[Lokus]

It felt like forever since I've personally taken field against the Black Falcons. I've given years of my life, lost a few friends along the way, felt as if I'd never know peace. Arael was slain in Chaturanga, a missed opportunity to settle the score once and for all. A man I had known the company of briefly in captivity, staying months at a time. And now, it's over. Cornelius, at the height of his ascension, was slain. Our losses were by no means small. Everyone who had arrived sacrificed something to see it happen. In all my years of military service, I had thought that I would not repeat the mistakes of my past. But this time, it was different. When I felt the earth rise up and pierce my flesh, I couldn't help but remember everything... Everything that led up to this moment. I felt my regrets, the loss of not only the years of my life from wielding dusk to escape, but the loss of someone special. Isaiah. For the brief moment my consciousness slipped, I remembered you, Isaiah. I remember your loss of life, how you bled out right in front of my eyes. I saw it happen with my comrades, with Varen, Eiael, and Redfield. I watched what I had thought would have been our final moments as friends.

But it didn't end there.

It didn't end, even as I felt the pain searing my lungs, my insides. When the strength in my arm was undone. When all felt... Lost. For the first time since your death, Isaiah, I had given up hope. I was ready. I was prepared to have let my final moments on this plane of existence be to rasp out, with my dying breath, the names of my comrades before my own. Even when the world around me grew dark and my final thoughts kept locked inside my mind, I was ready to pass into Lazarus. I came to Sigrogana to get my fresh start, to seek penance for the deaths of my comrades from my ineptitude. The jeers of their families still ring soundly in my mind, the cold shoulder my own father gave me before I was put into exile. And yet, were it not for that fatal mistake, I would not have met all of you. I would not have had the journey of a lifetime in which I re-learn to make companions once more.

I would not have met you fine folk.

I would not have discovered an entire world beyond Chaturanga. I have remembered pain, suffering, I remembered the self-hatred in my heart and learned the hatred for others. Arael is dead, but so are you, Isaiah. My time will inevitably come, I have no misconception of that. But, for as long as there stands Evil in this world, those that seek to disrupt peace established across the realm, I will be there. I will fight. I might not win, but I will die striving for the good of this world. Whether my death will come about as Julien the Guardsmen, Julien the Lancer, or simply that of a Masked Mercenary, I will give my life to gladly fell another Demigod. I will take all the evil in this world and plunge it down into the abyss with me, all so that there will never be another like you that bleeds out before me. I am finally free of my pain, Isaiah. Although it pains me to know that Varen will join you among my dearly departed friends, I can only pray to Ryart that you two will still be waiting for me at the gate. I can only pray that our time apart has not made you forgotten your old friend.