Enter The Cycle

The elder stared, wild-eyed, at the towering figure before him, completely without understanding. He searched the Lord's blank steel eyes, his empty steel face, his spined, eternally bloody armor, hoping for some clue, some sign as to what he did wrong, why the Lord had chosen to do this to him.
He looked down as the Lord drew the spines of his gauntlet from his chest. It seemed an eternity; he could feel the thin shafts withdrawing from his lungs, his heart, scraping against his ribs. The wounds were precise... and fatal, beyond doubt.
His Advocate buckled, and silver-blue light licked and flickered from the wounds, trying without hope to heal them. New flesh would not form, existing flesh would not regenerate. The wounds were irreparable, responding to neither the flow of life nor the restoration of order.
It was an instinctive reaction. He'd already known as much.
"My Lord Destroyer... why?"
The Lord looked down at him, passionlessly, as he slumped to the ground. Lesser warriors, he thought to himself, would have died to that gaze. Or to these wounds already, for that matter.
"You have much to do, Father," the figure intoned. The voice wracked his body; he could feel his physical shell deteriorate from it's implication. At this point, only force of will held him from the Great Wheel.
"Yes, the Wheel," the Lord said. "You are far from done, my child. You have a great deal yet to learn; more than this life alone could show you. You will return, Son, and life will begin to teach you again. You shall be strong despite yourself, and learn many crafts."
The figure kneeled next to him, his armor barely making a whisper. The spined gauntlet came to rest on his ruined chest, and a new agony cut through him. Not spines, but a feeling of being ripped apart from within. As though a vital piece of his existence were being ripped away. His Advocate screamed even as he did, a thin wail cut short as he choked on his own lifeblood.
"This, though," the Lord said, quietly. "This is what makes you my child. You will discover that this is your instrument, your source, your fate. You must learn to hold this before you, wield it even as it wields you. By the time you take it back into you, by the time you become one again, you will become the instrument I need. Time is short, and the Balance is dangerously askew."
The Lord rose again, a dim blue-grey shimmer fast fading around his hand. "The realms of Creation are closed to you, now, child. The forces of change, of fate and chance, are your tools from here forward. You have learned to use them well as tools of assassination for the sake of balance, this time, and had you never called me in the first place, I still may have noticed. You must learn to make them your life; live through them and let them live through you. To do this, you must be reborn, and this may come to be several times. Each life will be a Hell of sorts; each life will be a lesson. Learn well."
The towering, spined figure turned from him as his vision faded. From the engulfing blackness, he could hear his Lord Shiva's last words to him. "Even as you return to the Wheel, Ruiner, your beloved wife flees beyond the Voivode's wrath. A child, four days conceived, is within her, and it is without a soul. Her time is short, but she will reach Spain. Then, her time will end, and yours will begin again."