Chương 15: The Sun Shall Rise

In the Year 912 AN, when snow lay knee-deep upon the roofs of Velisk and honest folk slept under the icons of the Seven Curator Gods, there came at midnight a tearing above the chapel of Saint Yarik, and the sky opened like cloth cut by a wicked knife. No trumpet warned them. No reaper rode in haste. No old mother woke from dream and cried, "Children, run for your lives, for the Tyrant of Vyrmgaard has found us." So the town slept, and so fell the astral lead.

It came silver and soft, like holy ash in mockery of holy ash, and it kissed the shutters, the cradles, the bread left cooling by the ovens, the beards of fathers, the lips of babes, and wherever it kissed, there hunger awoke. Cows bit through their own tongues in fear. Dogs tore at chapel doors, begging to be let out. Men called for water and drank their own blood instead, while mothers held their children close until the children bit them in cry and terror. Then, my beloved, came the demons.

They descended through the black rift in horn and sinew, with bellies empty as winter graves. They did not laugh, for laughter is a human thing. They did not rage, for rage is too clean a word. They ate Velisk from street to cellar, from altar to marriage bed, from first cry to last prayer. By dawn, the snow was red, the icons were blind, and no soul remained to ring the bell.

Thus remember, faithful men of Ostravia: fear the lead rain as you fear sin in your own blood, but meet the demons beneath it as sons of winter meet the bear—trembling, but with an axe in hand. —Excerpt from 'The Black Homilies Against Vyrmgaard', Spoken by Justicar Aleksy Voromir before the Morozniki Orland blinked at Kazimir, still half-crouched beside the fire with his new golden evercoat as the man scrambled off the ground.

"Cover? Why? What's going—""Now, brat! That one over there!" The snap in Kazimir's voice made Orland turn, following the man's gaze until his eyes landed on a giant cedar standing near the edge of the clearing. Its trunk was wide enough for five men to hug and still not meet hands, but there was an opening in the base of it, possibly allowing a few of those men to hide inside if they had to.

Orland wouldn't go in there by himself—he knew from experience hollows like those were typically used as nests by dangerous beasts—but Kazimir had zero hesitation. He scooped up his seven Altars, wrapped the boards in their cloth bundles, and bolted straight for the hollow. Well, if he's going in first… Orland moved as well, ducking inside the tree and nearly tripping over a few roots as he did. The moment he did, the forest began to hiss around them.

He glanced back out to see the tiny shimmering flakes landing on leaves, bark, dirt and grass and stone, and whatever they touched, they scraped and scratched. It was a light metal flake rain at the start, but as the seconds passed, it quickly became a full storm of multi-colored flakes, painting the darkening sky in a strange, oil-like glowing hue. Suddenly, it no longer seemed as though they were even in the same world, let alone in the same forest.

"What the fuck?" he whispered, backing further into the hollow as wind blew a few flakes in, stabbing into the ground at his feet.

"Hey, Kazimir, I think something's not—""It's your fate," Kazimir muttered back, sitting with his back against the inner wall of the hollow, jaw clenched. In the gloom, he looked even older than usual.

"Of course we're getting hit by a lead storm. Why not? The gods have humor, and all of it is shit."

"We're getting hit by a what?" Kazimir stared back.

"... Just sit down," he grumbled, kicking the ground before him.

"The worst of the storm has to pass before we can move again. In the meantime, I guess someone has to do the unwanted job of teaching the 'Hero' about his job." Orland scowled at the man but sat anyway, pulling his knees close as he shuffled further away from the opening.

The hollow smelled like musty wood and old sap, and it was cramped as hell with the two of them inside—especially with Kazimir's altars shoved between them like a bundle of sacred doors—but it was still shelter, and the alternative was getting cut to ribbons outside by the raining metal flakes. Kazimir was right. There wasn't much choice here but to wait out the worst of the storm… whatever it was.

"Listen closely, 'Hero'. I'm not repeating myself," Kazimir started, unsheathing a small knife from his belt so he could start carving a map into the wall beside him.

"In 881 AN, the King of Demons appeared in Vyrmgaard, the northernmost continent, and united all the demon races under his banner. His first words when he took his throne as the Tyrant of Vyrmgaard was thus: 'By throne of lead, by crown of ash, and by the blood that paved my ascent, the world is ours'. That same year, he sent his first armies of demons south across the seas to strike every continent at once, and that was the beginning of the First Demonic Incursion—Era Nakri, the Demonic War."

The map Kazimir was carving was beautiful. He drew a circle at first, then filled it with continents, then marked an X in the furthest northern continent to designate it as 'Vyrmgaard'. Orland had no trouble following his drawings—he'd seen a few maps here and there in Baba Marza's store—but before Kazimir could start carving lines from Vyrmgaard to the other continents across the world, he held up his hand.

"Wait," he said.

"What… uh, are demons, exactly?" Kazimir's knife stopped, and his head turned slowly. Orland forced a grin quickly, one hand already lifting in a lazy little gesture.

"No, no, no. I just wanna know how much you know," he added, using the ever-reliable.

"Just explain it like I don't know anything. I like to… uh, hear you explain stuff."

"And you like to dig your own grave with your own hands," Kazimir said sourly.

"You went to school, didn't you?" Orland shrugged in response. Kazimir stared at him for another second before returning to the wall, sighing in reluctance.

"Unlike every other race in the world, demons are not a natural race," Kazimir began anew, carving a normal human man beside the world map.

"The term 'demon' is used to refer to any living being infected and corrupted by astral lead, which is an outerworld material—not from our world, that is—with two main properties. First, anything it infects and corrupts becomes extremely violent and aggressive. Second, anything it infects and corrupts becomes extremely hungry for mana."

"Hungry?" Orland leaned in close, getting a closer look as Kazimir started carving horns, spikes, and other strange appendages jutting out of the normal man.

"Hungry like starving wolves in winter. Demons infected by astral lead must continuously feed on mana as their sole source of nutrition, or else they'll die. This means demons can't generate mana naturally since all of it is immediately devoured—and it also means they can't use any relics, which are powered by mana—but in exchange, their bodies are forged far stronger than any other race.

Astral lead grants them immense strength and speed, and demons who feed their astral lead enough can even produce outerworld abilities not dissimilar to magic and relic abilities. Considering the weakest demons are still usually high Common-Grade, that makes demonkind, by raw strength, the strongest race in the entire world." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. That landed badly.

Orland had only just started being proud of his Uncommon-1 grade, but now Kazimir was telling him the weakest demons started around there. How tough was the leech again? Uncommon-5? Uncommon-6 And to think the weakest demon was at least on par with him as he was now?

"That's why, during the First Demonic Incurion, the Tyrant's demon armies nearly toppled the entirety of Ostravia," Kazimir continued, returning to his map and carving a thick line down from Vyrmgaard to the continent right beneath it. That was probably 'Ostravia', where they were right now.

"The demons were close to unstoppable. Towns fell, cities burned, roads were severed, and Relikov City itself nearly broke—but then in 900 AN, nineteen years after the war began, Naghari the Sage and the Curator Church divined that a man capable of beating back the demons would appear."

"... The First Hero," Orland mumbled. Kazimir glanced at him, perhaps surprised he knew that much.

"The First Hero. He appeared in 901 AN with the Star-Element Gauntlet, battled the demons in Relikov City, and in 905 AN, he drove back the First Demonic Incursion before succumbing to his injuries. Since then, four more Heroes have appeared through the century according to the Church's divinations." He carved more lines across Ostravia, mapping out the Heroes' battles across the continent.

"Each one contributed to holding back the Tyrant's attempts to swallow the world, and all of them, without exception, were carriers of three special items: a 'Hero' title, a lion's mask, and a Star-Element Gauntlet." Orland's fingers flexed inside his own gauntlet. So there's multiple of these relics—"But there can only be one Hero at a time," Kazimir said, stopping after he carved one line going from Ostravia to Vyrmgaard like a counterattack.

"After failing to defeat the Tyrant in Vyrmgaard, the Fourth Hero perished in 959 AN, and three decades passed with no new divinations. The world, at large, grew anxious at the thought that there might not be another Hero, and so did the Tyrant's moves become bolder and bolder—until four years ago, in 989 AN, Naghari the Sage divined that the Fifth Hero would appear soon." With that, Kazimir looked directly at Orland.

"The Curator Church hosted a series of tests across the continent to locate the one who could bear the title. Eventually, on the Fifthday of Seventhmonth of last year, they found the Fifth Hero: you," he said.

"The Curator Church gave you your 'Hero' Title, your mask of identification, your Star-Element Gauntlet, and your prophecy. I don't suppose I'll have to remind you of the prophecy they publicly announced to the entire world?" Orland held his gaze through the mask.

"Uhh—""Don't bother," Kazimir muttered, before clearing his throat and speaking with a deeper voice, "'When the Fifth Hero rises beneath the shadowed sun, he shall walk the circle of the Blessed Three.

"Six champions shall gather to his wandering hand,"Five pure elements shall carve his brand,"Four great calamities shall break across the land,"Three armies shall march to the golden command,"Two great moons shall bless the mortal strand,"And at Vyrmgaard's crown, where the Tyrant stands, the sun shall rise or fall by fate's demand." Orland blinked. Kazimir didn't.

"For your reference, the 'Blessed Three' refer to the Blessed Lands of Ostravia, Thalassene, and Huanchong, which form a circle of continents sitting above the world's thickest mana leylines," he said tapping the lower left end of the continent with his knife.

"Right now, we're in the far western quarter of Ostravia over here. If the prophecy is to be followed, we'll be traveling south until we reach the continental edge, and from there, we'll sail to Thalassene so we can continue the journey—does this answer your question of what we're supposed to do in general, or do you have more questions?" Orland did. A hundred. Maybe more. What were the 'Four Calamities'? Who were the 'Six Champions'? How long would it take them to reach the sea?

How long did he have to fulfil his 'prophecy'? Did Kazimir already know enough to ruin him and simply hadn't done it yet? But instead of asking any of those, he looked out of the hollow. The shimmering metal flakes were still falling from the sky. The forest outside had completely changed in just a few short minutes, and while he knew very well how dark nights could be out in the woods, the way things were going, it was likely even the full moon would be blotted out by the flakes.

"... These flakes," Orland said, holding his left hand out of the hollow. A few flakes touched his palm, but none cut him this time.

"They're called…

'astral lead'?"

"Right," Kazimir said grimly, looking out as well.

"Even though the Third Hero helped discover a new relic capable of preventing large-scale rifts from opening across Ostravia—'rifts' being portals the Tyrant can open to send his demons across the world—the relic doesn't work against smaller rifts, so very often, these small-scale rifts tear open and allow small raiding packs of demons to flood into Ostravia.

Since the rifts connect to Vyrmgaard, the atmosphere of Vyrmgaard also pours out with the demons, and the far north has long since been completely corrupted and permeated with astral lead. These flakes are mere air across the sea."

"So there's a rift somewhere close?"

"Sure is."

"And if we don't close it soon—""This whole area becomes an astral lead-poisoned den, and anything living here risks turning into demonkind." Orland immediately yanked his hand back into the hollow and felt stupid for trying to feel the metal flakes.

"O… kay," he said slowly.

"But why now? A rift just so happened to open near us while we're—""Nothing 'just so' happens to happen when it comes to fate," Kazimir muttered back, already unsheathing his chainblade and checking its sharpness.

"The 'Hero' is prophesied to embark on the Tyrant-slaying journey, which means misfortune is drawn to you like a moth to a flame. Greater fortune may fall your way, by the benediction of the gods, but everything bad that can happen to you will happen to you so that the common man may live… though you already knew that before you picked up that gauntlet, didn't you?" Orland looked away first. Outside, the astral lead rain kept falling. Tiny blades from a poisoned continent he'd never seen.

And to think somewhere past those trees—far, far beyond the horizon he could see—demons strong enough to raze the world were going to be drawn to the 'Hero', all fortunes be damned? His hands felt cold despite his new coat, and he started shaking. Just a little Kazimir noticed. For a little while, he said nothing—but then his voice dropped, quieter than usual.

"If you're not ready, turn yourself in," Kazimir said, looking at him sternly.

"I mean it. Give up the gauntlet and mask. Confess your crimes to the Curator Church. You'll probably lose a hand, and you may hang, or you may spend the rest of your life in some Church cell copying prayers you can barely, but there's still a chance for you to go back to being… whoever the hell you were.

'Fate' is not something you can trifle with, and for the 'Hero', fate is crueller and more violent than it is for anyone else." … But that was it, wasn't it? The mention of 'fate' once again. He looked out once more at the astral lead rain, and confirmed one thing: he was afraid. Obviously. Only idiots wouldn't be afraid when the sky started raining demon metal. But fear had been with him his whole life.

Fear of hunger; fear of cold; fear of bigger boys; fear of guards, and fear of fate deciding he wasn't worth a warm bed or a proper meal or a single good thing not stolen first. He'd walked with fear for fifteen long years. And now, he walked with purpose—and a promise to fulfil.

"... Why would I give up the mask?" he mumbled.

"Why would I ever go back?" So he stood, rolled his shoulders, and tightened the mask over his face as he stomped out of the hollow, into the lead rain. Kazimir stared at him pensively the entire way. Flakes immediately scraped and stung his skin, but he grit his teeth and willed his skin to tighten. Maybe that didn't do anything, but it was about the effort. The will to walk through the rain. The pain wasn't too bad, so he could bear it as he glowered at the dark tower on the far northern horizon.

After all, now that he'd seen it once, he could never unsee it again: the symbol of demonkind Baba Marza wanted to see crushed into pieces.

"I promised the sun will shine on the world without the shadow of the Tyrant," he said, clenching his gauntlet.

"Come on, old man. Where are those demons I've gotta kill?"