Pale and still trembling, Louis raises his leg, holds it in the air for a moment, and suppresses a cry with an exhalation as blood trickles onto the ground. He lowers his leg and looks ahead, the ascent blurring with each step. The trail of blood starts from a village, a few hundred steps below. Despite his blurry vision, turning his head, Louis sees it clearly: a fire bursts forth from the ruins of Nirl.
"Hurry," he thinks, moving his dried and cracked lips. The horsemen are right behind. They want to kill him, just like they killed everyone else and are about to kill the king. Milton was still resisting but -
An arrow pierces his chest. Louis screams in pain as he falls to the ground. He lies sprawled out, unable to move for a few seconds, then a figure appears above him, wielding a sword that decapitates him.
His head shot towards a hand that caught it. With a shocked look, he died without having any answers as to why these invaders had come from another world. After all, why would a slave, no matter how noble, have one? The apocalypse just came to him, quick and efficient, as the red star demands. He is not the first, he will not be the last.
Rargnes wakes up with a start. He is in his room, in the darkness. His eyes take time to adjust to the darkness, but his wife is by his side. He sat on his bed, sweating, and placed his hand on his forehead.
'Do past lives really exist? Their beliefs in reincarnation, all that?'
He remembers that noble, that appearance, it's the one he had seen in the visions, not the one when he had met him. The noble was still human but he died and became a thing.
"Wait..." he murmurs. A thought crosses his mind. His eyes widen, his face contorts, his teeth grind, his fists clench into themselves. Then everything goes back to normal. He gets up and sits against the door. And we hear him murmuring words in the two languages he knows: "City of Gersea, portal 5. Another version of myself."