Death's End

Chapter 38 - Masterminds

You've done well as an administrator. You could trace the source of the tampering to Caqur, then to us. Truly the pride of our choosing. A voice echoed in her head, causing her, unlike her usual self, to gasp.

Standing in the second courtyard, Fermand did not expect the Cabal to reveal themselves to her when she spent the night further examining the Ritual of Intent. While the wraith was defeated, Mirayoung, Jerius and Holz had disappeared without a single trace. It was all a cesspool of intrigues and suspicions that prompted her to revisit potential clues including the Ritual of Intent.

She opened her mouth to call out the identity that she now knew, but nothing came out as two Sen Guards stood at the far side of the courtyard, unsuspecting. She too, was bound by the Thrall. She swiftly dismissed the guards, ensuring she was now alone in the entire courtyard. If the Cabal were the masterminds, she could not afford letting it slip out even to her closest confidantes and retainers.

"Why?" Fermand said, intoning the word after speaking at last to the masterminds behind the scene. It was all she could manage, standing and feeling very alone in the Dual Cell.

Why, you ask. The voice replied.

"I do not understand," Fermand said.

Beneath the mask she wore over her face was a cauldron of emotions she could not dispel and which threatened to spill out. She felt utter shock, growing fires of fury, and agony of betrayal, all intermixing to become a sum greater than its parts in an attempt to break her emotionless facade.

"You cultivated wraiths to murder so many, but to what end? To initiate the Ritual of Keys?" Fermand said. "What is the madness you seek? New knowledge? Godhood? Destruction of Elaria?"

Every great cause has martyrs, Fermand. Their deaths are in the utilitarian spirit, necessary for our realm to progress.

"Master Zele," Fermand said. "Are you there? Are you complicit in this madness?"

Zele is us. We're Zele. There's no individual now...for the most part. Fermand, how much do you remember about the Ritual of Keys? The Contract Bearers? The spirit-gates between this realm and the netherworld realm?

"There are more pressing matters at hand, Lord Cabal," Fermand said.

Explain to us, Fermand. You seek the truth, and this is the foundation on which the truth is built.

"The Ritual of Keys exposes the spirit-gates for destruction," Fermand said through gritted teeth. "The Contract Bearers protect the gates from said destruction. When the gates are destroyed, spirits from the dead in our realm no longer flow to the netherworld. They accumulate here. And then what after that, I do not know. The Ritual of Keys has never been enacted in history. It's a forbidden ritual that upsets the laws of not just this realm, but the realm after.

You've misunderstood. This ritual is the panacea we seek for the realm. Without it, we'll continue accursed.

"Enlighten me on this panacea and without the doublespeak please, Lord Cabal," Fermand said.

Is death truly the natural order, or have we been deceived since the beginning of time? That's a question we have sought for centuries, and for as long, the answer eluded us until...we discovered a passage to travel to and from the spirit realm for the briefest of moments. And we saw in those moments, the spirit realm is not what we thought it to be.

"The final resting place for souls?"

So we thought, like ignoramuses we were. The realm is not a host like ours. It is a devourer of souls. We're a lesser realm...a farm of souls trapped in eternal servitude. And it's not just our realm. We're one of many that are equally plagued by death. We call this the Imai Curse, the curse of the lesser realms. We seek to break loose from it and progress to become a greater realm, impervious to the devourer.