Infernal Paradise: The Bright Ones Plan

The Inevitable Revelation

Past Aranx senses that the Hero’s time with him has ended: his future self is calling them back. He offers to return the Hero with Arthelyn’s help, but she says her own destiny calls from the future. She will accompany the Hero and face their sister. She tells the young Aranx to take care.

The Hero returns to the present with past Arthelyn. She says she is needed because her future self can no longer fulfill her duties: that Arthelyn is already dead. Present Aranx had hoped his sister’s reappearance meant there was hope, but now concludes that Azalith must have killed her. In his grief, he repeats the divide between them: they are enemies, no longer family.

Aranx looks exhausted, and the eyes normally hidden by his helmet are exposed. He says fighting the Infernal invasion alone has taken its toll; reassuring mortals that they need not fear him rarely helps. Arthelyn asks where the other Celestials are. They are hiding, he answers, afraid of the light of the heavens.

Towers have erupted from the ground, something Aranx says has not happened since the siblings’ birth. Azalith’s invasions have drawn their creator’s attention again: the Bright One has returned. Arthelyn recognizes that the dread pressing upon them does not come from the Infernals. Aranx urges the group to stop Azalith before the Bright One descends and she takes their throne.

Arthelyn remembers these towers as the siblings’ birthplace. In her recollection, Aranx opened his eyes when she and Azalith could first stand; Azalith held the quiet child’s hand to help him feel brave enough to speak. He no longer remembers it. Arthelyn accepts what she believes is her inevitable death in the Hero’s era and places saving her family above delaying that fate. Yet the returning creator’s light fills her with dread: she wonders whether they fear Azalith’s ambition or the Bright One’s wrath.

The Climb to the Throne

Azalith’s Infernals are climbing the towers. In Revoked Devotion, the Hero ascends with Aranx and Arthelyn and fights the Infernal Mages. Aranx initially takes them for rear support, but finds them disturbed and driven to their knees by the Bright One’s presence. Reverence is Fear sends the group to find missing Celestials, but those they locate refuse to leave their hiding places. Aranx reasons that Azalith cannot be what frightened companions who had just fought beside him; the pressure is crushing his head too.

Incidental Fall brings them against an Infernal Malxas blocking the ascent. After its defeat, Aranx realizes this is not the Malxas the Hero encountered before. Newly shed feathers suggest a recent transformation, which he blames on Azalith. In Knight-Erratic, the Hero clears her foot soldiers farther up the tower, but Aranx sees the army falling into disarray for reasons beyond their attacks. The Knights are reluctant to approach a cruel presence ahead.

Terrified Terrors sends the Hero to investigate Infernals cowering like the Celestials below. Aranx wonders why their creator did not return sooner if mere flickers of its light can reduce these warriors to tears. Eudaimonia then confronts Maah-na and Akh-a, whom he identifies as Celestials caught midway through an enforced fall into Infernal forms. He calls beings in this unusually strong transitional state Eudae and asks the Hero to pacify them before they bring the tower down.

The feathers collected in Giver and Redeemer unsettle Aranx’s explanation. They are new growths, possibly torn away when Infernals were forced back toward Celestial forms, rather than old feathers shed during a fall. He and Arthelyn are left trying to understand what is happening.

In Losing the Cause, the Hero casts Mages down from the tower so Aranx can catch and question them. They report disappearing Infernals: some become Eudae, while others vanish without a trace, and the frightened survivors call it the Bright One’s punishment. Building Doubts clears the last Knights from the approach. Aranx tries to set his misgivings aside, remembering the creator’s old decree that creation was not meant for Infernals and that they were made for destruction.

They catch Azalith before she can reach the Bright One. Aranx asks the Hero to help defeat her and put an end to the doubts obscuring their conscience. Azalith the Disavowed ends with her defeated, but the confrontation has not ended her quarrel with her siblings.

The Bright One's Plan

Worn down, Azalith remarks that Arthelyn is as strong as when they first opened their eyes. She calls her a cheater for traveling from the past. Arthelyn begins to ask how Azalith could fail to know what became of her in this era, but Azalith turns to Aranx: he has grown taller, held his own, and even exhausted her.

Aranx appeals to their shared birthplace. Here, he says, the Bright One created them; here they were a family. Azalith refuses to return to that past, and declares that he will not return either. She raises a hand toward him, and red power covers Aranx as he cries out.

Accused of transforming the other Celestials, Azalith denies responsibility: her Infernals, she says, joined her willingly. The unanswered question of what caused the Eudae hangs over the exchange. She singles out Aranx as the replacement made to protect the Realm when she was no longer needed, declaring that she will show everyone they are the same underneath. He cries that it hurts. She lowers her arm, the red covering recedes, and she admits she could not carry out her threat.

Aranx says he never wanted to replace her. The Bright One is descending, and he wants to speak to their creator and plead Azalith’s case. He insists there is still a chance, but his next words are cut short. Something speaks to Azalith; Arthelyn asks what the others hear, while Aranx feels a piercing pain in his ears and mind. The voice pronounces Azalith unworthy.

Gold light covers Aranx, and he cries that his body is tearing itself apart. He rises above the floor. The presence is identified as Anethyx’o, and Aranx is taken away. Arthelyn cries out; Azalith demands that they give her brother back.

Afterward, Arthelyn reports that the Bright One completed the Infernal transformation Azalith could not bring herself to perform. She and Azalith have reached a temporary understanding: they will resume their quarrel after confronting their creator and bringing Aranx back. Wretched Limbo calls for the Hero to prepare for that rescue by tempering their blade against the Infernals. Arthelyn wonders whether her present counterpart suffered such a transformation too, but what she wants now is peace for her brother and sister.