The King Trials 2: Beyond.

~The Ringed Dance~

I draw out the rolled-up scroll from my carrier bag.

Even though I am alone. I still cast superstitious glances around me. I round the vanity and I settle on the backless seat before the mirror. Utterly baffled. Trepidation punctures my chest, filling the hole with angst, worry and fear. With a mere glimpse of my expression, all emotions are etched on my face.

Despite it, I silence my qualms and I unfurl the scroll, smoothing out the wrinkles and the flaps at the corners before I flatten it on the table. The ancient scroll, an aged ivory colour, withered with fissures, the features eroded by time but the quality preserved.

A timeless artefact that bears nothing.

I pick up the scroll and twirl it around, looking at it from different angles, upside down, right side up. Nothing. I wrest my agitation under control and I gingerly place it back. Leaning forward, I plant my hands over my eyes, thinking. Pensive. I think back to the Sagetai's Sanctuary, how we breached the threshold, what Zoar explained about the Sagetai Statim.

But I cannot reap a plausible answer on 'decoding' this blank parchment. I know somehow it must contain some concealed truth of the upmost significance, or else it wouldn't be specially encased in glass.

We only reached the mythical library of prehistoric wisdom because of my blood. But that solution will probably not work here. Zoar explained that the basis of my power is light, to reach the might of a ten thousand suns I would have to master the Sagetai Statim. Baffling. The scroll was in the library that was within the Sanctuary for a reason. particularly a section which only the Sagetai can open. I have reason to believe that only the Sagetai can 'unlock' whatever enchantment has caused the truth of this scroll to be obscured.

Time drifts by agonisingly. My arms are folded on the edge of the table, my chin perched on top, staring down at the parchment vacantly. Curious, I roll my head to rest my cheek on the back of my hand, viewing the open balcony. More time has passed than I thought. The descending sun, a fascinating plethora of a waning flame; the ebbing of gold, crimson bleeding into the beams, enriching the light with a blazing orange. It floods into the entrance, pooling the entryway with its auburn glow.

I whip upright.

The sun.

With sensitive haste, I unpeel the scroll from the surface, dashing across the furnished floor to the open balcony. The light consumes my vision for a heartbeat, splitting away to reveal the bare parchment in my hand, awash with feeble sunlight. Nothing.

I hold it to the sun like a magnifying glass. And this time, the opposite happens. The sunlight, despite its dwindling strength, it pierces through the scroll and it ignites it at its centre. A small eruption of swirling golden essence bursts and ripples out to all four corners. Just like the tablet in the Sanctuary that responded to my blood. The parchment responds to sunlight. Inscriptions materialise in a translucent form and the golden light inundates them, emboldening them into prominent visibility.

I do not know the language, but I comprehend the words.

Darkness shall cover the face of the realms; the cause of its own destruction.

A world of one, torn asunder. Kings rise only to fall.

The cause of destruction as a consequence for all.

The Dark shall ascend, the corrupt and undead it shall send.

The cause of destruction had sealed the realm's fate. But only by His grace the providence of sorrow and desolation, He would then recreate.