Zenith Online: Rebirth of the Strongest Player

Kieran stood within this strange black space, in an area not quite the Darkness Below but existing right outside its edge, skating its periphery in some fashion he still couldn't fathom. 

Much like he couldn't fathom how he had walked into this place.

'I feel like you're lying to me, Flame… just what did you do?'

"My child, you are too cynical. I didn't take you to be a buzzkill fatalist, but you seem more like one with each passing day we spend together. Why don't you just enjoy the now with me?"

Kieran frowned, squinting into the dark with aimless venom. 

The Flame had not manifested itself. If it did, Kieran couldn't tell in his current condition. The Darkness Below was similar to Altair's Lightless Shroud in that way, somehow absorbing all light, even the crimson light of the blood fire he could conjure now.

In this place, Kieran had nothing but time — time to explore and refine as if biding his time and waiting for the perfect moment to strike like a predator. But that wasn't his current situation. 

It was more forced upon him than it was willful action.

Every attempt to convince the Flame to let him out had failed. There was only him… and the Flame in this darkness, which seemed poetic after giving it more thought. 

Sort of like the situation was supposed to mean something to Kieran. Alone in the dark… with the Flame?

Kieran fell black with his limbs splayed, hitting what he assumed was the ground with a soundless thud. The only proof he had landed on solid was the strangely concrete feeling stabilizing his rear.

'Ready to let me out, Flame?'

"So you can ruin everything? No can do. My machinations have only reached a simmer. They must reach an unstoppable boil before you can be let loose."

Kieran inwardly groaned, feeling frustration and overwhelming boredom build in his mind. The Flame was unmatched in its infuriating ways.

'You have imprisoned me here. Dare I ask what for? I am no stronger than any of those people in the battle.'

"You're right. Perhaps you are far from the strongest, but you could be. And that is why I can't set you free. You cling to death like a parasite and absorb it like a sponge. Surround you in too much… and my plans will be ruined before they start."

The Flame's words came as no surprise. 

Even Kieran found it offputting how easily he attracted resentments like he was born to it… cursed by it. No, condemned to be that way. If he had the ability, he would alter that attraction, finding something not so incendiary as a replacement. 

Something told Kieran those efforts would be fruitless, though. 

In this situation, Kieran was a fly drawn to honey, drawn in by its sweet temptation. Only the honey in this regard was a maddening power tasked with chipping away at his reason.

'More like a fly drawn to shit. Because this sucks!'

As upset with the situation as Kieran felt, he didn't let it cloud his judgment or stop his current actions. Though he was speaking with the Flame, most of his psyche was inside his Realm, reconstructing his soul to ramp up the accumulation of mystic essence. 

Before all this had happened, he had been on the precipice of understanding the remaining Supreme Letters in the memory of muted brilliance. The concepts borrowed upon and deeply resonated with many of the lessons embedded in this Trial.

Kieran's perceived version of the Trial's lessons, at least. Perhaps the road of least resistance was his objective, but Kieran despised that option with a heated repugnance. 

Down that road was the Flame's fulfillment, and he sought to defy that and deny the Godslayer. The symbol of his defiance was a testament to that decision.

It was asinine to go against something like the Flame, against an entity with stories related to the Gods, but it was his chosen path. 

As his psyche worked, making deft usage of a Master's Mind and all its improved, superior cognitive functions, Kieran mulled over the Flame's choice of words. 

He couldn't be let free because he would eat up all the resentment being gathered in the area. That meant the Flame had a paramount need for resentments in its next plan. In terms of how it could be utilized outside of making Fiends… that required a glimpse into Ravaged Plain's birth.

It was a grave loss for the Wailing Sierra, but that perhaps wasn't why its wails had become so egregious. Kieran could not know if its cries were once tame, but they were daunting now.

Kieran's mind churned in two places, in the mystical and in the baneful. His thoughts drifted to the Citadel of Resentment and the Ruined Bastion. If the Creatures of the Dark could spill from its bowels, both constructs belonged to the Place of Bane.

They had emerged from the absence of the Screaming Night.

'Wait, no. That makes no sense. Its absence shouldn't mean anything because the Screaming Night is not indigenous to Xenith. It had to be brought here. Maybe? I don't know…'

He felt he had all the pieces, but they were a disparate mess, like a jumbled puzzle framed with congruent themes capable of unification. Kieran did some mental math, his expression growing more engaged as he moved his fingers beyond his senses in the stagnant air.

He mimicked Agatha's usage of mystic essence to write on the air without drawing upon any of that energy. It only had a nominal effect of keeping his thoughts in order.

Through what he knew, Kieran slowly wove a timeline together.

At the time of the grand battle in his vision, the Ravaged Plains hadn't been a thing… but the Screaming Night existed. In the wake of its destruction, something was fractured, likely something that held the darkness at bay.

With nothing but the Screaming Night to feed on, the Darkness consumed the Night, draining it of its chill and might. And once saturated…

'From within the Darkness Below rose the Ruined Bastion and Citadel of Resentments.'

Kieran blanched at the thought of the Flame's meticulous planning. For how long had it been devising this plan? The Flame extracted a win even in its losses — which Kieran assumed the first vision to be, likely a scene from the Failed Reckoning.

If Kieran's assumptions were correct, resentments could be manipulated to summon things from the Place of Bane. 

A question floated into Kieran's mind as he thought of the final battle.

'Does that mean the Flame intends to sacrifice two Boundaries? Is the Place of Bane a Boundary?'

The Flame was ruthless enough to engage in a scheme like that, but Kieran doubted this was all just for the sake of watching Boundaries be destroyed. Pitting them against one another and sparking a war had to be the catalyst for something greater.

A greater summoning.

With eyes of cold rage, Kieran barked at the Flame.

'Flame! What the hell are you trying to summon from the Place of Bane?!'

A maniacal laughter rang out in Kieran's mind, sonorous and deafening. 

"I told you at the very beginning. Perhaps you just didn't listen well enough. A marriage is coming, and it can't happen without Death and Destruction! And a witness to ordain it all. If you haven't put two and two together… you shall be the witness!"

Kieran frowned, ready to refute the Flame, but he was stopped in his tracks. 

Suddenly, a change erupted in Kieran's Realm. 

The Anchor was pulsating violently, spasming as if suffering from thrashing death throes. The Call of the Anchor went haywire, the six chains clashing together in a stringent tune. 

The frequency led to the dreadful cracking of the Anchor!

'Wait… wait. What? WHAT?!'

Despair hit Kieran in a tidal wave. The Anchor was his primary defense against the Flame. Without it… everything was left in shambles!

'Dear God…'

In his mind, Kieran heard sinister cackles increase in number.