While Alaric's group struggled through the swamp mud, which began to boil under the weight of cosmic changes, the capital "Ocasia"—the pearl of the seven kingdoms and the jewel of the human crown—was witnessing a transformation that even the most ominous priests dared not record in the books of heresy. The golden clouds that emerged from the horizon were not merely a weather phenomenon, but gelatinous entities of pure light, settling atop the city's minarets and palaces like a celestial octopus wrapping its arms around the necks of stone and man.
In the heart of the city, night had turned into perpetual day—a day lacking the sun's warmth and the mercy of shadows. It was a blinding, white light, cold as a surgeon's blade, leaving no corner uninvaded and no secret unrevealed. The inhabitants, accustomed to taking shelter behind their impregnable walls, found themselves naked before this light, which did not initially burn skin but began by absorbing "will" from the eyes, turning screams into dead silence.
Inside the "Hall of the White Throne," where the majesty of kings had fallen under the weight of fear, King Leonard sat on the cold marble, not as a ruler, but as an orphaned child who had lost his compass. His personal guards—the elite who had sworn to protect him unto death—did not fall by swords, but turned into rigid statues of white salt the moment the particles of golden ash falling from the hall's cracked ceiling touched them. Their faces froze in a single expression: eternal bewilderment before a grandeur that humans could not bear.
In the center of the hall, where Merlock once spun his shadows, stood three towering entities clad in armor of liquid crystal that reflected an unquenchable light. Their faces were not human; they had no mouths to speak, nor noses to breathe, but were smooth surfaces with a single, enormous "eye" in the middle, radiating a light that stole the soul before stealing sight.
The central entity spoke, its voice emanating not from a human throat, but reverberating like thunderous echoes inside the skulls of everyone in the city—from the king in his palace to the beggar in his alley:
"The accursed lock has fallen... the shadow that veiled your sins from the scales of eternity has crumbled. We are the 'Keepers of the Covenant.' We have come to reclaim the earth from the filth of mortality you have wrought. Purification is not punishment, but a return to primordial purity... and purity requires the erasure of impurities."
The "courts" began in the public squares without warning. There were no judicial platforms, no indictments. The Keepers passed among the people with steps that weighed like mountains, and whomever they found in the depths of their hearts an atom of "Ash-blackness" or a thin thread of betrayer's remorse—light would burst from their eyes and ears until their bodies burned from within in solemn silence, turning within seconds into fine golden dust that rose to the sky to feed the hungry clouds.
In a dark corner of the palace, Azrael (the Mask Maker), who had slipped away secretly from the cave following the call of curiosity and madness, watched the scene from behind a torn velvet curtain. His trembling hands held a piece of cold silver, and his lips muttered rapid words as if they were a survival incantation:
"They have returned... the 'Angels of Nothingness' that forgotten legends warned us about. Merlock, that clever accursed one, was not evil by chance; he was trapping them with his disgusting black magic, feeding them our slaughtered souls as offerings to keep them in their distant sky. Now that Alaric has broken the chain, there is no one to satisfy their hunger for absolute perfection. And perfection, in their understanding, means emptiness... and emptiness means we all fade away."
Suddenly, one of the Keepers, standing in the great square, turned toward the palace with terrifying mechanical precision. The entire city felt a violent tremor as the Keeper raised its crystalline hand toward the high minarets. In that moment, a scream erupted—not from humans, but the scream of "metal" as it melted, the scream of "stone" as it crumbled under the weight of immense spiritual pressure. The minarets that had embraced the sky for centuries began to melt like wax, pouring their molten substance over the heads of worshippers who had turned into golden statues before the lava touched them.
Many miles away, amidst the mud of the dark swamps, Alaric suddenly stopped as if struck by lightning in his spine. He fell to his knees clutching his chest, the stone tattoo on his body burning with a golden color as if being branded by a blade heated in sacred fire. He looked toward the horizon, toward the capital, and did not see the Ocasia he knew; instead, he saw a colossal mass of light swallowing the horizon, as if the sun had fallen upon the earth to erase every shadow.
Alaric spoke in a terrified tone Elianor had never heard from him:
"They are reaping them... they make no distinction between executioner and victim, between oppressor and oppressed. To these entities, every pulsating atom of life is 'filth' that must be erased for eternal silence to return. Merlock was a chain... and I, in my ignorance and my quest for truth, have broken that chain."
Elianor gripped his shoulder tightly. Even though the light from the horizon was blinding her sight, her insight burned brighter. She spoke in a resolute voice that cut off despair:
"No time for regret, Alaric! If these Keepers are the 'light' that kills, then we need the 'original darkness' that protects. Alaric... the Plundered Crown in the Whispering Mountains is not just a symbol of sovereignty; it is the weapon the 'Keepers of the Covenant' have feared since the dawn of time because it has the power to 'incarnate shadow.' We must reach there before the entire continent turns into a silent golden cemetery."
They broke into a frantic run, the golden ash beginning to melt the rocks of the path beneath their feet, turning the world around them into a surreal painting of fusion and deadly beauty. They left behind an entire civilization being burned in the name of "purification," knowing that their coming enemy possessed no heart to be stabbed, but rather a "holiness" that must be shattered.