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Her Light - Chapter 3
🕑 Added 2025-01-06 00:53:09 +0000 UTC------------------
The Abyssal Reaper did not lunge. It did not move as lesser horrors did, seeking to claw at them. Instead, it loomed, its form a tide of writhing void, the absence of light given shape. Dozens of eyes, fractured open, shifting between realities, locked onto him.
Gideon didn’t falter as the masses of Hollowed surged from the shadowy mists beyond the broken gate to meet the shouting knights. Kalen had already retreated with the auburn-haired teen from another world, Drystan covering his escape.
He knew this creature’s scythe was less a weapon and more a concept, curved and shimmering, its edge never quite there, never quite real. He’d never faced a Dread Harbinger, much less an Abyssal Reaper, but he knew this fight would be less physical and more mental…spiritual. Typically, these Eldritch fiends were handled by those in the Radiant Council.
I cannot break! I cannot let it plant a seed of corruption within me!
Gideon advanced, Radiance ablaze in his grip. His strike was swift, honed by faith and unyielding will, a meteor of divine judgment cleaving toward the Reaper’s core.
And it passed through nothing.
The darkness folded, consuming itself, swallowing the path of his blow into a void of nonexistence… The world slowed to a standstill. The Reaper’s voice layered over itself, one voice, a thousand voices, the echoes of the lost and the whispers of the damned.
“Physical might means nothing before oblivion, soldier of the light… Enter the shadows, and embrace the Truth.”
Gideon didn’t stagger back, didn’t retreat, Radiance still burning in his grip, but the faintest glimmer of doubt, insidious and unfamiliar, coiled at the edges of his heart.
Behind him, the golden glow of Altheria dimmed. The distant splendor of Sanctaria, the Dominion, the faith of the people—all faltered, as though devoured by an unseen maw. The battlefield that had once shimmered with divine brilliance flickered, shadows creeping in where they had never dared tread before.
Isolde gasped, reaching for him. Her emerald eyes, so often filled with unwavering confidence, wavered with something more fragile—uncertainty. The whispers pressed in on them, the pressure of unseen things at the edge of their senses creeping closer. She grasped his hand, her grip firm, anchoring, but the darkness surged.
Then…his golden-haired companion was gone.
Ripped away in a burst of nothingness, her light swallowed whole.
Gideon inhaled sharply, pivoting in place, unsure what to expect next. “Isolde!”
A hollow wind breathed against his armor, the silence that followed more deafening than battle.
“Brother,” Altheria’s voice hummed, not from above, not from around him, but from within his soul. “There is nothing you can do against this kind of darkness. It is a choice. Have faith in her… Have faith in us.”
The void trembled. Then, in the abyss, a sound arose—not of despair, but of song.
Isolde’s voice. “Bathed in thy light, O Glorious Sister… Guide me to him… Return him to me. Do not let him forget… Sister?” her words faded, no doubt facing her own trial.
The darkness twisted, recoiling as though pained. The flickering embers of Gideon’s faith surged, burning against the void’s oppression.
The abyss swallowed him whole.
He was pulled beyond the battlefield, beyond the known world. A sensation unlike anything he had ever known gripped him—a paradox of weightlessness and drowning at once, as if submerged in an ocean of ink. The air—if it could be called that—pressed in from every direction. The whispers came next, brushing against his mind like skeletal fingers tracing his thoughts, murmuring words of despair, of surrender, of the inevitability of oblivion.
He clenched his teeth. I will not hide my face from Her to embrace forbidden fire… I will return to Her…and joyful be.
And then—warmth.
He blinked, and the darkness was gone.
He was a child again, cradled in the arms of his mother. Her voice, a gentle melody, whispered comfort against his temple. He could smell the faint scent of dirt from the fields, feel her steady heartbeat against his ear. He knew this moment. It was the first day in the Dominion, when they arrived as refugees, when he was only four years old.
A bell tolled in the distance.
His father knelt before them, pressing a kiss to his mother’s forehead. His voice, strong yet filled with reverence, murmured words that would shape Gideon’s very being:
“In Altheria’s light, we shine and plant the good seed in preparation for the rain. I answer Her call to arms.”
His mother drew him back to press her lips against his, lingering for a time, yet in her moist eyes was belief. “Should you not return and your lantern dims, I will not lose faith. I look forward to the day I meet you at Her table.”
Threads of golden faith emerged, unseen yet deeply felt. They wove through his father, his mother, the settlers, and the thousands drawn into this corrupted world of trouble and sin. The Dominion was born on that day, when the Hollowed attacked. No walls. Only several minutes of warning. Yet, with Altheria’s support, they repelled them with only a single lantern extinguished…his father.
Each thread wove into something greater—a luminous, tangled tapestry of belief that bound the ten thousand souls who had come to this land in joyous union to their big sister, their goddess, Altheria.
Gideon saw it clearly now.
Every act of faith strengthened the light, every prayer, every sacrifice, every funeral pyre and dimmed lamp, was replaced by sons and daughters, blazing bright in their stead. The bell above the great cathedral glowed brighter with each twined thread of faith, its toll echoing across the sanctified corrupted lands as they advanced in rank and file. The walls of Sanctaria did not rise by mortal hands alone, but through the power of faith itself.
Floating through the expansive scene before him, time flowing by as a river, Gideon’s gaze shifted to the shadows lurking in the distance. “If this is your way of planting doubt in me, Reaper, then you know nothing about our faith. When we fall, we do not languish in your pits but at the table of our glorious sister.”
“Indeed, you do…as do every other creature who worships Her light from the world we captured you from. You do not see the Truth yet… You know but fleeting fragments of what you serve. Have you forgotten your past… What festered before Her light blinded you?”
Then the vision shifted.
His seventh light cycle came, and Gideon stood before his mother’s funeral pyre, the flag of the Crusaders wrapped around her corpse, three years after watching his father enter the light. The flames roared, golden and consuming within the cathedral’s holy glow. The people sang hymns, their voices weaving into the fabric of faith, carrying his mother’s spirit to the light to see her husband at last, running to welcome his wife home.
Eleven light cycles passed, and he found himself alone, a young man, doubt gnawing at his soul before that same altar. Night was dark when it fell over what land they’d been able to wrestle from the corruption. Lanterns brightened the night, and the brightness was supreme in this sacred place…yet the light never flickered to answer his quaking heart.
Golden eyes watching those bright flames of pure lumination, he came here to cleanse his soul during nights like this. When he dreamed, he’d hear her voice. His mother, singing, “Oh, oh, my child… Come on home… Home, to me. And I will hold you in my arms, and joyful be. Return to me.”
The world around him rippled, and Gideon felt himself drawn further into the riptide that was his memory, as though his body and soul were sinking into the past.
In the next instance, he was before the Effulgent Altar, causing a chill to run through his spine. Emotions he hadn’t felt for over a decade crept in, despite the golden luminescence of the altar bathing the vast chamber in celestial warmth, the incense of sanctified oils hanging thick in the air. He was no longer an observer.
Why won’t you answer me, Altheria? Can you sustain the Dominion…when we lose lanterns? We gain ground…but to what end? Every new mile we purify reveals nothing… Nothing but the ruins of past civilizations who have fallen. They must have had their faith and goddess, wouldn’t they have? I don’t even remember where we came from… Our good world of purity and light… Did my mother really have to sit at your table so soon?
Despite his questions, he could feel the faith of his people growing, not shrinking. Every loss, every hardship had only made their faith stronger…Altheria’s miracles greater.
Is it only me who asks these questions, Mother? It’s been eleven light cycles, and still, I hear you at night, sending your love…and pleas to return to you.
Young again, kneeling upon the smooth marble in his eighteenth year, his forehead pressed against clasped hands, struggling beneath the weight of his silent doubts. The vast dome of the cathedral loomed above, adorned with murals of Altheria’s divine guidance, and yet, for all the majesty surrounding him, the emptiness in his chest remained.
He heard the soft pattering of hard-soled shoes, the type only worn by one woman. Her hushed footsteps broke his meditation, and though he remained still, his pulse quickened. Prophetess Serelith Veylora stopped beside him, her hands folded in quiet reverence.
The Reaper’s voice bled through his mind. “Faith…or obligation? Do you kneel in Truth, or does the weight of duty bind you in chains unseen?”
Silver strands cascaded over her shoulder like molten light, the strands shifting and flowing as though alive, capturing the very essence of eternity within them. Though still mortal, the previous prophet had a similar ageless appearance before he returned to the light.
She said nothing at first, only joining him in silence before Her altar.
Gideon hesitated, stealing a glance from the corner of his eye. The Prophetess’ face was serene, yet her gaze, piercing and knowing, seemed to cut through to the marrow of his spirit. He had seen her before from afar—had heard her sermons, had followed her commands—but never had he been this close to the woman who walked hand-in-hand with their eldest sister Herself.
Minutes passed. Or perhaps hours. Time felt irrelevant in her presence.
Finally, she spoke, her voice a gentle melody woven with certainty. “Your heart is loud, Gideon Solaryn. Your mother’s song, strong beyond the veil.”
His breath caught. He lowered his head further, unsure if he was being chastised or comforted. “Forgive me, Prophetess. I did not intend—”
She raised a hand, and though the movement was slight, it carried a gravity that silenced him at once. “There is nothing to forgive. It is not questions that lead to doubt. A mind that questions does not falter—it seeks understanding. And understanding leads to faith.”
His hands tightened around one another, his knuckles paling. “Then…why do I feel as though my faith weakens? I do not waver in the light of our sister’s glory, but there are moments I wonder… Are we truly meant to succeed? For every step we take forward, we unearth ruins. The remnants of those who came before us, who tried and failed.”
The Prophetess exhaled softly, turning her gaze to the altar. “Do you believe faith is unchallenged, Gideon? That to walk in the light means to be free of questions…even doubts?” She turned back to him, her silver eyes alight with a confidence he desired. “No. Faith is strongest when it stands despite doubt. It is impossible to rid yourself of all shadow…for the day shares its space with the night.”
He looked up at her then, his heart pounding. She was not dismissing his concerns—she was meeting them. Addressing them. And somehow, that made the weight in his chest a little lighter.
She extended her hand, palm upturned, a smile like that of his mother. “You are the son of good parents, Gideon. Altheria has called you, as she elected your father and mother. The path is not free of hardship, nor is it one you ever walk alone in.”
“Me? A Crusader?” Gideon’s heart wavered as he swallowed hard, darkness creeping in. The moment stretched into eternity. His mind swam with memories of his parents, of their sacrifice, of the faith they had left behind for him to carry. He felt…dirty, even if only looking at her open palm…unworthy. “Despite my…doubts?”
“Questions are far from doubts,” she softly returned, palm remaining upturned, waiting for his decision. “Faith is first empowered by action before fruit can be reaped. The light calls to you, Gideon. Altheria demands free will… Agency is always yours. Will you choose to answer?”
He thought of the people who depended on the light, who he admired. His best friend, Anelisse Caelvar, who had recently entered the Crusader ranks only two years after choosing to enter the ranks of the Purifiers. Her little sister, Isolde, who idolized them. The ones who prayed for salvation. The ones who marched into the darkness because they believed.
“Will you follow behind a million rank and file?” the Reaper whispered. “Do you really know the big sister who you walk with… Does she walk with you as equals?”
Slowly, he reached out, his fingers brushing against the Prophetess’ palm. The moment his skin met hers, warmth surged through his limbs, burning away the cold fear nestled in his ribs. He gasped, feeling something within him ignite.
“I will answer,” he vowed, his voice steady. “I will walk in Her light.”
Serelith smiled, closing her hand around his in quiet benediction. “Then become a beacon through darkness, Crusader.”
As she released him, the memory unraveled, the light swallowing the cathedral whole. The warmth did not fade, but the world around him twisted once more, pulling him back toward the abyss, toward the waiting gaze of the Abyssal Reaper.
“You see, but do you understand Her burden?”
Every funeral pyre brightened the cathedral’s golden bell. Every trial endured fortified the people—not as slaves to faith, but as believers who chose to walk beside Her. Altheria wept with them. She was not merely above them as their goddess. She was with them.
A shadow loomed. He turned.
The Abyssal Reaper descended once more, its form coalescing from the void, a towering mass of writhing limbs and void-dark eyes. They did not glow with rage. They only watched.
Gideon did not falter.
His golden aura only grew stronger.
His voice cut through the abyss: “Was this supposed to shake my faith, Dark One?”
The Reaper did not answer.
“Was this meant to break me? You showed me the pillars of my faith. You do not crack them but reinforce Her light in me.”
The abyss was quiet, the entity remained motionless.
Gideon raised his chin, eyes unwavering. “All I see is the unbreakable bond between us and our goddess. She sustains us, and she walks beside us. That is not weakness—that is power you cannot contend with.”
A golden rain began to fall—gentle, warm, cascading through the vision like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. The fields ripened overnight, cattle birthed their young, and the land flourished beneath the light of faith.
“She sings over us,” Gideon declared. “We sit at her table within the night.”
The Abyssal Reaper watched. Its many eyes did not narrow. They did not seethe with fury. Instead, its gaze was full of…pity. Then, it spoke. Not in mockery. Not in cruelty. But with the weight of something that had seen too much, something that had watched the rise and fall of faiths beyond mortal comprehension.
“You people are rare within all that is, Gideon Solaryn. Your heart is pure… Naive.” Its words carried no malice, no venom. Only inevitability. “Few resist the abyss. Even fewer leave it unchanged.”
A pause. The abyss itself seemed to inhale, stretching the silence between them like the thinning of a veil. “Yes. You have great power in your faith in your big sister… Your goddess. She sustains you in ways most mortals cannot imagine.”
A slow tilt of its head, the abyss writhing beneath its formless shape.
“But do you truly understand the price of Her success…of your faith?”
Gideon tensed, his grip tightening around Radiance, though he did not strike. The Reaper did not need to dodge—it did not even need to defend. It only needed to reveal. This combat was not of physical blows, but of spiritual will.
It lifted a hand. A motion so slight, so subtle, yet it carried the weight of something vast and inescapable. The golden threads of faith unraveled.
Gideon’s breath hitched as the tapestry he had so proudly upheld began to dissolve before him. What once had been the brilliant weave of belief—the foundation of the Dominion, the strength of their people—now revealed something deeper. Something hidden beneath the layers of devotion he had never thought to question.
Altheria was there.
Not as he’d seen Her mere moments before—divine splendor incarnate. Not wrapped in ethereal grace. But of what the Reaper saw with higher sight.
Stripped of her glory.
Shackled.
Bound.
Her light flickered—not infinite, not untouchable. It was not given. It was sustained—fed by the unyielding faith of those who worshipped Her, woven into a prison of devotion. The unbreakable bond he had spoken of was not one of divine providence, but of necessity.
She stood before him, radiant yet imprisoned by him in covenant.
“Behold the Truth behind the light that your brothers and sisters refuse to acknowledge. Is it truly a walk in unity? Is it equal? Do you see the burden and sacrifice She shoulders for your weakness? Who is the master… Who is the slave?”
Golden threads of faith coiled around Her wrists, Her ankles, Her throat—worn too tight, cutting into ethereal flesh, the marks of servitude raw against divine skin. Shackles, gleaming like consecrated silver, dug into Her waist and chest, their chains vanishing into the abyss itself, tethering Her to something unseen. Her bare feet hovered above the void, yet the weight of countless prayers anchored Her in place.
Painful tears welled in Her luminous eyes, yet Her lips held the trace of a gentle smile—quiet, long-suffering love. In Her hands, she held the countless threads of those souls that bound Her, cradling them as a mother would a child, as if their burden was not Hers to bear, but Hers to protect.
Gideon’s breath shuddered. This was no vision of unshaken divinity. This was sacrifice. This was love. They were harming their own goddess by holding too tightly, relying on her in this world of corruption.
This was imprisonment.
The Reaper did not gloat.
It simply waited. Peeled back the veil. Showed him Truth.
It did not need to destroy Gideon’s faith.
It only needed to let him ask the question himself.
Gideon felt his heartbeat slow, each thud a heavy drum against his ribs. His mind raced, grasping at the Truth laid bare before him. No… No, this is a deception… A lie…
But even as the thought formed, the weight of it settled into his bones. He wanted to turn away. He wanted to deny it. But he could not.
For the first time since taking this mantle of Crusader, since becoming a Templar, Gideon Solaryn did not know the answer.
The darkness did not crush him.
The revelation did not break him.
But it did not leave him with a question.
“You see her shackles, Believer. You see her wounds? But who bound her?”
As the abyss began to fade, as Isolde’s singing pulled him back to the world, the last thing he heard was: “And if She is the one who is bound…then who do you truly serve? Who holds the real power? It is certainly not equal.”
The words echoed, reverberating through the hollow of his soul.
He did not have an answer.
The darkness peeled away, dissolving into curling wisps of nothingness. The abyss retreated, its final words clinging to the marrow of his bones. He was weightless for a moment, suspended between revelation and reality, the golden threads still lingering in his vision—threads that bound, that sustained, that imprisoned.
Then, warmth.
A single drop touched his cheek, its heat shocking against his cold skin. Another followed. Then another.
He gasped, lungs burning as he surged back into the world.
Golden rain fell around him in slow, luminous arcs, each droplet aglow with divine light, searing away the last remnants of the abyss. His fingers twitched against the cold earth beneath him, and he realized he had fallen to his knees. The battle still raged, but its tide had turned—where once corruption threatened to consume, now sanctified light drove it back.
Isolde knelt beside him, her emerald eyes bright with relief and the lingering glow of faith. Her voice, hoarse but steady, carried through the thinning mist.
“Gideon! You’re back—Altheria be praised.”
Her hands hovered over him, hesitant, as if unsure whether to grasp him fully or let him find his footing first. His heart pounded as he blinked, struggling to separate the lingering nightmare from reality. The weight of the vision clung to him like a second skin.
She is bound. Shackled. Sustained by us… Tortured by us… Who is the master and slave?
The realization lodged itself deep within, an unspoken weight pressing against his ribs.
The battlefield came into sharper focus. The Hollowed Ones, their twisted forms writhing in the light, screamed as they were struck down by consecrated blades. The last of them fell beneath a new resurgence of purifying light that arced over them, their essence burning away into nothingness.
A clarion call rang across the ruined keep as fresh ranks of warriors surged from their rear—armored figures clad in deep crimson, their weapons wreathed in golden flame. The Zealots had arrived.
At their head strode Captain-General Ronan Dreaven, his presence a storm of fervent devotion. His cloak billowed behind him as he raised his hands toward the heavens, his voice carrying over the battlefield in a commanding prayer.
“Oh, Holy Sister! Thy light is unyielding! Thy will, unshaken! See this place made whole in thy name!”
As his voice crescendoed, the broken metal gates groaned.
Gideon barely breathed as he watched—the twisted, warped steel shimmered, its sundered edges smoothing, shifting, reforging as if time itself reversed at the Zealot’s call. The holy script etched into its frame illuminated, each letter flaring with sanctified brilliance. With a final, resonant clang, the gates slammed shut, restored to their original state—no, renewed. As though they had never been broken at all.
The soldiers cheered.
Zealots and Crusaders alike knelt in reverence, their heads bowed, their hands clasped in exultation.
But Gideon did not kneel.
His golden eyes, once filled with unwavering conviction, now burned with something quieter—something deeper.
He tilted his head skyward, watching the golden rain fall. Watching what he once saw as blessing now tinged with something else.
Not infinite. Not untouchable. Sustained. Blood to support them in their weakness.
The revelation did not break him.
But it did not leave him unchanged.
Isolde’s hand found his arm, her grip firm, grounding. She smiled, believing he had merely been lost in the battle’s aftermath, in gratitude for their victory. “She’s with us,” she murmured. “As always. We defeated an Abyssal Reaper!”
Gideon forced a small nod.
But as he looked upon the restored gates, upon Ronan Dreaven’s fervor, upon the soldiers basking in their goddess’ triumph, the question coiled in his mind like a viper waiting to strike.
Who do we truly serve… Our own selfish desires?
And for the first time, Gideon was afraid of the answer.
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