[ShiroKirishiki]

The Dark Cathedral
The Ruins of Viritas
On the eve of the winter, 2194

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Parchment reaches blackened hands, a raven's caw heralds silence that stretches seemingly into eternity.
Its contents are read, yet not comprehended. They are read again, to the same effect.
Over and over. Again and again.

...what?

The paper quivers in stilled air, the slender fingers that bear it shaking like brittle leaves in the wind—not from anger, but realization too slow and too human.

It can't be...

"You...coward." I whispered to the silence. It wasn't hatred that danced in the air with the scent of roses and iron...it was disbelief.
No...no...
My mirror, my echo...my necessary opposite. The wound that I was supposed to make holy, the trial that was meant to make me truly understand—I'd been robbed of it at that moment.

It's gone.

She'd chosen mercy. She'd chosen peace.
She'd broken the cycle of violence that carved meaning into our flesh and bones.
Mercy was worse than defeat.

Hollow.

"He forbade you from challenge." I murmured to the voices in my mind, those that plagued me as they grew in number with each wound I'd carved. They echoed my wounds, mocked me in my own tongue. "...And you listened."
...why?
I felt it then—sorrow's twin. A bite, gnawing at the back of my mind until it slowly grew enough for me to realize it: emptiness.

It hurts more than I thought it would. It hurts...

The place where my realization should have gone. The vindication for the wisdom owed, vacant now. An abyss that yawns before me as I stand at its precipice. The world blurs into discordant colors and shades, thoughts given shape drift in and out of my periphery. The veil thins, my control wanes for the briefest of moments, allowing Them to surface. Allowing Them to chuckle. Allowing Them to drink in my pain as if it were delicacy.

Wounds...are wisdom.

"Then, I will grant meaning to emptiness.
I will carry it like stone to a sculptor."

Scars are lessons.

My eyes refocused upon the letters writ in dissonant script. They were bleeding together in my presence; ink seeping from my fingertips, darkening the parchment. It was not rage that bled into the words that had given me such pause—no, it was resignation.

It cannot be changed. It shouldn't.

With mechanical precision, I fold the letter. I stride forward, Vesper unable to quiet the crunching of shattered glass beneath me. Upon the altar of the Dark Cathedral, moonlight bathing it in pale glow, I placed her answer. Had it been necessary, her heart would have gone there instead. Beating calmly like a metronome until the silence drank in Ayse's last dredges.

Is it bad that I wanted to, even a little?

"The abyss will be my burden instead.

The place where the echo was cast.

The place where it died."

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The Duel between Yaeka Akatsuki and Ayse does not come to pass.
The ruins of Viritas are spared the spilling of blood.
Yet, the future remains ever uncertain.
A shadowed path shrouded in haze, its destination ever in flux...

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OOC: Duel Cancelled!

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