Ice whimpered beneath Estel's silver greaves, shattering like fragile bones with every step. He stood on ravaged permafrost, surrounded by shattered ivory armor and frozen crimson stains. The Peragius Mirror Shield stood tilted in the ice nearby, its polished surface reflecting the dying aurora overhead — streaks of green and purple fading like his resolve.
The shield also mirrored three corpses. Their armor, once bearing the Pure Beauty Knights' pride, now bore vicious cracks where ice crystals crawled upward, blooming into blood-roses at the pauldrons.
Estel's fingers trembled. He knew this abomination too well: the brand of a Mara-Struck Knight. When beauty is defiled, blood crystallizes into filth.
"Stand down, Morias." His voice cut through the blizzard, weary and pained — a stone sinking into frozen depths.
Ten paces away stood his brother-in-arms, the man who'd once shared his last crust of bread. Morias's right arm had crystallized into jagged prisms, refracting distorted light and his own desire-twisted face.
"Stand down?" Morias rasped, laughter like grinding steel. "Open your eyes, Estel! The moment Idrila fell, Pure Beauty became a cosmic joke!" He stomped; ice erupted like fangs toward Estel. "Power is the only true aesthetic now!"
Prismatic spikes exploded from Morias's arm, caging Estel. "Remember our first mission?" Estel choked out, agony raw in his throat. Morias only lunged, mirror-blade shrieking through snow. "You crossed a hundred worlds to save that dying child! Now you hunt like a rabid beast!"
Estel raised his shield. Steel shrieked against crystal, casting monstrous shadows—two souls tearing each other apart. "I haven't changed!" he roared, twisting as his sword grazed Morias's ribs. Blood droplets froze mid-air into crimson gems. "You turned protection into plunder!"
Morias grinned grotesquely, slamming a fist into his own chest. More spikes burst from beneath crystallized skin. "Look at your shield!" he bellowed, driving his blade into the ice.Glacial spears impaled the ground where Estel stood. "The cracks in Peragius... aren't they your soul? Idrila's dead! Your faith rotted with her!"
Estel wrenched Peragius from the ice. The shield shuddered as ice-spikes hammered it. For an instant, he saw his reflection in the fractured prisms — his face, once noble, splintered into a hundred mad shards.
"First Tenet of the Code..." Estel pivoted, sword cleaving toward the crystal arm. "Beauty is Truth. Truth is Virtue! You forsook it!"
Morias howled as steel bit deep into crystal. Estel's blade lodged in the prismatic shoulder. In Peragius's reflection, he saw his own face — temples silvered, eyes webbed with bloody veins. Morias drove a crystal knee into his gut. Pain flooded Estel's mouth with copper, yet he clung to the sword. "I still guard what's worthy..." he gasped, blood-flecked. "You forgot your name."
A shard sheared off, stabbing Estel's palm.
Agony ignited. Visions surged:
In endless dark, a shard of a vanity mirror pulsed like a tide. The battlefield dissolved into the Knights' training grounds.
Sunlight once flowed over a sea of silver armor. Argenti always polished his engraved lance, its tassel's dried roses perpetually fragrant. "Pure beauty is the gambeson beneath the plate, not the gilding," Argenti would say. Behind him, Morias tucked a stolen rose into Estel's shield.
Until the day the first knight shattered his silver insignia.
The training yard became a charnel house. Hands that once fastened each other's armor now gripped blood-slick swords. Estel saw Argenti's lance pierce the old commander — the first to preach "Power is Beauty." The blackened insignia dangled from the spear tip. Argenti knelt in gore, propped up by his lance, its tassel roses bloated with blood.
"Idrila wouldn't want this," Estel had whispered, white-knuckling his shield. Argenti didn't turn. He drove his lance into the earth, blood filling the engraved filigree.
Present.
Estel's sword slid home into Morias's heart. Scalding blood hit the icy shield, hissing steam. Estel closed his eyes against his brother's death rattle. Trembling, he tore the blood-crusted silver insignia from Morias's neck.
He placed it with twenty-seven others — trophies of fallen brothers — and fused them into Peragius's heart with his own blade.
"Peragius... Shattered Light," he murmured, tracing the shield's fresh fractures. "You're the last Knight now."
The blizzard swallowed him. Only the shield's ghostly reflection lingered on the ice: Estel's blood-streaked mouth, perfectly superimposed over Morias's dying snarl.