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Abraham AKA Ahbram Ulren
My teeth tighten as I stare at my "father", Irham Ulren, the Noble Phantasm of the Nahullo. He stands amidst the gloomy darkness created by Blightraven's final act as he gazes back at me and Virgil, who supports me. His Ether moves through the air, his invisible and manipulative hand able to create a gap in the darkness enough for us to see each other, though our outlines are vague.
Virgil keeps trying to make a move, to disappear into the fog with me, but I stop him every time with Allude, inputting my words directly into his mind.
"Don't. He will chase us. Anyone he's ever killed, he can conjure a Phantasm of to fight for him. That probably includes Blightraven now."
An almost inaudible grumbling curse comes from Virgil as his eyes also steady on Irham. I wait to speak until my father does, my hate for him building with every passing moment. The man who killed my mother to teach me hardship and who sent me out into the world alone to teach me perseverance.
But the Noble Phantasm is prideful, too arrogant to speak first, even to his own son, so we've just been standing here for minutes now. We've been in this silent back and forth since before Blightraven rose the curtain of fog.
Eventually, however, my father loses his patience and opens his mouth to me, a half-breed.
"Are you not going to say hello, Abhram? It's been years, my son. How have the human lands treated you?"
I barely stop myself from yelling at him, every fiber of my being wanting to lash out, scream, and do anything to make him feel what I've felt. But I don't. None of it would work. Even as a new 6th Sigil, something I've held back from doing for years despite being capable because I loathe following the same path as my father, I would be crushed underfoot like a bug to the Noble Phantasm.
Instead, I try to steady my voice and figure out why he is here. I doubt it's for me. He had no idea where I was. Ikham, my long-dead uncle, did all he could to give me freedom. once I was sent away, preventing me from becoming a spy or some other figure in these lands.
"Why are you here, father? Don't you have more important things to do than to chase around Blightraven?"
My father laughs that detestable chuckle that begins in his stomach before bursting upward through his frame. The same laugh he made when he butchered Sara. The same laugh he made when he ended his own brother's life. The same laugh he made when he did so many terrible things.
"Hahaha, Abhram. You have so little clue as to how this world works. The Tree wants to challenge his king, and who am I to stop him? Why would I halt a human who seems so wanting to be killed by the Wastelander? I would much instead make sure it happens myself."
His words give me pause. Does Eli want to kill the Prime? Why? Is he insane?! That's like if I were to try and kill my father right now. The gap in strength is so large. I'm unsure if even Weiss' mind can bridge that gap.
And why? Why kill him? Why wouldn't---
"He just wait until Harvey croaks? I, too, asked this question, but I received no answer. Humans are irrational creatures, Ahbram. I'm sure you've learned that over your time with them. There is no point in wasting mental energy on understanding them."
My father predicts my thoughts, his tendrils always in my mind. So it seems, even after years, they've never left. Many think the skills that allow us to summon the phantasms of others come from something spiritual, but it is the opposite. It is mental. His Phantasms and my Nightmares pull from the deep recesses of the mind and make the illusory real.
But his words spark thoughts. Irrational? Yes. They do not think how we do. Nahullo are raised to believe only in war, sacrifice, and duty. I was sent out in the hopes that I could conform since being in the Frozen Castle didn't cut it. Humans are so disjointed that only a fraction of a fraction does the same, and I am not of that fraction either. But Eli Weiss, from what I know, is the most extraordinary mind of mankind right now. A hundred inventions come from his laboratory deep within Timberlands every solstice.
Would a man like that act irrationally against the Prime? Maybe, but it's unlikely. So there must be a reason for him not to wait for the eldest Harvey to die independently.
Could it be? A fragile yet terrifying thought comes to mind.
"What if Harvey isn't going to die, father?"
This sentence finally earns my father's attention as he looks at me curiously, concentrating entirely on me.
"Pray to tell, Ahbram. What do you mean by that? All beings age, even demons and especially humans with their brittle lives."
The tiny spark of a thought I had previously now burgeons into an inferno as chills deeper than those I usually feel while asleep when the Nightmares come for me and scrape along my skin. The thought leaves not my mouth but only my mind as it is delivered to my father with Allude.
"Do Gods, though? Vincent Harvey has been on the edge for so long, do you--"
Irham cuts me off verbally, his voice sharp and stubborn as he refuses to believe the notion that a human could rise to Godhood.
"Idiocracy. No human could become a God, Ahbram. You know this, If even Ytrial, our ancestor who left behind the Pale Cavity, couldn't, then neither can Vincent Harvey, no matter how strong he is. The Door is impenetrable, a thousand times harder than an Absolution, Proof, or Metaphor. Gods cannot rise from mortals. They can only be birthed by other divines or at the start of time."
The reference to the old ancestor long passed makes even Virgil beside me pause. The current humans likely think Ytrial, the Furious Gaze, to be nothing more than a folktale. Still, hundreds of years ago, he did indeed live. The pride of the Nahullo, a man who ventured to the west coast and brought back tales of what lies on the other side. A man who fought against all three of the Lords at that time and lived. But even time eventually took him too.
I loathe to believe in these stories, but the proof I saw when I was young keeps me from disregarding them. I shiver just thinking about it. And as I shiver, my father seems to lose whatever patience he is holding onto.
"You seem to have only softened in your time away, Ahbram; how disappointing. Allow me to see your Phantasms. Then, perhaps, if you show more potential than your brother or sister, I may let you and your human here live for you to keep learning."
I grind my teeth at the mention of my Phantasms and my siblings. The former has been twisted far beyond what they are supposed to be, the trauma of the Council blooming within my Sigil. The latter only further burn the candle of hate in my chest. My siblings... yeah, right.
Irham had them after me, younger, more talented, and pure-blooded Nahullo than I. We may share his blood, but we do not share the blood that matters, my mother's.
But I don't argue with my father. When he says something, he means it. He might let me live if I can somehow impress him with my Nightmares, the version of the skill he guided my Sigils to. There is just one thing. Our skills are different. He can conjure those that he has killed, while I can only conjure those Councilmen, those that left scars deep inside my mind.
I reach deep inside my mind, the tendrils of my focus entering the dark recesses, the Hell inside my mind, ignoring the missing arm striking at my mind every second. My nails dig into my flesh as my breathing picks up. As I push through, flashes of dark corridors, long meeting rooms, and bloody tables fill my mind.
A moment passes before I break into the dark, the Hell inside, the High Table. Meanwhile, my father mocks me.
"Even now, you take several moments to conjure even one. How pitiful."
He's right. I am pitiful. But the steel-clad faces of the Councilmen who will never leave my mind shake me out of those thoughts. Before their gazes, I can do nothing but shiver. They have followed me for years, haunting my every step, my every dream, and my every blink.
I might take far longer to conjure a Nightmare than he does a Phantom, but that is because we are different. The power of our conjurations comes from our connection to them. His connection comes from the killing of the foe, wanting the life drain from their eyes, but mine are much, much more profound. So in-depth that I've shed innumerable tears hiding from the Nightmares myself.
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Blood leaks from my hand as my nails push into my skin just as I step into that corridor of my mind where the Councilmen lie. Quivering flesh of dead people line the walls as I step through that fateful door. The one that led to me being banished.
Typically, I come here for Cirn, Niyte, or Bahto, the least terrifying Councilmembers. Yet, right now, I am looking for someone else.
I was always allowed to wander the High Table as a child, a uniqueness to me and one other due to the virtue of being the Viceroy's son. But after walking into a sacrificial ceremony to the long-dead Ytrial, where my father removed my mother's head and ripped out the unborn sibling within her stomach, I've never been the same.
My breath hitches as the scene repeats once more. This time, unlike any other, I'm forced to gaze into my father's eyes, his chuckle resounding both inside and out as my mind nearly shatters.
"It seems you are afraid. Better a dead son than a coward."
I can hear my father take a step forward as I reach deeply, skipping past the man of Phantoms, ignoring the female beside him, and locking gazes with the man above him. Ytern. The Warmaster. The Council Leader. The owner of the Pale Cavity, the strongest Arca in existence.
Looking at him like this only gives me a sense of discomfort; the man not doing much during the ceremony and one of the few who don't innately terrify me. I would conjure him more often if I could, but I simply can't. The weight of his presence is far too much to bear, even for a split second.
But as I stare at him, I push harder, stepping further into the circle of madness. The Councilmembers dance around me, my dead family before me, as I squint my eyes to not see them.
I can feel my father getting near in the fog, but I ignore it. Instead, I focus and compel myself further, extending my arm toward the Warmaster even as I feel pinpricks on the back of my head.
For years, I've struggled to merely open the door of this room. Only in the last two have I managed to enter. Never before have I come so far. Yet, as my fingers are an inch from the wielder of the Pale Cavity, something stops me. A crying comes from below, the mournful call of my mother.
"Help... Ahbram... help... it hurts. It hurts so much. I know I've been an awful mother, but... even if you don't love me, save your little sister."
My gaze turns toward her, locking onto the woman whose head is removed from her body. And I try to pull back as a phantasmal blade touches my throat, but I can't.
"Ma..."
A small utterance leaves me just as I realize where I am, pain coming from my neck as my father cuts it open. I'm not in this room. Not anymore. I haven't been for half a decade.
I'm sorry, mother. I'm sorry, Arhen. I can't keep looking back.
I twist my gaze forward, staring right at the abyssal watch of the Warmaster.
And as I gaze unto him, the pale abyss, he stares back. And it's not his phantasmal, mental image that looks into me. Instead, I can feel that it is him. Really him. The disposition and presence are unmistakable, a mountain among trees. The calmness to bear any storm and make the phenomenon itself stutter. In his hand lies the Pale Cavity, a split open heart frozen to eternity. I reach forward and tap a quaking finger upon the white frosted heart.
As I do so, everything changes, my surroundings shifting as I reappear inside a long wooden building with a roundtable in the center of light blue wood.
Why am I here? In The Roundtable? After all my time with humans and my recent trip to The Cabin, I figured that's where I'd go from now on. But apparently, that's not the case.
Shaking my head as I know what's happening yet refusing to believe it, I step forward toward the scroll on the table with unimaginable words.
Congratulations, Nightmir. You have displayed an overwhelming pure resonance to the aspect of the Eidolon. You have performed an Act of Absolution in your attempt to overcome your own limits. You brought yourself to your very limit. And then one step further. Again and again, until your very mind began to collapse. But within that collapse and stress, a diamond emerges from both you and your Sigil. And so, may your Nightmir Sigil shift into a purer form, for you, the soon-to-be Eidolon, have performed,
The Eidolon's Absolution.
You have prematurely resonated with a future step along your path, and as such, your current Sigil shall shift its Absolute Form to match it just as it shifts to better match you. It will never be the same again, and neither will you, Nightmir. Like an old memory recalled after a millennium of ignorance, your Sigil shall now be more powerful, more vibrant, and purer.
From the Nightmir you once were, now, you are the Resurging Nightmir. One who uses their fears to impose their own reality. A man, twice broken, now with a horizon to pursue.
With this new form, your Sigil shall grant a new strength. A new aid to you in your long journey. One that is premature yet effective.
Your refusal to succumb to your fears yet rejecting to face them has only made them more emphatic. You resurge from the depths of your mind after years of suffering and languish, but you are not the only one to return. With deep enough resolve, your fears return the real.
The form of your Sigil shall now be revealed to you, as it is more pure and effervescent than ever before.
A shiver runs down my back at the potential of what was just bestowed onto me in my Absolution. If I can make the fears real... then... no. Fucking no!
I flail my hand forward as I try to push away the scroll, but I only succeed in exiting The Roundtable, my entire body tensing as I return to my body. I about piss myself as I feel the pain in my neck again.
A quake rushes along my whole self, almost buckling my knees, as a presence appears beside me, a foot tapping the ground softly.
I open my eyes with shaky hands, fearing what I might see beside me more than the blade to my neck, and that fear becomes a reality.
Beside me is one of the Paramounts, one of the ten strongest living things. Stalwart Spine, Ytern, the owner of the Pale Cavity. Even if some may say he only earns his spot because of our ancestor's heart, that doesn't matter to me as my neck stops bleeding, his gaze alone sealing the wound. Virgil is also beside me, but the man is completely frozen, unable to even react with these two before us.
My blood stops flowing as I catch my father lock eyes with Ytern, my mother's killer, taking a step back.
"What are you doing here, Warmaster? Don't you have more important things to do? What happened to your trip into the Chill?"
My breath stops as I see Ytern, a relatively short Nahullo at only seven feet tall; he looks around for a moment curiously before answering with a wave of his hand and a swirl of crackling Ether, dispersing all the fog around. Such a vague motion renders all of Blightraven's struggles null within a thousand feet, everything else returning to my sight.
Thankfully, or maybe worryingly, no one else is within the region cleared.
"I felt the gaze of a child upon me. But unfortunately, it seems it was your lost one, Viceroy. I was hoping for another candidate."
My father nods, then tries to continue what he intended to do, killing me.
"Yes, it was. Now shouldn't you go back to the Chill? I can handle this. A Warmaster shouldn't lower himself to these depths."
I can feel Virgil beside me trembling as well. We are both under the pressure of two figures whose powers are beyond our comprehension, both clashing slightly. My father seems to want to kill me, but the Warmaster is stopping him for some reason.
"Hmm."
Ytern looks around the vastness of Starkbluffs, his gaze running along the rocks before pausing on a spot within the fog far away. Irham keeps trying to get him to leave without being disrespectful. The slimy bastard.
"Here, I'll send you back with a carriage. I'm sure you're tire--"
"Hmm... Who told you to invade the Bado?"
Ytern cuts him off midsentence, the Warmaster making the Viceroy stutter. I almost smile as I see my father lose his cool for the first time as he tries to weasel his way out.
"Well, you see, I took it upon myself. I saw a great opportunity, and---"
"War is coming, Viceroy. You know that. Why provoke more enemies? Cold begets cold. The ones who escape today will come for us one day."
My father keeps trying, unwilling to give up, as he spreads his hands.
"That's true, but we need as good of a defensive position as possible, don't you agree? Starkbluffs is far better than our home in the Frozen Wastes. And Eli Weiss agreed to not counterattack should we help slay the Prime's only faithful dog while the old man has isolated himself. We need all we can get for our candidates, and do all that is possible to remove the others."
This time, Ytern lets him finish his sentence before turning to me. His very gaze makes me shake to my core. I can feel even the Ether within my body stagnate and refuse to obey me.
How did I conjure him? What the fuck?! I just looked at his mental image!?
"And what do you think, child? You are of us, too."
Shellshocked at being addressed by Ytern, the Stalwart Spine, I struggle to even eke out a sentence.
"M--me? What do I think?"
Ytern nods, his head dipping toward me in solemn gratitude.
"Yes. You conjured me, and I heeded the call, though I could have refused. Your connection to those you invoke seems far above your father's. An impressive feat. What do you think about the coming war?"
I pause for a second as I try to understand what he means. The coming war? What war? I know things are getting more chaotic in the human lands, but shouldn't everything be as expected in the others?
"I'm sorry, I don't understand. What war?"
Ytern looks out west, his gaze slightly tilted south toward the vastness of the demonic wilds.
"Fate is converging, Sigils are aligning, and The Roundtable, The Cabin, or however one puts it, is coming close to collapse. Soon, there will no longer be a guide as the old one awakens. Deep inside our bones, the powerful can feel it. Time is running out to leap into the sky. Three Angels have risen in the past week, a number equal to the year prior. And I can sense another about to ascend in the east. How do you view this war, child? Will those around be allies or foes? As the whirlwind encloses, who can be trusted? As the legions rumble, who will refuse their call?"
I stutter out an answer as I barely fathom his meaning. The Warmaster is even older than the human's oldest, the Prime, as Nahullo live longer naturally. His years have an untold amount of experience flowing between every word.
"W-W-Why are you asking me this? Why do I matter? There are thousands stronger than me."
Ytern turns from the horizon and kneels slightly, his gaze focusing on my trembling pupils.
"Because your emotions are powerful, Ahbram. More potent than any I've seen. They are so dense that I could feel your call from thousands of miles away. Your call wasn't for me; it was simply for my phantom. But so deep was the emotion, it became more. I can feel your tremors, your fears. Your father would tell you to remove them, to banish the emotions."
Ytern stands upright as I see my father behind him glowering, unable to do anything to the Warmaster because of his overwhelming strength.
"Emotions give us sustenance, child. Without them, we are but beasts. So feed your fear, stoke it, embellish it. One day it will grow large enough to devour the world."
I pause and stare at the living legend, a man who has gone toe-to-toe with the best and lived. He turns and barks out an order to my father without any room for negotiation.
"Have all Councilmen in Starkbluffs clear the Fell Omens near. I don't want any of the Mother's corruption in our new home. Bury the fallen with their family ice. Stop your hunt. Those who yet live have earned it. They will repay the favor one day, for the Pale Cavity mandates it. Another candidate exists. He will return to us when the time calls for it."
Ytern finishes his speech as I feel a rumble flow through me, golden ichor emerging in the air that wraps around my neck before disappearing. Then, the Warmaster takes a single step before vanishing, the rock below crunching deeply from his movement.
Once he's gone, I see my father stare at me, frustration, disdain, confusion, and even surprisingly, a sparkle of pride in his eyes. Then finally, he turns away with a harumph, walking away toward the cloud of darkness in the direction of the army locked in combat with the Motherbound and leaving Virgil and me as we collapse onto the ground.
"Not too bad... not too bad."
Virgil curses at me as the man breathes for what must be the first time in minutes, his face blue and purple.
"Your family is even more fucked than Wyatt's."
I can only dryly laugh as I feel my mind begin to shut down, the Nightmares demanding their compensation.
"Yeah. It's why I haven't talked about it."
The last thing I see before I return to those endless halls of malice is Virgil shakily standing and grabbing my collar. Then, as he drags me and I drift off, the man sighs.
"Ah, now, this feels normal."