Chapter 66: Severance of Will III

It didn’t take her too long to realize that he’d been the cause of the very first trial.

The thought unsettled Lucrezia more than she had expected, however, she didn’t know what she’d expected. The word seemed important enough that the gods had been forced to create something like this.

Lucrezia struggled to imagine Vaeron at the center of such a history. It felt disproportionate but not very much impossible. What worse could he have done for the gods to construct such for just a trial?

Lucrezia wasn’t given time to sit with it when a movement spread through the arena, cutting through the quiet before she could form another thought.

Below, the figure facing Vaeron raised his head, and the similarity became immediate and disturbing not just in appearance alone, but in its bearing. From the way he stood, to the certainty in his posture, and the absence of hesitation in his gaze, everything mirrored Vaeron too precisely to be a coincidence.

In that moment, Lucrezia believed that this wasn’t an imitation. It felt far from it, like some… alignment, perhaps.

Out of reflex, her spine straightened when his voice cut through the stillness of the arena. “I am the truth that endured,” He started with a voice resonant and unstrained, as if he or… it, whatever the figure was, had recited it a thousand times before disclosing. “The hand that did not tremble, and a will that did not yield. I ruled. I judged. I decided what was necessary and did not ask forgiveness for it. I did not hesitate. I did not regret. I did not harbor,”

Her hands tightened together in her lap when the figure concluded. She swallowed, her nostrils burning from the cold and her stomach knotting at the weight of what she’d witnessed at the start of the day.

Listening to a truth spoken by a creature she had always understood as a Sin felt wrong in a way she couldn’t name. Sins were judged. They were wielded. They were not meant to explain themselves. That was what she had been told, and what she knew as well.

As if that wasn’t enough, a second presence emerged to Vaeron’s left immediately after the first concluded.

This one moved more slowly, wearing no armor. His clothing was simple, worn at the edges revealing the old scars on his hands. His eyes were warm, troubled, painfully alive, looking at Vaeron not with authority, but with a sense of familiarity.

“I chose,” This one said quietly in a way that made her heart clench. “Even when it hurt. Especially then.” Lucrezia’s throat tightened, struck by the discomfort of watching something that should have remained private, even here.

The figure smiled faintly, and what she saw wasn’t confidence, but something she would’ve never believed that a creature once possessed. “I loved,” He continued, and the tone carried the recognition of pain shared. “I doubted. I stopped myself when I could have ended things. I lived with the consequences.”

Loved? That word hit her like a blow and struck her to the bones. H-He loved? She thought. A creature like him… capable of… love?

For as long as Lucrezia could remember, she had been taught that Sins were empty, carved from divinity’s excess and bound to function as all kinds of Punishers. Lucrezia tried to imagine him being in love, but the picture in her mind was almost as scary as the present one.

Her gaze flicked, helplessly, to Vaeron who had not moved, and her heart skipped. His expression remained composed, but she saw the shift in his shoulders, and the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw marred with blood and scars.

The figures before him were not strangers to him in the way they should have been. They were not accusers, nor echoes. They stood too close to something buried.

Fragments, perhaps, or even foundations, whatever it may be.

She had the sudden, humiliating certainty that if this continued much longer, she wouldn’t keep her composure, and the reaction would betray her in front of everyone watching.

A third figure emerged behind him and this one did not look at Vaeron at all.

His gaze was unfocused, with his loose posture, almost careless, and movements precise but unconsidered, like a blade falling exactly where it had been dropped. He bore wounds similar to the ones Vaeron now carried, though none bled the way she’d seen closely when he came for her.

“I obeyed,” He began flatly, and at that moment, Lucrezia couldn’t tell the slight difference between both of them. “I functioned. I acted when acted upon,” His eyes flicked briefly to Vaeron, empty of judgment. “I did not suffer from choice. I did not fail because of doubt.”

The three figures stood equidistant from Vaeron now, forming a loose arc. The arena sealed with something close to certainty when the sound returned in resonance, a pressure that settled behind Lucrezia’s eyes, making it difficult to think without effort.

For the first time, the woman beside her spoke without her asking, her voice amplified without raising in volume.

“These are all true,” She said. Lucrezia felt she was already aware. “They are not illusions, Lady Anastasia. A god, a man, and an instrument,” She pointed out the figures in sequence. “They are not lies even but they cannot co-exist.”

Lucrezia swallowed, silently appreciating the knowledge that all seemed to fit into the pieces she observed. A god, a man, and an instrument. Three truths. Three ways of existing that could not breathe in the same body.

She had the sudden, humiliating certainty that if this continued much longer, she wouldn’t keep her composure, and the reaction would betray her in front of everyone watching.

Lucrezia felt the pressure behind her eyes intensify. The arena was waiting for a response that was heavier than the weight of uncertainty in the air.

For one moment, she let herself stupidly believe he was going to choose the man as his prospect, but as time flew, that thought diminished into thin air.

Vaeron’s gaze passed over the god first. He lingered there only a moment, but it was enough for Lucrezia to feel the chill of recognition stripped of reverence.

Then he tore his gaze, his eyes moved to the man, and something in him faltered for a moment. It was so small she might have missed it had she not been watching him with the vigilance of someone whose survival depended on it.

His jaw loosened and his shoulders sank a fraction, as though the effort of standing had suddenly increased. When he looked at that second figure, the one who had loved and doubted and lived with the weight of consequence, this coldness weighed something close to pain and… bitterness.

Lucrezia’s chest ached.

She understood then, with a clarity that frightened her, that this was the cruelest cut of all. It wasn’t the stripping of power, nor the exposure of truth, but the act of forcing someone to look at what he had once been allowed to choose.

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