“Luna? Is something wrong?” Sol paused, a worried look on her face.
“It’s nothing. This statue just caught my attention.”
“She kinda looks like you, to be honest. Though I guess that makes sense. The first Oracle would’ve been one of your ancestors, right?”
Lunafreya thought she heard her name being called again. She looked up to meet the statue’s eyes. For a brief moment, it seemed like those stone eyes were glistening with tears. The statue’s outline began to grow indistinct, and Sol’s anxious, repeated inquiries of “Luna?” faded away into the distance.
The gods blessed me with a power and a purpose: to cure people of what ails them.
The voice seemed familiar. Lunafreya felt certain she’d heard it somewhere before. The moment it reached her ears, her surroundings were bathed in golden light. Gone were the ancient murals and floor of stone. Gone completely were Sol’s cries. Ears of wheat bowed in the wind, a field stretching on as far as the eye could see. On every side, the warm color of the harvest surrounded her.
Your devotion shall not go unnoticed. The gods will doubtless be watching over you.
The second voice was that of the first Oracle. For some reason, Lunafreya knew this with certainty.
So who did the voice other belong to? Who was the first speaker?
“Ardyn Lucis Caelum.”
Her question was met with this immediate answer. Aera Mirus Fleuret, first to hold the title of Oracle, spoke directly into Lunafreya’s mind.
“Such was the name of the man I loved,” Aera said, “and the man meant to be our Founder King, ruling over the new nation of Lucis.”
Ardyn? That was who she’d heard speaking? The voice was quite similar in tone to that of the Ardyn she knew, but her mind reeled at the implications. And what was this about the Founder King?
“Ardyn was chosen. He alone was bestowed with the power to heal those afflicted by the Starscourge.”
Lunafreya’s surroundings shifted once again. Now she saw a young woman in the throes of the scourge, chained atop a small wooden bedframe in a shed. Ardyn stood before her, his hand extended. He drew in the scourge, and the young woman was healed.
And there had been others, too. Soon, Lunafreya was witnessing scenes of innumerable lives delivered from the scourge by Ardyn’s hands.
That power, Lunafreya thought. It’s the same as the power I’ve been given. But I’ve used mine only to destroy the daemons. I hadn’t realized it could be used to heal as well.
Lunafreya had brought comfort to the ill during her travels as Oracle. However, the powers she wielded in that role merely bolstered the recipient’s innate capacity to heal. It was a world of difference from being able to remove the root of the scourge itself.
She witnessed Ardyn in his plain and simple garb, on an endless mission to treat the suffering people of his land. Never did he rest. She witnessed his growing conflict with his younger brother; after a disagreement about the best way to govern and aid the people, Ardyn was forced to run for his life. Even near the end, as the scourge ravaged his body, he labored on for the sake of his people. He was the very picture of a savior.
Ardyn desperately tried to contain the scourge that roiled inside his body. He feared that he might someday become a monster, and struggled against the worry that he might lose his own humanity. It was the same battle that Lunafreya had been fighting during these past few days of her returned life.
“Ultimately,” Aera said, “Ardyn’s calling as bestowed by the gods differed from what he believed himself fated to do.”
Despite the fact that he had labored to heal the people of his land―no, because of it―he was ravaged by the scourge, rejected by the Crystal, erased from Lucian history, and imprisoned on the island of Angelgard. There, he was renamed “Adagium” and branded a monster. Entombed deep beneath the rocky shores, brooding over the unjust way he’d been treated, he had millennia to grow and foster his hatred. The woman he loved had been killed before his eyes. His happiness and future had been stripped away.
Nothing matters―none of it. Not the “blessed” gods above nor the accursed kings below. To hell with them all!
His words full of rage and malediction shook the surroundings.
Ardyn had put his faith in the gods and had given everything to his calling. Yet the gods did not heed his pleas. In fact, it was far worse than that―his fate as prescribed by the divine was of unparalleled cruelty.
It was because of what she’d been through that Lunafreya could understand his despair. She had been granted the same power, and she now struggled with the same fears.
How awful, she thought. How could I have been so blind?
“Please, you must stop Ardyn,” Aera begged.
She appeared before Lunafreya now not as a lifeless statue, but as she had been in life. Upon her face was immeasurable sorrow.
“I beg of you. Deliver him from his long years of anguish.”
Aera made no motion to wipe away her tears as she delivered her appeal.
Stay the Usurper.
So, too, the Draconian had commanded. The prospect of stopping Ardyn the Accursed seemed difficult enough. Now she was supposed to allay his suffering? Lunafreya did not know if she was capable of it.
“Why me?” she asked.
There was no answer. When she looked around, Aera was again a lifeless statue and Lunafreya stood right where she’d been before the vision. Directly before her was the pedestal inscribed with Aera Mirus Fleuret.
“Luna?” She could hear Sol’s voice again.
“I . . . ”
“Did that bother you? What I said about you looking like some ancient Oracle?”
Lunafreya remembered having heard such a comment, but it felt like quite some time had passed since Sol made it.
“No, that’s not it at all.”
“So you’re not angry? You weren’t ignoring me because you were mad about what I said?”
Apparently, the exchange with Aera had occurred within a brief instant. She’d seen Ardyn’s past and heard the first Oracle’s plea all in the blink of an eye.
“Are you feeling okay? And don’t lie to me,” Sol warned.
“No. I am fine.”
Lunafreya met Sol’s concerned expression with a smile.
“Come. We must hurry.”
Had she truly had a vision? It had been far too vivid to dismiss as just a hallucination, but the revelation felt too earth-shattering to accept. She didn’t wish for conclusive evidence so much as some sign to confirm what she’d seen was real and to help lead her to the truth.
At the back of the sanctuary was a small room, and inside that was a stairway that led underground. One level deeper into the earth, they found themselves at the entrance to the cavern.