A platinum window describing the vestige shimmered into Ishiki's view.

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Vestige - Eye of Ruin

Type - Artifact

Rank - Epic

Adaptability - II

Description - [In the shadowed annals of a Nameless Kingdom, there ruled a sovereign who beheld the world as it appeared, not as it was. His kin betrayed him, his throne crumbled to dust, and he lost everything. In desperation to know the truth, he beseeched a God 'Why did truth elude me?' He asked.

The god's reply was a whisper in his ears 'Not everything you see is true, and the truth is something you cannot see.'

Enraged, the king tore out his own eyes and cast them as sacrifices to a corrupted God in hope of power that will grant him vengeance. But he failed to see what it was at the end. Bartering his sight for vision beyond veils. This monocle is forged from the crystallized tears he shed in eternal darkness, a lens that makes one witness what mortals dare not witness.]

Abilities - King's Lament, Truth Seeker

King's Lament - [Target a single entity. Force them to relive their greatest regret, inflicting Mental Shock that ends in either obliterating targets intelligence of direct death.]

Note - This ability can only be used once.

Truth Seeker - [The monocle has high affinity to seeing spiritual things that may drive a mortal to the verge of insanity.]

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Ishiki read the description twice and frowned as he read through it for the third time.

The words settled into his consciousness like sediment drifting to the bottom of a dark lake, heavy and ominous. For once, Ishiki was happy that the system had given it a proper description and not included him as a cruel murderer.

Which in fact he wasn't...

The words in the description left a deep impression on him and rose a myriad of questions in his heart.

To the very least, he felt... fascinated. The parallel was not lost on him. Wasn't he doing the same? He was trying to claw at his reality and figure out the truth beneath Aethelburg's golden facade?

He thought long about the king, why was his kingdom nameless? Why did his kin betray him and Why was he not able to see the truth even after sacrificing his eyes.

It was kind of weird... or maybe he was just not desperate enough to understand the reasoning.

'Not everything you see is true, and the truth is something you cannot see,' he repeated the god's reply in his mind, tasting the bitterness of it like a joke. This reply had drove the king to the very edge of madness and desperation that he even went as far as to seek power from the corrupted Gods.

'Wait?' Ishiki frowned.

Did that mean that not all Gods are corrupted? Or maybe in another context it could be interpreted that the God that answered him was Corrupted as well and the king played right into his scheme.

Anyways... he did not wish to pry too much, into the mysteries of the corrupted Gods. But he was a little interested and paranoid as well to leave it at that.

Even if he didn't want to, there was no guarantee that the God's were not going to interfere into his life, just like the entity of the clearing.

He could be compared to a God in some sense and cruel one at that, Ishiki still hadn't forgotten the scene he saw during his early days in that clearing. The child, restrained by ropes and was about to be sacrificed.

Even remembering it sent a pang of hatred in his body towards the entity that would have led the parents to do something so vile.

Letting out a foul breath, he looked around the park once again. It felt emptier now that the noon had passed and evening was approaching.

'This place is weird...' Ishiki thought, weren't parks supposed to get crowded during evening? 'Still, what is not weird in this creepy place?'

He dismissed the thought with a shook of his head and again looked at the last parts of the description which were a single ability and a note.

'One use only,' he noted, staring at the artifact's limitation. 'King's Lament. A weapon that kills with a mental attack. Poetic, indeed for such a cruel thing.'

And the second ability, Truth Seeker... it could drive one insane. Ishiki grimaced, but was still inclined to try it, just a little bit won't hurt.

He summoned the vestige with a thought.

The monocle materialized in his palm, and the moment his fingers closed around it, a chill shot up his arm like frostbite racing through his veins. The artifact was heavier than it looked—not in physical weight, but in presence.

It was as though he held a fragment of concentrated sorrow, a lens carved from the petrified regret of a sovereign who had lost everything and gained nothing.

The silver rim was tarnished and etched with symbols he didn't recognize—runes that seemed to shift whenever he blinked. The glass itself was dark and clouded with swirling grey mist that moved with hypnotic slowness, like storm clouds were trapped inside of it.

Ishiki raised the monocle to his right eye, hesitating for just a heartbeat before pressing it into place.

At first nothing unseaming happened, it was just like seeing through a dark sunglass. People went by and he couldn't see nothing out of ordinary.

'Is this thing useless too?' Ishiki was honestly about to crash out, but then he slowly moved his head and peered beyond this park and into a building... that was when his eyes widened.

He stood up and walked towards the exit of the park with a terrified expression.

He stepped out of the gate and once again put the monocle against his eye and suddenly the world around him changed.

'What the... what the hell.'

As he saw through the dark lens, he saw tangled webs of pulsing blue light erupting beneath the earth, weaving through the ground like the roots of some impossibly vast tree.

They stretched between buildings, wrapped around lampposts, coiled through the fountain's base and went as far as he could see... the entire Secondary Ring it seemed, was crisscrossed with these threads, a lattice of some incomprehensible power that looked like a spider's web woven by a god.

And all of these webs went towards a single place... that was the Inner ring. They were the foundation of this place... foundation of the paradise where thousands upon thousands of people lived.

A very peculiar question formed in Ishiki's mind. Were these all connected to the Emperor? Was the Emperor actually a immortal that had the powers of a God?

Ishiki yanked the monocle away from his eye, gasping. His head was hurting slightly.

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