The sky was pitch black.
Not the soft, warm black of early evening—but the dense, chilling black of true midnight. The kind where the moon hangs high and pale above the canopy, its light silvering the tops of trees and giving the forest a haunted gleam. Crickets whispered from the shadows. A nearby stream murmured beneath stones. The wind moved carefully, as if afraid to disturb what had just happened.
Niko lay broken in the grass, blood soaking into the dirt below him. The impact had cratered the forest floor—his limbs sprawled like a marionette with its strings cut. His body was battered beyond recognition, the blue flicker in his eyes now dim… but not extinguished.
He coughed, his breath shallow. But he was alive. Somehow. Somehow.
And then the golden one walked forward
Chalice walked softly beside him, his cloak rustling faintly, the silver light catching in his long golden hair. He looked less like a warrior and more like a prince in a storybook—ethereal, cruelly beautiful. Even now, after the brutal beating, he radiated a peace that felt unnatural.
He tilted his head, eyes aglow, and said simply:
"Sit. Let's talk."
Niko didn't move. He couldn't. But he didn't have to.
Chalice extended a hand.
In that moment, Niko felt something tug—not at his skin, not at his bones, but at his soul. As if invisible strings pulled him upright, and something deeper than magic repaired the shattering inside him. Bones realigned. Cuts closed. Pain dulled into ache.
He was whole again. Mostly.
The fatigue lingered, like a phantom gripping his lungs—but the agony was gone. Niko breathed, steady for the first time in minutes. He looked at Chalice, unsure what to say.
"…Thanks," he murmured.
Chalice sat beside him on a patch of moss, eyes fixed on the moon through the breaks in the trees. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The forest filled the silence with its quiet chorus: wind brushing leaves, frogs croaking in the dark, water trickling gently nearby.
Then Niko asked, voice cautious:
"So… you're trying to bring your father back, huh?"
Chalice laughed. Not the mocking laugh from before. A tired, knowing kind of laugh.
"Absolutely not," he said, shaking his head. "That old fart? His time has passed. He wouldn't know what to do with the world now, even if I handed it to him."
Niko blinked. His thoughts tumbled. If not revival, then why all this? Why the Speaker, the rituals, the cultists?
His mind flashed back to the chamber—the mess, the blood, the horn—and he clenched his jaw. But before he could ask, Chalice glanced at him sidelong, amused again.
"The chamber?" he said casually. "Ah. That. Just a little play I directed for the zealots. Can't have them getting suspicious, after all."
"…What?"
"The people you saw?" Chalice continued. "None of them are dead. I gave them money. Cleaned them up. Sent them back to the Sanctuary. Better lives than they started with, I'd wager."
Niko stared at him, stunned.
"You staged the whole thing?"
"Of course," Chalice said with a serene shrug. "That kind of fanaticism doesn't sustain itself without a little theater. A little fear. It's all part of the script."
And for a moment, Niko forgot the bruises, the blood, the fight. He forgot the pain.
Because none of this made any sense.
And yet, somehow, it was all starting to make a different kind of sense.
Under the midnight sky, with only moonlight and mystery between them, Niko realized one thing: whatever Chalice was really doing here—it went deeper than a cult.
Much deeper.
L
Niko had many, many questions.
But he started with the one that had stayed with him since the end of the book.
He glanced at Chalice, half-smiling through the ache in his body. "Sooo… did you win? Against that devil—what was it called again? The Devil of Light?"
Chalice looked at him, incredulous, almost childlike in his outrage. "How the HELL would I win against a black hole?" he snapped, throwing his hands up. "Who does that? Not even the dead gods could!"
Niko snorted, then winced as his ribs complained. "Fair enough," he muttered. "Touchy topic."
Chalice grumbled under his breath and crossed his arms, but the fire in his tone had cooled to a simmer.
Niko tilted his head. "Wait… dead gods?"
Chalice gave him a sidelong look. "You didn't know?" he said, as if it were common knowledge. "They're gone. All of them. The gods died a long time ago—only their incarnations remain. Fragments. Echoes."
Niko stared at him. "But… who could kill gods?"
Chalice didn't answer immediately. His gaze drifted upward toward the stars again, as if the answer was somewhere among them.
Then, without warning, his mood shifted. The humor vanished. The air around him grew heavier.
"You must be wondering what I'm really doing here," he said.
Niko raised an eyebrow. "You mean beyond beating me half to death?"
Chalice gave a faint, almost amused exhale. "You know of Dem Oche, yes?"
Niko nodded slowly. "Yeah. When you were playing prophet, you mentioned him during that speech. Said he was protected by the Ones of Light."
A pause.
"Not protected," Chalice said quietly. "Possessed."
Niko blinked.
Chalice turned toward him, eyes gleaming gold in the moonlight. "Dem Oche is the incarnation of the Devil of Light."
The silence that followed seemed to freeze the forest.
"…That explains the cult," Niko murmured. "They hate him."
"They do," Chalice said. "Because I made sure they would. I convinced them Dem Oche and the Devil of Light were responsible for the death of their war god. And I wasn't lying."
Niko's throat felt dry. "So your motive is…"
Chalice stood slowly, his cloak falling around him like liquid shadow.
"To destroy the Devil of Light," he said. "To restore the Northern Banner."
He looked back over his shoulder.
"And to sever the Pale Arc from the House."