Alone. Caius Ballad was completely and utterly alone. He finally accepted the fact that there was no one else left in this world. He won and was left in a place devoid of any other human life but his own.

Instead of creating a perfect world, Caius had been left with a world of his nightmares. A world where he would be forever alone and never know the fate of Yeul, whether she was finally at rest or still suffering somewhere he could not reach her.

At first, he was overjoyed to have triumphed over his rival and have the Heart of Chaos destroyed. He believed the merging of the worlds would finally end both his and Yeul's pain but that had not been the case. After the worlds merged, he remembered being consumed by chaos and then waking up in the middle of the city. A search yielded nothing but empty buildings.

Yeul was not here and neither was anyone else.

He was puzzled that he had found no one and set off to look for Yeul in other parts of the world. He traveled across the new world, realizing it was made up of four continents, but found nothing but monsters. He thought a year passed, maybe two, during that time but there was no sign of Yeul, or anyone else at all.

Caius then began to look for someone, anyone so that he could prove that he was not alone.

But he found no one.

He refused to accept that he could have been wrong in his methods to save Yeul and searched harder, forgoing sleep in order to search longer. No place, save one, had been left undisturbed from his presence. Caius began to look through the same places multiple times, thinking he could have missed someone if they had traveled from place to place like he was.

Many more years passed and he had found no trace of human life. He grew angry and destroyed empty buildings, tore apart monsters in rage and screamed to the heavens for someone to be here so he was not alone.

But no one came.

There was one place he had not searched, one place that he would not search. At least not yet. The place was once the home of the Goddess and Caius refused to step foot in the building devoted to Her.

The temple of Etro still stood proud and hauntingly beautiful in this new world. When Caius realized what he had done, the temple became a mocking reminder of his sins. It was his fault that he was in this situation and would now suffer for killing the Goddess.

One day Caius would enter the temple and he wondered what he would find there. Was the Goddess's Champion still trapped in crystal on Her throne? The thought of seeing another human, even trapped in crystal, filled the man with hope and longing. Even if she could not speak or move, Caius would no longer be alone.

But if he entered and saw that the throne was empty then he would lose his last bit of hope and likely his sanity soon enough. Right now the belief that Lightning Farron was trapped in crystal on the throne kept him from true despair.

Today would not be the day he entered the temple so Caius once again began his futile search of the world.