After Inspector Vargas's downfall, Arkanum was never the same. The fog that had protected the Church's secrets began to lift, replaced by a heavy tension. Selene knew that the Executioners were coming, not just soldiers, but human "erasers" sent by the Church to wipe away any errors in the records of reality.
For the coming confrontation, Selene didn't need a weapon; he needed "minor characters."
"The narrator can't put on a show alone," Selene muttered as he walked through the Ash Quarter, a deserted area inhabited by spirits banished by the Church as "unfit for the ritual."
Selene stopped before the burnt-out ruins of an old theater. There, in the dark corner, sat a girl with hair as white as a shroud, her eyes covered by a black cloth. Her name was Ellen, a "failure" of the Seer's Path (The Seer) rejected by the ChurchBecause she saw "things that shouldn't be seen."
"I know you can hear me, Ellen," Celine said, stepping over the wreckage. "And I know you've been anticipating your death for three nights."
Ellen shuddered. "I saw you in my vision," she said faintly. "You are the man without a shadow. You are the silence that speaks."
Celine smiled and leaned down beside her. "The church says you're spiritually blind because you didn't see their God. But I'm here to tell you a secret: You weren't blind; the light was too bright to hide the truth."
As soon as he spoke the word, Celine felt his power to distort reality interact with Ellen's soul. He had "rewritten" the reason for her helplessness. Suddenly, strands of gray light began to emanate from behind her blindfold.
"I'll make you the oracle of the ashes in my novel," Celine whispered. "You will be my eye that sees through the lies."
Ellen wasn't alone. That night, he gatheredCeline brought another person from the cellars of the copperworks: Bruno, a blacksmith who had lost both arms in a mysterious explosion and was believed to be cursed. But Celine told another story; he said that Bruno hadn't lost his arms, but had hidden them in the Shadow Realm to forge weapons invisible to humans.
And when Bruno believed the lie, thanks to Celine's power, ghostly limbs of steel shadow began to appear where his missing arms had been.
By dawn, Celine was standing with his outcasts on a hill overlooking the city entrance.
In the distance, three black horses appeared, their hooves never touching the ground. On their backs sat three men in full silver armor, their faces hidden behind solid iron masks with no eyeholes.
"They've arrived," Ellen said, nodding her head toward them, though she was blindfolded.
"The Executioners... Sacred Hunter's Path. Sixth Rank."The air around the Executioners was boiling.
As they drew near, the "lies" Celine had planted in the area began to weaken. The Executioners possessed the power to cleanse falsehood, the natural enemy of the possessed narrator.
"Celine..." one of the Executioners called in a metallic voice that shook the mountains. "Return the shadow you stole, or you will be erased from the page of existence."
Bruno withdrew his shadowy arms, and Ellen braced herself, but Celine placed a hand on their shoulders.
"Don't rush into great novels. The hero doesn't fight at the beginning... the hero changes the rules."
Celine produced a writing quill made from the bone of Prisoner Zero, dipped it in the black ink that oozed from his eyes, and began to write in
the air:
"Chapter Nine: The place where the Executioners stand... is not land, but an illusion designed by the Fool."
The ground shook beneath the Executioners' horses and began to turn into a black liquid that swallowed them up. It was notA clash of forces, but a confrontation between their "sacred reality" and "Celine's possessed fantasy."
The new members of the Forgotten Theatre Club:
Ellen Ash Oracle sees spiritual paths and detects the weaknesses of enemies.
Bruno the Ghost Blacksmith): He crafts magical instruments from a material of "shadow" that cannot be broken by physical means.
The "liquid earth" that Celine had created was not enough to stop the Executioners, so one of them quickly struck the ground with a massive hammer, and a wave of "cutting" light blew out, freezing the liquid and returning it to solid.
"Your falsehood cannot stand against absolute truth!" cried the leader Executioner, hurtling toward Celine at superhuman speed, leaving in his wake a trail of sacred fire that burned even the air.
Bruno, now!" shouted Celine.
The Ghost Blacksmith advanced, steel shadow arms emerging from his shoulders. He did not attempt to hold offThe hammer, or rather, the "emptiness" surrounding it. Thanks to Celine's lie becoming reality, Bruno was able to grasp the very "concept of motion." The Executioner froze in mid-air, suspended between two moments, while the arms of the Shadow wrung his silver armor as if it were tin foil.
Meanwhile, Ellen, the oracle of the Ashes, whispered in Celine's ear:
"The Executioner on the left... his heart is not in his chest. He hides it in an amulet hanging from his horse's neck."
Celine smiled, lifted the bone feather, and began to draw swift lines in the air, as if tearing at the fabric of reality.
"The narrative says: what is hidden must be revealed, what is protected must melt away."
Suddenly, the amulet on the horse's neck began to burn with black flames. The second Executioner screamed and fell from his horse clutching his chest as his body began to dissipate like tobacco smoke in the windThe third Executioner, however, was the most cunning.
Realizing that Celine was the "author" of this mess, he removed his iron mask to reveal a featureless face, merely a mirror reflecting Celine's image.
"I am the Mirror of Truth," the Executioner said in a voice that echoed from all directions. "Whatever you do to me, reality will do to you."
The Executioner plunged a dagger into his own heart, and at the same instant, Celine felt a real stab pierce his chest. Celine coughed up black blood and fell to his knees. This was the power of the Sacred Reflection, the Church's most powerful tool for killing "narrators."
"Celine!" Ellen cried, trying to reach him.
But Celine, despite the pain, began to laugh a mad, foolish laugh.
"You forgot one thing, Mirror..." Celine said, wiping the blood from his mouth. "To reflect my image... I must have a shadow."Celine opened his shirt to reveal the emptiness where his heart should have been.
"I am a possessed storyteller... I am filled with the secrets of others, but I have no truth of my own to stab the wound you have inflicted upon yourself... It will remain yours alone."
The Executioner's (Mirror's) features froze. Cracks began to appear on his glass face, and his body exploded into thousands of metallic shards that vanished before they touched the ground.
Celine stood up, his wound healing not with flesh, but with words written in black ink that plugged the gap in his chest. He looked at the Commander Executioner, who was still wrestling with Bruno's shadowy arms.
"Go and tell your masters in the Church," Celine said, his voice as cold as the grave. "The play is no longer just a story I tell... It has become the new reality. And from this day forward, I will write the end of everyone who wears this silver armor."
Celine waved his hand, and a gateway opened from nothingnessThe Executor swallowed the leader and hurled him far beyond the city limits.
Celine turned to his small party. Bruno was panting, and Elaine was trembling at the magnitude of the power she had witnessed.
"We've begun," Celine said. "But this battle will directly attract the attention of the Seven Gods. We need somewhere they can't reach...
We need to build our own Theater of Nothingness."
Suddenly, the broken mask tattoo behind Celine's ear glowed purple.
The Fool's voice echoed in his mind:
"Well done, son... Rank 6 is now attainable. Are you ready to become the Architect of Illusions?"
Volume 1 Ending:
First Victory: Shattering the Executors' mystique and liberating the "Ash Quarter."
Physical State: Celine is no longer humanhis body has become composed of "ink and secrets".
The next goal is to move from defense to offense and build a stronghold for the outcasts.