Killing Mercier should have felt like victory.
And for a moment, it did. A flash of something akin to triumph surged in my chest, but it burned out as quickly as it came—like a match struck in a blizzard.
What followed was silence. Not the kind that comes from peace, but the void-like stillness of absolute zero—a numbness so profound it bordered on cosmic. The same emptiness I'd felt when his hands carved trauma into my body, and long before that, when childhood had been nothing more than a waiting room for pain. I have lived this hollow twice before, and both times it branded me. Shaped me. Molded me into the weapon I had to become.
I wiped the blood—his blood—from my Blade. It gleamed not crimson, but black, like oil slick on water, a reflection that refused to show my face. The ruins around me fell away as I walked. No tears. No screams. Just ash and cold and the knowledge that this—this—was the price of clarity.
There was no boat waiting this time. No hand reaching through the fog to save me. I was alone again. Not the quiet kind of alone, but the existential kind—the kind that wraps around your ribs like ice and whispers, everything you touched has withered.
And it's true.
Every scar in the world I've carved myself. Every ruined body, every broken town, every smoldering campfire was a reflection of me—of us.
The entity… the passenger—it still stirs, deeper now, more relaxed. As if satiated. As if killing Mercier wasn't the end, but the beginning of something far more insidious.
I have to know it. Understand it. Learn the shape of its teeth, the rhythm of its hunger, the echo of its thoughts in my mind. Because no matter how long I pretend otherwise, it is not a parasite.
It is me.
The shadow I cast when no light touches me. The instinct that strikes before thought. The scream behind my smile. My twin flame—dark, furious, and ancient.
To turn back this world—this fractured, frostbitten echo of what it once was—I must first navigate the labyrinth of myself. Peel back the layers I've wrapped around my soul like gauze on a wound I never let heal.
I am no longer the man I was.
Not the victim. Not the soldier. Not even the avenger.
I am something else. A ghost with a pulse. A weapon learning to weep. A god's blade with a heartbeat.
I am V.
And I am the only one stubborn, mad, and broken enough to love this dying world enough to save it.
Not because I believe in it.
But because if I don't—no one will.
Snow fell like ash as I walked northward, though the skies overhead had not changed. The world held its breath, and the silence that followed Mercier's death felt too deliberate—like the moment before a final breath or the hush before the plunge of a knife.
And then the Veil began to move.
Not with wind or sound, but with memories.
They slithered in sideways, impossible to track—illusions creeping into my vision like cracks in glass. The frozen path beneath my boots twisted, curling inward, taking me not forward but deeper—into myself. The Blade pulsed at my side, steady but subdued, like it knew this part wasn't meant to be fought.
I saw him.
Mercier.
Standing amid the frozen fog. Unmoving. Unbleeding. His silhouette charred black as if he'd been burned into the air itself. He said nothing. Just stared with eyes that were mine.
I blinked.
He was gone.
But his voice—
"Did you think killing me would be your salvation?"
It was inside me. Not like the passenger—no, this was different. This voice bled memory. It echoed with that bitter paternal edge that had haunted me since childhood, since the screams I never remembered clearly but always felt behind my eyes.
The walls of the world began to close in. Ice formed mirrors on either side of the trail, and in each one: versions of myself. One smiling. One screaming. One crying blood. One laughing with Mercier's voice.
You made me, V.
You wore my hatred like armor. You carved your name with my blade. You didn't kill me. You inherited me.
I stumbled forward, but my feet hit stone. The ice beneath me was gone, replaced with the scorched marble of a chamber I hadn't seen in years—the place where he first broke me.
Where I was born.
Not the child. Not the man. V.
The passenger stirred violently, trying to pull me out, but I raised a hand to quiet it.
No.
I needed to see this.
I needed to feel this.
"You're not ready," the voice growled from everywhere and nowhere.
"You think knowing pain gives you the right to be savior? Pain isn't purpose. It's prophecy. You're just another link in the chain, V. One more broken soul swinging the hammer."
The room collapsed.
I fell—through memory, through frost and fire, through screams I hadn't heard since I was six years old and a hand slapped the innocence out of my face.
I hit the ground hard.
Back in the Veil. The real one. Maybe.
I coughed, blood in my mouth, though I hadn't been struck.
The Blade at my side buzzed—angrily now. Unstable.
The passenger was silent.
Something was coming.
Something worse than Mercier.
Not a man.
His memory.
The stain he left in this world—spiritual, psychic, viral. A curse that echoed through those who survived him. Through me.
I stood, breath ragged, mind shaking like cracked glass.
"I'm not your legacy," I spat into the snow, blade raised. "I'm your erasure."
But the wind only whispered in return:
"We'll see."
The wind howled now—not with rage, but hunger. The kind that whispers through the bones of dead cities and forgotten gods. The snow twisted like smoke, and with each step, the cold grew quieter, until it was watching me rather than touching me.
Then I saw it.
A figure, standing still at the center of the storm, as if the blizzard itself had been built around him. My heart didn't skip. It slowed. Like prey.
He wore my coat. My boots. My stance. The same slight tilt of the head. Even the same threadbare bandage across the left hand.
But the color—
Obsidian.
Not just black, but impossibly dark, like it had been carved from the memory of night itself. The figure shimmered in faint purple edges—sickly, divine. Like something ancient pretending to be me.
I walked toward it.
The Blade vibrated, low and uneasy.
Still, I felt no fear.
Only… recognition.
With each step, I matched its gaze—eyes like molten voids, still and endless. It didn't move until I was within a blade's reach. Then, it turned—slowly, deliberately—like a sculpture awakening.
Its face was mine.
Every detail. Every scar.
But the smile was new.
A wolf's smile. A grave digger's joy.
And when it spoke, its voice was ruinous—husky, harsh, like razors dragged through frostbitten lungs:
"You finally came back."
The snow paused.
Even the Veil seemed to listen.
"You buried me. Drowned me in silence. Gave me names like 'passenger,' 'shadow,' 'pain.' But I'm not your sickness."
The creature took a step closer, and my own body betrayed me—I didn't flinch.
I leaned in.
"I'm your instinct."
Another step. I could see reflections of myself in its skin—moments I tried to forget. The kill in Cairo. The betrayal in the Hollow. That night in the flames where I didn't pull them from the fire.
"I'm what you'd be without shame," it whispered.
"Without guilt. Without all this heroic noise you wrap around your hate."
I clenched the Blade, but it laughed—my laugh, if it had been born in a dungeon.
"You want to save the world? You can't do that without me. You want to kill the gods? You'll need my hands."
It leaned forward, and for a moment, I felt warmth—not like a flame, but like hunger wrapping around my bones.
"Say it," it murmured. "Say my name."
But I didn't have one.
Because I had never given it one.
And that was the problem.
It smiled wider.
"Then I'll choose it myself. Until then, I'll walk beside you. Closer than blood. Closer than breath."
The wind rose.
The obsidian twin dissolved into smoke and shadow, wrapping around my legs, my arms, my spine—curling like a serpent into my chest.
Not gone.
Not banished.
Merged.
I stand alone again.
But not alone.
Later—though in this world, time moved like ash in water—I sat down.
Not on snow.
Not on stone.
But in the hollow place within myself.
I closed my eyes.
And opened the door.
A room emerged. Crude and dark, stitched together from the architecture of memory: walls made from broken helmets and torn cloth, floorboards of shattered glass from battles long since drowned in blood. The air flickered with candlelight, though no candles were seen.
In the center: two chairs.
One of them was mine. I sat in it.
The other remained empty—for a moment.
Then it wasn't.
He appeared again—my obsidian twin—this time without wind or storm, only silence. A silence that weighed. He didn't sit at first. He just stood there, watching me as if waiting for me to admit something I hadn't yet understood.
I looked at him, and behind his head, flashing images stuttered into my vision like a reel of broken film—blades, umbilical cords, a burning church, a crib.
Then—
Letters.
One after the other.
N
A
Z
Z
"Nazz…" I whispered.
And the name settled into the room like a new gravity.
The figure sat.
He smiled—though it wasn't joy, but relief. As if finally being acknowledged made him less… hungry.
I stared into those void-burned eyes. "What are you?"
His gaze dropped—not in shame, but calculation.
And when he answered, it came in riddles:
"I am the bruise that never surfaced.
The scream you never let escape.
The echo that learned to mimic a voice."
His tone was almost tender, almost mocking. "You gave me no name, V. But I was there, when you drowned in the baptismal tub. When your father yelled through clenched teeth. When your mother wept through silence. You thought I was fear—but I was the thing watching your fear."
He stood slowly, dragging his fingers along the chair's wooden edge.
"I'm not new. I'm emphasized."
I didn't understand.
So he leaned forward, close enough to feel the air ripple.
"When you killed Mercier, you shed part of yourself… but I absorbed it. You hollowed out to survive, and I filled the rest."
I stood too. Something in me flared—rage or awe or both.
"You're not my shadow," I said. "You're a parasite."
He laughed. The sound made the candlelight warp.
"No. Parasites feed without giving. But I—V—I am your backbone when guilt tries to break you. I am your certainty when your hands tremble. I am the part of you that doesn't ask for forgiveness."
He stepped closer, only inches now.
"And you need me. Or do you still believe salvation comes from silence?"
I said nothing.
Because silence had only ever gotten me hurt.
V stared into the void-crafted twin before him, the figure that bore his face but not his soul—or so he hoped.
"I'll name you," V said, his voice low but unshaken. "Not because I own you. But because I finally see you."
The figure tilted its head, like a curious animal sensing the tension in a hunter's breath.
V stepped closer, the air between them sharpening like glass.
"Nazz," he said. The name struck the space like a chime in a dream. "That's what you are. That's who you've always been."
The figure's lips curled into a grin—hungry, satisfied, but not malevolent.
Nazz extended his hand—not toward V, but slightly upward, palm open like summoning a forgotten relic from the void.
V's blade responded. It shivered in its sheath like a dog recognizing its true master. Then—without V moving—it was pulled to Nazz's hand as if drawn by ancient gravity.
The moment metal touched obsidian flesh, the blade transformed.
The steel—once silver with dried crimson—twitched. Its veins turned black first, then the rest was consumed by a dark violet hue, an eerie, living shade that rippled like oil over water. Whispers danced along its edge.
V's breath hitched.
He remembered.
The time in the wastes—when his body went obsidian, when his skin turned to stone and every strike was effortless, godlike. He thought it was adrenaline. Fury. Survival.
But it had been Nazz.
All along.
"You…" V murmured. "That was you."
Nazz looked up from the blade, voice rough and nearly reverent.
"You let go of your fear… and I slipped in. Power isn't born—it's allowed."
He held the blade out for V to take back.
"You wore me like a coat that night. You tasted what it's like to stop bleeding."
V took the weapon, its hilt still warm from Nazz's hand. The violet glow flickered—then faded into dormant embers.
He stared at his reflection in the blade. But now… two faces stared back.
His own.
And one behind it—deeper, waiting, smiling.