Arthur stared blankly at the beautiful canopy of scarlet roses. Their vibrant crimson hue stretched across the landscape like a sea of blood, undulating gently in the breeze. The petals caught the fading light, creating an illusion of flames licking across the ground. Despite their beauty, he felt nothing—no awe, no appreciation, just emptiness reflecting the void within him. The world could have been painted in the most magnificent colors imaginable and Arthur would have remained unmoved, his capacity for wonder extinguished alongside his will to continue.
He sighed and looked down at the roses by his feet before slowly lowering himself to one knee and wrapping his fingers around a root and picking it out of the ground. The stem felt cool against his palm, tiny thorns pressing against his skin without breaking it. The rose was perfect—unblemished petals spiraling outward from a tight center, each layer of deepening crimson more exquisite than the last. With methodical slowness, as if each movement required careful consideration, he stood back up and slowly raised the flower to his nose and began to smell it.
The headache came on as usual—a dull throbbing that started at his temples and radiated inward, pulsing with each beat of his heart. Then came the temptations and the urge to give yourself to them. The whispers at the edge of consciousness, promising relief, promising an end to pain, promising power in exchange for surrender. Actually in truth they had been hammering in his mind ever since the end of his fight with Luke, but Arthur's mind was so fractured and in such disarray the temptation of the roses became little more than background noise—just another torment lost among many, another voice in the cacophony of grief and guilt that dominated his thoughts.
Right now he was simply smelling the rose and trying his best to enjoy its sweet and savory scent... but he did not smell anything. No fragrance reached him, as if his senses had shut down along with his emotions. The rose might as well have been carved from stone for all the sensation it provided. Another small loss atop countless others, another reminder of how disconnected he had become. Arthur sighed and dropped the rose along with his hand limp by his side, watching dispassionately as it fluttered to the ground to rejoin its brethren, disappearing among the sea of identical blooms.
Before slowly looking to the right where he had long since felt a presence entered his dark sense radius. The awareness had been there ever since the dead flowers came back to life, footsteps under the shade of the freshly bloomed flowers, but he had ignored it until now, neither curious about its nature nor concerned for his safety. He looked blankly at the thing that lay before him and for the first time since leaving Luke's body, Arthur spoke.
"The fourth monk... guess there will be someone to witness me die after all."
His voice was hoarse from disuse, the words scraping against his dry throat like sand. They seemed to hang in the still air, alien sounds in a place that had known only silence. To Arthur's right, standing ominously in the field of red roses, was a skeleton draped in a black robe with the hood pulled over its head. The fabric was worn and frayed at the edges, moving slightly in a breeze that seemed to affect nothing else. In its hand was held a scythe that was as long as the skeleton was tall. The wooden handle was dark and polished from centuries of use, and the blade gleamed with an unnatural sharpness that seemed to cut the very air around it. It looked lifelessly at Arthur, unmoving, empty eye sockets somehow containing a penetrating gaze that pierced through his physical form to evaluate the state of his soul.
It was the missing fourth monk, it was the thing killing all those monsters Arthur found on his journey through the roses. Corruption kills most of its victims, but some suffer a fate worse than death. If their will is strong enough, instead of being simply killed they would be turned into a grotesque harbinger of death consumed by corruption.
The monk's will to keep this sacred ground safe was so strong that even after being corrupted he did not die. Instead, he was subjected to be the warden of these dead lands he once held so dear for the rest of eternity. Forever patrolling, forever killing, forever trapped in service to what he had once willingly protected. A testament to dedication transformed into unending punishment—a cautionary tale about the fine line between devotion and damnation.
Arthur did not run, he did not tremble, he did not summon his sword. He simply stood there with a dim lifeless smile on his face as he stared at the death that would soon take him. There was almost comfort in the finality of it—an end to the emptiness that had become his existence.
The monk stood there waiting, patient as only the eternal can be, the scythe held at a precise angle. The skeleton made no sound, no rattling of bones or rustle of robes, just perfect stillness as it evaluated this latest intruder upon its domain. And soon Arthur closed his eyes and took a deep breath, filling his lungs with air that tasted of roses and dust. Then took a step towards it, then another and another. His feet moved through the carpet of roses, crushing petals beneath his boots with each deliberate step. The soft crunch of vegetation was the only sound in the eerie silence of the field.
He was walking to his grave but he knew that. He didn't necessarily want to die but he found it unfair that he should get to live after what happened to Luke. The guilt of survival weighed on him more heavily than any physical burden could. And even if he did survive, what's out there for him anymore anyway? No home awaited his return, no purpose remained to drive him forward. This was easier. There would be pain, but it would be brief. Then nothing—an emptiness to match the one he already carried inside.
He walked closer and closer to the unmoving skeletal reaper who now barely stood 10 feet away. The scythe remained motionless, but Arthur could sense the gathering of power, the preparation for the swing that would separate his soul from his body. The air seemed to thicken around them, heavy with anticipation. He closed his eyes, ready for the strike, almost welcoming the oblivion that would follow.
When suddenly a second thing entered Arthur's radius and before he could even think to question it, a sound echoed over the roses:
"IDIOT, GET BACK!"
Arthur flinched at the unmistakable sound of... human words? The harshness of the voice cut through his stupor like a knife, shocking him back to alertness. His eyes snapped open as he turned toward the source of the shout, confusion momentarily replacing his resigned acceptance of death.