A Looming Revisionist

"Learn the origins of the Grandmaster, as well as the repercussions of the Arc 3 universe's destruction."

- Mission Briefing

A Looming Revisionist is the first cinematic cutscene featured in "The Sentinel Trials" saga of the Roach Chronicles, created by RoachTheIntelCollector.

Story
In ancient Delphi, Greece in 490 BC, a young man is sparring against several training dummies with a sword while his father watches his progress. After slicing apart some of the dummies and displaying masterful swordsmanship, the man turns to face his father, who nods. The man pierces the sword into the ground and approaches his father, who tells him he will one day make a fine warrior and leader. The man is skeptical, saying he doesn't feel like he deserves to be one, asking how could he be a leader if he could not foresee his own future later in life. The father chuckles, saying that he will know soon enough before holding out his hand and materializing an ancient sword, gifting it to his son. The father explains that the weapon was known as No Name, and it had been passed down from owner to owner for thousands upon thousands of years, telling his son that he was now the new owner of No Name. Curious, yet amazed by the weapon, the man asks how this weapon would allow him to stride towards the future. The father smiles, and tells the man to gaze into the eye of the weapon. The man soon glares into the blue cat-like eye embedded in No Name's head, and soon began to see brief visions of events to come, such as the man's rise to power in Delphi and the beginning of his research of Prima Materia. After the man returns to his senses and gasping after witnessing what he has seen, the father asks the bewildered man if he knows what he must do. Looking back at the weapon before back to his father, the man responds that he does, saying that he now knows how important he is. The scenes cuts dramatically black before revealing the title of the saga: "The Final Chapter".

In the aftermath of the Arc 3 universe's destruction, a temporal anomaly was created throughout time and space in the multiverse. This anomaly caused the boundaries of the multiverse to fracture, thus making it more exposed to the Nexus, allowing the creation of a rip timeline set in the past during the Soulless's attempt to return back to Limbo. After the destruction of Xarcoh, his soul soon escaped deeper into the fading rift. Asking himself where he could possibly go, he soon begins to be pulled towards a bright light. As the light faded into darkness, Xarcoh found himself as an apparition, standing on a watery floor in a seemingly endless black void. Looking above him, he sees countless blue clocks floating above him; turning behind him, he sees he has emerged from a red portal, where as the few portals next to it were all blue. As Xarcoh questions where he has emerged, a blue light catches his eye as it drifts towards him from the sky above. Reaching out towards it, the light manifests into No Name as Xarcoh grabs ahold of it. Inspecting the weapon and questioning what it was, Xarcoh soon glares into the eye embedded in the weapon's head, causing him to begin to see visions in rapid succession until they piece together to form complete memories. In these memories, Xarcoh learns of all of the events that have transpired in the original timeline, including what would be his future. Regaining his senses, Xarcoh realizes what was going on: he was in the Nexus, an interdimensional plane that allowed travel to the various multiverses in existence. Knowing what he had seen was destined to be his ultimate fate in the original timeline, Xarcoh begins to laugh with real emotion, something he was unable to do for so long in the original timeline. Xarcoh soon exclaims to the endless void that he knows what fate intended for him, announcing that from now on, he will walk his own path, one that destiny cannot foresee. Xarcoh declares if he was to walk this new path, he was to abandoned his old identity, and ultimately leave behind what he once stood for. Raising No Name into the air, he declares his new name, Ignotus, and announces he will find a way to conquer the Nexus and turn it into his own image.

De-summoning No Name, Ignotus turns to return back through the portal he came through when he discovers one of the adjacent portals was grayed out and cracked. Stepping through it, he finds himself in a white void of nothingness, filled with the ruins of what was once the Arc 3 universe. Among the remains that caught Ignotus's eye was a single unused synthetic body. Grabbing ahold of it and returning back into the Nexus, Ignotus's apparitional form soon expires as his soul enters the body, giving himself a new vessel, which donned his signature black coat. Satisfied, Ignotus soon returned back to his rip timeline, emerging back in underground chamber in Tunisia. Ignotus, using some of the knowledge he was given by No Name apart from the memories of his future, soon began planning how he would assume control over the Nexus when he immediately discovers a problem; when the Nexus was created, The Father created a special seal that prohibited anyone from altering it, including The Son and the Nexus Apparitions. To accommodate for this, Ignotus sought to find a way to bypass this setback, and used No Name to observe past events that led up to the Nexus's creation. He soon discovers a loophole: when The Father created the Nexus, he used No Name one last time to see the events to come to ensure his seal was never broken. However, he could only see the span of history No Name was wielded in a consecutive amount of time following the Nexus's creation. This meant The Father could only see up until the events of Boss Rush, as that was when No Name returned to the Nexus without an owner for the first time since its creation. Because of this, The Father believed that the last of Dark Creation, the only powerful enough substance to break the seal, was gone, and the last of it was safeguarded by a well known hero of light.

With this loophole now dawned, Ignotus set his eyes on the Harbinger, more specifically the one wielded by his complete self in the original timeline, as this version contained the remaining essence of Dark Creation within it following its reforge. Ignotus soon planned to have his complete self from the original timeline venture into the rip timeline, where he would steal his Harbinger and use it to fulfill his plan. Wishing to find a way to coax this into happening, Ignotus used No Name to learn of creatures known as the Unversed, which were physical manifestations of powerful negative thoughts and emotions from strong-willed souls with great ties to darkness. Knowing he has a powerful enough soul to conjure the Unversed, Ignotus tapped into his soul to form negative powers to generate an army of Unversed, modeling them after zombies. Ignotus then sent the Unversed into the Nexus, where they would begin leaking into other universes. Knowing it would only be a matter of time before the heroes found out what was going on, Ignotus opens a dark corridor, and steps through it to warp away in order to prepare himself for his master plan.

Trivia

 * The cutscene reveals how the Grandmaster came to acquire No Name, as well as the most notable of the repercussions of the Arc 3 universe's destruction.