Gilgamesh entered not into a room as he expected, but a great hall. Barely lit and fully enclosed, the floor, walls, and dome roof were made of solid stone, all deeply engraved with intricate patterns. It was the same as any other ritual room, but this was of a grander scale than he thought possible.

  He glanced around at the hundred or so other members of the clan waiting within as he walked to an inconspicuous spot between the outskirts of the crowd and the very center. It seemed roughly equal in number between the genders, across several generations. The only common theme seemed to be that they all wore pure white robes, meaning they all possessed the clan's holy bloodline.

  Gilgamesh's gaze deepened. Whatever was about to occur was of even greater severity than he had been readying himself for. Just as he had settled in place, he glanced to the side and his eyes widened at the sight of Marduk standing calmly within the ritual grounds.

  Torches that lined the walls lit themselves around both sides, one after the other, to reveal a gathering of Elders on the balcony overhead. Most of the other scions within the ritual circle looked around at the audience above, but Gilgamesh was fixed on only one.

  A man with long, matted black hair, bronze skin, and sunken eyes opened strangely wide. Lugalbanda, the current head of the Zoraster clan, and the father of Gilgamesh, Marduk, and many others.

  His words were law, his decisions the duties of all who bore the Zoraster name, but rarely did he show himself. Not unless it was for the Prophecy.

  “You stand in a Crucible Ritual.” Lugalbanda spoke. His stony face barely moved, and his detached tone was as haunted as his expression.

  Gilgamesh steeled himself, as he had heard of it before. It originated from the concept of a Gu Jar Ritual from the east, a form of dark sorcery where many venomous creatures were sealed into a jar and made to devour one another until only one remained. The survivor would acquire all that belonged to those who had perished and gain a poison beyond compare.

  All but one of these one hundred members gathered were destined to perish, all for the sake of the one who survived. Gilgamesh looked to Marduk once again, now with even greater intensity.

  It was inconceivable that the clan would allow their strongest and most talented scion to become mere material for another, which meant this ritual was surely arranged for his benefit. Most of the other scions seemed to recognize this fact as well and placed all their focus and vigilance onto Marduk.

  "...This is good." Gilgamesh thought.

  The bulk of hostilities would be directed at Marduk, as he was by far the biggest threat. Easier for Gilgamesh to survive an organized war than a chaotic fray. Gilgamesh briefly wondered if something had changed within the clan to take such a drastic measure, but he pushed the thought out of his mind as soon as it arose.

  The Crucible Ritual gave the last one standing everything. It could all be his. The bloodline and the acknowledgement of his rightful place in the Prophecy. All he had to do was be the one to survive.

  “Kill your kin.” Lugalbanda spoke once more. “Devour them whole. Only then will the Light become.”

  Lugalbanda raised his arms out with strained reverence. “Fulfill thy fate.”

  All at once, the fire torches snuffed out, and the vast net of engravings shone a faint red. Then chaos erupted.

  Instantly, the stone hall fell into merciless barbarism. The weakest and most unfortunate of the scions were mangled and ripped into parts by invisible forces. So sudden was the brutality that even the most hardened of combatants would have jolted into action, but Gilgamesh remained perfectly still.

  He glanced around as indistinctly as possible as he assessed the bouts of single combat closest to him, and started to lurk closer to one of them. A middle-aged man with his back turned to him strained as the head of the woman he faced was ripped from her body. And Gilgamesh sank his dagger into his skull.

  He eased the body to fall quietly and took stock of his surroundings again. No one else seemed to have him in their sights, so he carefully lurked away to another area.

  The elation and relief of victory stalled a person’s focus for just a brief moment, and that would prove even truer in a battle to the death. Striking in these moments would be the only way for him to win.

  For that same reason, rather than seek an empty space and risk notice, Gilgamesh chose to remain in the thick of the fray to hide among the chaos, and only struck when he needed to.

  It was not necessary for him to kill all the others himself. The only reason he did was to eliminate those whose attentions were freed by victory so that such attention could not fall upon him.

  Gilgamesh set his sights on another such target, but as he closed the distance, an elderly woman ran through the space in front. Her grim expression lingered behind her for a moment, but as she turned to focus ahead, her eyes caught his own. And she sneered.

  Gilgamesh threw himself to the side as something struck past. There was no impact upon the stone floor nor even the sound of anything cutting through the air, but Gilgamesh knew it was there.

  He could not see the hands since he had not awakened, but most scions of the clan were careless fighters. They gave up the movements of their angels with the intentions of their eyes. Something he had learned to read after years of harassment.

  Still, that was only a small advantage. Yazatas were much stronger than even awakened Magi, and most importantly, unkillable. He didn't stand a chance against them directly.

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  Gilgamesh jolted to his feet and fled through the fray. He needed to create distance between them.

  "Heretic!" The old woman shrieked, her hostility latched onto him out of spite and malice rather than necessity.

  She was faster than him, despite her age, and reckless in her pursuit. Gilgamesh knew he would get caught at this rate. He hurriedly searched through the quickly thinning fray and found something he could use.

  A boy no older than 12 or 13 had just finished what seemed to have been a desperate fight, and was distracted. Gilgamesh lunged for him, not with a dagger but a hand, and threw him into the path of the elderly woman.

  "Move, boy!" The elderly woman roared her shrill command, but that only heightened the boy's sense of self-preservation.

  Gilgamesh watched as the elderly woman halted in her tracks, as she was forced to defend from an invisible attack. It took her only a moment to commit her full efforts to eliminate the opponent in front of her first.

  Panic spread across the boy’s face as he quickly realized he was outmatched. Just as the woman’s face stretched deeper into a toothy sneer, her eyes flittered to the left as Gilgamesh approached with a silver dagger raised high.

  He stole her focus for only a moment, but that was enough. Something took hold of her leg and snapped it in half. The elderly woman collapsed with a shrill scream, and that was another moment too many. She did not get a third, for something grasped her head, and mercilessly crushed it into pulp.

  Gilgamesh threw a silver dagger at the boy with perfect timing, but to his shock, it clanged off the air, and the boy turned to him with a wicked smile.

  Without hesitation, Gilgamesh fled. But the boy pursued. Gilgamesh tried to use what few fights still remained to lose him, but it simply wasn't enough. A man crashed across the ground in front of Gilgamesh, which slowed him for just an instant, and a heavy force bashed him to the edge of the hall.

  Gilgamesh forced himself upright in complete defiance of the pain, but it was too late. The boy had already cornered him.

  “Nowhere to run now, demon.” The boy mocked.

  Gilgamesh thought fast. He made a show of his intention to launch a desperate charge at the boy, but just before he took his first step, he suddenly jolted his face to the side with a look of extreme vigilance. On nothing more than reflex, the boy's own focus drifted to that direction, and in that opening Gilgamesh threw a hidden dagger into his throat.

  Blood splattered his clothes and the ground beneath as the boy reeled back. Eyes filled with hatred glared at Gilgamesh as if to curse him in place of words, but those eyes soon lost their vigor. His limbs lost theirs next, and within moments, the boy collapsed, still forever more.

  Gilgamesh caught his breath, then walked forward to retrieve his bloodied dagger. His body was weary and his mind strained, but this was no time to rest. He had to keep moving.

  “Oh, you’re still alive?”

  Gilgamesh's gaze veered left just in time to see Yazata arms rip the last of the other remaining scions apart. And he could see them, just faintly. Arms of translucent gold, although he still could not see the angel behind.

  Partial Materialization, a feat few in the clan's long history have accomplished, and proof that one's power was beyond the norm.

  Marduk flung one of the torn bodies at Gilgamesh without warning. Gilgamesh lurched away, but it clipped his shoulder and sent him crashing to the floor. Pain coursed through him from both impacts, but he forced himself to his feet immediately.

  Golden Yazata arms reached for him as he darted straight back. Sheer speed and urgency caused him to trip, which proved fortunate as the arms passed right over him.

  Gilgamesh sprang to his feet and fled, but Marduk merely walked after him without the slightest sense of urgency.

  “All men are given their fate the moment they are born. Why bother with the futility of denying what will surely be?” As Marduk spoke, his angel arms grabbed more corpses from the ground and hurled them after Gilgamesh, who just barely dodged each time with pathetic desperation.

  “Of denying duty.” Marduk threw another. “Purpose.”

  Gilgamesh threw a dagger as he flung himself away, though that silver blade was effortlessly blocked by the arms. But Gilgamesh did not give in to despair. He fled once more and snatched another dagger off the ground.

  “What purpose do you serve?” Marduk asked. “You are nothing more than a pebble in the path, desperately clinging onto a name you do not deserve.”

  Gilgamesh was forced to halt as a corpse sailed just past him, and a golden hand grabbed his arm. A sickening snap echoed through the stone hall as the yazata broke it. The dagger slipped from his fingers, and Marduk flung him away.

  “Accept your fate.”

  But Gilgamesh rose again, despite the pain, and continued to run. The luster of resolve, of ambition in his eyes had not diminished in the slightest. Rather, it had only deepened.

  “Pitiful…” Marduk’s confident composure did not wane, but there seemed to be a change in his tone.

  Both Yazata arms reached out at once, and in that opening, Gilgamesh threw the silver dagger he had been concealing from the start, straight down the middle. The timing was perfect. His aim was perfect. But Marduk merely raised his own hand, coated in gold, and caught the blade between his fingers.

  Gilgamesh had no time to react to the failed attempt before the Yazata arms snapped his legs in half. A sharp groan of sheer agony slipped through his gritted teeth, but still he did not stop.

  His one good arm thrust out, and he desperately pulled himself across the stone towards another silver dagger as fast as he could. He reached for it, but a golden hand grabbed him by the throat first and hoisted him high into the air.

  "Why do you not see that I am doing you a favor?" Marduk spoke as Gilgamesh choked on the Yazata's grip. "You were given false hope. Told you could be something you are not. Made to suffer and despair as you toil towards a light you will never reach."

  Marduk’s expression turned serious. “I am the only one who can be the Hero. That name was meant for me.”

  Defiance and wretched indignation radiated from Gilgamesh’s eyes. He struggled to break free even as the life was being squeezed out of him.

  “...You really are just a golem, aren’t you?” Marduk saw he would never accept fate. “Suffer no longer, brother.”

  In that instant, an almighty light filled the world. A transcendent light of desolate warmth. For a fleeting moment, the image of the Eternal Flame appeared within Gilgamesh's mind. And with the next, he found himself within the vast expanse of starry space that seemed to stretch on without end.

  The hand around his neck was gone, as was the pain that had wracked his body just a moment ago. He stood fine on his own two feet, surrounded by countless amorphous silhouettes.

  Before Gilgamesh could think, a brilliant light shone in the distance up high. From it emerged a towering woman of beauty and bearing no mortal could ever hope to match.

  Her body was like a sculpture of mismatched stone, fused together with golden lacquer. A banded crown of gold covered her eyes, and red blood streamed down her cheeks that seemed to glimmer like gemstones against her marble and onyx skin.

  It was, undeniably, to Gilgamesh, the visage of a goddess.

  "Rejoice, o' wretched souls adrift." Her voice washed over him like a river of honey. "Refuge, thou hast reached at last."