niota!" Thasos barked, his voice cracking a desperate, suicidal bravery. "If you value justice, why are you attacking us? Aseri never did wrong to you.”

You are trying to interrogate an ancient catastrophe, Thasos. What conceivable rationale could it offer you?

Chuckling softly, Niota rested a casual hand on the pommel of his greatsword, tracing the dark steel almost affectionately. "This blade fulfilled its fundamental purpose. The debt of justice I was owed has been settled in blood. Now, I am simply looking for a new home."

What debt? What home?

"My Lord... your home is the kingdom of Rovia. Lead your host back across the sands to your own people," Thasos pleaded.

Niota laughed again—a high, sharp sound like a crow’s caw. "Just because I marched out of the West, what makes you assume Rovia was my home?" His smirk turned glacial. "Or that Rovia even exists anymore?"

Thasos froze, his breath catching in his throat. Kritos felt his own heart hammering wildly against his ribs like a trapped animal.

"Yes... The sovereign of that wretched realm wronged me. Severely. And so, his entire kingdom paid the ultimate price for his sins. It certainly made conscripting my new vanguard a simple matter..."

All those reanimated corpses... an entire slaughtered kingdom...

With a primal roar, Thasos bared his teeth, whipped out his shortsword and charged across the rugs. But halfway to the warlord, he hit an invisible wall of force. Niota had simply flicked two fingers upward, and Thasos was hoisted effortlessly into the air.

"Brave little soldier," the Demon mused, inspecting his fingernails. "Your appointed hour has not yet arrived." The shortsword was violently wrenched clean out of Thasos’s grip, clattering loudly against the floorboards directly at Kritos’s feet. Thick ropes lashed out from the corners of the tent, wrapping Thasos’s wrists and ankles in bonds. Niota casually dropped his hand, and Thasos crashed to the floor, his back laying on a pile of sacks.

"You haven't answered my question, Guardian," Niota prompted, turning his suffocating gaze back to Kritos. "Do you not believe that mankind is solely responsible for the execution of justice?"

"Demon of Rovia, or whatever cursed pit spawned you!" Kritos screamed, tears of panic pricking his eyes. "You are no longer human enough to lecture me on what is just!"

"And yet, it is warm, mortal blood that courses through my veins. I suspect you can sense it."

"I only know that anyone who brings an apocalypse to this land has forfeited the right to speak of justice!" Kritos cried out.

"But I haven't laid a single finger upon the land itself. I haven't set fire to your woodlands, nor have I slaughtered your livestock. Your deep lakes and mountain streams remain pristine."

"You butcher the sons of Aseri every single morning! Is there a more depraved, unforgivable crime than that?" Kritos roared, spittle flying from his lips. "The howling souls of the innocent will be the iron chains that drag you down into the underworld!"

"Tell me, Guardian... were the men my vanguard trampled truly innocent? Two years ago, I arrived at your borders and asked only for the head of your King. Your tyrant. The entire nation denied me. They voluntarily linked arms to bar my path." Niota took a slow, deliberate, terrifying step forward. "What do you think of your King now... Kritos?"

The blood turned to solid ice in Kritos’s veins. The Star had spoken his true name aloud. He remembered him. The entire fragile facade was cracking wide open.

"Why... why does the Demon know your name?" Thasos’s voice choked with bewilderment from the floorboards. "Kritos... what does he mean, 'what do you think of your King now'?"

"The Star! The relic must have granted him a divine vision of its Guardian!" Kritos stammered wildly, his pitch cracking.

Niota beamed a razor-sharp smile, taking pleasure in what he was watching.

"Yield, Demon! You have one final opportunity for absolution! As Guardian of the Star, I command you to surrender the missing half of the medallion! Restore the divine balance of the world!" Kritos bellowed at the top of his lungs, desperately trying to drown out the conversation.

Niota’s smile didn't waver. "Do you genuinely believe you can put a leash on the Star of Ire? Do you truly believe your brilliant little plan will succeed?"

"YES!" Kritos shrieked, his eyes bulging wildly as he screamed over the warlord to prevent Thasos from hearing another syllable. "The sacred law of the heavens must be enforced! The Star must be made whole!"

Niota reached into his collar, snapped the leather cord, and thrust his broken half of the medallion out into the light. "This is what you're after! I will hand it to you. But only if you look your friend in the eye and confess what you actually intend to use its power for!"

Kritos felt the oxygen leave the room. The tent spun in sickening, erratic circles. He looked down at Thasos, whose exhausted, pale face was now contorted into raw, agonizing confusion.

"Liar! I have no hidden designs..." Kritos choked out, his voice shrinking to a pathetic whisper.

"And the grand marriage to the princess?" Niota inquired softly, tilting his head.

Kritos’s legs finally gave out entirely. He collapsed onto the heavy rugs beside Thasos. He had completely run out of theater. "Gods above..."

"The gods don't listen, Kritos. That is what you always tell me," Thasos whispered. His voice was a blade turned directly inside Kritos’s chest. Had he lost him? The Demon had successfully planted the venomous seed of absolute doubt.

"Thasos, look at me! Don't listen to him! He is a master of lies!"

"Brave little soldier," Niota said, ignoring Kritos entirely. "Your companion is indeed the authentic Guardian of the Star. He sought me out in the desert with a magnificent vision. To depose your King." The warlord slowly turned his dark gaze back to Kritos. "He set me free so I could help him."

The desperate bewilderment in Thasos’s wide eyes slowly hardened into pure revulsion. Kritos couldn't bear the weight of that gaze. He violently wrenched his face toward the canvas.

"I trusted my life to you..." Thasos’s voice fractured into a dry sob. "And you traded us away? All of us? The whole realm?"

Every single word was a physical blow to the back of Kritos's head.

"Thasos... you don't understand the pressure I was under! He is the one who corrupted my mind! How could I ever knowingly bring this suffering to our home? You know my heart!" Kritos babbled, weeping openly into his hands.

"No... I don't know you. I don't know you at all."

"Thasos, I swear to you, don't believe the Demon... I beg of you, brother..." Kritos sobbed through heavy, convulsive gasps. "I would never harm Linos..."

Hearing his son's name out of Kritos's mouth snapped the final of Thasos’s restraint. His reply came out as a venomous promise. "Keep my son’s sacred name out of your filthy, traitorous mouth! If the gods grant me the mercy to survive, I will personally drag you to the capital so everyone finds out who brought this calamity upon us!"

Kritos felt his skull swell, threatening to split down the center. His entire frame shook with a violent, animalistic tremor he could no longer govern. A high, deafening static completely swallowed the sound of the morning wind.

No... No! Absolutely not! No one can ever know!

His eyes fell upon Thasos’ shortsword lying next to him. With both bare hands, Kritos seized the leather hilt and lifted it. It was a standard, lightweight blade. Yet to his sweating, trembling palms, it felt heavier than a blacksmith's anvil.

Without a single conscious thought, driven entirely by the blind, frantic terror of total exposure, he spun toward his friend. Throwing the entire weight of his torso forward, he drove the cold steel clean through Thasos’s sternum.

Thasos didn't cry out. He simply looked up into Kritos's eyes. Not with shock. Not with sorrow. With pure hatred.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... but no one... no one can ever find out!" Kritos babbled hysterically, his tears falling onto his face as his fingers slipped against the hot, welling lifeblood of his closest friend in the world.

Thasos didn't offer him a final word. He just kept his eyes locked onto his murderer.

Niota’s soft, thoroughly delighted chuckle broke the suffocating quiet. "My absolute gratitude, Kritos! The board has resolved itself with absolute perfection! Here is your missing piece!" The warlord casually tossed the broken half of the medallion down onto the blood-soaked floor.

A wild spark of desperate delusion ignited in Kritos’s mind. If he could just fuse the metal halves in time... The raw magic would force Niota back into the frail, glowing blue teenager. Back under his absolute, unbreakable command. He would order the Star to save Thasos. And he would order the magic to wipe his brother's memory completely clean.

He snatched the silver piece from the gore and violently ground the two sheared edges together. He squeezed them with all his might. For a moment. And then for more, long seconds. But the cold metal refused to catch. Niota remained the towering, armored god of war standing triumphantly over them. And Thasos’s breathing degenerated into a rattling gasp.

"I warned you. Back in the crypt beneath Falcon's Peak. I explicitly told you that a day would come when you finally understood," Niota looked down at him, his voice echoing like a tolling bell.

"UNDERSTOOD WHAT?!" Kritos shrieked, his vocal cords tearing.

"That the Star of Ire was never a divine blessing. It is a living, breathing curse." Niota slowly crouched down, bringing his striking, merciless face level with the sobbing Kritos. "An ancient, primordial hex forged by deeply embittered gods. Across the centuries, it drifts through the dark, waiting with infinite patience for the one mortal soul wretched enough to betray its own kin. And when the predestined alignment arrives, it is unclasped upon the earth to remind arrogant mankind of just how fragile they are. Condemned to an endless, repeating cycle of misery." The warlord stood back up. "Or at least... that is how I prefer to interpret it!"

Kritos couldn't process a single syllable of the grand design. He was still frantically, uselessly grinding the two shards together against his collarbone, his hands thoroughly painted in Thasos's blood. His friend's chest hitched.

"Cease your struggling, Kritos. The metal will not mend at your command. But set your mind at ease—I will personally see your grand design through to its conclusion. I will sever the head of your King. I will claim his royal daughter as my war prize and plant my seed within her womb. I will rule Aseri from the high throne. My glorious descendants will sing of my reign as the realm's most magnificent epoch. And the ancient legend of the Star will be relegated back to a dusty bedtime yarn. A vague, foolish comfort that the inherent rot inside the human soul can somehow be defeated. Until the fateful hour it is forced to wake once more..."

Tears spilled continuously over Kritos’s lips as he rocked violently back and forth, shaking his head in a blind, silent, absolute rejection of reality.

Beside his knee, Thasos drew his final, rattling breath. His glassy, empty eyes remained fixed forever upon his ultimate enemy: Kritos.

In Kritos’s right palm, the two shards suddenly grew hot, searing his skin. They violently wrenched themselves clean out of his grip, hovering above the pooling blood. With a sudden, concussive, blinding flash of pure azure light, the two metal halves fused together clean. Flawless, solid, and completely seamless—as though the medallion had never been broken at all.

"Hail, new Star," Niota whispered quietly.

The interior of the command tent began to smear into a chaotic, spinning vortex. The very last thing Kritos registered was the feeling of falling into a thick, freezing, suffocating ocean of light blue mist.