You are a wandering mercenary, and she is destined to become one of the most powerful people in your country.

As I live out

Each peaceful day

Deep in my soul

Oh, I know I can't stay

She catches your glance from the moment you first lay eyes on her, standing on the doorsteps of your dwelling with her pale lavender gaze filled with silent determination:

The Lady of Hresvelg.

She wears a businesslike, refined smile, but she observes you with a certain analytical disposition, and it occurs to you that she is perhaps thinking the same thing as you.

Later you will think about something Catherine once told you, about how people with the same Crest can sometimes subtly sense each other, but all the same, it seems perverse to taint the moment with such hindsight.

At the time, you believed it to have some deeper meaning, and whatever first made her catch your attention, you like to think that even if there was no meaning there to begin with, your thoughts an actions themselves would have created meaning, much like the deliberate connecting of random dots fills up the sky with constellations.

Or perhaps it was coincidence after all: You merely stated your allegiance as you did because this town that you used to frequent with your father was technically within the borders of the Empire, and this, over the course of a handful conversations, led you to end up in charge of her house, though you had no particular preference of your own.

Until this days, you and your father have traveled this land like solitary cats to whom all alleys and places are the same – wherever you were, you marched, you fought and you survived.

And while your father sometimes gave you these sad and worried glances, he would never be ungrateful for his chance to have you around as you are.

For the last years, you don't know how many, that has been enough, and at first, this unfamiliar setting that you have been thrust into is no different.

Little do you know that the destiny you had never thought to look for had caught you unaware.

But as always, you do what you are tasked with, and while few of it leaves impressions on your face, you do your best to do it well.

Not only to you instruct your charges to the best of your ability, you go out of your way to invest in their personal development, to hone their strengths, balance their weaknesses and discovering altogether new talents that they themselves would not believed themselves capable of.

All things considered, the imperial students turn out to be a rather quirky bunch, many of whom may not immediately appear to be suited to the harsh realities of war nor very enthusiastic about the tasks they are sent to carry out by the Church. You suppose that this should not be surprising – most of them are just here out of old family tradition or for political reasons, being descended from the handful of old families that had held the reins of the Adrestian Empire since forever. Even Dorothea, the only actual, honest-to-goodness commoner in the group, turned out to have fairly cynical motives for enrolling.

You have been told by your co-workers that relations between the Church and the Empire have been strained as of late, and that it would be considered a great success on your part if you should manage to close that rift through your influence on this young generation. The archbishop once tells you that it is precisely because of her great faith in you that you have been trusted with this unruly bunch of problem children – on her suggestion, you familiarize yourself more with the tenets of the faith, and end up discovering some hidden talents of your own.

Since you were never a believer and ever lived your life by the sword, with little thought of tomorrow, you never thought you would be any good at anything like faith magic, but the Archbishop, who was the one to instruct you, seems the least surprised of all, like she had always expected you to be skilled – if anything, it was your initial struggles that rather seemed to bewilder her.

But you're not one to look a gift horse in the mouth – after all healing magic is sure to come in handy when you are out there leading your students onto the field of battle.

And just as you had used to go from battlefield to battlefield, you spend untold hours instructing them both as a group and one on one, doling out tasks, finding out what motivates them, resolving their disputes, listening to their problems, building understanding of their life stories, even going on regular searches for their lost possessions and making sure they eat dinner.

They begin to respect and admire you, of course, but that's not the only thing that happens.

As you touch the trajectory of their lives, they in turn touch yours. Many times, you have them over for tea outside of class hours.

And it's not just the students – between the staff and the knights, this monastery is filled to the brim with unique personalities, each of them with their own intricate stories.

It's almost like having friends, or what you imagine having friends might feel like.

But at the same time you're aware that there are others who do not trust you.

Many times, you overhear the Archbishop's aide questioning your appointment. You caught the Riegan boy sneaking after you on at least four separate occasions, but then again, he seems curious about everyone whose deal is not immediately apparent. When confronted he just grins at you slyly with those forward green eyes that seem to bore into everything, and admits to his misdeeds with half a shrug.

You're not sure if you would count the imperial princess herself among the numbers of your great skeptics, but it is clear that that retainer of hers doesn't trust you one bit.

You're not sure how much you blame him – you'd probably suspect yourself if you weren't you, how suspicious indeed that a complete outsider to the faith, not even a believer, and not many summers old should be appointed to your position, how puzzling, that you should have the archbishop's undivided favor though you've never seen her in your life.

Your father, in turn, doesn't trust the archbishop, and as for the woman herself, you don't know what to make of her.

Many here at the monastery sing the praises of her gentleness, but while you don't know about that, you think she seems… burdened, to you, even lonely maybe, not entirely happy in her much-treasured, restrictive ceremonial robes.

The way she speaks to you is almost that of a gentle mother or grandma, but while that seems like a passable approximation, it doesn't seem completely right, either.

You can't quite put your finger on it – sometimes when she looks at you, you have the sense that she's not looking at you, exactly.

It's not like you have ever met your mother or grandma, so maybe you wouldn't know for certain.

…

When you asked the other house leaders to introduce themselves, they both deflected you – one of them deftly, the other, quite badly, with some manner of old wound quite transparent beyond his formal demeanor.

Your silver-haired lady, meanwhile, awaits you right past the door arch of the dining hall when you descend from the stairs leading to the archbishop's audience chamber, and leads off with a list of various unpleasant traits that others have ascribed to her, only to note that it won't be good to be bogged down by those misunderstandings.

Maybe she is trying to showcase that she values self-awareness. Then she looks you straight in the eyes, unflinching, and confronts you with what you cannot have missed yourself: She senses that there is something very similar about the two of you.

Clearly enough, she has taken an interest in you, though at the time, you do not believe it to go beyond her usual ambitious disposition that had become apparent even then.

Perhaps you agreed to lead her house simply because she seemed so insistent to ambush you along the way.

She's intrigued by you, but she appraises your every step with her pale analytic glance just to make sure that her initial sentiment is reasonably merited.

At least, you are united in trying to get her classmates to apply themselves; She proves to be fairly reasonable and appreciates your efforts, and yet she never protests when you assign her unpleasant 'lowly' tasks or critique her just like everyone else – not your typical spoiled princess at all.

You start to notice how she operates, the way she fairly weighs her classmates' strengths against their weaknesses, how she never one urges them toward conventional propriety, but rather tries to accommodate them and provide them with the preconditions they require to excel, her insistence in urging them never to give themselves over to the capricious winds of fate, to be not the quarry, but the straight arrow that flies through the air, even when telling them so might not necessarily benefit herself.

As it would appear, she 'collected' those she deemed to be extraordinary or fascinating, though she did not choose them by any established principles of conventional wisdom: From former street urchins like Dorothea to her highborn classmates, those with political connections and without, from those with exceeding natural power like that young magical prodigy from the Alliance class that she sometimes liked to have tea with, to her trusted right-hand man who possessed none such intrinsic gifts, for all that he carried himself with an uncommon determination that stood out amid the many obvious beginners in their class and soon distinguished him as one of the heavy hitters in their ranks – he wasn't too green to begin with, and you fear that your tutelage might well fashion him into a sheer machine of destruction before the year is done – He's tough as leather, the clearest, most natural candidate of dark mage that you've ever seen, and for all that he transparently distrusts you, it's not like he doesn't appreciate your input, or the virtues of others in general, though he certainly makes you earn his respect with his frequent tests to your ability as an instructor.

He and his lady harmonize very well in their preference for a dispassionate appraisal of both ideas and people, but the longer you know them, the more you see that though they agree by and large, there are some subtle distinctions in their attitudes.

Though both are driving forces in him, caution pulls at him stronger than curiosity does, and you begin to suspect that the princess' opposite disposition occasionally keeps him up at night, especially since he's implied to you in no uncertain terms that he believes you to be the designated crown jewel in the princess' 'collection'.

Now, he too is always on the lookout for useful allies to the imperial cause, but 'useful' and 'extraordinary' were… well, there was an enormous overlap between the two, but they were not exactly synonyms, and he is concerned that you might fall just outside that intersection, even if he no longer holds it to be your own fault, and you suppose that this could be seen as a kind of progress, but by and large he remains somewhat impenetrable, as does his lady.

But it's not as if you haven't ever been described the same way, or like you cannot understand them.

On first glance, you suppose one might have mistaken her for the stubborn, forceful type or even described her as unyielding because she would state and pursue her aims without flinching, but the more time passes and the more you see of her, the more the veil falls away and you come to realize that she questions herself almost more than anyone else, and though there isn't much that she would seem to revere or respect (at least not without question), if there could be anything that she believed above all else, it would be her stance that individuals should strive to pursue the life they want, regardless of what the conventional wisdom of the world around you would have you do.

Between the lines, sprinkled in between your various conversations, she makes it clear to you that she is not much one for tradition. Her sharp mind looks past the well-trodden paths as if they were the walls of a glass house, cutting away all unnecessary things in ways that may have quite frightened those entrenched in the established ways, for whom the mere questions would shake the foundations of the world -

That, she could respect even in individuals whose chosen lives were rather different on her own, and it was perhaps this that connected her to people such as Dorothea or Linhardt, different as their backgrounds or dispositions might have been.

A person like you, who was never inducted into the old-fashioned ways to begin with, fascinates her to no end.

But at the same time, those very connections only seemed to go that far.

They were her friends, but where they tell-all, know-everything-about-each-other trust-them-with-your-life sort friends?

Probably not. Hubert maybe, but even there you weren't too sure.

They only ever seemed to speak about business – and you certainly appreciate that she's making her fellow Black Eagles go to class, acting as the leader that she's supposed to emerge as once her education here is concluded, but it almost seems like business and purpose is all she ever has on her mind.

She almost seems closer to your position when you're discussing the strategy for the next mission, or what the two of you are to do about their classmates' struggles.

Many of her fellow students seem to think so, anyways.

She's high-minded and fair and looks to foster comradely and togetherness, but when she speaks of it the others seem surprised, like they could never quite imagine her as belonging in the same category or level as themselves – Like there was something untouchable about her, sublime even, something that distinguished her from everyone around her, that elevated her further than anyone could reach.

Even her own retainer, who should have known her better than anyone since she was a snotty little child and stuck with her through the most banal of everyday situations spoke of her prowess with rapturous awe, and when he talked about her, his eyes held a glint like he knew some things that only he knows.

Others, by contrast, were sometimes even a bit scared of her; Bernadetta had once told you that she sometimes doubted if the princess was even human. The little archer tended to be quite impressionable and easily frightened in social interactions, and surely her position as the imperial princess would require her to keep her responsibilities in mind at all times without the need for any more incredible explanations.

You faintly recall Prince Dimitri expressing his displeasure with what he believed to be her callous words or cold treatment once or twice, and you're surprised that his repressed, polite demeanor could not quite hold back his strong feelings of offense.

You yourself have never perceived her that way.

Maybe she never struck you as that odd because you're considered something of an oddball yourself – your father never made you feel bad about that, nor did you ever think much of it when you heard others talking, but it's a fact you're aware of.

She's not an untouchable opponent to you when you cross blades with her on the training grounds, but people had said the most ridiculous things about your strength since you came here.

Crests, Relics, Saints.. none of that ever meant anything to you.

Insofar as you knew, you were never impossible or untouchable, you were simply you.

So why wouldn't she be the same?

That's how your father raised you, but maybe that was precisely why he seemed more apprehensive the closer you got to the secret heart of Garreg Mach…

Even so, you are you and she is she -

Perhaps you simply understood what she's talking about, furthermore, you've seen what she's like when she comes to you to ask for your advice, or even thanks you for your guidance, with all the genuine sincerity of one who has just been granted a pitcher of water after a harrowing march through the desert-

"When I fight by your side, " she tells you once on a wide open field, "It's almost as if I can accomplish anything.", and she twirls around with an uncommon levity that you have not seen on her many times. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but, it really feels like I could sprout wings and take to the skies!"

You were, at that time, teaching her to use magic in case she ever needed a viable long-range attack in an emergency, but of course, she had meant quite a bit more than that.

But even so, you can't escape the conclusion that there is a wall in her heart.

You go on to spend much time with her, for you find much cause to celebrate as your class exceeds all expectations.

You learn her likes and dislikes, you sit with her when she retires with a sigh after long strenuous days, and always, she seems so obviously put-together, ever the sort well-bred lady who would use elegant gloves and high-class porcelain and well-worn feather quills, reserved yet confident, fond of a spot of tea, a good book and a sweet, peaceful sunset in the gardens, and the subdued, but genuine enjoyment of the most ordinary things -

That's the version of her that shows up when you invite her to your balcony, but somewhere there's a portal and a silver door and you suspect that you've never glimpsed what lies beyond it.

It's hidden under the long sleeves and opaque tights she never fails to wear, concealed in the nights where you are on march with the rest of the class, and you notice her turning in uneasy dreams as you keep watch for the night, a hard, absolute tone when she speaks sometimes, and unspecific, vague replies when the subject of the future is concerned, it's how she never explicitly denies that she might choose to fight the others, it's those rare days where she seems a little paler than usual and Hubert, without fail, would seem to give off the impression that he is stewing with some long-held grudge, when he wasn't fretting about his lady more than usual.

Once, he would have worn a thin, reptilian smirk while he tells you that there is a lot that you don't know about his lady; Now, you scarcely see him outside of mandatory classes because he is reportedly occupied with urgent business, and when you do see him, his bony features invariably bear a severe scowl.

…

And yet you sit endlessly on the grounds in the nectarine light of the late afternoon hours as she tells you your opinions on the latest books she had read, her thoughts garnished with small pastries and bergamot tea.

Due to your sheltered upbringing, you might not have realized that much of what she says could have been considered an unorthodox opinion if she had not made sure to tell you so – and with every word, she's sizing you up, studying every remote twitch of your face, gauging your reactions -

You think you've been probed with one or the other trial balloon question, but as a trial for what, you cannot say. At the time, you don't think she's probing anything but your intellect, for no other reason than her own curiosity, and you never grow weary of observing her thoughts in progress, how the little gears in her head turn, how she follows up your every word with further questions.

When you find her readings of historical events or fictional stories to be overly jaded, or too intent of inverting all interpretation for inversion's sake, you don't at all question what twist of fate might have made her that way- you see simply an active mind questioning everything, and perhaps at times going over board, in what is a natural step in building discernment and wisdom to eventually arrive at more solidified opinions.

Had she crossed your path as a new mercenary recruit working under you, you would have made sure to keep her close in anticipation of what she might become.

You feel at times like you are in the presence of a person of great destiny, like what it might be like to stay in the tent of a legendary conqueror the likes of which reshaped the looks of the map. You marvel and wonder what Adrestia might become once she finally ascends the throne. Your powers of perception are not so weak that you wouldn't spot how she always seems to be holding something back – but she comes the closest to letting loose when she comes at you on the training grounds, yearning for a challenge that only you can seem to provide to her satisfaction.

When she throws herself at you with abandon, you don't wonder what it is that she is hoping to find in the crossing of your blades; The obligations of a ruler seem demanding enough to be an obvious explanation.

...

But it's like you're catching glimpses of something whose overall shape you are unable to grasp.

One day, at the crack of daybreak, you would find her wandering the courtyard, taking in deep breaths of outdoors air, looking at the reddening skies with apprehension.

Another time, while you are discussing how the actions of your mysterious enemies might be related, she brings up the thesis that all the abnormal occurrences so far might be connected by a single thread.

At first, you assume that this is precisely the conclusion she wants you to make – you've long since noticed that she appreciates it when you catch on quickly.

But when you agree with the proposition, she doesn't, in fact, commend you on your astute sleuthing.

She looks defeated.

Apparently, she thought instead that this might be the result of multiple actors with overlapping motives, but even so, you don't quite understand the extent of her reaction.

"When all of this is over, will you still think of me as you do now? Would you still be by guide?"

"Are you leading the life you envisioned for yourself?"

Then you are swallowed by the never-ending darkness, and though she has faith in your return, the palpable relief melts off her face the moment she beholds you – enlightened one, avatar, august star.

It's like she has been slapped awake from some foolish dream she didn't even know she was having.

Her response is awkward, stilted, when you try to explain what just happened as best as you can, but before you can tell her anything definite, the world fades before your eyes.

The last thing you see is the heartbreak in her lavender eyes.

"If the world were to divide and go to war, who would you-"

…

You have lost your father, and perhaps that's what makes Rhea's inexplicable attentions so enticing.

You're almost sure she implied that she was somehow related to your mother – Which means that Flayn and Seteth must be your family, too, then, if they were relatives of Rhea's. When you look at yourself as you appear now, it seems much easier to believe, and the idea of having a family again, well, it's rather enticing.

The archbishop is happier than you've ever seen her, positively giddy with an almost feverish euphoria to her voice, as if she just cannot wait for whatever she expects to happen next.

You suppose that it might be something very important to the faith she had dedicated her life to.

And after all, you did speak with some impossibly powerful being as it would seem, though she never seemed to you like the fire and brimstone smiter of sinners in whose name you have cut down so many by now -

Still, it's not like you really know about such things.

And many in the monastery, including many of the students, are ecstatic about this, joyous to be receiving word from the one they so worship and adore, grateful even to be living in such a blessed time.

Perhaps this really is your destiny.

You have been called a Demon and spent most of your days shedding blood, by the eternal flames, you had never even been a believer or as much as heard the goddess' name...

Yet here you are garbed in the robes of a prophet, adorned with a wide collar much like Rhea's and laden with ancient golden regalia whose meanings you barely grasp, but which mean the world to those around you – You, humble child of Jeralt Eisner, have somehow attained that which has been called 'enlightenment' or 'the touch of the holy spirit.'

Paradoxically though, it's the students from your own house that seem to be the least moved – Linhardt looks at it largely as a matter of curiosity, Bernadetta seems somewhat uncertain, and Dorothea… you might almost say she's worried about you.

But you're not sure what she means any longer, you barely register her as you step through these now-familiar halls in a raptured daze.

You're probably just adjusting, but even so, you walk right past the silent silver-haired girl, so absorbed in this whole new world you just discovered and all those things you never knew about yourself that you didn't hear her tiny plea for help -

And then it's too late.

Too late, it does eventually strike you that something must be bothering her.

Something about her is different when she returns from her brief visit home.

She smiles her usual dignified smile and speaks in her usual confident voice, but it's like some part of her is a thousand miles away, a decision already made, some ineffable thread of fate already crossed.

Though she is still right before you, it's like she has gone somewhere where you can't ever follow -

What you don't know, of course, is that she is thinking the same about you.

…

And now you know.

At first it boggles the mind; You will not, cannot believe it.

This seems to come out of nowhere – it's just not possible. How is it possible?

You're tempted to refuse to accept what all your senses tell you, but you're smarter than that.

When you think it through, you realize that you've never actually seen the princess and the Flame Emperor in the same place, at the same time.

You recall all the times she had expressed sympathetic sentiments for the various revolts and heretics you had been sent to put down, brazen rebellion barely even veiled by her dignified style of speech; You remember all the times you've seen her and Hubert running about on unspecified errands and Caspar's comments about seeing her talk to his father;

And last but not least you realize that you never once saw her in the cathedral.

You think of Ferdinand speculating whether one of the house leaders might have known that there were mercenaries stationed nearby, and a particular conversation comes to mind, a chat you had with one of the monks rather soon after your arrival, about how the church's age old reputations would have been quite tarnished if the word spread that the three precious heirs had been in danger – that is the very thing that would have come to pass if the incident hadn't been overshadowed by the tales of your heroics and subsequent appointment. At least you hope that the aim was to make the church look bad, and not outright assassination. You hope so, but you don't know it to be true.

The Edelgard you know might strike without reservation where she must, but she would always at least give the enemy the chance to surrender – but did you know her at all?

What you do know is how often you had seen the then-disguised Kronya swarming around Edelgard, and how some of the other girls had remarked on it, and at the time, had gone so far as to speculate if Edelgard was also a thing, as if such a revelation would not come as a surprise, since it was Edelgard – Edelgard of the faintest cold smile, Edelgard of the calculating dead-eyed stare, Edelgard of the boundless ungodly strength.

You thought she was like you once, but that was before you were beginning to understand yourself, to find your place here with the closest thing to a family that you have left anymore -

Now, you're not so sure.

But you seem to remember other things as well – Her eyes lighting up from the simplest things like sherbet sorbets and red carnations, her sadness when her classmates reacted with surprise to the idea of her championing companionable togetherness and her sincere wish to change it, and last but not least, her genuine revulsion at the black deeds in Remire.

You remember how she sought you out after your father's death, urging you to move forward – There wasn't even the slightest shred of pretension, no empty meaningless phrases to make you feel better, no condescending attempts at telling you what you ought to be feeling, no sugarcoated denial of the cold hard truth within your heart. She conceded outright that no amount of sympathy could replace your loss, that no measure of empathy could truly allow another to know what you were feeling; She wouldn't presume to understand, or waste your time with meaningless displays that could never have replaced what you had lost – but at the same time, she was determined that she would not allow you to give up on yourself, and vowed that she would stand with you when the time to take action should arrive…

You thought that maybe you knew what she meant, and how she thought, where others might not have, but as it would turn out, you have understood absolutely nothing.

At least her concern over Flayn seems like it must certainly have been a lie – She has played you for a fool, you, and her classmates.

But there is so much you don't know – couldn't there have been some sort of explanation?

You don't know what to think, but there is no time – Rhea is almost most certainly asking you to choose, and though you hold in your hands a legendary weapon of godly power, your resolve very much falters.

("...")

But it's the same as if you had outright turned your blade on her. Whatever pretense of wanting to go with her you might have mounted now, she would never have believed it – she was ever so good at knowing whether or not you were lying, like the impregnable mask of your face was never that opaque to her.

But you couldn't see through her at all – with a wink of her arm, she beckons Hubert to her side, there's a sizzle of magic behind you but before you can turn around, he is at Edelgard's side, looking down at you and his former classmates with disdain.

You recall how diligently he had been practicing his teleportation magic as of late, how meticulously he'd honed his technique – without a doubt, all for this moment, all that so that he could now return to the side of his mistress, and warp them both out of the chamber at her signal.

Could you truly have been so direly mistaken about her?

Was everything you thought to have seen just a perfect illusion, as much of your own making as it was of hers?

You don't know. You don't know anything, you never did.

At best you know that you're confused, but you can't afford to be.

Your students – your remaining students – are all frightened, seething with various shades of terror and wrath, especially your own charges who all hail from Imperial lands – Half of them are afraid for their friends and family, terrified that they might be caught up in the upheavals that are clearly shaking up the imperial capital, others dread the prospect of having to fight their own kin.

The Adrestian Empire is still their homeland – you get the feeling that some of them only stayed at the monastery because of their trust in you, and that's overwhelming. It's more responsibility than you've ever shouldered in your life, and your father isn't here to tell you what to do.

Everyone's panicking. They don't know what to do, or what might happen to them.

Dimitri's more enraged than you've ever seen him and darkly mumbles about revenge – you hardly recognize him anymore. Marianne scarcely understands the world anymore, utterly bewildered as to why anyone would possibly raise their weapon against the faith that has been her only support in her dreary life. Flayn speaks as if she had seen war before, though that cannot possibly be so. Lorenz says he's prepared to stand and fight, but you can hear how his resolve falters when he thinks of his territory's proximity to imperial lands and his foolish old father whose blood he doesn't want spilled. He does his best to hide it but you can tell that he's trembling in his boots. Petra, likewise, is concerned for what her choice to stand against the empire might mean for her land of birth.

And Ferdinand… worries you.

All his life, he had been preparing to take over his father's lands, had steeled and bettered himself to one day man his post. His frequent talk about the long, proud and illustrious history of his family had been a common source of irritation for yourself and his classmates, but now that he's been stripped of everything, he looks before you like a lost, beaten puppy dog, his eyes wide, blank and utterly broken.

With his father jailed, his pride broken, and his future snatched away in an instant, he has no idea what to even do with himself.

In the months you have spent together you have known him to be more than just a braggart; He was always eager, ever resourceful, genuinely upstanding and last but not least, optimistic and dauntless to a fault – but right now, even he can't seem to find a single positive thing about his current predicament, nor the faintest shred of a solution.

He's shaken to his core – And yet he knows that he cannot abide Edelgard's actions, that he must stand up to her though it may cost him dearly.

In a way you are proud – He might not have her unparalleled power, but he is very much a leader. He stood up to her down in the catacombs, in the heat of the moment, out of his sheer sense of virtue, but now that the reality of it is sinking into his young sheltered heart, he doesn't know how to go on.

And he is not alone.

Many of the students ask you why this is happening, and all you can do is to tell them that you don't know. Why go against the church? Why start a bloody war? Why antagonize the nobles whose support should have been the foundation of her power?

The more you try to calm them, the more you hear of the rumor mill that is quickly beginning to come to a boil, the scathing conclusions that are being drawn all around the monastery.

Leonie brings up the possibility that Edelgard may have meant to kill your father all along. You don't know for a fact that she didn't.

Dedue can only explain the Prince's anger by surmising that she may have had a hand in the assassination of his parents and the ensuing slaughter that devastated the taciturn vassal's own beloved homeland. With knowing eyes, Lysithea tells you to expect the very worst from any future encounters with the imperial army. Ingrid lists all the atrocious things that have happened around the monastery, all that you now know the 'Flame Emperor' to have had their hand in, from Jeralt's death, to these horrific experiments, to Flayn's kidnapping – She must have planned it all along, she must have been plotting it even as she sat in their midst, participating in classes and passing them in the dining hall, all with that composed, untouchable face of hers – and brave as she in, Ingrid shudders at the thought.

The only ones who have answers for you are Rhea and Seteth, and you don't like the sound of them one bit: She's deposed her own father, the one you thought she loved as you did yours. As for the families of her classmates, her supposed friends, many of them have been disgraced.

Hubert's father was outright killed, and you don't know which option is more disturbing, that the emperor would not spare any mercy even for her loyal vassal, or that his twisted devotion to her went so far that he would even kill his own blood.

She has undeniably been plotting with what you believed to be your mutual enemies. She wants to conquer all of Fodlan, they tell you. Tear down all existing social order so that she might rebuild it according to her own twisted ideas and selfish desires once everything else had been razed to the ground, and not even the faith was to be left standing – She had turned her blades against all that was holy.

Perhaps she means to conquer the world. Maybe she even means to set herself up as some kind of false deity – for how little you know, that may very well be true.

But whatever her aims may be, she is most certainly coming here, and she's bringing her army.

The situation is looking dire.

The Archbishop, of course, tells you to listen for the voice of the goddess, and to be honest you can't make sense of half of what she says, whatever that is about your memories or her being your proxy, but you understand enough to grasp that the responsibility has been left on your shoulders.

But today of all days, when you needed a voice from the heavens like never before in your life, you can hear absolutely nothing.

….

And still she looks the same as she did just mere days ago, when nothing could have been more natural than for you to pass her in the halls and for both of your faces to light up in an instant, no matter your reputations for impassiveness.

She is still the same woman who has lived in your proximity, the one you have worked with, convened with.

She doesn't do you the mercy of cackling maniacally or going on about how she would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids. Apart from the red-feathered armor that she wears, nothing about how she looks or sounds has changed.

If you had seen her looking so downcast just a few days ago, you would have done anything in your power to make it better – now, you feel something clenching in your center as you get ready to cut her down.

Her silver hair sways in the wind adorned by her usual pair of lavender bows, her demeanor is as perfectly reasonable and composed as you have always known it to be, apart from the tinge of wistfulness that accompanies her every word:

"I wish you were someone whose heart could be swayed by my words and deeds. If that were so, I would have done anything to make you my ally..."

Sway your heart? Make you her ally? Why in the world does she think you would follow her?

You don't know, just like you don't know anything else, other than that you stand now with your blade in your hands between the encroaching army and most of your students and colleagues.

You don't get a single answer before you find yourself tumbling down a ravine.

The last thing you see is the dark priest who held you back as you tried to rescue your father, the one who killed him as surely as Kronya had, if not more so – no sooner than you had spotted him in the ranks of the imperial army, the dark radiance of his spell appears to have sealed your fate as well, and you spiral downward into the darkness, struck down, as it seems, through the callous betrayal of your own cherished disciple.