With the conquering of Kyoya's first Demon, and another first in the form of shaking hands with royalty, the boy's choice to follow Lyric has only been accompanied with fortune. Albeit not for free, the rewards of such ventures still proved more than worth his while, ultimately resulting in his decision to commit himself to her pursuits.

As one recollection after another begins to open itself unto him, Kyoya grows ever closer to learning just what persistent little memory had begun to gnaw away at his patience. As it would go, he's been provided an opportunity to converse with some that can shed much-needed light upon his ordeal, and he couldn't be happier that his partner had such a way with connections...

...And now, the only thing keeping him from going mad with excitement is the reality that he'll be hearing it all from a King and his more-than-excitable daughter... But he was told to mind his manners. What a shame.

This "Pinnacle" that Alexandria mentioned was a sight. Not one to behold, as it wasn't likely that anything could even attempt to behold such imagery.

The four of them sat at a large, circular table, in the dead center of a moderately sized, conference-style room decorated well beyond what the Miscreant figured possible. The table itself was mostly normal, save for the astoundingly smooth gold plating and studs lining almost every inch of its legs, rim, and frame. From both the wood and metal, he could see himself as clearly as a mirror -- likely even more so.

Around them, paintings and sculptures arranged in an oddly alluring manner gave the setting an almost cryptic feel, such a scene being identical to what one would imagine laid within a haunted mansion, or other similar attractions. Though, thankfully, none of the paintings of knights and maidens seemed to track his eyes when he turned away...

...That, or they just did it when he wasn't looking.

A velvet carpet with threaded gold woven into the patchwork served as the floor-boarding's cover, wrapping effortlessly around ivory pillars that held up a chiseled granite ceiling.

Kyoya and Lyric sat parallel from Altar and Alexandria, the Reclaimers' chairs being only very slightly less fashionable than their hosts'. They were made of dark wood, with silvery bolts and frames decorating points of connection or operation. The only difference with the royal family's?

Theirs were gold.

With the only thing keeping the room from dead silence being Alexandria's metal greaves ravenously tapping the floor, the Seraph took it upon herself to get their little meeting going.

"Alright!" She began, resting her cup of tea down lightly on its plate. "The meat of the matter here, is that I've got a certain somebody who I'd be willing to wager is about as connected as me to our Legend problem... As far as I'm able to delve, it checks out. I need to know, for one, what you two think -- and, for two, what we'll need to do from here on, should the same go for you."

Altar nodded, looking to his daughter, then to Kyoya, and finally to Lyric.

"That's quite the workload, miss Seraphim." He chuckled. "While I'm not capable, myself, of identifying any resemblance to one of the nine, I find it likely that a measure of his statistics may be a suitable alternative, at least while more reliable resources aren't available to us."

Alexandria seemed to perk up at this, for reasons unknown to the Miscreant.

"That does sound appropriate! How do you feel about a statistic evaluation, mister, uhm..." She caught herself at a loss, the both of them seeming to remember that he'd actually yet to introduce himself.

"Right, I'm sorry! I'm Kyoya! I totally forgot to mention that before we got started-"

She was quick to regain that supremely excited pep.

"That's quite alright! Mister Kyoya, then! How would you feel about a statistic evaluation?"

Unsure as to exactly what this evaluation would entail, the boy took his liberties in knowing what he'd be getting himself into.

"Before we get trigger-happy, how does it work?"

"I suppose it would be a better idea to have made that clear, now that you mention it." The Princess agreed. "With no better way to word it, all I have to do is place a hand on your chest, and allow some of the Magic to flow through you. From that, I should have a clear tell of your individual Power Levels, which would give my father more insight towards any of your potential connections to the Legends."

Following his daughter, the King addressed another note.

"If you'd yet to reach a conclusion, young Kyoya, myself and other elders of Takera have managed to deduce that your partner is also one of these fabled reincarnations... Specifically, the reincarnation of Lyrileas of Hope."

An exceptionally powerful jolt went up and down Kyoya's spine, then back up and down again. It didn't hurt, but Deja-vu was definitely to blame here. Go figure.

"So, that means she's..."

"That means she's one of nine destined to prevent the next coming of the Great Schism..." Alexandria chimed in, less excitedly than before. "Or so we'd hope. Her earlier mention of Fate having some sort of 'dysfunction' was in reference to the current state of the prophecy. If she hasn't related it to you already, should you be one of these nine, Lyric would have broken a step of a curse that was meant to kill you the very moment she did so; she was never meant to have found you, and you were never meant to know about any of this..."

She shuddered for a moment. "...And if any of those conditions were ever met, you were meant to die."

Lyric, unsurprisingly, found it necessary to add her own input to the young miss's statement.

"Which is why I was so adamant on letting you put two and two together... I just- I didn't want to risk any of that. Especially not knowing you now."

Kyoya took a bit to breathe. He had to. It was enough already to hear that the bright-eyed, care-free gal he'd met less than a day ago was some sort of re-emergence of a legendary hero, but that to some extent, he, too, could be a part of that story?

It wasn't bells that were ringing, anymore. They were war drums, bellowing their roars of brutal recollection with every passing statement offered by their royal audience. More and more of the foreign memories revealed themselves to him, but always fled before he could truly remember them. Constantly flickering visions of years and years beyond his own leaving almost no room to pay full attention to what was going on at the table.

"With that being said," Altar began, forcing him back into reality, "It should go without saying that we would all like to know for absolutely sure that you do indeed harbor some sort of connection to any one of these reincarnations. As it stands, based solely on your name, you'd have already been a match -- that being with the Legend known as Kyoaekon of Glory. Your stark lack of ability to remember any of this is possibly linked to the doing of the Denizen, as he was told to have set forth a curse that would tamper with each reincarnation's string of Fate, preventing the nine Legends from coming back together, which was a detail that the course of every other retelling lacked..."

Looking to her father, Alexandria picked up the tail end of his point.

"And from all that's happened, with your sudden emergence and the complete denial of what was told to be the only outcome of this millennia's cycle, it's only logical that we try our hand at every opportunity that we have. If the Denizen was capable of outright modifying the tendencies of Fate, there's no way to tell what else could come if we choose not to act."

There wasn't even a moment to blink before the Miscreant gave his answer.

"Well, whatever the hell this is about... It sounds like something I can't back out of, Legend or not."

Though, this time, no signature grin found its way to him, nothing igniting his trademark competitor's urge... Even if the thought of something so massively outrageous involving him of all people was a good step up from intimidating, it was even more intimidating to think of what Alexandria had mentioned. Behind his courage, there was nothing but fear.

Kyoya had heard stories of such a being as the Denizen. It was the antithesis to Takera, the Goddess; completing their ever-perpetuating struggle of darkness versus light. Whereas heaven was to hell, God to the Devil, the Aether was to the Void, the Goddess Takera represented all things pure, all things holy, within their world. She was thanked for the bountiful harvest, praised in her charity that the young maiden's life was spared at the hands of assassins.

But, the Denizen, as one would assume from so little as its less than gratifying title, came in to stake claims on the sheer opposites. He was to blame for negativity in this world, even the most negligible misfortune leading straight to cursing his very being, deeming that no such thing deserved to exist in any sort of company with life.

Anything capable of so much as putting a dent in the Fate that had been so graciously talked up by so many would already have put up red flags, but completely changing the way She worked? If the Denizen could do that, surely it could do a lot worse to something merely mortal, merely of this world...

Kyoya still had living family; parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, albeit in places unknown to him, but living, no less. What could become of that, should a being so dire as the Denizen will it so? What of the shrine grounds, of Reika, and Guran, and Lyric, and Ryder, and Altar and Alexandria, and the boy they'd saved, and all of the crowd from the courtyard...

What of them?