Sowhere on the Galestine…
A giant island composed of myriad corals of every color slowly cut through the gentle waves of the ocean.
There was a massive tree ford entirely of coral sowhere on this vast floating island. Its trunk was thick and branching like a petrified reef.
At the base of that tree lay a concealed entrance…
Past the hidden entrance was a long, winding tunnel that spiraled deeper into the ancient turtle's shell. The passage was narrow and uneven, and runes glowed faintly along the walls and the floor.
The tunnel opened into a wide chamber. There, a pair of massive stone doors stood sealed at the far end. The room was filled with runes carved along every inch of the place.
Crack!
Sothing faint and ominous echoed from beyond the giant stone doors.
Beyond those doors lay a smaller chamber.
Crack!
The ti, the sound was louder.
A crystal coffin stood at the center of this chamber. It was the source of the noise.
Thin fractures spread across its pristine surface like a spiderweb. Inside lay a middle-aged man. His features were calm, almost peaceful, as though he was rely asleep.
He was unmistakably dead, yet his body showed no signs of decay. The crystal coffin had preserved him perfectly, sustained by ancient magic that kept his flesh whole and untouched by ti.
Another crack appeared.
Then another. And another.
As the coffin continued to crack, the man's appearance began to change. The transformation was subtle at first. The healthy color of his skin faded away, replaced by the pale hue of a corpse. The warmth and vitality that had been preserved by the coffin's magic vanished.
Then his flesh began to shrink. His cheeks hollowed. His eyes sank deeper into their sockets. The muscles throughout the body rapidly withered as though thousands of years of decay were finally catching up to him.
His skin tightened around his fra, clinging desperately to the bones beneath. Before long, it looked less like flesh and more like a thin layer draped over a skeletal structure.
The man who had appeared rely asleep monts ago now looked like a corpse that had been dead for a long, long ti.
And still, the coffin continued to crack, as if the magic preserving him was finally coming to an end.
Until finally…
Crash!
The crystal coffin shattered into countless fragnts. The man inside fell to the ground and imdiately curled into a fetal position. His eyes snapped open, and his hands instinctively shot toward his neck.
For a mont, Aldo Wagner simply lay there motionlessly, his fingers slowly curling around his neck. Confusion filled his mind. And so did fear.
His last mory was of death, of a field of white flowers, of petals drifting through the air, of cold steel flashing before his eyes… and of his old friend, whose body he now inhabited.
He rembered dying. The mory was vivid. Too vivid. His fingers curled tighter around his neck, and his brown eyes flickered with disbelief.
"I… lost?"
A strange sense of incongruity washed over him. He looked at his hand, but it did not feel like his hand. The fingers moved when he commanded them, yet there was a strange disconnect. As though he was operating soone else's body from behind a thin veil.
As though he was a puppeteer and also the puppet.
The weight of his body felt unfamiliar as he slowly sat up. The body obeyed him, but it did not belong to him. Not yet. Not fully.
A lingering sensation remained deep within his soul.
The sensation of dying.
He vividly rembered the mont his head was separated from his spine. The feeling of his consciousness fading. The feeling of his soul traveling and then plunging inside this body.
But above all else, he still couldn't wrap his head around sothing.
"How did he know?"
The Dark King seed to be aware of the Beyond. And judging from the illusion he had woven inside the [House of Mirrors],he seed to know about Wagner's family as well.
Lastly, he knew about Bartholow and the fact that the Cult Leader had always been the founder of the Twilight Brotherhood.
"…How?"
Wagner's brows creased into a frown.
He still couldn't understand. His journals shouldn't have given away any clues about his true identity. It may have led Adam to the abomination residing in the depths of the Dark Valley, but there was nothing in the journals to even remotely hint at his identity as the Cult Leader.
How?
The sa question echoed repeatedly in his mind.
Wagner knew why he had lost.
It wasn't because he was weaker than Adam.
It was because Adam knew more about him than he knew about Adam.
From the very beginning, the Dark King had exploited that advantage without rcy.
First, he revealed his knowledge about the Beyond. Then ca his knowledge about Wagner's past, his family. The mories Wagner had spent countless years trying to bury.
Each revelation had chipped away at his composure. Each one struck precisely where it hurt the most.
And, at last, ca the final nail in the coffin.
Bartholow.
Adam had shapeshifted into Bartholow, the one person Wagner had never expected to see again. The one person whose betrayal still haunted him after all these years.
The sight of him shattered Wagner's concentration completely. His world had turned upside down.
For that brief mont, he had lowered his guard and stopped being the powerful and calculating lich who had survived for thousands of years.
And that mont was all Adam needed…
The Dark King had defeated him not with overwhelming magic or superior strength, but with lies and deceit. Each step of the battle had been carefully orchestrated. Everything had been designed to manipulate him.
"Constantine," Aldo Wagner spat through gritted teeth.
He slowly rose to his feet, his limbs trembling from years of inactivity. He clenched and unclenched his hands several tis.
This body's mana reserves were vastly inferior to his previous body's. He was also physically very weak in this body. And he did not even have a drop of mana in his core.
But what mattered was… that he was still alive.
"There's still more than fifty years left till the planetary alignnt," he muttered under his breath as he dragged his feet toward the corner of the chamber.
He took support of the wall and slowly slid to the ground. He sat cross-legged and quickly stabilized his mind that still echoed with the whispers of the Beyond.
"I'll activate my other contingencies," he said softly. "Depending on the outco of the war, I'll plan my next moves. But more importantly…"
His eyes turned utterly solemn. "I need to find out how he learned about Bartholow."
Wagner took several deep breaths.
Then he entered a state of mindfulness and began replenishing his depleted mana core.
He didn't need much mana, just enough to leave this island and secretly travel to one of his safehouses.
Unbeknownst to him…
At another secluded part of the Coral Island, inside a cave situated halfway up a coral hill, the space suddenly shuddered.
A brilliant flash of light illuminated the dark cave for a brief mont before everything returned to normal.
A few monts later, a figure stepped out of the cave.
His appearance was haggard, and his body was covered in injuries. Twin shortswords were strapped to his back.
He had a head full of raven-black hair, and a small patch near his temple was bone white.
The Dark King's eyes glead with hard resolve as he turned toward the massive coral tree in the distance.
He inhaled deeply and slowly retrieved the Blades of Fulgrim.
Then he silently made his way toward Aldo Wagner.
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