CHAPTER 301: THE WARDEN’S TRUTH

"It’s a long story, young friends. Longer than you can likely conceive. So I will keep it short, for time, as you have shown me, is both endless and cruelly brief."

He shifted, the bones of his form groaning.

"We were the Vanguard. I was the Captain."

It paused, as if reminiscing about the past.

"We were the last line of defense when the Abyssal forces broke through the barriers. Our charge was not to win a war—such a thing was never possible against the endless hunger of the Abyss. Our task was to hold, to protect. To stand in the breach while the great minds and powers of our age worked their arts, weaving the seals that would sever our world from that consuming darkness. We were the dam against the flood..."

"We... We knew it was a one-way mission."

A profound sorrow seemed to radiate from him, colder than the chamber’s air.

"The others... Mayana with her silver bow, Marcus and his twin shields, Elena who could sing light itself into being..." Ossian’s voice grew distant. "One by one, they fell, holding their positions. I was the only one left when the final seal was activated."

He gestured to the pedestal behind him with his massive claw.

"That is the Nexus Stone, the anchor point for this dimensional pocket. When the seals were complete, this place was cut off from the main reality, trapping both the remaining Abyssal forces and... myself."

He paused, letting us digest the shocking revelation.

"The sealing... was a cataclysm. A necessary one. It required a symmetry, a balance. To lock a door of such magnitude, one must... lose the key."

"The Nexus Stone needed a guardian, a soul bound to it for eternity, its life force becoming the lock itself... That’s right." He said, almost to himself. "I became that eternal guardian."

He had been a willing sacrifice, a key thrown away for the sake of the lock. He had bought their victory with his entire existence.

No, they all did.

"The ritual that bound me here..." The violet eyes fixed on us again. "It changed me. Slowly, over the centuries, my flesh decayed and my bones hardened. My life force became tethered to this place itself. I cannot die, but neither can I truly live. I am sustained by the energies I guard against."

"..."

"Five thousand years of watching."

"Waiting."

"Fighting off the occasional Abyssal scout that manages to slip through the weakening barriers. And slowly... very slowly... forgetting what sunlight feels like. What rain tastes like. What it means to sleep without nightmares."

The chamber fell silent except for the soft whisper of the shadows.

"You ask how I survived?" Ossian’s laugh was hollow. "Survival implies choice, young friend. I endured because I had no alternative. Because every day I told myself that my sacrifice meant something. That somewhere beyond these valleys, life continued. That children played in meadows I would never see again."

He lowered his great head.

"There were times... Dark centuries... when I considered allowing the barriers to fall. When the loneliness became so vast that oblivion seemed preferable. But then I would remember Mayana’s last smile, or Marcus joking even as he bled out, or Elena’s final song..."

"And I would hold on for another day. Another year. Another millennium."

Ossian straightened, and some of his earlier composure returned.

"But now you tell me we won, that the world is at peace. That my vigil... that all of our sacrifices... they mattered." The violet light in his eyes brightened slightly. "Perhaps that knowledge will make the next five hundred thousand years more bearable..."

I felt a lump form in my throat.

This ancient guardian, transformed into a living monument to duty and sacrifice, still stood watch over a war that had ended before my civilization had even begun.

The weight of his sacrifice, the unimaginable loneliness... it was almost too much to bear.

"Sir Ossian," I began, my voice thick with emotion, "your sacrifice... it did matter! The world remembers—"

CRACK.

The sound wasn’t just heard, it was felt

, reverberating through our bones like reality itself was fracturing. The chamber shuddered violently, and hairline cracks of absolute darkness began spreading across the bone walls.

"No..." Ossian’s voice carried sudden alarm. "Not now. Not when—"

RRRRRIP.

Space itself tore open like fabric.

Through the wounds in reality, I glimpsed something that made my mind recoil, an endless void filled with writhing shadows and hungry eyes. And from those tears, things began pouring through.

They weren’t like any creature I’d ever seen or imagined. Pitch-black forms that seemed to absorb light itself, with limbs that bent in impossible directions and faces that shifted between nightmare and nothingness.

Some skittered on too many legs, others flowed like liquid shadow, and the largest ones moved with a predatory grace that spoke of ancient, terrible intelligence.

"Abyssal Wraiths!" Ossian roared, his earlier melancholy instantly replaced by the commanding presence of a warrior. "Stay behind me!"

One of the creatures lunged at us, its claws trailing void-fire. I barely had time to register the attack before Ossian moved.

His speed was beyond comprehension. One moment, he was beside the pedestal—the next, his massive claw had intercepted the wraith, grasping it by what might have been its throat. Violet energy erupted from his grip, and the creature’s shriek was like the sound of stars dying.

But there were dozens more pouring through the reality tears.

"Bone Prison!" Ossian’s voice thundered with power that made the chamber walls tremble.

Massive bone spikes erupted from the floor, walls, and ceiling, forming a protective cage around Zephyr and me. Through the gaps, I watched in terrified awe as the ancient guardian unleashed his true power.

Ossian raised his free hand, and the very air began to fracture. "Void Severance!"

A cut appeared in space itself, not darkness, but the absence of everything. The slash extended impossibly far, bisecting three of the larger wraiths. They simply... ceased. Not destroyed, not banished... just erased, as if they had never existed at all.

...Just in case!

[Exorcist’s Gaze]