Side Story 3.3: The Victor and His Truth
---
The Vantage of Defeat
Atop a spiraling tower of blackened stone, a weathered man of advancing years stood silhouetted against the dying light, his gaze fixed upon the horizon that stretched endlessly before him. The vast expanse below revealed a landscape of desolation—countless ruins scattered like broken teeth across barren earth, where filth and corruption had claimed dominion over what was once fertile ground. The very air seemed to whisper of ancient glories turned to ash.
Beside him materialized a figure both ethereal and commanding—slender of form and draped in garments that seemed woven from moonlight itself, silk that caught and reflected shadows in ways that defied natural law. Though the figure's lips moved in silent counsel, only the man could hear the words that flowed between them like poison and promise intertwined.
"You would think they might have revealed the truth by now," the man mused, his voice carrying the weight of bitter years and unfulfilled vengeance. His weathered hands gripped the stone parapet until his knuckles showed white against the darkening sky.
The spectral figure responded with words unheard by mortal ears, but the man's expression shifted as he absorbed the silent communication.
"Bah!" The man's laugh was harsh as the winter wind. "Of course not—it remains the victor's truth, as it always has been. We who were defeated are forbidden from speaking our version of events. The triumphant write the histories while the fallen are consigned to shadow and whisper." His eyes gleamed with an inner fire that spoke of plans long in the making. "But how amusing fate can be. The truth they have so carefully buried is about to claw its way to the surface once more. And when that moment arrives..."
He allowed the words to hang in the air like a blade poised to fall, a knowing smirk playing across lips that had forgotten genuine mirth long ago. The ethereal figure began its retreat into the consuming darkness that dwelt within the tower's depths, each step echoing with unspoken promises of what was to come.
"Soon," the man whispered to the empty air, his voice carrying across the ruined landscape like a curse made manifest. "Soon the entire continent of Arkanus will return to my grasp. Damn you, Janus, and your righteous empire! I will reclaim what was stolen, what was always mine by right." The words were both oath and prayer, spoken to gods who had long since turned their faces away.
With that declaration hanging in the air like incense at a funeral, he turned and followed the departing figure into the labyrinthine darkness of the tower.
---
The Rising Storm
Far below, across the scarred landscape of what had once been a unified realm, the drums of war beat their relentless rhythm. The sound carried on winds that had known nothing but conflict for generations, speaking to those with ears to hear of battles yet to come. The forces of the Great Evil had already seized control of half the easternmost part of the Sub-Continent of Arkanus that had been corrupted with darkness, their advance as inexorable as the tide, sweeping away all resistance in their path.
This resurgence of the Great Evil and its Dark Forces came after their strongholds in the western territories of the Fresco League of Kingdoms had been reduced to smoking ruins by the armies of Emperor Janus and the Imperial Army of the new Elms-Arkanus Empire—a defeat that should have ended their ambitions forever. Yet like a hydra, they had grown stronger from their wounds, more determined in their purpose.
The current empire of Elms-Arkanus that stood against this rising darkness was mighty indeed, forged from the ashes of despair and tempered by righteous fury. It had been built upon the foundations laid by the remnants of the original Empire of Arkanus—survivors who had witnessed their homeland's destruction and sworn never to see such devastation again. These scattered souls had rallied behind the banner of the Noble House of Elms, a bloodline that had stood as an unbreakable bulwark against the corrupting tide that sought to claim all in its path.
The House of Elms had emerged as leaders not through birthright alone, but through their unwavering stand against the Great Evil after the cataclysmic fall of the original Arkanus Empire—the realm they had served with unwavering loyalty until its final, terrible hour. Now they led the charge against the Forces of Darkness with a determination born of loss and nurtured by hope for redemption.
At the forefront of this desperate struggle stood a figure of legend made flesh: the last true son of Arkanus himself. Emperor Janus was known by many names—the Exiled Prince, the God-Touched, the Wrathful Heir—but his true identity was whispered in both reverence and fear throughout the land. He was said to be the half-blood Imperial Prince of the fallen empire, born of a union that had shattered the very foundations of divine law.
---
The Forbidden Union
His parentage was the stuff of myths that scholars dared not record and priests refused to acknowledge. His father had been Imperial Prince Tiberius of the mighty Arkanus Empire, a mortal man whose ambition had reached beyond the earthly realm. His mother—and here the whispers grew to reverent silence—was none other than Goddess Jena, the sole and beloved daughter of the Heavenly God King who ruled the celestial realm with absolute authority.
Their love had been forbidden from the moment it bloomed, for it violated the most sacred of divine decrees. The Heavenly God King had decreed the greatest of all taboos: no deity or mortal should ever be joined in matrimony, whether in the heavens above or on earth below, lest the balance between mortal and divine be forever shattered. Yet love, as it often does, defied law and consequence alike. When their union produced offspring—a child who carried both mortal blood and divine essence—the very foundations of heaven and earth trembled with the implications.
When the child drew his first breath, the Heavenly God King felt the ripples of this cosmic transgression reach even his celestial throne. His daughter, bound by divine compulsion to speak only truth when directly questioned by her father, revealed the full extent of her defiance with tears that fell like silver rain.
The child was an impossibility made manifest—a half-blood born of mortal flesh and divine spirit. Such beings had been forbidden since the dawn of creation, for their very existence challenged the careful order that kept the universe from descending into chaos.
---
Divine Wrath and Mortal Consequence
The Heavenly God King's rage was terrible to behold, a cosmic storm that shook the pillars of creation itself. Stars dimmed in their courses as his fury sought outlet, and the very fabric of reality strained under the weight of his divine anger. Yet even in his wrath, he was bound by the same laws he sought to uphold—justice must be absolute, without favor or exception.
With power that reshaped continents, he cast the infant down from the heavenly realm, hurling him toward the mortal world with force enough to crack the earth's foundation. The child's impact was catastrophic beyond mortal comprehension. The entire Arkanus Empire—millions of souls who had known nothing but prosperity under their wise rulers—was obliterated in an instant. The land itself was transformed, becoming a sea of fire that raged for thousands of years before cooling into the massive crater now known as the Great Caldera of Arkanus.
The destruction did not end there. The divine force of the child's banishment created a great schism that split the once-unified continent into fractured pieces. Where the impact had been greatest, vast mountain ridges thrust upward from the tortured earth, forming the Great Mountain Ridges of Arkanus that now divided the Central Sub-Continent into two distinct realms. Two mighty rivers—the Central West and Central East—carved new paths through the devastated landscape, their waters running red with the memory of that terrible day, separating the other two sub-continents: the Western Sub-continent and the Eastern Sub-continent.
To ensure that mortals would not venture into this sacred-cursed ground, the God King appointed a guardian of terrible majesty: Ignis Auralith Aetherion, the Dragon King, the Skyforged King, Wielder of the Primordial Fire and Celestial Lightning, whose flames had been kindled in the forges of creation itself. This ancient being, loyal beyond question to the divine throne, was charged with keeping all mortal souls from the Great Caldera and its surrounding domains.
---
Mercy Hidden in Wrath
Yet even as the Heavenly God King dispensed his terrible justice, the grandfather's heart within his divine chest could not be entirely silenced. Though he was compelled by cosmic law to punish the transgression, he could not bring himself to simply destroy the innocent child who bore the sins of his parents.
Instead of death, he chose exile. The boy was stripped of his ability to access the heavenly realm, cut off from the divine inheritance that should have been his birthright. Yet his essential nature—the godhood that flowed in his veins alongside mortal blood—remained intact, a gift and burden that would shape his destiny.
Before hurling the child earthward, the God King wrapped him in protective divine essence, ensuring his survival of the catastrophic journey. The magic would preserve him through the impact and beyond, though at a cost—he would be forever changed, forever marked by the violence of his exile.
And in a gesture that spoke to the complexity of divine justice, the God King secretly commanded Ignis to serve not only as guardian of the forbidden lands, but as protector of the exiled child. The Dragon King would watch over the boy from afar, ensuring his survival while maintaining the facade of absolute guardianship over the cursed realm.
The boy's mother, Goddess Jena, faced her own punishment for her defiance. Stripped of her divine authority and cast down from the high heavens, she was condemned to walk the mortal realm in the form of an ageless woman—forever beautiful, forever youthful, but forever separated from the celestial home she had lost through love's folly.
---
The Weight of Prophecy
These truths lay hidden beneath layers of legend and deliberate obscurity, known only to a few and spoken by even fewer. Yet as the drums of war grew louder and the forces of darkness pressed their advantage, whispers began to circulate that these revelations would soon emerge into the harsh light of day.
Questions that had long been buried would demand answers: Would the fallen goddess Jena find redemption and welcome return to the High Heavens? Or would she choose to make her rebellious stand known to all, defying once more the father who had cast her out? The future remained unwritten, its pages blank even to divine omniscience.
For in the cosmic game being played across the mortal realm, even the gods themselves could not foresee every move, every consequence, every moment where fate might turn upon itself and rewrite the rules entirely.
What remained certain was that the Empire of the Wretched Son of Heaven—Emperor Janus, as the boy had come to be known in whispered prophecies—stood firm against the encroaching darkness. Led by the nobles and elders of House Elms and strengthened by the determination of those who remembered what had been lost, it remained the final bastion against forces that sought not mere conquest, but the complete corruption of all that remained pure in the world.
The war that raged across the fractured continent was more than a struggle for territory or power—it was a battle for the very soul of creation itself, with the exiled prince standing at its center, carrying within himself the power to either save or damn them all.
And in the spiraling tower where shadows gathered and whispers plotted, the defeated enemy of old made his own preparations, confident that his time of reckoning was at hand. The victor's truth had reigned long enough; soon, it would be time for other truths to claim their due.