Gazing back at me was a young man with a pale, unhealthy complexion, unkempt purple hair, and lifeless purple eyes with huge bags under them. He looked like someone with only a few days left to live, his skinny physique making it worse, with fatless limbs and ribs almost visible through his skin.
This was me.
I stared at the mirror a moment longer but the reflection never changed. I was Amael, I was him, or was he me, I genuinely had no idea anymore. My memories had blurred over time and I could barely even remember my own face, only my name, Eren.
But none of this made sense. Why was I here, what was I supposed to do? These questions had been circling in my head for the past four hours and the answers refused to come.
Amael Kyren Arenford.
The very character I had hated as much as I pitied. He was a villain, a minor one in the first act and a major one by the fifth, and the only character in the entire game bearing the title of The Catalyst, the agent of Bad Endings.
Going by the treatment I'd just received and the state my body was in, I could already piece together where in the timeline I was. The awakening had already happened, and from the look of things I didn't have much time left.
The awakening was a ritual carried out when a child turned thirteen, revealing whatever blessing they'd received and activating their innate abilities. Since Damian's coming-of-age ceremony was today, that meant three years had passed since the awakening, putting me at sixteen now, which was another problem on its own considering what happened to Amael at sixteen.
I really didn't have much time.
The dark church, Kyneal, was an organization and religious faction opposing the order of Hermit, the gods worshipped across all of Nevel. I remembered reading Amael's biography after his countless interferences kept leading to Bad Endings no matter how many times I replayed. He wasn't loved by his family, at least not by his father or stepbrother, though that didn't extend to his stepsister Christina or his other childhood friends. From the very beginning of the game there'd never been any mention of his mother or how he'd come to be a child of Arenford at all.
But what had truly led to his descent was the revelation three years ago, on the day of his awakening.
Kneeling before a man in flowing white garments who held a grimoire was a younger Amael, his purple curly hair framing a childlike and slightly chubby face, his eyes shut tight as his hands rested on a dark orb.
"Do we really have to do this?" asked a lady standing in the corner, Rachel, dressed in a white tunic with waist-long hair and deep blue eyes.
"It's necessary, we have to know what blessing he bears, only then can we know what we're dealing with," said the man beside her, Duke Arenford, whose face was more mature and slightly reminiscent of Damian's, with styled black hair combed back in waves and fiery red eyes that held a depth that was hard to read.
They were all in the cathedral, which was otherwise completely empty, just these four figures standing in its vast confines.
"You may proceed, Varten," Duke Arenford said with a nod, and Varten looked down into the book he held.
"Heed my call and reveal yourself, make known to all who thou art, and bestow upon your vessel the blessing thou bears, Revelia Vemoth!" he chanted, and the orb before Amael began to glow with an unsettling eerie light, a violent darkness that spoke of something deeply wrong.
"W-What is this?!" Varten stammered, stumbling back.
Sensing immediately that something was off, the other two figures moved from the corner and knocked the orb straight out of Amael's hands. The lady knelt down and steadied the man, looking into his eyes.
"What happened, what did you see?" she asked.
"A demon," he replied.