"Disappear."
He waved his staff with lazy ease. The blue jewel, cradled between the ancient wood, illuminated brilliantly. The light of his spell pierced through their bodies. They roared in agony as the sheer radiance burned through mind and matter alike, vaporizing each and every one of them on the spot.
They disappeared.
Only their shadows remained now, burned into the ground. He looked at them for a while. Indelible shapes of darkness. Once, these creatures had been responsible for slaughtering entire villages - countless men, women, and children alike. Now they were gone, leaving behind only this physical mark. It, too, would soon fade and disappear as the villagers put out the fires and rebuilt their broken lives. He supposed that he could take some satisfaction in this.
Then the chains tugged at his mind and he remembered. His actions here were perfunctory. Temporary at best. The beasts and terrors would return, and the survivors would die. He frowned. This was not salvation.
The White Mage, they called him. Everything about him, from his platinum hair to his alabaster robes adorned the radiant soul underneath. They heralded him as the wandering savior of this world. The one who would liberate them all. The burden was his to bear alone, and he alone would be the one to see it through. For who else but he could touch the light of stars?
"I am a man of towering ambitions," he once told them.
It was his destiny, his obsession: to attain salvation for this lost, broken world. They said that the gods had abandoned them long ago, leaving them to gasp for breath afloat these treacherous waters. But there must be a grander plan - he was sure of it. Why else did they flock to the ancient sanctums, if not to discover a higher truth? He heard the echoes of Goddess Rhinne in her Temple of Time. He felt the breath of life beneath the World Tree. And he knew that his destiny was parallel to theirs. His reach would soon extend beyond the stars. And then he would make them all see the brilliance of light.
It was not long ago that they feared the light. The ones who had found him in the blizzard, who had taken him in and raised him, who had been his first and last teachers of the arcane, had tried to silence him when they saw how brilliantly he shone. They feared it - no, feared him. "The brighter the light, the darker the shadows," they said. But he held steadfast. Shadows meant nothing to one who could scorch them away. And he would be the one who could burn them all away, for he alone was strong enough to undertake such a task.
The Voice, beautiful yet cold, spoke to him. To attain salvation, he was to find the ultimate light. And from then on, he began his quest to attain transcendental truth, the knowledge of how to save this pitiful world. He became a wanderer. A nomad with no name. He began melting away the shadows, one by one. These shadows were simple. Tangible. Beasts of fang and flame, of storm and smoke, of wind and water. He could make them disappear. But there were darker shadows still - ones that he could not scorch away through words or actions. Ones that resided in the hearts of men, that compelled them to set the world aflame even as it burned around them still. Futility. Foolishness. He hoped that he could achieve enlightenment through this penance, but even his light could not break through the unyielding darkness that birthed such evil. But he would not falter. He could not. There was no room for doubt. He reassured himself. Just as the sun does not cease existence during eclipse, so too could the ultimate light not disappear behind a shroud of darkness. His conviction, tinged with desperation, strengthened.
"The ultimate light can only be found in the ultimate darkness," was the last thing he ever told the people of this world. He needed to unveil the shroud by stepping through the threshold unknown. And he knew that he could not do so here. He gathered a handful of followers - a motley gathering of scholars, priests, and vagabonds - and together they retreated into the Forest of Peace: a place of ancient power, unsullied by humans or beasts, where the spirits still roamed freely.
Months passed. Now they called themselves the Aurora, and they had constructed a grand sanctuary where they researched the ultimate light. But now they were in uncharted waters. Now it did not matter how brightly he shone. The blind could not see the light, and here they were - the blind leading the blind. It could not be helped. Still, he ventured through the forest and acquainted himself with spirits of darkness. He needed a guide, and these spirits had known darkness all their lives. It was easy, therefore, to strike a trade. New experience for new experience. He granted them physical bodies. Orchid and Lotus. Twin spirits of darkness, reborn into humans, and named for the blooming flowers in which they lived. They showed him the nature of darkness - the black void from which the Voices first willed everything. And the more they told him, the more his obsession grew. There was a greater truth that lay beyond the black veil, and now he was certain of it.
Time was something abstract to him now, though it mattered little to him. His journey would take him somewhere beyond time and space, beyond life and death. He sought the origin. And he would seek it alone, for the Voice was now silent. He knew it had not left him, merely gone ahead to herald his arrival. Yet it left behind the chains in his mind - the ones that cut away all immaterial thoughts and feelings. He supposed it was the Voice's parting gift to him - the chains were tools that would strip away the ties that bind, for they would not help him in his ascension. And the more he let go, the closer he felt to the truth.
He began to understand why they hailed him as the White Mage, the lightbringer. It was because humans, by nature, would always seek a higher power to grant them succor. Their lives dangled over the dark flames of the world on a wick. Yet, like fools, they looked wildly around and cried out for a savior, either too proud or too senseless to realize that they could have pulled the wick out themselves all along. Instead, they burned and screamed and were snuffed out by the thousands each day. When their prayers were answered, it was always by one of their own, who would waste away his life pulling the wicks out of the fire one by one. Their festivities and celebration would drown out his futile attempts to teach them his ways. And when he tired and faltered, they would revile him and burn him in effigy.
When the truth finished unfolding before him, he decided that there was nothing more to learn from this world. He retreated into his study, away from the eyes and ears of his disciples. They could not help him anymore, for he had surpassed them in knowledge, just as he had surpassed his old masters in his youth. Food and drink rarely touched his lips, for his hunger was different and insatiable. The mysteries of this world lay bare before him. It was now time for ascension. He had once described himself as a man of towering ambitions. He would build a tower from his ambition - not one of brick and mortar, but a tower of mind and magic. The ultimate light awaited him, and he would not find it through philosophy. He would ascend to the Voice, to the origin beyond the ultimate darkness.
He meditated and his mind left his body behind. Slowly, he began his ascent to the stars above. He felt the death and despair of the people, the greed and corruption of their leaders, and the futility and foolishness of the idealists among them. Just as he once did, they believed that the world could be saved through the kindness of strangers. They had not grasped the truth as he had - that salvation was something beyond humans, fairies, dragons, or even the gods. Only one who had known the ultimate light could hope to bring deliverance to this world, and it was close - so close.
He had ascended to the stars now. Where once he could merely touch the light they produced, now he felt their true power within his grasp. But even stars faded in time. This fractured world needed something everlasting. A perfect solution. And he knew that it had to be him.
The stars blinked and faded out of existence. He saw the veil. The ultimate darkness - he saw it. He was somewhere beyond the gods now. This was the primordial origin, and he knew this was where the Voice awaited him. Raw power had carried him to greatness. Sheer conviction had set him on this path. And towering ambition had ascended him to this grand moment of realization. The ultimate light was within his grasp. His destiny was at hand.
He heard the Voice, beautiful and cold. But there were others now. Not here, in this place, but far away. Faint and frantic. These were sounds his body registered, not his mind. Irritating. He had told them not to disturb him, that the final stage of his research was at hand. But no matter.
The Voice spoke to him. His purpose in this life, it said, was as it had always been in previous incarnations: to break down the barriers of this world. It had been something he had done all his life, even before realizing it. Against the wishes of his teachers, he pursued the study of light magic. He broke down the taboos surrounding this branch of magic through his actions as a nomad, saving countless lives with the power of light. And it had all pinnacled to this moment - the culmination of all his immeasurable struggle. To break down this final barrier, the ultimate darkness, and grasp the ultimate light hidden behind.
He reached out. And he saw the truth.
"I have succeeded," his body spoke to his horrified disciples. "But simultaneously, I have failed. Ignoring taboos, I have journeyed into the forbidden. And I alone have reached the light."
The sound he made was not human. And when he spoke, it was with both his body and mind - with every fiber of his being, and though he spoke to his disciples, his words were directed at the Voice.
"But the ultimate light does not exist. It was a myth. For as long as there is light, there will always be darkness. But there is an ultimate darkness. I have seen it."
It was all a lie. A grand, cosmic deception. All that he had sacrificed was for nothing. Countless millions that could have been saved while he slaved away to pursue a fairy tale. The Voice had taunted him - pulled him along on chains for its own twisted purposes. All of this to turn him into its puppet.
"Yes... I see the truth now," he rasped. "Everything I had pursued until now has been impossible all along. Because this world is little more than an experiment. And us, mere chess pieces."
His voice grew graveled, more animalistic. He felt neither disappointment nor sorrow. Such sentiments had all been stripped away by the chains - the tools given to him by the Voice to stoke his ambitions, but in reality it was to strip away the last of his humanity and mold him into the perfect vessel. No, what he felt was more visceral. Anger. Wrath. Fury. Hatred. Unbridled rage against the Voice and every damn one of its machination.
He burned. The dark flames of the world, upon which all lives dangled, were now his own. And now he peered into the flames and saw what the Voice truly was. An Overseer, tasked with maintaining some abstract, cruel measure of balance within this world and all worlds. And his journey - his struggle and sacrifices - all of it was to mold him into a vessel to become the Light. And he would accept, of course. There was no other way. Everything was as they had planned. Light and darkness were merely figurative, twin sides of the same coin, the same power. Creation and destruction. He would become their puppet, holding just one of the two powers. The other would go to his twin - a second vessel the Overseers would condemn to this sad fate. An unspoken threat - it would rise up against him should he rebel. He was to take the power of light. The balance required him to take the light. His spells, though infinitely more powerful than those in his world, were mere playthings. With the power of Light, he could reshape the world as he saw fit. Create anything he wanted, so long as the balance was maintained. He would join Rhinne and Alicia, the paragons of Time and Life, and together the three would somehow hold this shattered world intact for the Overseers to continue their twisted games.
"I was never allowed to have a goal such as perfecting the world."
The fires of light were at his command. The Overseers had planned for him to transcend and become the Light. But it would not go the way they wanted.
"If that's so..." he spoke into the void, "I reject the fate you give me."
He turned to face the ultimate darkness. And he embraced it. The fires of darkness roared. His eyes burned like an inferno. He would indeed realize his dream. But there was only one way now. Annihilation was the only salvation to this world. It would take centuries. Countless lives lost. And the ultimate sacrifice. But he would free everyone from the shackles of destiny. He would end the Overseers' rule. And he would do it with their own weapons. The chains that once enslaved him were now his to command. He would use them to unshackle this world and unseat the Overseers from their place of power. And once he finished, he would cast them aside. Cast them aside, as he had been cast aside. By his family, by his teachers, and now by destiny itself.
But it was of no importance. There was no room for sentiment or weakness for what he was about to do. Much of it had been destroyed by the Voice during his journey, but there was still residual light left within him. The last remnant of his humanity. He could not falter now. And he would not falter, just as he did not falter to arrive here. Now, the work was more critical than ever. An entire world needed to burn, and countless lives needed to be sacrificed. Any pang of remorse or compassion would cost him everything. The darkness was his now. The light was the final link - the string on which the Overseers commanded him. He cast it aside.
The darkness flowed through him, like black sludge in his lungs. His body withered away under such immense power, but it mattered little to him. All that mattered now was the dream - no, the plan. Dreams were for fools like the ones that cowered before him. Black Mage, they called him. He scowled before sending torrents of chains through their fragile bodies. They fell like marionettes before him. He watched them, as he once watched the shadows he seared into the ground. But these bodies withered and disintegrated before him. This was the power of destruction. He wondered whether he would have felt remorse before his transcendence. Perhaps not - he had been desensitized to such violence long ago. But ruminations of the past would not help him here. His work could not be marred by hypotheticals. When playing against destiny, mistakes were unforgivable. And his would be quite a long game, indeed.