"It looks like our journey in the City of Flower is nering its end..."
Alice didn't bother replying.
Before her was a sight barely believable.
The strange stairs... stopped, leading to a large wooden door which was lighted up thanks to a torch attached on the wall.
It took a bit of time for Alice's eye to adapt to the light of the torch. She was so used to utilizing her Sixth Sense for everything that it was weird to be able to see again.
"Mirror, what is behind that door ?"
"You already know. It's Stranger's youngest son, Brandon."
"Yeah... but you know a little more than that, don't you ?"
Mirror took her time to answer.
"He's infected... kind of like a zombie, I guess. That's why he didn't die of old age."
"Ok."
"By the way, don't try to help me kill him for good. You'll only hinder me."
"You're sure ?" asked, Alice, surprised.
"I'm sure of it."
Mirror opened the wooden door.
On the other side, a wide room.
Alice recognized it instantly: it was the room were her first ever vision took place, although it was now in a much worse state, as if centuries passed.
Wait... that was probably the case, actually.
Alice didn't pay much attention on the room, however.
Instead, she payed attention on the monster on the opposite corner of the room. On what was once Brandon.
The giant looked...old and hollow. His hair and beard were white, and there were even some spiderwebs in them. His eyes were colorless, lifeless, empty, like those of a corpse.
On one of his arm, there a bunch of black flowers.
No...the whole arm of the giant seemed like it was transformed in some sort of vegetal arm. That sight was truly... disturbing.
Suddenly, something clicked in Alice's head.
A while back, in her first vision, Isa said something along the lines of "I wonder which color I should use. I think I'll try black." to Stranger.
The black flowers on Brandon's arm.
Her own blood, black.
It was all connected, somehow. Alice was sure of it.
However, there was no time to think how or why all of this was connected.
Brandon was already moving. Despite being dead, he was quick.
The giant, before peacefully sited in a corner of the room in front of the fifth Golden Door, was now menacingly standing up.
Just looking at the giant, and especially at his infected arm, Alice felt a weird... pressure.
Kind of like what she felt when looking at Isa through her vision, but weaker.
"You two... took your time to arrive...."
Brandon's voice was completly emotionless.
"It's your fault. What was the purpose of the infinite stairs ?"
"You should ask that to Isa, instead of a pathetic shadow of a man like myself."
So, it was Isa who made the cursed stairs, and Mirror's guess that it was Brandon was wrong ?
There was an akward silence, during which Mirror and the undead giant looked at each other in the eyes.
Finally, Mirror asked the obvious question.
"Will you let us pass ?"
Brandon laughed.
"Me ? I could not care less about you two. The problem isn't me, it's him."
Brandon designated his infected arm.
"That bastard... has far more control over my body than I do. And he will not let you pass."
"Why ?" asked Mirror.
"Because that's how this bitch created him, I guess. He hate every living being in existence. He want to kill them. He want to drink their blood, to crush their bones. By the way, you two should go back. It's becoming harder and harder for me to resist him."
Mirror drew her sword, a resolute look on her face.
"Sorry, but this Door behind you is the only way out of this hell. Alice and me aren't backing down now."
The giant sighed.
"It looks like two more souls will perish because of my weakness. Two young girls, and one of them is a Lightbringer. Well, I guess that beetween four hundred twenty two and four hundred twenty four, there isn't that much of a difference..."
Alice was truly horrified.
If she understood what Brandon meant, there was some sort of being in his body that used it to kill the people his mother tried so hard to protect. Being forced to do that sort of thing against your own will... just how twisted was Isa for her to do that to someone ?
And why was she doing that in the first place ? What was the goal behind it ?
However, even if there were still questions, a lot of thing made more sense now. With all the info she had, Alice could almost reconstruct a timeline of the events that happend in the past.
At first, Stranger was sent to the Sky just like her, and somehow ended up pledging to defend the City of Flowers. Then, she met a husband that Alice had no info about, and the two made two kid, one of which was Brandon.
However, things then started to take a dark turn.
The City of Flowers was attacked by some sort of strange monsters named Two Mouths, and they possessed a truly fearsome might. Isa and... her allies, whoever they were, then procedeed to kill one of her son and transform the other into... whatever Brandon was, now.
Stranger was probably unable to bear the sight of her own son killing the citizen of the City she was protecting, so she abandonned her duty as a Lightbringer, and exiled herslef on a small island far from all of the conflict.
She died years after that because of a problem with her soul.
There were MANY holes in this story, like what was Nikoletta's role in it, or what was Isa's true goal, but overall it was at least... a somewhat incomplete version of what happened in the past.
It was a messed up story.
And Isa and her allies seemed to be the bad guys here.
"Don't worry, Brandon. I don't intend to lose."
"In general, nobody intend to lose."
"True, I guess."
"You seems to know my name, young girl, but I don't know yours."
"I'm Mirror."
"Strange name."
"It was given to me by a person I am capable of entrusting my life to."
"How interesting... but I fear that our talk has to stop now, Mirror. Sorry, but I can't stop him anymore."
"Alice, step back. It's going to be quite dangerous."
The giant took a step towards the little girl.
"Now... Please kill me."
Mirror laughed.
"Your wish... should be granted !"