Ersia: Raven Dawn

“My first strike severed you from The Goddess of Art and Dream.”

Vito’s voice was calm, almost conversational, as if explaining an inevitability rather than a victory.

“Without Dolla, you are no longer immune to illusion or mental interference. You didn’t even realize it, did you?” He tilted his head slightly, amused. “With Echo of Farewell, I made you fight a replica of me from the last three minutes.”

Vito Farelsi began to circle Randia.

Each step was unhurried, deliberate. The rain slid along his black armor, tracing its edges like silver veins, while Randia remained kneeling at the center of the arena—one knee buried in stone, the other trembling, his breath ragged as pain tore through him in waves. Every sound the hero made seemed to please Vito more than any shout of triumph ever could.

As he studied his opponent, Vito reached beneath his half-cape once more.

This time, the weapon he produced was smaller—but no less ominous.

A dagger.

Its design was strange, almost ritualistic: two curved blades extending from either end of the grip, like mirrored crescents. One blade shimmered with a dull crimson hue, the other glowed faintly blue, as if cold and heat had been bound into the same piece of steel, forever refusing to reconcile.

Vito sighed softly.

“…I’m certain the man you used to be would have noticed immediately,” he said, disappointment threading his tone. “Oh, Hero Randia. In your current state, it is impossible for you to defeat me.”

He stopped before him.

“You are dull now. And weak.”

The words were not shouted. They did not need to be. They landed with surgical precision, sinking deep where Randia’s divinity had already begun to fracture.

“While you were playing at freedom—while you ran from your sins—I devoted my entire existence to chase.” Vito’s eyes burned, sharp and unwavering. “Every second I lived. Every piece of bread I ate. Every drop of water that passed my lips.”

He clenched his fist slowly.

“All of it was offered to you. Every sacrifice made for a single purpose: to equip myself with every possible mean to kill you today.”

Then, calmly, Vito slipped his hand back into the spatial fold hidden within his half-cape.

No weapon emerged this time. Instead, the gauntlet on his left arm began to change.

The black metal peeled away, reshaping itself with a dry, unnatural sound—like bones grinding against bones. In its place formed a structure that looked less forged and more grown: a double-layered bone construct, latticed with exposed gears, rotors, and mechanisms whose function defied conventional logic. Along its outer surface, etched deep into the pale material, ran a mantra—symbols so alien, so ancient, that even the air around them seemed uneasy.

“Aine’s blessing accelerated your regeneration,” Vito continued, gesturing casually toward Randia’s shaking form. “It granted you resilience beyond reason. Pain tolerance fit for a god.”

He lifted his gaze.

“Omzun, meanwhile, granted you invincibility against frontal assault. Any attack within your field of vision—whether faster than lightning or heavier than mountains—you could parry and counter flawlessly.”

A smile curved his lips.

“Separating them from you…” He shrugged lightly. “Was well worth the price I paid.”

Vito let out a low chuckle, then lowered himself to the nearby rubble with infuriating ease—one knee raised, one arm resting lazily upon it. He looked less like a warrior in battle and more like a spectator enjoying a performance.

Randia, still kneeling, could feel it now—clearer than ever before. The hollow spaces where the divines once offered their boon. The silence where gods used to stand.

---

From the spectator stands, Viena watched Randia collapse beneath the rain, his blood darkening the stone. Her chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.

Papa…

Anxiety swelled—but then another thought struck her with equal force.

Lisabelle.

Her gaze darted across the arena, frantic. What about her? Had the massive explosion earlier—had it killed her? The questions spiraled, each darker than the last, piling atop one another until Viena felt paralyzed. She didn’t know what she should do. Worse—she didn’t know what she could do.

Then—

Someone moved.

A figure leapt from behind Viena, fast and sudden, the rush of air brushing her hair. Steel flashed.

The attacker hurtled toward Lady Morwenn, who still stood upon the podium—upright, composed, as though the world below her were nothing more than a staged performance.

It was Lisabelle.

Somehow, impossibly, she looked unharmed. No blood. No visible wounds. In her hand gleamed a dagger Viena had never seen before.

“—!”

Lisabelle lunged.

Slirrtt.

Black tendrils erupted from Lady Morwenn’s shadow, writhing like living smoke. They snapped upward and coiled around Lisabelle mid-air, halting her attack as if she had slammed into an invisible wall.

“D–damn you! Let go of my sister, Witch!” Lisabelle screamed, thrashing.

The tendrils tightened.

They wrapped around her limbs, her torso, her neck—binding her completely. Then they began to constrict, squeezing with merciless intent. Lisabelle’s body jerked as the pressure robbed her lungs of air.

“Ack—!”

The sound strangled in her throat as the coils cinched tighter.

Viena’s fear tipped into terror.

Without thinking, she scrambled forward and threw herself at Lady Morwenn’s feet, wrapping her arms around the woman’s leg.

“Stop! Please!” Viena cried, her voice breaking. “Don’t hurt Lily!”

Lady Morwenn did not even flinch one bit, and the tendrils continued to tighten.

Desperation clawed at Viena’s chest. Her thoughts raced—until, suddenly, she remembered Vito’s words. She remembered about the thing about Lady Morwenn that he had taught her just aa while ago. Although she hated him for trying to kill her father, but right now, she had no choice but to take the clue she had been given.

“M–Mother… please,” Viena whispered, pressing her tear-soaked cheek against Lady Morwenn’s leg. “Please forgive us.”

The word mother hung in the air.

For a long, dreadful moment, nothing happened.

Then—slowly—the tendrils loosened. They recoiled, releasing Lisabelle, who fell hard to the ground. She collapsed to her knees, coughing violently, sucking in air as if she had been drowning.

“Lily!” Viena rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”

“Y–yeah… I think I’m—”

Before she could finish—

The shadows surged again.

Black coils snapped over Lisabelle’s mouth, silencing her, binding her hands, knees, and feet in a single ruthless motion. She was dragged flat against the stone, immobilized, like prey neatly wrapped for later consumption.

Seeing this, Viena wanted to beg again. To scream. To cling harder. But she holds herself back.

Some instinct—small, frightened, but painfully sharp—told her to stop. The witch had spared Lisabelle’s life. That alone felt like mercy bought with miracle.

-Don’t push your luck-

With trembling hands and great struggle, Viena lifts Lisabelle up and sit beside her, careful not to make the bindings worse. She sat close, shielding her as best she could with her own small body.

And in this moment, she said nothing. She simply stayed still, stiffened.

---

Within the arena, Randia stood once more.

His eyes were closed, not in defiance, but in acceptance—as if he were finally allowing himself to feel the wound that had pierced his heart. The pain was no longer something to outrun. It throbbed, deep and intimate, each pulse a reminder of blood lost, of divinity torn away.

When he opened his eyes, he did not look at his enemy.

He looked upward.

The sky above had become a thing in motion. Clouds rolled and folded upon themselves, vast and heavy, black upon black—like a winter sea overturned and suspended in the heavens. They churned with slow violence, swelling and collapsing, their depths swallowing what little light remained. The air itself felt charged, tight, as though the world were holding its breath.

And then—at last—he heard it clearly.

The voice within his mind returned, no longer distant and fragmented nor mere loud noises and ringing. It's now simply a whole. Just as it had been on the first day he was crowned a hero

It was Ruala, The Goddess of Light. Her presence was not loud, yet it echoed endlessly, as if spoken from every direction at once—ethereal, radiant, and terrible in its certainty.

Fight, and embrace Us, O champion.

When this trial has passed, by Our names which binds the truth of this world, We shall unveil to you what you seek—

and what you have not yet dared to ask.

Know that all is for the sake of the greater order.

Should you fall in this hour—Should you falter upon this ground—Mistus shall reign once again,

and from his shadow, chaos shall devour more than you can imagine.

Have faith, Randia. One final time.

Randia doubted the Seltis Pantheon. Of that, there was no longer any question.

After everything he had endured—after the blood spilled in their name, the lives weighed and discarded, the sins he had been made to shoulder—his faith had collapsed entirely. Its foundations were gone, reduced to dust. In its place rose something else: a towering citadel of suspicion, resentment, and grief. Every soul lost along his path as a hero had laid another stone in that grim monument within his heart.

He no longer believed.

And yet—at Ruala’s promise, something shifted.

Not hope. Not forgiveness. Just clarity.

In the wreckage of his doubt and despair, a narrow path revealed itself—thin, fragile, barely illuminated. But for a man who had been long bested by the despair of his aimless wandering, it was enough. It was not a choice made by something so honorable as renewed conviction or reasoning, but rather of something so petty and low, of something that he could have turned into an excuse later—an assurance of his guilty conscience.

Above him, the sky answered his choice.

The clouds twisted violently now, spiraling inward as though drawn toward a single unseen axis. Veins of blinding light crawled across their bellies, branching and colliding, illuminating the heavens in stark, brutal flashes. Thunder did not roar—it boomed, layered and overlapping, as if the sky itself were cracking open.

The air sharpened, turning metallic on the tongue. Every hair on Randia’s body rose as one, as if his flesh itself sensed judgment approaching.

Within the heart of the storm, a pillar of radiance began to take shape. Light compressed upon itself—folding, tightening, condensing into something vast and imminent. The clouds recoiled from it, peeling away in slow, trembling spirals, as though gripped by instinctive fear. What was revealed was not sky, but a wound in the heavens: a rift where cosmical calamity gathered its breath.

A heavenly lightning—poised, patient, prepared to descend.

Randia raised one hand toward the sky.

The gesture was not that of a general issuing a command, nor of a priest invoking doctrine. It was the motion of a poet, arm lifted as if offering verse to a beloved—an intimate, almost tender invitation cast into the roar of the wind.

And he spoke.

“I call upon thee by an oath woven in heaven’s breath.

Thy crown is the storm, and thy gown the blackened clouds that draw the curtains of the sky.

Answer my summons, O bride who wields the lightning.

Let mine enemies know the wrath of the empyrean—

and thy eternal obedience.”

The wind howled louder, clawing at the arena, tearing at banners and breath alike. Within that very same howling, Randia heard the reply.

“…I hear,” whispered the voice of a young woman at his ear, soft and clear as rain against glass.

“And I obey, my Valdrin.”

In that instant, lightning of unimaginable magnitude struck the heart of the arena.

The world was annihilated into white—formless, absolute, devoured by a radiance beyond measure. Sound followed not as noise, but as violence: a thunderclap so vast it did not merely echo, but erased. There were no sigils. No wards. No crows. No incantations to soften its descent.

Every soul present paid the price. Eardrums ruptured in unison. Blood spilled freely. Even Viena cried out, though no sound reached her own ears.

When the blinding light finally subsided—ears were not the only things broken.

Some lay dead where they sat, their hearts stilled by sheer, overwhelming shock. Children screamed, mouths wide and faces contorted in terror—but no one heard them. No one could. Caring was impossible; even the simple act of remaining upright proved a battle, as balance abandoned bodies that no longer trusted the ground beneath them.

The storm had answered. The sky had made itself known.