What was the meaning of those days, dreaming of a new dawn for humanity and running headlong toward the horizon? The moment Prodotis revealed his plan to achieve godhood, his closest friend grew fearful and betrayed him. His father and his royal consort, upon whom he had intended to bestow eternal life, had been unable to last until the completion of his secret rites and had departed from this world before him. All that was left to Prodotis was his anger toward Haos—and his hatred toward the Tereans.
But even that had been taken from him—at the scene of his single combat against the representative of the opposing army, a stone thrown by a reckless spectator had felled him, ending his life all too soon.
A dishonorable death. Prodotis’s dream had ended without him ever accomplishing anything. When he next awoke, inexplicably several hundred years had passed. In this age, where neither the subjects of Krios he had sworn to protect nor Haos on whom he had sworn revenge still existed—for what purpose had he been brought back to life?
In this moment, though, Prodotis finally understood the reason for his awakening. Many foes had appeared before Prodotis, only to leave the battlefield again—Tereans and Reincarnators both. In each instance, there was not one hero among them with Nectar or Ichor in his veins. Although the great warriors of this age were known by that same title of “hero,” those who bore it were of a different nature entirely.
“Acknowledge your defeat, Prodotis! We won’t take your life. You are, after all, our hero.” While rallying the fighting spirit of his allies around him, from time to time Dill Steel-Link himself charged forward to swing his sword at Prodotis. Perhaps this declaration of his enemy’s defeat was part of Dill’s propaganda.
Prodotis shook his head and gave his answer. “Nay. I wish to gaze upon you all for just a moment...just a moment longer...” The rain had stopped. The titanic girls surrounding the castle had vanished. The sky was now covered by a blanket of black feathers, and the countless crimson eyes embedded in them gazed down upon Prodotis. They continued blinking, as if hurrying the hero to his demise. Prodotis had already lost the will to fight.
“Father! Father!” A voice draws near. Kranos. My son. All alone, he had knocked aside the enemies gathered against him, opening up a path of blood. His desperation contrasted sharply with Prodotis’s quiet acceptance of his defeat. “I beg you—I beg of you, please! Please fight! Krios needs you, father. I don’t want to be left alone again! After you perished in that dastardly attack from the Tereans, I fought for the return of your remains. Each time one of the Seven Generals fell, I stole back the body and launched it into the sky until finally, I was the only man left in Krios! Father, are you saying that you would have me taste that same torment once again?!”
In Prodotis’s heart, pity welled up for his own flesh and blood. Turning between Kranos and the Tereans before him, he hesitated.
“Pergamon, the revived fortress.” Beyond the ceiling of black feathers in the sky...something occurred.
“Prodotis, what are you trying to do?”
“I no longer have any particular interest in fulfilling my ambitions. However, as a king, I cannot abandon work once undertaken either. Therefore, I think I shall leave the fate of the world in your hands. Soon, Prometheus will activate at its greatest scale yet seen, and surely all people in the Aeros Region—if not all the world’s people—will be forcibly made into heroes. Try and stop me before this is done.”
After speaking thus, the hero suddenly delivered a kick to Dill’s midsection. Dill guarded against this with a newly procured shield, but it was no use. Prodotis’s foot stomped straight through the shield, destroying it and sending Dill flying.
“Pygmalion, carving out the rhythm.” Beyond the black feathers covering the sky, there echoed the sound of something being chiseled away, as loud as a thunderclap. Though no one there could see exactly what was happening, they knew that something had been set in motion.
“What’s going on?” The Reincarnator Repeater was next to stand against the hero Prodotis, but seeing her allies easily beaten down, she looked up at the ceiling of black feathers, adorned with their crimson eyes, and the fading fruition of all the Reincarnators’ science—the Capital Tower. In front of Castle Krios, the looming, half-real Capital Tower began to fade even further out of existence. “What the hell’s going on?” Repeater echoed her own words.
Prodotis was already in front of Repeater. “I want to thank you Reincarnators. If you had not appeared, my efforts to discover a path to godhood may never have reached this stage.”
“Stop fooling around! We’re the invaders here...”
“I welcome you to Redguard, then.”
“I said...stop fooling around!” A high-speed flurry of six punches followed. The hero did not evade these, or even try to guard against them. He simply nodded to Repeater briefly, then walked right past her. Repeater felt a sense of foreboding and ceased her assault. She had broken into a cold sweat, and her right arm, which had landed a solid hit on the hero’s bronze skin, was now broken.
“Antikythera, the computer of the stars.” The sky suddenly brightened as light streamed in through the gaps in the ceiling of black feathers—proof that some intensely luminous body had come into being high in the sky.
The dome of feathers started to peel away in pieces and fall out of the sky. As the charred remains of the feathers poured down upon the ground, the hole in the ceiling began to widen faster and faster.
“Finally, Ixion, the wheel of eternity turning backward.” The surface of Krios was then assaulted by a wave of heat, and the ceiling of feathers vanished without a trace. Floating in the sky where it had once been was a single luminous mass—a sun formed via pyrokinesis.