Caedis’s bones crumble to nothing more than dust as the wind carries his remains away. The sun is gone, and night has fallen, leaving me in the early hours of the night.

  All that’s left of the Radiant Axis is Elen. I wait for some confirmation that the dungeon has ended, but she claws at the wings that sprout from her back once more. A new halo is flickering above her, illuminating her surroundings one moment, and then flickering out the next. Her body is trying to change to accommodate what it’s trying to create, but her soul is fighting it.

  Elen’s wings sprout from her back, and I pull Clarence behind me just in time. The Leviathan’s able to protect us from a flurry of arrows with ease as they ricochet off of his hardened scales. I feel him coil up my spine, and resting his chin on my shoulder.

  Elen reaches for her bow once more, but her hands won’t close around the weapon. The darkness around us is slick against her skin, crawling up her legs in oily whorls. When she finally looks up, her face is a mess of tears, snot, and dried blood as she forces a smile.

  "I don’t think I can hold it back any longer. If you have to kill me then that’s alright. It’s okay if it’s you,’ Elen chokes, and her gaze meets Terra’s.

  Terra tries to drag himself forward on one arm, clutching the Blade of the Shadewell so hard that his hand grows white. Despite his state, his face is filled to the brim with determination, so I sit on his back, pinning him to the ground where he lies.

  "Kill this, kill that, why does everyone think the only way to resolve these things is through death? We should get a second opinion." I glance over my shoulder at The Leviathan, whose head is gently nuzzling into my neck. "What do you think, Levi?"

  He answers in a series of low hisses. The syllables form a language I don’t remember learning. But I understand him regardless, how couldn’t I? He was mine after all.

  "You really think that’ll work?" I turn on Elen and hold a hand out to her. "Levi, restrain her."

  Elen’s hand wraps itself around her bow, but in an instant, Levi is upon her. He wraps himself around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. Elen tries to resist, but she doesn’t so much as budge as she falls back.

  I motion upwards with my arm, and a small, earthy stool catches Elen. This is followed by a crude table, and another chair for myself. I set Ethel’s grimoire down and flip it open to the page that’s been raked through with a pair of claws.

  "You know, Levi loves his puzzles. If he’s right, then Aurion of the Radiant Vanguard is actually quite different from how he likes to present himself. His true name is Ardain." I look back to Terra, and his face twists into one of disgust at the mention of the name.

  "Terra over there is a pretty old soul. Look at how he flinches every time I say Ardain." I watch as Terra’s features tighten in response once again. "See? Terra knows of him. Whatever Ardain is, he is something old, something that feeds off of the sins of others. We were under the belief that the enemy of this dungeon was the Radiant Axis, but this is not true. The only thing we need to destroy is the sin inside of you. So, I will be eating your sin. With your cooperation, I will extract your sin and claim it as my own. Levi should be able to assist me in keeping it away from Ardain, thus ending the dungeon."

  "You… you want to eat my sin?" Elen asks, blinking at me if she had misheard my words.

  "That’s right. I know, it's a lot to take in, but all you have to do is play along. In a past life, I watched a friend of mine do this many times."

  "I’ll do it, what is required of me?" Elen grunts, and the halo begins to flicker once more as the muscles on Elen’s arms tense up and grow in size.

  "All that's required of you is a story. Your story to be more exact. Tell me about the life of Elen, and what led to your end. The goal of this story is to understand your sin so that I can take it as my own, so please, don't hide anything from me. And Levi? Make sure to hold her tight. If she manages to reach me then you are to slither into her eye socket and lobotomize her on the spot." A small hiss can be heard in response, and I hold my hand under the table. A small bit of graphite forms at my fingertips so that I have something to write with.

  "I can do that," Elen says.

  "Good. Now for the record, please state your full name, and then begin," I say, and flip open to a blank page, readying the bit of graphite I have at my disposal.

  "Hey Clara? Have you seen Isalithe?" Clarence asks, and I turn to him.

  "No, I’m afraid not."

  "I think Sen and I are gonna go look for her," Clarence whispers, and a small bit of flame appears in his hand.

  "That would be good. A lot happened there at the end so she probably just got lost in the mayhem of it all… Sorry Elen, please begin."

  Clarence begins to walk off into the distance, with Sen at his side.

  "My name is Elen, Elen Cromwell. I was born as a quadruplet, but our father didn’t want anything to do with us. He was an alcoholic, and a violent one at that. He would disappear for weeks, sometimes even months on end. Our mom though? She was everything. Kind, soft, caring, and...always quite tired."

  Elen’s voice softens, and I feel Levi’s grip on her lessen.

  "I don’t remember her name, or her face, but I remember how she made me feel. She taught us how to read, how to write, how to run, and how to hide when Father was angry. She worked hard to take care of us as best she could. Sometimes I wished that she had only given birth to triplets so as to lessen the stress she had. All I was, was another mouth to feed, but she didn’t see me that way."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Dark wispy shadows begin to rise out of the ground around us, flickering towards the table in a desperate attempt to claw Elen’s sin out of her body. The process of eating her sin had already begun.

  "Being the girls and the middle children, Evelyn and I were best friends. But she was always… off. She enjoyed hurting things. It started with bugs, and then rats, birds, sometimes stray cats and dogs. I blame my father’s cruelty for that trait of hers, but she was never cruel to people. At least, not until she found her magic. You know how it happens, toddlers find their magic naturally. Cirelian was the strong one, a geomancer. Caedis and Evelyn had both dark and holy magic somehow. Evelyn’s healing was especially potent. She could knit flesh together with the snap of her fingers. What was my innate magic, you might ask? Nothing. No magic, no strength. Just these damned eyes of mine. I was allowed to bear witness to everything, but I was unable to change any of it…"

  "I think I can understand how you felt. Some things happen regardless of what you do."

  "Is that so? You’re still so young though, master. Sorry, I’m getting off track. I wasn’t extraordinary like my siblings, so I had to lessen the workload on mom however I could. I was fast, and cunning. I would often steal from others just so that mom had one less mouth to feed. If at all possible, I’d try and get away with more, but that usually ended in ruin. On an especially unlucky week, I got caught twice and my hand was removed. It was one of the most painful things I’d endured. Thankfully, Evelyn was able to reattach it for me," Evelyn admits, and she diverts her gaze.

  "I’m not here to judge you, Elen. Please, continue."

  "Of course. Even when we were starting, Evelyn refused to heal anyone, no matter how much they were willing to pay. She claimed she needed to inflict pain onto something living first. She said it was the only way her magic worked. People believed her, or at least they played along. What were they to do? She could cure any malady, so if she asked to hurt someone? They would let her."

  Elen’s face darkens. "One night, Father came home in a drunken rage and beat mom until she stopped moving. Even then, he just kept hitting her. I had never seen such cruelty, not even in my own sister. We hid until he left, then went to her. I thought that maybe, just this once, Evelyn would make an exception to her rule, like she had for my hand. But she didn’t. She said she needed to hurt something. We all begged her to do whatever she needed to do to us, but our mom woke just long enough to stop her. So we sat there, crying to ourselves as she died. And then she looked right at me. She made me promise to watch over my siblings, to ensure that they all walked on the right path..."

  Elen pauses, and then she holds her head in her hands before pressing it against the table. Small droplets of water can be seen soaking the stone, and I lean forward, laying a hand on her shoulder.

  "...I failed her."

  A bowl appears on the table now, and its contents are a dark, murky color. I’m unable to tell what the meal is supposed.

  Thankfully, Elen keeps going.

  "After Mom died, Cirelian started working. Hard labor, using his body to make a living. Caedis became a mercenary, and Evelyn healed people for money, but she got worse. She started asking for sacrifices. Animals at first. Sometimes she’d hurt people, but only the ‘bad ones’. Caedis and Evelyn actually found our Father one day. They killed him. Then they brought him back, and killed him again. By the time Cirelian and I got there, there was nothing left to save. His soul had been torn apart so many times that he was nothing. We had to run to avoid capture after that. On the road, we became an adventuring party, the four of us, and we were good at it. We protected each other, and for a while, it almost felt like we...we were a family again."

  Her voice breaks, but she pushes on. "I don’t know how it happened, but we became known far and wide throughout the lands and we were recruited by the Church of Eloria. They made me a Saint, and gave me my very own magic. I finally felt useful, I could help people, and my siblings didn’t have to go hungry. We had a place to stay, but it wasn’t enough for them. They wanted more..."

  "What happened next, Elen?"

  "Caedis and Evelyn became Saints in name only, and started belittling any necromancer they came across. I believe this was due to their hatred of our father for what he had done to our mom. He was a necromancer too, but... It was little things at first. They led smear campaigns, and spread misinformation about necromancers throughout the Eastern lands. Plagues were caused by them, famines were caused by them, anything bad in the world was due to your local necromancer. Soon enough, if a child was seen talking to a ghost, they would be cut down on the spot. Then they started an inquisition. ‘Sinners,’ they called them. They said that ridding the world of sinners was the only way to save the world… Tell me, how many of your kind survived?"

  "It is in the history books actually. Necromancers make up less than one percent of the general populace now in the kingdom of Astrovia. Your siblings nearly drove us to extinction. Thankfully, us Crowsongs get our necromancy from Death, but for someone to be a native born necromancer? That is extraordinarily rare."

  "Eloria… Why did you ever choose me? I tried to talk them out of it. I tried everything. But Cirelian always sided with the majority, and Evelyn… she was just so broken. She reveled in wartime, she loved hurting others. It didn’t matter how, or why, as long as she got to see their pained faces. So one day I met with the resistance, and we plotted to end the war. I lured Evelyn into an ambush where hundreds of necromancers were lying in wait for her, but she was simply too strong. So I was the one that took the shot. I shot her right through her wicked heart. When I came home, Cirelian was crying. His baby sister had died, and as I held him in my arms, and consoled him, I sang a song that our mother used to sing to us. When he finally grew calm, I ran my blade across his throat. I didn’t want to kill him, but I had to. There was no other way to stop them. I hid their bodies so that Caedis wouldn't find them, but..."

  Elen’s body shudders, and her voice is unsteady, but she continues. "C-Caedis caught on. He tried to take me alive, but I knew I couldn’t allow that to happen, so I killed myself. I had hoped that he would follow soon after. I thought if the Axis broke, the world would begin to heal."

  The story is done. Inside the bowl, a meal has taken form. Potato soup.

  "You know, my mother used to make potato soup for us, but it was pretty watered down and sometimes it didn't even have potatoes in it.

  I move my spoon around the murky liquid, and there is a single, shriveled heart floating in the broth, pierced by an arrow tip.

  I blow on the spoon, and take a sip. It tastes like blood, but there’s something more to it. In the depths of the liquid, I see three children staring back at me, along with a motherly figure behind all of them. She’s smiling, and I smile back as I bring the bowl to my lips and choke the rest of the sin down.

  The Leviathan hisses in satisfaction as it releases its hold on Elen, and finds its way back to my shoulder. I can feel Elen’s sin beginning to settle in the pit of my gut. It's hot, and heavy, and alive, and it is mine.

  I look up to see the halo has finally fallen from Elen’s head, and clattered to the ground uselessly. The wings that had been straining to sprout from her back grow dormant, wither away before falling off, leaving two empty wounds on her back.

  I take up the grimoire and record the sin to memory, just as I had seen Talia, the Sin Eater, do seven times.

  Elen Cromwell, Saint of True Sight.

  Siblicide: Greater Pride.

  With this, The Radiant March has come to an end.

  And that’s when I hear the blood curdling screams begin. It’s Clarence. I stand up so fast that I knock my chair back, and begin running to the source of his voice.