The Traveler remained beside the river.
His right hand rested against the wet stones.
His breathing had not yet returned to normal.
The black stone remained beneath the water.
Silent.
Unmoving.
He could still hear the voice.
Do not trust the one who sits upon the throne.
And the sentence that followed.
I remember what he did when they came for us.
The Traveler stared into the river.
"What did you do, Arafial?"
The water rippled.
A shadow appeared behind him.
"Repeat that."
The Traveler turned.
Dark Arafial stood at the edge of the trees.
His expression was colder than before, but something about his arrival felt different.
He hadn't appeared to mock the Traveler.
He hadn't come to threaten him.
He had come because something had frightened him.
The Traveler rose slowly.
"You heard me."
Arafial approached.
"What did the voice say?"
"It warned me not to trust you."
Arafial's eyes narrowed.
"And?"
The Traveler hesitated.
"It said it remembered what you did when they came for you."
Silence.
The forest seemed to hold its breath.
Dark Arafial looked toward the river.
For several seconds, he didn't move.
Then he took a step backward.
The Traveler noticed.
He had seen Arafial laugh at his injuries. He had watched him treat death as an inconvenience. He had seen him stand before the obsidian throne as though nothing in existence could challenge him.
But he had never seen him retreat from something he couldn't understand.
"What is it?" the Traveler asked.
Arafial didn't answer.
He stared at the black stone.
Its surface had begun to glow.
Not black.
Not purple.
White.
A thin line of radiance spread across its surface, splitting it into several uneven sections.
The water around it stopped moving.
Every leaf along the riverbank froze in midair.
The Traveler looked around.
"What is happening?"
Arafial didn't look at him.
"Get away from the stone."
His voice had changed.
There was no amusement in it.
No contempt.
Only urgency.
The Traveler stared at him.
"Why?"
"NOW."
The word struck the forest like a physical force.
The Traveler stumbled backward.
The stone rose from the river.
Water streamed from its surface, but the droplets never reached the ground. They hung around it like tiny spheres of glass.
The cracks widened.
Light poured through them.
The Traveler raised an arm to shield his eyes.
"Arafial!"
Dark Arafial was already moving toward him.
For the first time, the Lord of the Abyss looked genuinely afraid.
Not angry.
Not irritated.
Afraid.
"Don't look at it!"
The Traveler turned his face away.
Then the stone made a sound.
A small, delicate crack.
Almost like a piece of ice breaking in winter.
Dark Arafial stopped.
His eyes widened.
"No..."
The stone exploded.
There was no fire.
No smoke.
No fragments striking the trees.
The explosion swallowed everything.
The river disappeared.
The trees disappeared.
The earth vanished beneath the Traveler's feet.
The sky ceased to exist.
The forest, the mountains, the distant world—all of it was erased beneath a single expanding wave of white radiance.
The Traveler felt himself falling.
He couldn't tell which direction was down.
He couldn't tell whether he was moving at all.
He tried to shout, but no sound emerged.
The light surrounded him from every direction.
It passed through his clothes.
Through his skin.
Through his bones.
He couldn't close his eyes tightly enough to escape it.
There was no darkness behind his eyelids.
Only more light.
Endless, merciless light.
And somewhere within it, Dark Arafial screamed.
Not in pain.
In terror.
"NO!"
The Traveler had never heard that voice before.
It didn't sound like the cold being who had mocked him.
It didn't sound like the Lord who sat upon the obsidian throne.
It sounded like someone who had just witnessed the one thing he had spent eternity trying to avoid.
Arafial reached for the Traveler.
His hand appeared through the radiance, black fingers stretching toward him.
"YOU FOOL!"
The Traveler couldn't see his face clearly.
The light was too bright.
But he heard the fear in every word.
"WHAT HAVE YOU—"
The sentence broke apart.
The light swallowed Arafial.
For one instant, the Traveler saw his silhouette suspended in the radiance.
Darkness poured from his body.
It wasn't spreading outward to consume the light.
It was retreating.
Folding inward.
As though even the Abyss itself had recognized something it could not touch.
Arafial looked toward the Traveler.
Their eyes met.
And for the first time—
Dark Arafial had no insult.
No threat.
No cruel smile.
He looked at the Traveler as if he wanted to tell him something.
Something desperately important.
But before he could speak—
EVERYTHING DISAPPEARED.
The Traveler was alone.
Or perhaps he wasn't.
He could no longer see his hands.
He couldn't feel the ground.
He couldn't sense the river, the trees, or even the familiar presence of Dark Arafial.
There was no horizon.
No distance.
No beginning.
No end.
Only light.
White light without warmth.
White light without shadow.
White light that seemed to have existed before the concept of darkness had ever been imagined.
The Traveler tried to move.
Nothing happened.
He tried to speak.
Nothing happened.
He tried to remember where he was.
His thoughts scattered before he could grasp them.
He couldn't tell whether he was alive.
He couldn't tell whether he was dead.
He couldn't tell whether time had stopped—or whether time had never existed here at all.
Then, somewhere in the infinite radiance, something moved.
The Traveler couldn't see what it was.
He couldn't hear it.
He couldn't even be certain that it had moved.
But the light changed.
For the briefest instant, it seemed to bend around an invisible presence.
And far away—or perhaps directly beside him—Dark Arafial remained silent.
The being who had once stood above gods.
The being who had created the Abyss.
The being who had admitted that he didn't know where his other half had gone.
He was afraid.
The Traveler couldn't see him.
Couldn't hear him.
But somehow, he knew.
Dark Arafial was afraid of this light.
And the light showed no sign of fading.