This chapter is, like, a 70% retelling of the Episode Ardyn Prologue, apart from being experienced through Noctis' view. Feel free to skip it if you like.


The Fall

Noctis fell. Wind whipped towards him. Darkness enveloped him. Desperate, he threw his Engine Blade and warped after it as he heard it strike stone. The sword stuck in the rock for barely a moment before the stones came loose, and he fell again.

Suddenly and painfully, he smashed through a water surface. Disoriented, he kicked his arms and legs until his head came up for air again. The water stung like ice on his skin. Noctis was not a good swimmer, and the current threatened to pull him into unknown depths. Darkness reigned around him. His fingers brushed against smaller stones. He clawed at them and somehow managed to pull himself into shallower waters.

Panting, Noctis heaved himself onto the shore.

Although he was soaked to the bone, at least Noctis had survived the fall without any major injuries. He raised his head to the sky above. Although he could see the sun, its light did not reach deep enough into the deep and narrow chasm to illuminate the shore in front of him. The lamp on his jacket would not turn on, either.

"Ignis?" he called upwards. "Prom? Gladio?" There appeared to be a reply, but the call was distorted by the echo. He must have fallen pretty damn far.

Cautiously, Noctis felt his way along the rock face near the shore. He was prepared to take his sword out of the armiger at any second. Daemons might be lurking in this darkness - or worse: Ardyn.

In front of him, a smoking, strangely shaped mountain appeared in the darkness. Only when Noctis had come within a few metres did he realise with horror what the mountain consisted of. Arms, legs and heads protruded from the mass. A mountain of burnt corpses piled up in front of him. Their cramped fingers, bent knees and open mouths only allowed the assumption that the people had been burned alive.

The sight made Noctis' gasp for air. A wave of nausea struck him and he turned away abruptly. For a few moments he struggled for breath and composure. When he opened his eyes again, his entire environment had changed.

Instead of standing in the dark chasm, he suddenly found himself on the outskirts of a ruined village. The nearest houses, which had apparently once been built in the simplest manner, lay crumbling and blackened by fire. Uprooted trees and torn walls bore witness to a violent battle. In stark contrast to the devastation were the golden fields of wheat that surrounded the village on all sides. A lone tower rose in the far distance.

Noctis knew of no place in Eos which fitted this description. What he saw he would have taken for a dream or a vision, but the stones he felt under his boots and the wet clothes clinging to his body reminded him that he was conscious.

"Ardyn, is this your doing?" he asked loudly. "I will not be intimidated so easily!"

Noctis braced himself for the sight of the corpses before turning forward again.
Two people had appeared in front of the burnt bodies. An old villager wearing a historical tunic and a tall man whose figure was shrouded by a long cloak. Judging by their ancient clothing, it seemed to be a scene from one of the many old legends of Eos.

"Lord Caelum, I thank the Six you found your way here," the old man said. "Your dear brother did unspeakable things. He rounded up all those who carry the Starscourge - even those who were only suspected of it - and burned them alive."

"Caelum?" Noctis tried to catch a glimpse of the second man's face, but he had thrown the cloak over his head like a hood, and the illusion that overlaid Noctis's already poor vision of the floor of the chasm made it nearly impossible for him to get closer to the figures.

"By some miracle I was able to save my daughter from him, but I fear that without your help she will soon slip away from this world."

"Take me to her," the man in the cloak said. "I will do what I can."
Noctis thought he had misheard. The stranger spoke in Ardyn's voice.

The scenery changed. Colours blurred, and in the next moment Noctis and the two men stood in one of the last intact houses of the village. In front of them lay a woman on a bed, her body heavily marked with dark spots and black veins from the Starscourge. She was thrashing about and might have injured those present had she not been tied to the bed posts.
Upon entering the house, the unknown Caelum took the cloak from his head. Apart from the blue eyes and the long brown hair tied into a ponytail, he looked exactly like Ardyn. He sat down by the woman's bed and held out his hand over her body.

The anger Noctis had felt towards Ardyn earlier faded and was replaced by amazement as he witnessed the Starscourge pass from her into his hand. The woman's sickly spots and pulsating veins disappeared and she fell into a peaceful sleep. Unlike her, the healer writhed in pain.

"Lord Caelum?" the old man asked.

"She is better now," the healer said hastily, threw the cloak over his head and fled the house a moment later.

Only once had Noctis seen Luna heal someone, and it had been on television. She was gentle with her patients, far gentler than Ardyn's doppelganger, but also less practised. Unlike her, he seemed to have to do the healing quickly and in secret, and the procedure obviously wore on him. Noctis thought he had seen the strain in Luna's eyes back then, though she had hidden it as best she could. It had shaken him to learn that with each healing she sacrificed a part of her life force. At that time he had asked her to stop, but she would not and could not. According to Luna, only the Oracle was able to cure the Starscourge.
Ardyn's doppelganger, however, was not an oracle and did not perform the healing using his life force. Alone, outside the village, Noctis saw him overcome by the Starscourge with its typical symptoms, bringing him to his knees, groaning in pain. Unlike Luna, he had absorbed the disease. Noctis hardly dared to imagine how much he suffered from it.

Soldiers walked by on a dirt road further up the hill.

"He's over there! Stop him!"

They chased him like a criminal.

Noctis caught a glimpse of more fragments of the healer's life. In one of them, Ardyn was speaking to a group of people about how to deal with the Starscourge. In another, a blonde woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to Luna accompanied him. The two seemed happy, considering the circumstances. Yet although the old man had called him "Lord", Noctis always saw him outdoors or in the houses of poor people, never in a mansion befitting his title.
That changed when a new scene unfolded before Noctis, and Ardyn entered what must have been the first throne room of the Lucis Caelums long ago. On a pedestal behind the throne stood the crystal, source of all magic in Lucis. Ardyn must have come to respond to the call of the gods, after having been told that he, by ascending the throne as the first king of Lucis, was to rid the world of the Starscourge. The other people in the throne room awaiting Ardyn were therefore Aera Mirus Fleuret, the First Oracle, and Somnus Lucis Caelum, the Founder King.

Noctis moved as far as he could towards Somnus. It was as if he was looking through a mirror into his own face. If it were not for Somnus' emotionless gaze, Noctis could have been the spitting image of his ancestor. An uneasy feeling crept over him. None of what was unfolding before him had been passed down in the history of the Lucis Caelums.

Before Ardyn could climb the steps to the throne, Somnus stepped forward.
"It was I, brother! The gods have chosen me!" he announced to the people who had come to witness the ceremony.

Aera, who had obviously been unaware of this, stepped forward, startled, but was held back by Somnus' personal guard.

"Please forgive me for deceiving you all like this, but I had to lure that seditious traitor here." Somnus turned from the populace to his elder brother. "What a miserable man. Do you truly covet the throne that badly?"

Ardyn gave him neither an answer nor a glance, but after all Noctis had seen, he knew that he did not care about the throne. All he cared about was to help the suffering people.

"The gods have spoken. I am king!" Somnus repeated clearly, summoning the Blade of the Mystic from his Armiger into his hand.

His brother turned to him. "And what if I object, Somnus?"

With his blade raised, Somnus charged at him. Noctis froze. That cold-blooded thirst for power that stung from Somnus' eyes, on that face so similar to his own, made him tremble at what atrocities his family was capable of.

Ardyn defended himself with a red sword in his hands and he defended himself well, judging by how his illness was weakening him.

"I will let you live as long as you renounce your name and right to the throne," Somnus promised, just as his brother was overcome by a coughing fit. Contrary to his words, Somnus barely gave him a chance to recover before attacking him again. Ardyn retaliated vehemently. With one mighty blow he managed to knock the sword out of Somnus' hand and push him back, but Somnus threw a spear from his armiger and warped after it.
Noctis realised what was about to happen even before Somnus pierced Ardyn's chest.

Blood stained the white marble floor.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Aera running towards Ardyn. Somnus summoned another sword from the armiger to finally end the healer's life.

"Don't! Wait!" Noctis shouted, leaping forward to stop her but falling through the illusion onto the hard stones of the chasm. Horrified, he watched as his ancestor - though unintentionally - struck down the First Oracle.

Ardyn dropped to his knees beside Aera. With his last strength he lifted her into her arms.
Aera's hand fell limp.

"Foolish woman," Somnus said without remorse. He raised his sword again. "Forgive me, brother, but I must fulfil my kingly calling."

At that moment, a darkness entered the memory like a ferocious storm threatening to tear everything apart. Noctis could feel the dark power as if it were no longer part of the illusion but very real, all around him. Still, he witnessed through the swirling darkness how Ardyn dragged himself and the lifeless Aera up the stairs to the throne, all the while Somnus and his personal guard were trying to strike him down from behind, but to no avail. The healer asked for the gods' mercy one last time, stretching a hand out to touch the crystal, and was mercilessly hurled back by its light. The last thing Noctis was able to make out, was Somnus standing over Ardyn, readying his sword to pierce his fallen brother's chest.

The illusion faded, the chasm returned, and Noctis knew how the story ended. According to lore, the Founder King banished Adagium, darkness personified, to the sacred place of Angelgard, where he would remain imprisoned forever.
Noctis had never believed those stories.
Until that day.

He rose from the stones, and finally the clip-on light on his jacket was working again. Unfinished thoughts ran through his head as Noctis treaded the only path ahead of him between the shore and the rock face.
In the pale glow of his light, a familiar figure appeared before him. Ardyn leaned against the rock face and looked into the distance as if he were a traveller waiting for a bus.
"How do you like the dirty little secrets of the Lucis Caelums?" he asked.

"Is it true?"

"Oh, yes. My memory might have become flawed after more than 2000 years, but something like that happened." He turned to Noctis. "Make no mistake, however: the healer you saw is long dead. Before you stands a man who has forsworn the gods."

Noctis was glad that Ardyn himself drew a line between then and now. The sympathy he had felt towards Ardyn Lucis Caelum he could not extend to Ardyn Izunia. "I find it hard to believe that the same man threw me down a chasm."

"Oh yes, that." Ardyn stroked thoughtfully along the edge of his chin. "This chasm is a little deeper than I had expected."

"Don't tell me you threw me down here without knowing how we'd get out?"

"We'll think of something."

"You're kidding."

"Not at all." Ardyn turned and followed the path along the shore. " Let's find a spot where the terrain doesn't drop so steeply."


Imagine me, writing down the dialogue from the prologue's subtitles (since the prologue itself is in Japanese), translating it to German, and then translating it back into English.

The retelling is there, but it is not 100% the same as the anime, because Ardyn would not know of the scenes in which he was not present, and I feel like his relationship to Aera is a bit too personal and not relevant enough here to lay it out for Noctis to see. It also helps to shorten this section, since I am not a fan of video game novelizations myself.