The boundary between realms tore at Kaelion's essence like parchment through a shredder.
Molten gold light bled from the Godforge Core embedded in his chest as he crossed into Zarethiel's domain. His atoms scattered into pure consciousness - he tasted the iron tang of Veylis's spilled divinity still coating his teeth, felt the phantom ache of his sacrificed finger pulsing in time with the Core's arrhythmic heartbeat. Then - impact.
His boots met the frozen surface of a mirror-lake so vast its edges dissolved into formless dark. The ice groaned beneath him, fractures spiraling outward in intricate patterns that resembled celestial script. Each step sent ripples cascading through reflections that weren't his own.
To his left knelt his twelve-year-old self, face streaked with soot and tears, clutching their father's severed hand. The boy's mouth moved in silent screams that vibrated in Kaelion's missing finger.
To his right loomed a hollow-eyed future version, clad in armor woven from torn divine edicts. Galaxies swirled in its empty sockets, and black ink dripped from its lips as it mouthed words that made Kaelion's Core pulse in warning.
Most disturbing was the reflection behind him - a silver-haired doppelgänger with Kaelion's face but none of his restraint, calmly drowning a thrashing god in liquid scripture. The ink flowed upward into the figure's pores as the deity dissolved.
"Fascinating," Kaelion murmured. His breath fogged the nearest mirror, revealing hidden text beneath the glass:
"The first truth is always a lie well told."
The living tattoos along his arms twisted into defensive sigils as the air before him began to shimmer with approaching divinity. Reality split with a sound like tearing vellum. Zarethiel manifested not as a being, but as a series of escalating impressions.
First came the scent - yellowed parchment and iron filings that coated Kaelion's tongue. Then pressure, building against his eardrums like the crushing weight of deep ocean trenches. Finally, the taste - copper pennies and something darker, metallic yet sweet, like blood left to stagnate.
When the god fully materialized, his form refused coherence. One moment a gaunt scholar drowning in robes of faded gray, ink-stained fingers clutching a broken quill. The next, a towering magistrate wrapped in chains of living scripture that whispered heresies as they moved. Then finally settling, just for an instant, into the form of a faceless child holding a shattered mirror.
Only his shifting veil remained constant, cycling through expressions faster than comprehension - joy to sorrow to rage to perfect emptiness between heartbeats. When it stilled at last, displaying Kaelion's own face back at him but aged centuries beyond his nineteen winters, Zarethiel spoke, "You carry Veylis's demise like cheap perfume." The words manifested as burning runes that circled Kaelion's head, each character dripping molten gold that sizzled against the frozen lake. "Most killers would flee. Yet here you stand, tracking heresy into my sanctum as though invited."
Kaelion's fingers brushed the Hollow Codex at his hip. The tome trembled eagerly against his thigh, its godskin cover growing unnaturally warm. He studied the cracked mirrors surrounding them, noting how each fracture revealed glimpses of other times, other possibilities - a thousand Kaelions making different choices.
"Sanctum?" He gestured to the distorted reflections with his maimed left hand. "This looks more like an interrogation chamber. Tell me, Truthkeeper - how many souls have you broken against these glass teeth? How many screams are embedded in the spaces between reflections?"
A ripple passed through Zarethiel's form. The temperature plummeted so abruptly that Kaelion's next breath crystallized in his lungs, ice forming on his lips. The god's throne of frozen lightning crackled with restrained power, jagged bolts trapped mid-arcing.
"You mistake necessity for cruelty," the god replied. Frost flowers bloomed across his shoulders, petals unfolding with crystalline precision. "Not all truths bring comfort. Some exist solely to be endured."
Kaelion watched his breath fog another mirror, revealing hidden text,
"All truths are weapons if sharpened properly."
The silence between them stretched like a drawn bowstring, vibrating with potential energy.
Kaelion studied the god before him, noting the minute fluctuations in Zarethiel's form - the way his robe's hem dissolved into smoke before reforming, how his fingers occasionally blurred at the edges like smudged ink. The God of Truth was not as whole as he appeared.
"Three questions each," Kaelion proposed, fingers resting on the Hollow Codex. The tome's spine arched toward his touch like a cat. "Your deepest truths against mine. Every answer burns away a lie that binds us."
Zarethiel's veil cycled through a dozen expressions before settling on something disturbingly human - curiosity mingled with apprehension, the look of a scholar presented with a dangerous new text,
"And the stakes?"
With deliberate ceremony, Kaelion pressed his palm to the Codex. Blood welled from his skin, thick and dark, dripping onto the pages as he inscribed their pact,
"In this hall, all exchanges must be of equal weight."
The moment the ink dried, the mirrored lake fractured beneath them with a sound like breaking bones, their reflections began reaching for each other with glass fingers, Kaelion's tattoos burned gold at their edges, forming new, unfamiliar patterns
Zarethiel's first question struck like a guillotine,
"Why did the Pantheon truly fear your bloodline?"
Kaelion smiled as he answered, watching his left little finger turn transparent, then shatter into countless glittering fragments. The truth he extracted in return made his tattoos rearrange into celestial coordinates pointing somewhere beneath Mount Scripture.
Zarethiel's form began unraveling in earnest now, his edges bleeding into the air like ink in water. The god's voice came fractured, each word from a different mouth,
"You... are not... the first..."
Kaelion stepped forward, the ice cracking violently beneath him. "Say it clearly, Truthkeeper. Your final confession."
The god's veil tore down the middle, revealing not a face but a gaping void where stars winked out one by one. When he spoke again, all pretense of humanity vanished - his voice the grinding of tectonic plates,
"THEY MADE MISTAKES WITH YOU."
The force of the truth sent Kaelion stumbling back. His Core flared black lightning as the words burned into his flesh. Around them, the mirrored lake shattered entirely, countless reflections screaming as they fell into oblivion.
Kaelion's own reflection - the hollow-eyed future version - caught his gaze one last time. Its lips moved in perfect sync with the words now branded on Kaelion's soul,
"Wake up."
Then silence.
When the light faded, only a single scroll remained, floating where Zarethiel had stood. Kaelion reached for it, his living tattoos now a complete map to horrors waiting beneath Mount Scripture.