The lantern bobs ahead, its tarnished frame barely visible in its own glow. Rust and corrosion mark every joint and seam, yet the flame within burns steady.

I step where the lantern's light beckons, letting its glow push against the pressing darkness.

I took Aeternus to the wall, but the blade finds no purchase on the glassy stone. There are no pillars or runes anymore, ust smooth, unbroken rock as if the world itself forgot the hands that shaped it.

The lantern hovers ahead in patient arcs.

Yet the flame within won't die. Every so often, that flame pulses brighter, an echo of something older than walls or wards.

Something older than the bones I carry.

No illusions drift here, only silence thick as tomb air. Carida's remains rest secure, tucked beneath the battered mask near my ribs.

I press on.

The corridor opens abruptly into a vast chamber that swallows the lantern's radiance.

Its height rivals cathedrals, arches vanishing in gloom far above.

Statues crowd the perimeter, faceless things slumped against the walls. Their outlines flicker in half-light, revealing cracked limbs and mutilated silhouettes.

This proving path has brought me to a place I don't understand.

In the chamber's center stands a stage of worn steps, ringed by ankle-deep water rippling with an unseen disturbance.

An energy crawls across the stones.

The lantern drifts closer to the stage. Its glow intensifies, turning from a dull orange to bright silver-white.

And at the stage's center, enthroned on the twisted remains of a seat that once boasted divine lines, looms Loremonos, or what remains of him.

The true him.

this is the true Loremonos or at least the corrupted part of him. Corruption has warped his once-majestic form into a towering abomination of muscle and old divinity. Black sinews cross a skeletal torso etched with cracks where vile fluid oozes.

The throne looms before me, a grotesque monument of corruption. Lormenos sits entangled in his own flesh, horns spiraling in patterns that hurt to follow. Thick cords of muscle anchor him to the broken seat, each strand pulsing in time with ripples that disturb the water at my feet.

The pool carries something wrong. Not corruption exactly, but an essence that should not exist in any realm - mortal or divine.

Failed pilgrims litter the throne's base. Bones bleached white, armor corroded to nothing. Their positions tell stories of final moments - some crawling, others frozen mid-stride.

All sought to pass this test. None survived.

This is not the same thing I saw before stepping on to proving path.

The god-thing's head turns toward the approaching lantern. A tremor runs through those anchoring tendons, and darkness flows from the chamber's edges like spilled ink, drawn to his twisted presence.

But the lantern burns brighter, its silver light cutting clean lines through shadow. As it draws closer, Lormenos' form seems to split.

The lantern's light reveals truth. Two forms occupy the throne, one corrupted, one preserved.

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Like glass that has shattered and tries to return to original form.

Where tendrils of corruption anchor the twisted body, fragments of divine essence still gleam.

Clean lines of silver trace ancient symbols across what remains of his true form. The burial linens I saw before still drift around him, but now I see their true nature, maps drawn in sacred ink..

The thing on the throne, both versions of it, laughs. The sound scrapes against stone like burial dirt on coffin wood.

"Lost your way oh fallen thing??" The corrupted form's voice grates. "We met before the proving path, yet here you stand as if seeing truth for the first time."

The preserved form speaks with quieter words. "Or perhaps you recognize what you could not before."

I shift keeping Aeternus ready.

The blade reflects silver from the lantern's glow.

"If you had not lost my way," One replies, "could the one behind those bones have ever arrived?"

Both aspects of Lormenos still. The corrupted form's tendons stretch taut. The preserved fragment's burial linens drift.

I flex bone fingers, feeling the ancient magic that binds them. Commander Ikert's fragment forms my core - the largest piece of who I am, but not the deepest.

Something else moves beneath these borrowed bones. Something that remembers battlefields older than the Field of Broken Banners. Something that knew paths before Lormenos lost his way.

The preserved form's linens drift closer. "You carry many," it observes. "Yet the one who commands is not among the borrowed."

"The father-commander's bones give you frame." The corrupted aspect leans forward, tendons creaking. "But what gives you will?"

My answer rises from depths I cannot name. The reply scrapes from bone to bone.

"I am the vow that death remembered."

The words emerge without thought, drawn from a place beyond memory. Beyond the fragments that shape this form.

Carida's remains pulse against my ribs, resonating with truth. Her father's bones may grant me structure, but the force that moves them, that chose this path.

It dwells in darker soil.

In ground that drank deeper oaths than even the Field of Broken Banners could hold.

The lantern's light shivers, casting silver across my assembled frame. For a moment, I glimpse patterns in the bone, ancient marks that existed before these fragments were flesh.

I am more than borrowed pieces. More than final stands and desperate pleas.

I am what remains when all else falls.

The twin aspects of Lormenos shift on their shared throne, divine and corrupted fragments moving in unsettling synchronization. Their words pull at something deeper than borrowed bones.

"Each step led here," the preserved form's burial linens drift closer. "Each choice carved new paths."

Memories stir within my fragments. Commander Ikkert's last stand. The weight of Haven's walls. A daughter's desperate plea.

I grip Aeternus tighter, blade ready.

"Ah." The voices merge. "You understand then. The commander. The father. The fragments you carry."

A gesture toward Carida's bones. "All lost their way."

The water at my coils ripples with each word. Not corruption. Something older. Like the Field of Broken Banners' soil - saturated with final stands and desperate choices.

"How many paths did Com"mander Cid Ikkert walk before his bones became your spine?" The preserved form asks. "Before skull shard gave way to skeletal frame?"

The corrupted aspect's laugh echoes again. "We are all lost here. Gods. Knights. Daughters. Even guides lose their way."

The preserved essence cuts through: "As I once did."

The blade pulses with its own light now, responding to the divine presence.

"The paths were mine to guard," the clean voice continues. "To guide those lost in darkness. Until-"

"-until the darkness proved stronger," the corrupted form finishes.

I understand now. This chamber isn't just a test. It's a prison where a god of guidance lost his own path.

I lunge forward, blade-first. The stage rocks as Lormenos tears free from his anchors. Thick pillars of corrupted flesh snap with wet cracks. His divine and corrupted aspects merge into a single horrific form as he rises.

Black fluid cascades from where the tendrils held him, sizzling when it meets the lantern's silver radiance. The liquid pools around my form, eating into bone where it touches.

Still this form moves forward.

The chamber quakes with Lormenos' roar. Ancient statues crumble, their faceless forms collapsing into dust.

His arms unfold like great spined wings, burial linens splitting to reveal corruption-slick bone beneath. Each joint bristles with hooked barbs, remnants of divine power twisted by darkness. The silver lantern's light catches on those hooks,.

Black fluid drips from his unfurled limbs, each drop burning small craters in the stone where it lands. The chamber's air grows thick with the stench of decay and something older, the musty reek of forgotten temples.

I stand firm again him.

Those barbed wings spread wider, scraping against the chamber's walls. Stone screams where divine corruption touches it. Lormenos' twin aspects speak as one, their voice a grinding chorus of burial dirt and temple bells:

"Show us then, thing oh fallen thing. Show us what paths remain when guidance fails."

The spined limbs cast a web of shadow across the proving ground. Each movement leaves trails of silver and void in the air, divine essence fighting against corruption.

His wings block every route of escape, leaving only the path forward.

But I am beyond needing guidance now.

I am the vow that death remembered.

And I choose my own path.