Chapter 68: What was claimed

Vaeron tried to stand, but ended up falling. She saw the way his face contorted in pain, and her pulse roared in her ears. He was in pain!

“H-Hasn’t he proven enough?” The words tore from her before she could temper them, fear and guilt splintering her voice as she stared down at him. “Can’t this be stopped?”

A sick heat coiled in her chest as she remembered, too vividly, the way the silver woman’s touch had eased him, how relief had briefly softened his expression.

The image turned sharply on her now. He could have chosen release. He could have ended this. But she had watched him refuse it.

The thought would’ve created a sense of relief but the realization hollowed her even as fear swelled suffocatingly.

“I’m afraid not, Lady Anastasia,” The woman responded after a short while, her gaze never straying from the arena below.

Lucrezia turned to her in disbelief giving way to something colder. “Then this—this suffering,” Her voice faltered for a moment before sounding incredulous and faint. “… It was all part of the trial?”

She nodded. “She was the test to proceed; by denying a part of himself. Mortals choose for themselves, but the gods don’t,” She explained dutifully. “We act in accordance with our will, unbroken by fear or desire. What he denied was not relief, but the last echo of mortality attempting to speak through him,”

Lucrezia’s breath slowed as understanding took hold. She never knew denying a part of him was the right thing. Yet at the same time, he was being placed into inevitability.

“At this point, he’ll have to survive under pressure so he would be influenced and his mind can be tested with the next inevitable,”

Oh gods… she thought, her nose burning from the chill of the weather. Worry marred her features, etched deeply as she pressed her hands to her lap, straining her neck for a better view.

Vaeron struggled to get to his feet, still surrounded by the spectating figures who hadn’t attempted to help or move.

“Have you become weak, Vaeron?”

The taunt spread through the entire arena, and Lucrezia dragged her breath at the condemnation that followed. Was this the proof they wanted to know he wasn’t a mortal? By rejecting a part of himself and surviving that severance?

Finally, when he did, his legs wobbled, and his jaw tightened, trying so damn hard to hide the misery within him, and glaring coldly at the owner of the voice.

“Decide which truth you will carry into the trial. Otherwise, declare before gods and eternal hosts, that mortality has shaped you beyond denial.”

His remaining hand clenched slowly, fingers digging into the obsidian floor. His shoulders trembled, not violently, but with the effort of holding himself upright.

Lucrezia wished the detached sensation she felt before the trial began could transform her into neutrality as the others did, so she could survive. Although she wasn’t the person harboring the pain, she felt it in every fiber of her being as did the coldness of his words into her bones.

Suddenly at that point, being a mortal felt like a huge disadvantage, and she wanted nothing but everything to fall into the right places, consequences be damned later. A part of her knew her hope for his survival would haunt her in the future. For now, she didn’t care.

The instrument offered nothing further and god did not speak again either. It was the man who finally broke the silence.

“Pain is what makes you feel,” he said softly, eyes never leaving Vaeron’s face. “It was the closest to love when you were me,” the words trembled with a memory that made Lucrezia feel her nails bite into her palms. Knowing this had been his past and a truth was something that weighed upon her shoulders. H-Had Veximoor missed this important information?

Vaeron straightened, and for a moment, just one, she thought he might fall. He did not look at the god or at the man, and turned to the instrument.

The muscles in his jaw tightened, clearly constraining his pain as the eyes of thousands were focused on him. “I know,” he said, and his voice was hoarse, dragged raw from somewhere deeper than apathy. “You kept me… alive,”

The last word came as a struggle, displaying the veins popping on his face.

The instrument inclined his head and said, “I was made to,” he replied, as if he were the most important thing.

“And that is why you cannot stand.”

The arena reacted before the words fully settled. Without warning, the third figure convulsed into collapse, its form fractured along invisible seams, splitting into lines of dull light that sank into the obsidian floor without a sound.

There was no blood nor spectacle but an absence where something had been, and Lucrezia gasped despite herself, eyes wide as a saucer.

Vaeron turned then, finally, to the man, and their eyes met. “I desired and I learned what it cost. I learned that mercy does not undo necessity, but only makes you carry it longer,”

The man’s smile wavered, pain threading through it like a crack in glass. “You still carry it,”

“Yes,” Vaeron agreed, and as dangerous as hope was, Lucrezia saw the preference coming. “But I will not be ruled by it,”

The second figure bowed his head, a gesture so achingly human that Lucrezia felt her throat burn. When he looked up again, he was already fading, edges softening, form dissolving into the heavy air as though returning to breath as did the first one.

The arena shuddered once more, leaving just the god remaining. The one truth that was an inevitable choice was made.

He stepped forward, almost staggering, though power still rolled from him in suffocating waves. Lucrezia felt it graze her skin, tentative enough to make her shudder.

Finally, when he spoke, breaking the silence, it was not to Vaeron alone. It resonated clearly in the space, the witnesses, and the law that had been waiting since the first trial carved this place into being.

“You choose dominion,” the god said with pride, which made her stomach twist. “You’ve chosen certainty and judgment without fracture. You’ve chosen me,”

When he concluded, the arena reacted and the air seemed to tighten around them. She swallowed, knowing there was no space left to take it back.

He had won, she thought, and an inaudible sigh escaped her lips before she could control it. The noise of the arena swelled around her; their cheers, shouts, and the scrape of boots against stone, yet it all felt distant, as though she were standing underwater. It meant nothing to her now. All that mattered was that he had survived.

“No,” Surprisingly, a voice threaded through the chaos, that familiar cold tone belonging to no other than her husband. And in that instant, Lucrezia’s heart forgot its rhythm. “I choose responsibility,”

The word landed hard that air knocked away from her lungs, and the arena seemed to turn still. She froze in her seat, unable to process what just happened as quickly as the others.

The last figure standing turned. Its expression changed for the first time, not to anger, but to something colder when it looked at him. “You would abandon what made you absolute?” He questioned in disbelief. But in the disbelief, there was a conclusion.

“I refuse what claims to have made me,”

The silence that followed was immense. It took quite a long while for someone or something to break it off when slowly, the god began to crack.

His armor dulled, sheen draining away like color leached from stone. The certainty in his eyes fractured, splintering into something unfinished, and when his form finally gave way, it did so with a final sound like a mountain settling, leaving Vaeron, who fell hopelessly to his knees, a strained groan escaping his lips.

His lack of choice struck her to the core, and even more when he collapsed to his knees again. And this time, Lucrezia quickly jumped from her seat as the others; the woman beside her, Vaeloria, the silver-haired, the entire spectators, and a few Sins, leaving just the creatures with moving marks over their faces, the Nameless King, the scary-looking Sin, and the red-haired seated indifferently.

Her pulse roared in her ears. This was not how choices were meant to go. The woman beside her had said it herself that only one truth could be carried forward. The others would be rejected, severed, and erased.

How then did he reject all? How possible was that? And gods, he was in pain!

Terror etched in those soft delicate features, worried eyes as wide as a saucer fixed on the arena like never before.

“Don’t,” Lucrezia heard the woman speak before she realized she had moved on her feet. Her body had moved of its own accord, drawn by something fierce and urgent that she could not name. “You’ll intrude if you do,” She whispered, and Lucrezia felt herself grounded like a statue despite the contradiction she felt.

Lucrezia believed the woman had unending questions and was as confused as she was, so she didn’t bother asking what was happening.

All she knew was that he had failed.

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