Grey Requim 1

If that stupid kid wouldn’t have released the Vritra-blooded ascender—

I recoiled from the thought. That “stupid kid” had paid for his mistake with his life. Being mad at him now didn’t serve any purpose, and there was no taking back what had been done.

Unless…

The keystone had shown me a future where I could literally turn back to the time on death itself. I probed my mind for the god rune, and while I could feel it there, I couldn’t tell what it did.

Regardless, I had learned everything I was capable of understanding from the keystone. That’s why it pushed me out, I was sure. I would just have to try it out to see what it could do…

Despite the chaotic state of the room after our battle, it didn’t take long to find the others.

And like I had expected, the only two left were Haedrig and Ada. Haedrig was kneeling by the gruesome remains of Ezra’s deteriorated body. The sole remaining Granbehl sibling was lying on the ground near her mirror, which was thankfully still intact. The phantom was unbound, but she appeared to be unconscious.

The Ada in the mirror, the real Ada, was also lying on the ground, her entire body shaking with sobs.

She must have seen everything that happened, I realized with a jolt of horror. I thought of the battle at the Wall—how I had searched the battlefield in a panic, looking for my father, and how I had found him too late…

I reached out and touched the mirror, and suddenly I was able to hear her choked, manic sobs. “I’m sorry, Ada.”

Let’s hope this works, I thought, but I hesitated before activating the new god rune. It felt so…final to activate it, to experience for real the result of my work in the keystone. Once I used it, I’d know exactly what it could do—and what it couldn’t.

Regardless, this needs to be done. I steeled myself, then directed aether into the god rune.

The familiar warmth radiated from my lower back along with a flood of knowledge into the specific edict of aevum gained through the keystone. Much like my flames of Destruction and God Step, the edict molded into what I was able to grasp, manifesting itself into a form that made sense to me.

Motes of purple began spreading from my hand, swirling around like a miniature galaxy. Ada looked up, confusion and surprise overtaking her desolation for just a moment, and she began to fade away, turning to pinkish mist that flowed out of the mirror and back into her body.

A thick blackish-purple smoke was expelled from her pores and sucked back into the mirror. The phantom manifested back in its prison, a look of pure hatred on its twisted copy of Ada’s face.

At my feet, Ada’s body twitched and her eyes snapped open. She scuttled backwards, away from the mirror, her eyes wide with fear. Haedrig leaned down and put his arms around her shoulders, causing her to scream.

“Shush now, Ada, it’s me, it’s only me. Shush now.”