[The things that were in Ardyn's head were...unpleasant. The closest memories were bad enough; flashes of bright fire and blades, rain from a blighted and blackened sky. 'A war of attrition, then,' he'd said in an exhausted voice that still managed to have the strength to be mocking and arrogant.]
['When the prophecy is fulfilled-']
['-this time, you can rest in peace.']
[A young girl looking to him with compassion and sympathy in her dying moments. A man with clear blue eyes extending the same compassion ten years later. Blue eyes that matched those of a red-haired man who spoke a millennia-old order of execution in a voice that was overlaid with static and long since forgotten. Burning, beheading, impalement, hanging, why can't I die I'll kill every single one of them for this and through all of it the armored silver-haired knight who had sworn to protect him did nothing.]
[('Such a pitiable waste', he'd said in almost a melodic tone as he watched the capital burn so many ages later. Let them die, he almost envied them for having the ability.)]
[A body that had once been human, degenerating into something black and monstrous beneath the weight of his own sacrifices. Betrayal, agony, a hundred years or so left alone in a prison of stone and forgotten. Centuries upon centuries of wandering the planet under countless illusions and aliases, the name Ardyn Lucis Caelum never once spoken on the planet again until he said it himself to a boy vanishing into a shining Crystal.]
[Two thousand years of memories and all of it colored by a harsh current of rage, of hatred and anguish that hid the deep and immeasurable exhaustion of immortality.]
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['When the prophecy is fulfilled-']
['-this time, you can rest in peace.']
[A young girl looking to him with compassion and sympathy in her dying moments. A man with clear blue eyes extending the same compassion ten years later. Blue eyes that matched those of a red-haired man who spoke a millennia-old order of execution in a voice that was overlaid with static and long since forgotten. Burning, beheading, impalement, hanging, why can't I die I'll kill every single one of them for this and through all of it the armored silver-haired knight who had sworn to protect him did nothing.]
[('Such a pitiable waste', he'd said in almost a melodic tone as he watched the capital burn so many ages later. Let them die, he almost envied them for having the ability.)]
[A body that had once been human, degenerating into something black and monstrous beneath the weight of his own sacrifices. Betrayal, agony, a hundred years or so left alone in a prison of stone and forgotten. Centuries upon centuries of wandering the planet under countless illusions and aliases, the name Ardyn Lucis Caelum never once spoken on the planet again until he said it himself to a boy vanishing into a shining Crystal.]
[Two thousand years of memories and all of it colored by a harsh current of rage, of hatred and anguish that hid the deep and immeasurable exhaustion of immortality.]