Uriel stopped before the great beast, his body largely shattered by the recent battle. His left leg was missing, forcing him to use darkness to create a replacement, as was his right arm. Part of his stone head was missing, and wounds in his stone body released ruby dust. Fortunately, he couldn't feel the pain.
Uriel looked at what was once his old friend with pitiful eyes filled with unfathomable guilt.
An echo of a memory, heavy and lucid, resonated in his fragmented mind as he stared fixedly at Isis. In a corner, ignored by everyone, the evil specter watched everything with a sad and melancholic gaze.
Once upon a time, there was a rebellious princess who dreamed of having many adventures.
The memory struck like a bolt of light in the darkness of his mind. It wasn't the blurred image from the cycles, but the pure and painful memory of the beginning.
One day, a stone saint appeared before her, changing her life.
He saw her again. Not as the androgynous, empty beast before him, but as the young woman with hair like ripe wheat and blue eyes that shone with curiosity about a whole world to discover. He saw her laugh, defy her guardians, grab his stone hand with reckless confidence. "Take me with you, Stone Saint! Show me what lies beyond the walls!"
Both, the princess and the saint, lived many incredible adventures.
They crossed whispering forests where trees sang. They climbed mountains whose peaks brushed the stars. They faced legendary beasts and discovered ruins of forgotten civilizations.
At every step, he was her rock, literally and figuratively. She was his humanity, his reminder of everything good and bright in the world. She taught him to see the beauty in a sunset, the grace in a bird's flight, the hope in every dawn. He taught her the strength of the earth, the patience of stone, the perseverance in the face of the impossible.
But knowing her life would soon end...
The curse. The corruption that spread through her lineage like a stain of oil. She knew before he did. He saw her pale, lose her vigor, find the first dark threads beneath her skin. And one night, under a starry sky she could no longer fully appreciate, she took his rough hand.
"Uriel," she said, her voice a serene whisper that cut to the soul. "If I ever become corrupted... I hope you will be the one to end me. I don't want to be a monster. I don't want anyone else to bear that burden. Promise me. Be my last friend. Give me rest."
The stone saint did not know how to respond at that moment, but he nodded.
He nodded because he couldn't deny her anything. Because in his stone heart, a crack of terror had opened. How could he, who had protected her from all dangers, rise against her? He promised with a nod, foolishly hoping the moment would never come.
And yet, he had failed the princess over and over again.
The day came. The blue eyes clouded with violet poison. The rebellious smile twisted into a grimace of insatiable hunger. The princess was gone, and in her place was a nightmare creature. And he... he retreated. He couldn't raise his hand against her. He locked her away. He contained her. He saw her suffer and transform, and in every moment of clarity amidst the madness, she looked at him with a disappointment so profound it broke his soul more than any blow.
Every time he tried to gather his courage, the memory of her laughter, the sparkle in her eyes when she discovered something new, paralyzed him. He failed. Over and over and over again. The corruption advanced. It became something else, the Great Beast Isis of Ydrat. And his failure repeated not once, but thousands of times, in the endless cycle he himself created to escape the guilt, fragmenting his own mind in the process.
Full of pain, the stone saint faced his greatest failure and, in a broken voice, said...
"I'm sorry," he sobbed, his stone voice scraping like sand on a tomb. "I'm sorry for not keeping the promise I made you. You are my greatest adventure, my only true friend... and my greatest failure. But I cannot kill you. Even now, I cannot bring rest to your corrupted being."
He lifted his head, the flames of his eyes reduced to damp embers of pain. "So, I can only make you sleep. Until I can die. Until I can gather the courage, or until someone else does. Forgive me, Isis. Forgive me for being a coward. Forgive me for not being strong enough."
And true to his words, the stone saint used a powerful, one-time witchcraft that put the beast to sleep, in exchange for a large part of his life and being, his memories, until she awoke.
The spell was a monumental sacrifice. Not only of essence, but of memories, sanity, of his own core. He sealed Isis in a deep sleep inside the castle, and himself in a cycle of repetition and forgetting within the city, paying with his identity and his peace of mind the price of not having to see her suffer, of not having to face his duty. He commanded Soul, Fallen, Gunlaug—fragments of his own power and will—to guard the sleep, and then he submerged himself in cyclic amnesia, condemning himself to relive the day of his failure for eternity.
Until now.
Now, looking at the empty, agonizing creature in the crater, the veil of the cycles had broken. All the memories, all the pain, all the guilt accumulated over millennia, returned to Uriel in a single blow.
The Sacred Fragment remained attached to her. The connection he himself forged with his magic, the one that kept her bound to a painful dream, remained in place. She was not the princess. She was no longer the Great Beast in its fullness. She was the final residue of his failure, an empty echo that couldn't even die properly.
And he, after thousands of years, remained the same coward. Because seeing her there, stripped of all her humanity, even in her complete corruption, he felt he still couldn't be the one to deliver the final blow. The promise remained unfulfilled.
A tremor ran through his form of stone and darkness. It wasn't of power, but of an overwhelming, ancient, and devastating human emotion. The stone, faced with such accumulated sorrow, seemed to want to cry.
However, the promise had to be fulfilled to close this endless cycle that he himself had created with his own hands.
Uriel sighed, a long and weary sigh like that of someone who has lived countless lives, all of which failed one after another, only to fail again.
Uriel took a combat stance. His battle companions, who had given their all despite the scale of the fight, were barely getting back up. Everything would now rest in his hands.
This would be his last cycle. He decided it would all end now. It was time to end his nightmare.