The knight was quiet. The room was quiet. There was no comfort. There was no one to lash out at him; to confess the truth to. It was simply empty. Empty of everything. Life, death, love, and hate. Death was the only thing he had spoken to since his exile and imprisonment. Blood was absorbed by the padding beneath the armor that the knight had yet to acknowledge. It had been long enough for the once warm blood to turn cool into a chilly liquid soaked into the knight, electing small shivers from the slightly frigid padding–despite having a sort of resistance to temperatures. His breathing slowly grew quieter, and the knight began to stop shuddering; he was calming, even though he was drowning in contrition. The guilt wouldn't detach, but it was starting to let up. The clasping feeling of penitence, the choking presence was letting up on his bruised throat, allowing him to breath, or in this case, think.
Calm; tranquility. That is the simple way the knight felt after such a long bout with his subconscious, though it was very hard to put into words. The dripping from the ceiling had returned to his ears again, though it quieter than it had been before guilt struck, which meant his ears had adjusted to the world again. He lifted his head from the cold pool of incarnadine liquid. The slow dripping of the blood from his helmet as he rose thundered in the deathly quiet room. When he finally made it to his full statue in his sitting position, he looked down at himself with slightly hollow eyes. His surprise was dampened greatly by his mood, and so was the thankfulness of it all. He had been forced to make adjustments to his armor for the fight with the possessed body of the black knight, since the knight could not move enough to continue the fight. The upgrade was necessary, even if he had no idea how his armor could change. A small, almost nondescript thought passed through his consciousness about the shifting shell being a gift from Death, which he decided to believe for a fleeting moment before returning back to the real world; primarily red in his vision. He stared forward, allowing the blood to dribble down the armor, leak into the gaps of the armor and remain in the padding, or simply return back to the puddle he stumbled into.
His back was straight, plastered against the marble, as if a plant clung to the side of a building, searching for the perfect to bloom, but could not bloom there. He remained in his upright position, for a while longer, allowing himself to simmer, or linger in his issues at surface value for a few moments. He let his mind wander back to what he had been doing before, investigating the past, and was about to look at the other half of the story, Soven's story. It was by the time he remembered that he emerged from the ankle deep pool of crimson liquid, ready to continue his investigation–after quite a few hours in the same bowing position. He felt knees shake a little as he emerged to his full towering–harrowing height, seeming to hulk over the much more lofty marble pillars. His eyes wandered to the pillars on the opposite side of the room in which he had been studying–Sovens half. With his sword at his hip, and an almost physical question mark above his head, he slowly meandered his way to the main enterance–and the beginning of the other side of the story. It helped calm the screaming, and the flashes, so he would welcome this mystery with open arms. He would be okay, it was just the simple ghosts of his crimes trying to drag him down–he would be fine, for sure. Wincing a little, he shook off the growing emotions and focused entirely on the beginning of Soven's tale–which started at a much earlier point in the giant's life than it had for the Black Knight: at his birth.
From the early depictions of Soven, the knight could tell that the kid was a trouble maker. With his birth came the conceptual idea of needing rest, and if the knights theory was correct, the idea of getting tired, exhausted, and maybe even the idea of having finite stamina to run on before needing rest–so it was obvious that he was one who was not popular with his fellow second generations–as he had called himself. Glancing around, Soven seemed to be a rather handsome one compared to his fellow giants: a long head of straight white hair, a small nose, and a gracious smile, or that's what the carving said. While he was separated from his own for most of his life, there was one who did not seem to care about such things: A large–even compared to the others of his blood–blue skinned giant, muscular unlike any other, with four arms that were both thin enough to fit in tight spaces compared to their size, and large enough to crush, move, and rebuild the planet itself. It was The Guidance. The pair seemed to hate each other–but it seemed it wasn't like that for a time. He wasn't sure how something so large, and grand–that could create such a distinct aura of warmth and kindness, could become something as hollow, and empty as Death was when he met it.
Time passed, or he assumed time passed as Soven was much greater in stature than he was before, though not anywhere near as the leviathan that was Death–or maybe not Death yet. Not long after the jump in time a great event had happened. The skies seemed brighter in the paintings, as the stars themselves seemed to manifest from various paints in the night sky, which would soon after lead to a star's dissension to the mortal plain, but there was no further information on the star and its effect on the world–so it mustn't have been important or caused any lasting effects. After that there seemed to be a torrent of unfortunate events, over the course of an indeterminate amount of time. The pillars of knowledge were getting vague: giants seeming to hit the floor wherever they were when some big event happened, depictions of a landscape with the moons or the sun being in the sky like the rest, and the unremarkable star seeming to run away to the darkness when the sun reappeared a few moments later after several more chiseled engravings? It was all far too confusing for the knight to truly understand–but one thing he did know was that The Guidance called himself the forger of death–so this was around the time death was created? There were too many questions to try and figure out to give any of them any clear thought.
In the following painted engravings after the series of calamitous events The Guidance was no longer present in them for some odd reason, but Soven seemed to have found a place in the world: helping his fellow giants–at least those of the second generations–into sleeping eternal comas for whatever reason, a strange purpose, but he wouldn't judge. The rest of the story was just as aberrant: a new, younger, group of giants seemed to be going to war with the vast ocean that was somehow almost as big as the great population of land dwellers, but after that simple memory–the rest did not exist. The carvings did not exist after the start of what he assumed to be some kind of conflict between the youngest generation of giants at the time–ones who did not embody laws of this realm, that was one of the few things he was able to piece together when he was young–it was hidden in the depths of Tomoro's library–not unlike the scroll of manifesting shadow. Maybe Soven didn't have enough time to finish the story–which didn't make a lot of sense considering the likely hundreds of thousands of years he had been trying to assimilate and master the blade of darkness and the soul of the Black Knight. Did he have servants at some point? It would make sense, though the knight wasn't entirely sure when Soven could've possibly been able to contact them, or why he'd want his chest cavity to be excavated for a room this big to be made inside of him. It was peculiar–like the rest of it.
Sighing, the knight stared at the final image for a moment longer before turning to where the heart of Soven had been beating probably close to a day ago, letting himself question the sheer absurdity of it all. His mind wandered back to the long, unremarkable staircase he had to climb for days before, and despite himself, he let a groan of annoyance escape and echo about. What a boring time it was, to make his way back up to the surface, but he needed to get to the top. He moved to look at the distant staircase–which he could see in detail despite the length–and got over himself rather quickly. His first step echoed loudly with purpose inside of the room of white and black, and by the time his second step was made he made up his mind: he was going to see just how much he could cut down this long walk up the stairs. His balance had improved much in the battle with Soven, so there was a chance that he could go full speed up the stairs without slipping and falling all the way back down, and he was in the mood to test himself. It did help that he was beginning to grow weary of the dripping getting more frequent and the cracking in the floor continuing to grow louder with every massing moment.
The third step clanked, then the fourth, fifth, and finally the knight was nothing more than a blur of motion. The blood that was still clinging to him zipped off the knight from the speed, it seemed to only energize the knight even more as he increased his speed again and in a moment he arrived at the stairs, now he could not mess up.
He focused on the entrance and made the first step up the stairs, then he was on the tenth, after the six-fourth. The booms that were sluggishly following the knight were destroying the tight corridor and only spreading the danger, but he was fine with that. The simple act of running was so freeing to him, and now he was running past it all–leaving it all. He would think more of the fragments he had picked up–he knew they were very important to whatever story was to be told–if only intuitively. The knight continued to flicker up each step, crushing the marble steps with every pressurized step the knight took, evaporating the dust in the air with the weight of a tank given the weight of a feather–or at least that's how the knight would describe it. The sounds were blank to his ears, just as anything but the stairs were invisible to the knight.
The knight wasn't sure how long he had been climbing the stairs, but he was beginning to grow weary of the stairs. He could feel the ragged boots he wore begin to split. His legs were tired, and his eyes were slightly heavy, but he continued to run–even gaining speed for a portion before returning to his original speed. He would've considered the stairs to be infinite if he hadn't gone down these very steps not too long ago, until, finally, he saw the light at the end of the tunnel–not metaphorically. He would've sighed in relief, but he couldn't stop watching the stairs like a hawk now. They were already becoming uneven from age the farther up he went, but that wasn't the only thing. It seemed like the tunnel he was running up was beginning to collapse behind him, and above him, so he had no choice but to speed it up. The blistering speeds became an afterthought compared to the new found speed from impending doom.
The light remained a bead infinitely far away for little more than a few ticks of the clock before it was already in front of him. Every terrifying step powered by adrenaline didn't stop as the knight emerged into the daylight automatically. His heavy feet trampled over the gray, withered grass, sinking into the soil, before being forcefully removed when the knight was forced to continue making steps, to slow himself down. Placing his feet at an angle, trenches of healthy looking soil with small clumps of earth flying up into the air, like an anomalous parody of hail. The forest of flesh and blood was dead. The trees–humans–were piles of steaming flesh that writhed in something between happiness and agony.
The centipedes that lingered in the treeline were trapped in the tar-like remains of the transfigured humans; they had screeched in panic when the one who created the trees first died–now they're quiet, waiting to be claimed by death. Their wild, violent, and deadly tails numb from the organ-made tar. Twin trenches were carved into the mushy flooring of the terrain from the strong force the knight had been moving with for so long. He twisted his body, allowing himself to face the now distant marble block the knight had entered the tomb through, and sunk his left arm of the abyss into the ground now in front of him after raising his legs up slightly. Quickly after the feeling of weightlessness enveloped the knight which was quelled by the indestructible arm becoming a stump in putridly blood soaked ground, keeping the knight in place for a moment, and then several. Sighing, the knight finally crumpled to the ground. The sun was grinning high above, its radiance baking the land that had not felt the heat of the land in a very long time making it stink. The flesh trees had collapsed, the remains were baking, but it'd be gone in time.
Turning over from his face plantedness in the ground, he removed his arm from the ground with a fair amount of force, making the arm fling far up in the sky, slightly raising the knight with it, though he just fell back to his spot, giving himself a moment of rest and relaxation while gazing at the great white obstructions of condensed water painted over the bright, happy blue sky. A rumble of a chuckle escaped the knight's mouth, as he rested. He may have over came great battles, and would soon overcome more great battles, but for now all that mattered was the feeling of warmth the sun brought to his skin despite the armor on his skin–something to think about later.