In the empty valleys between Terrestria's northern ranges, the universe seems to yawn wide and bellow with the void's waiting doom. The void existed everywhere and yet nowhere, just a breath beyond this world, holding back the other realms with nothing but its utter stillness. Its utter emptiness.

Darius ignored the quiet of the snow-quilted valley, each of his breaths measured, steady, and as white as the frost coating his skin. The twin ridges of the range flanking the valley spared it from the ravages of the arctic weather, but it only heightened the volume of that empty moan, that vacuum of the void breathing into this world.

The Sin was perched upon the lip of a tor as he judged the scrawled drawing in his hand with only the stars above providing illumination. The faded ink portrayed a thin valley almost identical to the one he looked upon, but the mountains in the drawing were rounder and there was a river—or what Pride thought to be a river—scribbled in the basin.

Bloody Zhen. Couldn't draw to save his life. It was possible the river had dried up and the mountains had changed through the seasons. What interested Darius was the angle of the ridges, the atypical way the range split and rejoined, creating this odd pocket with no mortally traversable egresses. Zhen and the mortal soldier's diary had both made note of it.

A trill of excitement dared spark in the creature's chest. This could be it. This was one of the last areas he had yet to search. The weapon could be here.

Like a shadow torn from the night, the creature dropped from the tor and slid upon the frozen mountainside. He skated upon the ice, arms spread for balance, and leaped the last ten feet or so to land silently in the valley's belly. The ground beneath his shoes was hard but porous, comprised of crystallized silt toughened by a thousand years of braving the elements.

Darius paced the dead river bed as his sharp eyes darted here and there among the boulders and sharp, hardy vegetation. Sunlight hadn't touched this part of the world for many days, but the moonlight emphasized the oblique lines of shadows cast by the mountain's bones. Like the ridges of a spine, one side was white and glowing, the other drawn black like the deepest night.

The Sin smelled the land, pulling great amounts of essence through himself as he tested the area and audibly sniffed. What human memories remained here were weak, possibly centuries old. They spoke only in half-utterances of a nameless terror, of an urge to flee and to leave the silent vale be. Some entity had driven them off.

Mortals are cowards. Worthless, wretched cowards.

Darius marched over the shale and iced silt, each of his footsteps snapping and breaking the rocks and dirt. His eyes were locked on the southern slope of the valley as he moved—when suddenly the ground gave beneath his weight. 

The Sin was quick enough to avoid falling into the black cavern opening underfoot. He hopped to the solid rocks embedded deep in the mountain's body but listened to patter of falling earth as the hole widened and its edges crumbled. 

A cave beneath the surface? Strange place for it to form. 

Frowning, Darius went to the edge and peered inside the inky cavern. He could see nothing, but the rocks falling into the jagged maw didn't strike the bottom for quite some time.

Stuffing the drawing into his pocket with the remnants of his map, the Sin jumped into the unknown.

Like the rocks, Darius fell through the frozen dark for a considerable time before landing. The force of impact broke several bones in his legs and spine, but he healed the damage with a miffed breath and stood, surveying the new space.

Watery moonlight surrounded the Sin in a halo of cold light. Beyond, only the vaguest outline of ancient stones and masses were visible in the dark. Here, the booming echo of emptiness was deadened by the thick overhead of dirt, clay, and mountainous roots.

Darius inhaled slowly, summoning what meager power still resided within in his Seat in the Realm. The energy came unwillingly, slow and stubborn like blood coagulating in the bottom of a cup. Opening himself to its influence tampered with his finite control, but Darius was certain his savagery wouldn't be tempted in this barren locale. Besides, he needed the light.

The lambency inside his flesh was wan but enough to break the omniscient dark. He stood upon a hill of scree that must have been eroded from the cavern's ceiling over the centuries. Black ice had overcome a lake of stagnant water surrounding several thin islands of sharp rocks, which would explain the rank smell of decay and ruin. Oxygen was thin, so Darius held his breath and let the need for air burn in his lungs.

The cavern went on for ages. As he walked, the Sin decided it had once been an underground reservoir created by the river. The river had either dried up or been diverted by the humans, but the reservoir had remained. In time, the water had dwindled or had been displaced, leaving a pocket of air between the surface and its black lake.

A spot within the cavern caught the Sin's attention. The dome overhead held strange striations and deep kerf marks weathered with age, as if something had torn through the earth above and had landed within the reservoir. It was possibly the reason the reservoir had formed in the first place. Eyeing those peculiarities, Darius rushed forward, using the Realm to bypass a stretch of ice and land among the dried bracken on the other side.

He scanned the dirt, then knelt and raked his fingers over the brittle earth, testing the sediment between his fingers. Something was...amiss here. Something didn't belong.

The thin air hissed as it was cut by Darius's teeth. He moved fitfully and searched every inch of the dirt and rock before himself, but there was nothing. Nothing to be seen, nothing at all, and yet— 

The Sin pinched a feather between two fingers as he found the source of otherness. He drew it out from an inch or so of velvety silt and held it before his eyes. The feather was roughly the length of his hand but was bent and mottled as if taken from the wing of a damaged bird. The black coloring with gold dusting was familiar....

"That son of a bitch," Darius whispered in disbelief. His hands trembled with rage and the feather drifted once more to lay in the muck. The Baal. The weapon had been here, but it wasn't here now. It hadn't been for quite some time. "He already found it...." 

"Did you really think our dark father would let such a thing exist in this world for long?"

Startled, Darius spun in place as the voice lofted out of the untouched dark. Light blossomed and highlighted the delineation of a rocky outcrop hovering upon the placid lake. Upon that outcrop sat the Sin of Envy, the flood of his power illuminating the cavern like a midday sun.

Something cold gripped Darius's mind as he realized the rank odor hadn't been the lake. It had been Balthier's power of disease.

"Did you really think I didn't go looking for it eons before you?" Envy sneered, contempt twisting his lips into a foul grimace. "Naïve. Stupid. You were always stupid."

Darius stepped back and his foot slid on the black ice of the lake's fragile surface. Stupid. King's breath, I walked right into my own destruction.

"It occurred to me that you had," Pride spat as he repositioned himself on land and his gaze flickered toward the cavern's gaping mouth. Too far. He'd never make it without Balthier gaining on him first. "But since you never used it, I assumed you couldn't find it. You never had the patience for such things when you could just bloody your own hands."

"I have nothing but patience." Balthier dropped from his roost. The ice held his weight but began to fizzle under the brunt of his energy. Hairline cracks appeared on the lake's surface as Envy strolled nearer. "I have patience you couldn't even begin to understand, filth, and yet I find that you've tested that fortitude to its end."

Balthier stopped on the other side of the island, leaving a streak of broken ice in his wake. Ink-like water lapped at the ice's crest and steamed at the heels of the demon's leather shoes. Something moved in the colorless abyss.

"What will you do, Darius? Your search is fruitless and at an end. Your life is at its end. What will you do?"

Darius snarled but didn't yet move. He couldn't incite the beast into action quite yet. Not from this distance.

"Why put such effort into killing me?" Pride demanded as he bent his knees and prepared for Balthier's inevitable assault. "You've always thought so little of me—and yet you've funneled so much of your precious attention into my death. Why?"

"Because you deserve punishment." Envy bent at the waist to pick up the Baal's lost feather. The delicate piece of plumage disintegrated in Envy's poisonous touch. "Because you are the worst of us, by far. You throw mortals aside like trash, spit on the name of brotherhood, and idle away time like its infinite. Aside from that...you burnt it down. You burnt their temple to the ground."

"The Wild King's temple couldn't have been saved!" Darius yelled with exasperation, his voice resounding in the enclosed space. "I've told you this time and time again!"

"It could've been saved! The entire realm could have been saved!" Some shadow of emotion filtered through Envy's debonair features. The emotion was feral like a dog left unfed on its chain for way too long. "We could have saved it! But we did nothing! We deserve our punishment and you deserve punishment more than most, big brother."

Big brother? Darius caught the subtle slant Balthier placed on the term, as if the venomous creature held some secret Pride wasn't privy to. Is he inferring than I'm older than him? He couldn't possibly know that. None of us retain any memories of Absolia. How could he...know...?

Envy threw himself forward before Darius could finish his thought. Pride nearly lost his life—but he was quick enough to avoid veritable sledgehammer of Balthier's fist. Envy twisted and came at him again as their bodies collided. Talons formed on Balthier's fingertips and he arched them toward Darius's throat.

They wound up in a tangle on the ground. Darius grunted as he held one of Envy's arms at bay and tried to roll them over—but Balthier was too strong and too quick. His flesh burned with energy waiting to be expended and power thrummed in his muscles and veins. He broke his own arm with a horrendous crunch! and wrenched it from Darius's grasp.

Pride swore, kicking, and managed to avoid the majority of Balthier's blow. Envy's devolved talons drove themselves fully into Darius's shoulder.

He didn't scream, though the pain was unbearable. Disease rankled his skin and his blood spurted in black streamers around Balthier's arched fingers as toxins burned through his bones. His body began to quake with the effort to heal the poisons assailing his system as Balthier's teeth flashed in the dark.

Darius didn't try to remove the talon. He let them be, and instead flung his hand over Balthier's smirking face. He summoned his Absolian gift as the miserable agony overwhelmed him and funneled the pain through his fingers, amplifying it to ungodly levels.

Balthier screamed and tore from Darius, using the Realm to put distance between himself and the Sin of Pride as quickly as he could. He reappeared on his knees with one hand cupped to his heart as if the muscle had nearly exploded from the torture it'd endured.

"Nasty trick, that," the Sin panted, glaring at Pride as Darius struggled to get his feet under himself. The last of the poison was proving difficult to burn away. The wounds in his shoulder wept without end. "I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be on the receiving end of your particular gift. I'll have to be more careful, won't I?"

Darius tried to run. He sensed Balthier's renewed attack and turned to grab Balthier, to flood him with another taste of his Absolian curse—but Balthier evaded Darius's reach. He struck Pride in the face just as Darius grabbed him by the lapel of his sage jacket. The momentum of their struggle tossed both Sins into the water.

The lake's chill was enough to stun Darius as they broke the ice and sank into the black mire. Pride ground his teeth and slammed both feet into Balthier's chest, shoving the other Sin away. He immediately lost Envy in the opaque morass and sought the surface—when something snatched hold of his ankle and pulled.

It wasn't Balthier. No, it was something else lurking in that lake, something with many grasping hands and claws and piercing, ultra-sonic screeches that boomed in the subaquatic prison as the two bodies floundered in the water. Air exploded from Darius's mouth in rippling streams as he fought the entity, writhing and lashing out to break its inexhaustible hold.

Those hands curled into his clothes, into his flesh. Clammy fingertips pressed into his skin. They tugged him ever downward.

The Sin yanked on one of the hands and felt something break. He held the skeletal, disembodied arm to his face and saw the clawed, skinned fingers twitch before he flung the limb away.

Darius knew whatever had fallen here hadn't just been a weapon. It had fallen, and when it had struck the earth, it broke—just as the Sins had broken. The pieces of it had been strewn into the lake, where they had sunk and had remained untouched for so many thousands of years. They festered, grew, and spent thousands of years in the bottom of the shadowy reservoir, hungering. Wanting. Needing.

Finally understanding what the creatures were, Pride managed to disentangle himself from the sharp fingers of the starving fractus. Drenched and gasping, bleeding and cold, Darius heaved himself onto what bare spit of land there was and clawed his way out of the water.

The Sin of Pride didn't pause to see what had become of Balthier. He took one weak breath and vanished into the Realm, fleeing that horrid cavern and the arctic tundra that had hidden it for so long. Abandoning his futile hunt, he turned his sights to warmer climes and sought to follow the faint draw upon his soul calling him home.

Leaving empty-handed should have been difficult, but it wasn't. After so long away, it was as easy as breathing.