The gates of the Alabaster Spire were made of polished silverwood, engraved with prayers to a sun that this city had never seen. Before them stood a line of knights, their plate armor gleaming with a holy light, their faces grim and resolute. At their head was a woman whose presence was a beacon in the gloomy city.
Saintess Valerie. The commander of the Alabaster Legion. Her hair was a cascade of spun gold, and her eyes were the blue of a clear summer sky. She radiated a power that was both comforting and terrifyingly absolute.
"Kaelen Ravencrest," she said, her voice ringing with a calm, unshakable authority. "The Tower has named you an enemy. This city has no place for a soul-thief and his demonic arts. Turn back now, and my Legion will grant you a swift death. Defy us, and we will teach you the meaning of holy fire."
My knights tensed, their hands on their swords, but they were hopelessly outmatched. Valerie alone was likely a match for my entire, exhausted entourage.
I gently passed Lia's unconscious form to a waiting Elara. I stepped forward, alone, my hands empty. I was physically weak, my System was a dying wreck, but my will was a weapon she could not possibly comprehend.
"Saintess," I said, my voice respectful, almost gentle. "You speak of demons and soul-thieves. You see a monster. But your own eyes deceive you."
"My god grants me clarity," she retorted, her hand resting on the hilt of a glowing longsword.
"Does it?" I asked, my voice taking on a sad, philosophical tone. "Then ask your god to explain this city. You worship the sun, yet you are trapped in an eternal twilight. You preach of order, yet your city is a chaotic nest of warring guilds. You speak of light, but you live in a world of perpetual shadow. Is this a paradise your god has built for you? Or is it a prison it is too weak to break?"
Her perfect, serene composure flickered. I had just voiced the single greatest theological paradox of her entire faith. A seed of doubt.
"The Tower is not a path to the heavens," I continued, pressing my advantage. "It is a cage. And your 'gods' are merely the oldest, most powerful prisoners. I am not here to bring ruin to your city, Saintess. I am here to offer it the one thing it has never known: the truth."
As I spoke, a soft, golden light began to emanate from my body. It wasn't a spell. It was a trick. I was circulating the last dregs of the Sun-Drop Root's energy, the pure, holy life-force I had absorbed, and letting it leak from my pores. To these sun-worshippers, it was an aura of pure, undeniable divinity.
Valerie's eyes widened in shock. The aura I was projecting was purer, more potent, than even her own.
"Behold," I said, my voice booming now, playing to the crowd of knights. "The proof of your god's failure!" I pointed at Lia, who lay still in Elara's arms. "The Tower named this girl 'Nemesis'. It sought to turn her into a weapon of pure, destructive hate. But I have purified her. I have cast out the darkness that the so-called gods of this prison sought to foster. I have cleansed her soul!"
Right on cue, as if guided by the sheer, theatrical genius of my own will, the 'reboot' process in Lia's soul completed.
Her eyes fluttered open.
They were not the eyes of the hateful regressor. They were not the eyes of the broken consort. They were the eyes of a newborn, clear, innocent, and utterly pure. She looked around at the grim knights, at the towering spire, and then her gaze settled on me, the first and only familiar thing in her new universe.
"Who… who are you?" she whispered, her voice soft as a fawn's.
The effect was devastating. The knights of the Alabaster Legion stared, their righteous fury melting away, replaced by awe and confusion. They had come to fight a demon, but they were witnessing what looked for all the world like a divine miracle. The monstrous Nemesis, reborn as an innocent.
Saintess Valerie was shaken to her very core. Everything she knew, every law of her faith, was being turned on its head.
Before she could speak, before she could make a decision, a new, unforeseen variable made itself known. A flicker of movement from her own ranks. One of her own knights, a stoic, silver-haired veteran who stood at her right hand, suddenly dropped to one knee.
But he was not kneeling to me. He was kneeling to Lia.
His face, a mask of iron discipline moments before, was now a portrait of pure, soul-shattering shock and a dawning, impossible hope. Tears streamed down his grizzled cheeks.
"My… my lady?" he choked out, his voice thick with an emotion that was a century old. "Princess… Liana? Is it truly you?"
My mind froze. Liana. The name of Lyra's twin.
Unit 734, in a final, dying flicker before it went completely dark, pushed one last, glitched line of data to my consciousness. A result from a deep-level scan it had been running on the Saintess and her command structure.
[...Warning... Subject 'Sir Kaelan the Elder'... is not native to Veridia... H-h-he is... a transmigrator... from Aethelgard... Former Royal Knight of the... S-s-silvermoon Dynasty... personal bodyguard to the twin princesses...]
The knight kneeling in the mud was not just a knight. He was a ghost from a dead world. My dead world. And he had just recognized his long-lost, reborn princess.