Raphael's eyes dripped with warm tears as he collapsed atop the ruined corpse that formerly resembled Ashly Rinn.
Her eyes were wide open, bloodshot and lifeless, the once vibrant and jubilant woman reduced to a pale husk.
The white-haired boy's golden eyes were blurred as he stared downward, his mind breaking at the sight before him.
While he might have only met this woman less than twenty-four hours ago, he could truly feel something within him crumbling.
It wasn't just her death that had broken him, but in reality, the countless experiences he had built throughout his short adventures out of the Sea of Wishes.
Immediately after his departure, he had been ambushed by his own brother, who had stalked him out of the Matthew estate.
He had been convinced that Raphael had been hiding the wealth his mother had left him in an artifact and carried it on his body.
Failing to locate it, Alaric left his twin beaten half to death and alone to drift towards the Sea of Dreams.
Once he had begun his exam, Raphael came face to face with homes made from the corpses of hundreds of humans, their bodies in grotesque formations.
The smell still clung to his tongue in nightmares, burnt iron and molding flesh working its way into his mind.
Not long after that, he had been devoured by a giant, his death cemented in fate, if it weren't for the intervention of Aaron Grimstall.
Yet, there was a cost to that safety, for the one whom he owed his life to had lost his leg in the process.
Raphael knew he had a debt that he could not repay, not in this lifetime or the next; however, he pushed onward, bottling up the guilt and anguish that filled his heart.
But as he lay bleeding in the depths of the Sea of Mystery, his arms clinging around a frozen corpse, he sobbed.
An endless flow of tears soaked his face, his body trembling as he screamed with all his might.
There was nobody to hear the sound; only the echoes through the empty cave answered back with his own voice.
And as his vision faded to black, he felt the world slipping away from him, the grasp of death closer than he had ever been before.
Reaching out his hand, he felt another graze his own, an unusual warmth surging through Raphael's body.
Trying to open his eyes, he found them glued shut, a pressure incomparable to all others pinning him down.
Then, a searing pain engulfed his right index finger, a new kind of suffering, pushing aside the fading agony of death.
"AGHHHHHH!"
Within a world of pitch-black abyss, his voice resonated to the utmost extent of its range, shattering light itself in a display of sheer force.
However, this wasn't his own power, but one sourced from the thing that stood before him, its aura forcing Raphael to his knees.
Turning his head skyward, he poured every last drop of strength he had into opening his eyes.
His body refused, the world refused, and even fate refused.
Yet, even as he felt his body disintegrating into cosmic dust, he allowed a sliver of light to enter his mind.
CRKKK.
The white-haired boy's brain short-circuited in that very moment, the sight of a being surpassing that of mortal constraints sending him into a seizure.
He could not move, nor call out for help as life seeped out of his flesh.
Only the sad, empty silence of the cavern chamber filled his broken skull as he burned away his lifeforce to keep himself going for even a millisecond longer.
And that minuscule amount of time paid off, for at the very last moment before his soul was ripped from his living body, a crimson chain wrapped around his skull.
He had long since passed out, his mind a wreck of broken neurons that could never be repaired, the true form of a god engraved into his very essence.
Yet, the metallic chains that bound his every limb and vital point kept his life grounded and tied to the mortal plane even in this state.
Similar to the bond of a Soul Pact, the crimson binds that held him were forged through Death's will and his will alone.
Therefore, for as long as he was held captive by their metallic restraints, he would remain alive, no matter how much suffering he endured.
His bloodied and burned corpse was quickly surrounded by a group of crimson-garbed individuals who held his chains like leashes.
Reaching out to grab his body, they were pushed back by a searing heat that threatened to rip apart flesh and bone at the slightest touch.
Their panicked voices reverberated through the cave, and a hasty decision was made to drag him along the rough stones.
As they began to move him, they noticed a body hidden beneath where he lay, one partially devoured by the Pale Messenger that lurked in the caverns.
One of the cloaked individuals with a crystal crown hovering over his forehead slowly bent over, running his fingers over the woman's cheek and then to her eyes.
Closing them gently, he spoke loudly, an order to all the hooded people in the room.
"Take her to the altar. She will be the final sacrifice. May her soul be blessed to be taken by our lord himself."
Nodding their heads quickly and rushing forward, two men picked up her ruined corpse, blood spilling out in droves as they lifted her.
Resisting the urge to puke, the garbed men vanished into the darkness, leaving Raphael alone with the group of crimson-clothed people.
He, of course, was mentally destroyed, both by what he had dared to gaze upon and the events that had taken place.
And as he was dragged away into a pitch-black hole that dove deep into the depths of the island, he could only twitch involuntarily, his burnt flesh wafting through the cavern.
…
Eternal and endless darkness stretched out into the horizon for all time, the abyssal void never-ending in size or volume.
Stars twinkled in the space, no matter how luminescent or how faint, still gasping away at their last sparks of life, they forged through fusion.
Yet one odd impossibility floated alongside these cosmic marvels, a boy, one with long white hair and liquid gold eyes.
His soul was pure, but also filled with malice and contempt for the world, a noble of blood and birth.
There was no sound that existed in this world of lightless purgatory, only particles of condensed mass consolidating around the formless child.
Raphael von Steinfeste twitched and spasmed as he awoke into a liminal space, his eyes slow and weak as he gazed around.
He could not speak, nor could he move; only the hefty pressure that descended over him told him of another's presence.
The emotions he had felt before fainting had vanished; only a strange feeling of loss coursed through his mind as he attempted to recollect the information that kept eluding him.
Searching through his memory, the last thing he could recall was the day he chose his mission on the Bay of Thorn, all else after, erased from time.
Turning his eyes upward and locating the unusual presence that roamed the stars, he watched as it twirled and danced in the heavenly colors of life.
Its body wasn't physical, nor was it illusory, for it was something incomprehensible, a shape and form not native to the human psyche.
However, to allow the boy to gaze upon it, a simple incarnation was formed in that very moment, forged from starlight and plasma.
The being was faceless; its slender physique and finely trimmed hair oozed with the power of a deity.
Not once did it speak, yet voices bombarded Raphael's mind all at once, shredding his thoughts with knowledge.
He could not even imagine understanding any of it at the time, but, out of all the information pressed into his fractured mind, one thing stuck out among all others.
The brightest fragment of heavenly grace,
The majesty who hails from the dawn that rages like fire,
The unconquered ruler of the kingdom of light,
The God of Sunlight, ■■■■■■■■■■■.
…
"Oh, great pale one. We offer you this sacrifice to appease your wrath!"
Placing Ashly's body atop a stone platform in a dark chamber, the chanting men stepped backwards, their robes glowing in the candlelight.
One of the men who had helped drag the slumbering Raphael into the room let go of the boy, instead walking towards a large fire pit.
Summoning a small fireball into his grasp, he placed his hand into the wood, lighting it in moments, and warmth started spreading throughout the cavern.
Pillars of red stone held up the large ceiling, a circular chamber that encircled the altar where the orange-haired woman lay.
Her body was not the only one to fill the room, for, dug into small holes in the walls, human skulls hung out as if they had been buried alive.
Some still were attached to their bodies that had been stuffed into the crevice; others were only pieces of rotting flesh clinging to bone.
Spiders tore through the loose flesh, burrowing into their eyesockets for a cool nesting spot away from the flames.
Their clicks of joy at their new homes resounded through the chamber, their large web hovering above the altar.
Inside that nest, one large arachnid, perhaps the size of a horse, stared downward happily, its eight eyes fixated on its food.
Slowly descending from its web with its mandibles clicking together, it landed on the platform, its mouth opening slowly to reveal fangs oozing with orange goop.
The chants from the cultists around the arachnid erupted into roars, their once relaxed demeanors replaced with insanity.
"BRING US THE GREAT ONE SPIDER!"
"OUR LORD IS NEAR!"
"FREE HIM FROM HIS CONFINEMENTS!"
After each chant, one chain around Raphael's wrecked body vanished, their mana being channeled into the beast in the center of the room.
Its abdomen twitched with overflowing mana, a burst of eggs firing out like a cannon and coating the wall in tiny, microscopic spiders that sprang for cover as fast as they could.
Following their mother's lead, they burrowed into the human corpses.
One of them, more foolish than the rest, approached the white-haired boy for comfort, as the heat that had once radiated from his body had long since calmed.
Making its way up his leg and across his torso, the spider smelled the faint scent of its tribe on the boy's hand.
Crawling down his right arm towards his fingers, the tiny creature's eyes gazed upon a strange marking engraved onto Raphael's hand.
It only had a moment to process the information before its existence was erased, gone, lost to time.
Raphael's skin glowed with a magnificent golden radiance, one that illuminated the whole cavern, as a tattoo appeared on his index finger
Cloaked cultists rushed over, only to be pushed back by the blinding light, the queen of the spiders glancing over for a moment to investigate the strange disturbance.
Yet, as her many eyes locked on the child, she realized in a second of absolute terror that the white-haired noble was no longer asleep.
He was instead only a meter away from her skull, his staff in hand and a blank, lifeless expression on his face.
Something had changed about him, and it was nothing that anyone in this world or the next could fix.
For he had manifested the exact thing his mother had sacrificed her life to steal, the result of an artifact with more worth than an entire nation.
In the year 3125, on the date of October 11th, the Mark of the Sun appeared on Raphael von Steinfeste's hand.