While "Ocasia" lay submerged in an eerie stillness under the protection of the great specter Alaric, there was a wound that had not healed in the city's fabric — a wound embodied by those who had dwelt in the shadows for so long that they had become part of them. In the lower vault of the Royal Archives, where moisture devoured paper and oblivion devoured minds, Azrael was watching something he had never seen before.
The black crystal Eleonor carried was not the only source of the king's pulse; every sword of the "Forgotten Ones," forged from void-metal, began to emit a faint hum, like a distant flute crying for help.
"I can feel him, Eleonor," said Azrael as he entered the throne room, where Eleonor sat surrounded by maps of the city. "Alaric is not merely a silent 'guardian.' He is in pain. The metal in our soldiers' hands trembles whenever the 'Celestial Council' tries to probe the city's edges."
Eleonor raised her head; the dark circles beneath her eyes testified to nights spent in dialogue with the crystal. "Minister Scepter is not entirely dead, Azrael. He left behind a spiritual 'virus.' He is not attacking the walls, but attacking 'meaning' itself. People have begun to ask: If the king is the land, why does hunger still gnaw at our bellies? Why do the rains still fall acidic?"
At that moment, a guardsman burst into the hall, trembling with terror. "My lady... in the southern quarter, the earth has begun to 'speak.' People are fleeing their homes because the walls are whispering the names of their dead!"
Eleonor and Azrael rushed toward the southern quarter. The scene was surreal; the walls of the houses, built from the palace's rubble, were oozing a viscous black substance, and from within the stone emerged sounds resembling Alaric's voice, yet distorted, full of malice and remorse.
"This is not Alaric," Eleonor cried out, raising her crystal to disrupt the distorted frequencies. "This is Scepter using the king's own 'void frequency' to create a collective nightmare!"
Suddenly, the earth split open in the middle of the square, and from it emerged a gelatinous entity taking Alaric's form, but with a black hole in place of a face. This was the "Contaminated Echo." The entity began smashing the homes people had built with their own effort, turning the "security" the king had promised into utter devastation.
"Alaric! Resist him from within!" Eleonor called out, thrusting her emerald magic into the ground to contain the entity.
Everyone felt a violent tremor. The sky above Ocasia turned a deep purple, and the true specter of Alaric appeared in the heavens, wrestling with his distorted copy. It was a battle between the steadfast "Original" and the infiltrating "Falsity."
Alaric found no way to stop the contamination except through "partial incarnation." Through the crystal Eleonor held, a thick smoke began to gather, forming a colossal hand of Alaric that emerged from nowhere and grasped the gelatinous entity.
"I... am not... fear," echoed Alaric's true voice, rumbling like a tempest.
With a single blow from his spectral hand, Alaric crushed the "Contaminated Echo," and the entity turned into black rain that washed the city's streets. But the price was horrific; this sudden incarnation consumed a vast amount of the "Core's" energy, causing the crystal in Eleonor's hand to crack.
The upper specter faded, and silence returned — but it was a silence heavy with doubt. The people looked at Eleonor with suspicion-filled eyes. "Does the king protect us or haunt us?" whispered an elder, staring at his home's wall stained with blackness.
Eleonor realized that "governance through absence" was beginning to fail. Scepter had succeeded in sowing doubt, and the Celestial Council watched from above, waiting for the moment humanity would beg for "salvation" from their king, who had become like a nightmare.
"We must bring him back, Azrael," Eleonor said, gazing at the cracks in the crystal. "Alaric must return in a 'body,' even if it is a body of ash. Spirit alone cannot convince the hungry to be loyal."
The chapter ended with a dangerous decision: the commencement of the "Flesh Restoration" ritual — a process requiring the blood of the living and the magic of the dead, to bring the king back to the material world before "Ocasia" turns into a forest of doubts that devour themselves.
How will Eleonor confront the dilemma of "sacrifice" required to restore Alaric? And will Alaric return as himself, or will something else entirely emerge from the void?