He must have slept, because he woke. And he woke, feeling no more rested nor in any firmer standing with regard to Ardyn and his motivations. The sky was as bleary and dark as ever, with no hint of dawn beyond the black clouds. Below, Insomnia was flooding in parts. The main drive of the Citadel was perpetual home to several inches of water. The guardhouse at the gate was lined with sandbags.

Regis pushed bedraggled hair from his face and turned away from the window. All his efforts thus far had been for survival. On weathering this storm, in the most literal sense, until Ramuh grew tired of his games. And when that time came, the next trial would emerge. And the next. Could Lucis truly survive the onslaught of three Astrals? Already they were floundering.

But what other choice did they have? Submit to the gods and live the dark future where Noctis was forced to give his life to save others? Regis failed to see any benefits to that, save the very immediate: that the storm would stop and they would see the sun again. For a time. It wasn't worth what would come after.

A treacherous voice in the back of his mind whispered: He did have another choice, though, did he not? He could kill Bahamut.

Kill Bahamut. Preposterous. As if a man could truly stand against a god.

And yet, would Ardyn have suggested it if there were no hope of success?

Wouldn't he have? His motivations were unclear at the best of times. And this tale of Adagium and Somnus… just as ridiculous as the rest. Kill a god. Impossible.

Unless he was telling the truth. That thought alone was more ridiculous than all the rest put together; he didn't want to believe it, but could he truly dismiss it offhand?

Regis dressed rapidly, leaving word of his destination with the Crownsguard outside before departing the royal levels. He made for the Citadel library. Not the small, private library on the royal levels, which were more often used for talking than reading, but the vast wells of Lucian knowledge contained in the public areas of the Citadel. If answers existed in Lucis, he would find them there.

It was mid morning before Clarus found him. Breakfast had passed without him and both his councilors and his family were wondering where he had gone. He was no closer to finding answers for any of his myriad questions: no family tree showed any hint of a second brother by the name of Ardyn. There was indication, in some very old texts, that something had been contained on Angelgard to be protected and presided over by the Caelum family. But accounts of that had disappeared during his grandfather's time and no word had ever been spoken to him of such a thing.

None of this was conclusive in either direction. If Ardyn was what he claimed to be, then perhaps the Mystic had scrubbed clean the Caelum family history. It would be only too easy for a king to hide away dark secrets in a closet and never speak of them again. They would be forgotten in time and the line would live on, thinking no worse for their false knowledge. Until now.

So the library had failed him. Perhaps it would yield secrets and inconsistencies if he delved deeply enough. But he had no time for such things and he dared not entrust the task to another.

And when living memory and records failed, he had but one place to turn.

The day passed in a flurry of familiarity: Lucis was washing away, food would be a scarcity this winter for the first time in hundreds of years, and morale in the Outlands—and within Insomnia—was at an all-time low. The rains would never end.

That night held in store one more excursion to the In Between. But this time, when he reached the great black emptiness of the world between worlds, he did not seek Ardyn, but Somnus.

It was difficult—although possible—to find a single king and call his spirit forth alone. Far easier to cast questions into the void and beg answers of one hundred Lucian voices. Tonight he sought only one voice.

"Somnus Lucis Caelum."

The Mystic.

The Founder King. But was he at all?

The shape The Mystic took was of his own making: the great spectral armor that all Lucii donned in the In Between. Now that Regis had walked the bleak and empty dreamscape, he began to understand that it was little more than that: an imagining from their own minds that they gave shape to in this world. They transformed into symbols and monoliths not due to some divine force taking hold and showing the warrior spirit held within flesh until death, but because they wished to be perceived that way.

It was a farce.

:Regis Lucis Caelum. Speak and I will answer.:

"I seek answers not from the Mystic," Regis said. "But from the man. Face me, then, as a man."

He imagined shape for himself and thus pulled his own soul into a body. He stood as he ever was: a son and a king and a father all wrapped into one. For a time he stood staring up at the fiery form of the Mystic. Would he bow to Regis' wishes? By rights the king was subject to the will of the Lucii and not the other way around. He could ask guidance and answers of his ancestors, but he did not command them. Perhaps summoning the Old Wall worked differently, but he hoped never to learn.

It might have been several minutes they stood, regarding each other in utter silence, each wondering whose will would break first.

Regis' held out.

The glowing form of the Mystic shimmered and shrank. With a blast of blue fire, he stood, transformed, before Regis: a symbol no longer, but a man. As a rule, the Lucii were rarely portrayed after death as anything but the spectral forms they chose for themselves. Any true paintings of Somnus Lucis Caelum had faded and been swallowed by history a thousand years ago. Had they not, Regis might have doubted Ardyn's story less.

Somnus was of a height with Regis. Though his hair was the same blue-black that had become a symbol of the royal family, he bore certain similarities to the Burgundy Man that could not be overlooked. The shape of his eyes and the cut of his nose held distinct and undeniable similarities. Indeed, their eyes were of the same hue, despite the differences in hair color.

But this was no proof of Ardyn's words. And shapes taken in the In Between could not be trusted.

"I seek the truth," Regis said. "Of Ardyn Lucis Caelum."

The shape Somnus had taken for himself was young. For all their history, Regis could not recall if he had lived to see old age, but the smoothness of his face betrayed him now, showing the crease between his brows and the tension in his jaw as he fought to keep from snarling.

"Where did you hear that name?"

In this form, he could not hide the tremor in his voice behind an augmented suit of armor.

Regis pressed his advantage. "From Adagium."

Again the flicker of doubt, the anger printed so clearly on his face—a face that could not have been much older than twenty. In daring to be youthful he had done himself disservice. Instead he appeared merely inexperienced. Two thousand years should have taught him better and yet…

Family always brought out a peculiar side of people.

"It is true, then," Regis said.

"Everything that man tells you is a lie."

"Is that so? And yet, I have given no indication of what he has said. That you have leapt already to a conclusion implies that you already know. And how could you, save if you had lived the tale he told?" Regis asked.

"He has spread these lies before."

"Has he? Though records indicate that he was freed either in my father's time or my grandfather's time. If such things have come to light before, why have they not been discussed and passed down? Why hide away the truth, save when it is shameful?"

"The truth has not been hidden: Adagium is a monster and I sealed him away, as history indicates."

"No," Regis said. "Stories indicate that you locked away a monster. Children's tales. Not history passed from king to king. While the wisdom of the ages accompanies the Ring of the Lucii, this point is a blank. Until now, I had assumed Adagium did not exist, yet you have confirmed he does. Why, then should this history be hidden?"

Somnus had no response. He turned away from Regis as if he would leave; Regis groped for the line of magic that had allowed him to summon the old king and held tight to it. Somnus jerk backed as if pulled and rounded on him, a true snarl on his face this time.

"You dare keep me here?"

"I will have the truth," Regis said.

But with a slow sinking, like settling into thick mud, he realized he already knew it. He released his hold on Somnus and sighed.

"I thought to give you a chance to tell a different perspective of the story. Now I have only Ardyn's and I must believe the worst of you. Of our family."

Somnus turned away from him, but did not disappear into the In Between. He was silent for too long to hope. When he did speak, it was quiet and subdued, all hint of pretense and anger dissolved.

"The worst is true."

It was more than Regis had expected. He waited, hoping that wasn't the end of the tale.

"I can only surmise what my brother has told you," Somnus said. "And perchance two thousand years of aging in bitterness and hatred have turned his memories darker, but I can hardly imagine a lie worse than the truth. For the truth is that I betrayed my own brother, turned my back on my own flesh and blood.

"When I might have saved him, I instead scrambled for the crown. Even now I wonder at it. Did my hunger for power truly run so deeply that it drove me to run a sword through my own brother's chest? Did I truly have him imprisoned? The rightful King of Lucis? The one chosen by Ring and Crystal? Could my own childish jealousy truly have driven me to such heinous depths?

"In the darkness of death, I tell myself no. But this is little more than a lie to make sleepless purgatory less of a torture than it already is. I deserve no less. By my own hand was my brother driven to darkness, destruction, madness. The same should be true of me."

Regis stood, stunned by the weight of his confession. His hold on his physical shape slipped. They were now nothing more than two souls entwined. With such nearness in the baring of Somnus' soul, Regis could not help but feel the raw pain of his still-simmering guilt.

So it was true.

It is all true. Somnus' words pressed into his mind, no longer spoken, but known.

The Founder King was a fraud. The rightful title, taken from Ardyn Lucis Caelum, who had instead been demonized and cast aside, where he had eventually fallen into darkness and madness.

With a will, he pulled away from Somnus. The touch of his soul was unbearable. All that Regis knew of himself, of his bloodline, of his own royal heritage was built upon a foundation of lies. He fled, heedless of where he went, and landed, shapeless, in the In Between. Somnus' spirit evaporated without the anchor of Regis' consciousness to hold to. And he was alone.

He rebuilt his body. Even here in the In Between his hands quivered. The Founder King indeed. The Betrayer was more accurate.

"I am so sorry," he whispered to the In Between. "It means nothing, I know. Two thousand years too late and too little at that. Had I known before…"

If he had known, then what? What would he have done differently in his life? Did it matter?

"And now that you do know…" Ardyn stepped out of the In Between. Black wisps of fog clung to his body as it formed. "What will you do?"

"Set history right." Regis clenched his fists at his sides and drew himself up. He was king: Whether by right or betrayal, it had come to this. He was king. "Let the Caelum family shelter the dirty secret of our forebear no longer."

"Oh? And if I should come forward, as the rightful King of Lucis?"

He could. By rights, he had more claim to the throne than Regis, did he not? Shouldn't Lucis fall back into his hands, now that the truth was revealed?

But no.

Regis shook his head. "On behalf of my ancestor, I regret what was done to you. But I fear you are no longer fit to rule. Though it should never have come to pass, the truth is that you have been corrupted and perverted not only by the Starscourge, but by your own hatred."

"Are you calling me mad?"

"You are quite mad, Ardyn," Regis said.

Ardyn tipped his hat and bowed. When he straightened, the grin on his face vanished and a look of intensity replaced it. "I don't want your apologies or your pity. I want you to help me kill Bahamut."

"And on that front I am still unable to grant you an answer. The risks are high for myself and my kingdom, should I choose to oppose him so directly. I dare not commit so lightly, whatever the truth of your existence may be."

"Well, since you've proven yourself so open minded with my last little truth, perhaps I can let you in on another secret. One that might sway your mind to my cause," Ardyn said. "Observe."

He swept his hand as if displaying something beneath them. Before Regis could object that one world-shattering secret revealed was enough for one night, the blackness beneath his feet had dropped away. Instead he found himself standing in the air, as if looking down through a glass floor at a grand city below, the likes of which he had never seen before.

"Solheim," Ardyn supplied. "Before they grew so bold as to challenge the gods. But when they dared show independence from one who had guided and coaxed them along from sticks and stones to grand spires…"

The image beneath them shifted. Fire rained down around them. In the midst of the inferno stood Ifrit, unmoved by the havoc he wrought upon those below.

"They fought back, as humans will do…" Ardyn said as machines the size of titans rose up into the air to challenge the Infernian. "And perhaps they would have succeeded and all our lives would have been much simpler. Alas, they underestimated the lengths to which the Astrals would go to punish their hubris."

The other five of the Hexatheon joined the conflict. Where once only fire had rained down, so too came bolts of lightning, shards of ice, and a wave tall enough to level the city. Though the earth shook beneath them and around them, the Solheimnians still fought. Though their city was shattered, their machines turned to rusted heaps, the Solheimnians still fought.

If this was meant to convince him to defy the gods, it was not working.

Bahamut came forward. Until that moment, he had hung in the center of the Hexatheon, unmoving in observation. Now he took to the forefront, pulling all light from the world until Solheim was as black as the In Between. For a moment Regis thought that was the end of the vision. But still the blackness beneath their feet moved: a living thing. It swept about in patches like black fog.

Miasma.

At length Regis could glimpse greater detail through the blackness: people still moved, but where once they had stood proud—if failing—against the will of the Astrals, they now cowered. Their skin was pale as death, their eyes greyed over and glazed in unseeing gazes. Black veins throbbed beneath their skin and horrible rattling coughs racked their bodies.

"Starscourge," Regis whispered, startling to find he still had a voice.

The Starscourge had been inflicted on mankind by Bahamut himself.

The visions faded to blackness. Once more he found himself standing before Ardyn in the In Between. Once more he found his world turned on its head.

"So tell me, King Regis," Ardyn said, "Still thinking of siding with the gods? Still think this isn't your fight to take up?"

His mind buzzed. Despite all he no longer knew, he held tight to himself. His identity, his core. He was King of Lucis, whether his ancestor had come by the title rightly or not. And he would not strike a bargain from a place of panic and confusion.

"I need time to think," Regis said.

Ardyn scoffed and waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, by all means, go on pondering. I'm sure Lucis won't drown under the Fulgarian's onslaught before you make up your mind."

Before Regis could think of a response to that, he was gone. And Regis was left standing alone in the In Between once more. He followed the strand of magic back to his body and woke in his bed, restless and without any sense of having slept at all. Indeed, he had not. For a jaunt to the In Between was not the same as a night's rest.

The grandfather clock indicated he still had most of the night remaining to try. Not that he had any expectation of sleep tonight. He rose and crossed to the bathroom to splash cold water on his clammy face and neck. It did little to wash away the dirty feeling of having lived too many lies for too many years.

Was it possible that Ardyn was lying about the Starscourge? He was manipulative and cunning. He was utterly mad. It wasn't beyond him to fabricate a story to sway Regis to his side. That he had told the truth the first time did not make him incapable of lying the second time. Nevertheless, the thought had not crossed Regis' mind in the In Between. Was that, too, of Ardyn's devising?

He looked at himself in the mirror. Though centuries had changed their family nearly beyond resemblance, he could not help but see Ardyn in the shape of his own nose. Mere happenstance, perhaps. Or some trick of his own mind. All the same, the fact remained: Ardyn was—though two thousand years removed—his uncle.