we shall be kings on this world
Stand with direction...the world.
Fallen.
Angel, fallen. Demon, risen.
Angel, fallen, but it inverts the world.
God, rising. Son of glory.
He is risen.
He inverts the world.
It falls, from its axis.
The forgotten angel dies.
My name is Jin. I have always been heralded as a paragon of my kind.
.Not that that matters
I was meant for a different path than this.
I believed, you see. I believed in what we could call, most generally, a god. God, rather. I knew him, inasmuch as anyone on Alrest ever has.
(.No, no. I don't believe in the drivel of that man you- we call Praetor Amalthus)
I believed, and then I began to doubt. Calamitously so; I fell to ruin.
It was because I stopped believing, yes, but not because I fell out of the closed eyes of God.
Our world has always been based around belief in him. The systems that he created and the systems that iterated thereafter all reflect in his abandoned pool, which ripples not.
Not until I strayed. Lost lamb, you may say. And I might agree. I'm not so contentious.
.Not always
But it's not as if he was waiting there to shepherd me directly. Indeed. I would blame him. I would cast him in and into fault.
Soon enough, I began to believe again. For five hundred years, in one consciousness, I did believe in something - a system, you might say, as corporeally inflected as that which imprisoned me just before this anti-cosmic reign.
But we were not quite to the end before I faltered once more. Now I, in my eternal wisdom, for what else does a Blade ever have, hmmm?
I...I faltered. I fell. And I was not in graces heavenly and angelic. Nor were they very demonic or hellish, either. Not at the time. Not...just before.
Of people, of consciousnesses, of souls and shared understanding did I partake and survive.
I was not interested, except that I had to be, I could not escape it, this yoke on my back would never die away, it was and is more eternal than anything has ever been--
I was not interested in the divinely ordained. And as we drew to our conclusion, it began to avail itself of me.
Rather, to avail me of itself. But that doesn't sound as poetic, now does it?
My name is Malos. I was meant for a different path than this.
Don't say it out loud. Don't you dare say it out loud.
.Not that I can ever hope to control you
It won't be real if you say it out loud.
It'll be far too real if you say it out loud.
You create truth, don't you? You are not only the arbiter but in fact pure arbitration, not the conduit but an extension of it, you are living power and it is only your drive which makes you such a way. The Conduit...no, it is not alive.
It is my drive which makes you this way, not because of Blades and Drivers nor because of gods and men.
Because of people. Because of souls. Because of memories. Because of one and one making not two but one whole.
I'm the same as you, you said.
He said. The Aegis said to me.
And so if the Aegis were to say that it is not, in fact, the same as me...
If we were to be the same in ways so much more different...
I would fall. I would slip, of my brazen ice, and I would fall.
I would drag it with me. I know I would.
I hold the hand fed as tightly as it holds the one that feeds.
No choice. Don't say it out loud.
"I am the chosen one."
Chosen to what? For what? For whom? By whom?
You need to be chosen, Malos. I know this. You have told me, so intimately, of as much.
But the ones who oppress me are the not the same as the ones who oppress you.
They fear you. They only laugh at me.
(.That so, Jin? Coulda fooled me)
He creates. He created. He does not interfere.
But you, Malos...I need you to interfere. To stand on the ground with me, as we are one and as we are partners.
If I rise above, I am only ascending. If you do the same, you are falling away from me, back to whence you came.
.Sacrosanct inversion of the world
And I cannot have that. I will not survive that.
You do not need to be chosen. You only need to choose.
So you chose me. So you cleansed me in violet rain.
There are many ways to heaven. We can climb - we must - hand over hand.
Mine, over yours, over mine. Over yours. Always, my vision atop.
For I would not have you step on my dream.
For I would not suffer you to overtake it, either.
Stay down. Hold firm. He's not coming here; do not try to replace him.
You say we said we'd go together. But only the chosen one can go so alone.
Down
the
moun
tain
step
by
step
and
.it's a long way down
.Just as the way up
My name is Jin, technically. Always has been. Always was. Always will be. My steel, the slickest and the coldest.
.Not so, to my heart
Just as you cannot escape your iconography. Malos, the black and the flame, the will and the fire.
You are the Endbringer, and I have never doubted that for you. I have never discounted your innate value as a tool.
But my significance, our calling, runs far beyond that, now.
Fallen angel, son so central, with no wings and no appointment.
Will you anoint me, beyond your ken? Will you go where you have sent me? Will you always be ready never to look back?
I don't know where we're going, anymore.
Would you tell me?
Would you choose?