V trudges through the freshly blanketed frost, snow rushing around his boots, deeper now—up to his calves. His breath forms thick clouds. Still holding the blade pulsing with residual energy from Nazz's influence, V swings it once. It slices cleanly through the air, humming like it's eager to taste something greater.
not using it… you're letting it guide you. Good. It remembers."
V closes his eyes. He can feel the cold even inside his ribs, curling against his lungs. The sky above pulses a deep gray. Flakes fall faster. Denser. Sharper. The wind howls like a warning, but V doesn't stop.
"Let's see what you really gave me."
He dashes forward, the snow exploding behind him. Each slash of the blade leaves a wake of melted steam, the edges of the weapon glowing faintly, not just with power, but with heat. As if the frost itself recoils from it.
"It burns because it refuses to freeze. Because it's mine. Our will, not the world's. Watch…" Nazz declares while chuckling inside
Suddenly, the heat intensifies. V spins, a violent arc through the air. A ring of snow explodes outward, vaporized. The sky booms. A rumble. Then another. Thunder.
The clouds above churn and snap like breaking glass, and then it begins: blizzard, lightning, wind, every element at war. Snow whips sideways. Ice cracks beneath his feet. Thunder splits the sky again, this time violet in color.
"This isn't me."
NAZZ (growling, intrigued)
"It isn't us. Something's… here."
V squints through the storm, raising into the air with the blade's force. Hovering above the chaos, he surveys the scene. But the snow isn't just thick, it's deliberate. A swirling storm forming a shape beneath the clouds.
Below the fog, a towering form shifts. Something large. Humanoid, perhaps, but vast. The snow curves around it rather than touching it, as if nature obeys its presence.
Then, a silhouette.
Her.
GLAE.
Motionless. Still as the core of a glacier. But even from this distance, V feels something ancient and oppressive. A cold that isn't just temperature, it's memory without motion, grief without tears. Her presence is anti-breath.
And the moment he sees her, Nazz speaks.
NAZZ (rasping directly in his head, louder than ever)
"Get the hell out of there. NOW."
V (tense)
"What is-"
NAZZ (harsher)
"You don't ask. You run."
V doesn't argue. The urgency in Nazz's voice doesn't feel like fear, but reverence. Respect.
He rockets backward through the storm, slicing down with the blade to clear a path through the knee, high snow. The warmth around him flickers, sputtering like a dying flame.
Behind him, Glae doesn't move. But the storm follows.
The temperature drops sharply. Snowflakes stop falling, they hang, mid-air, frozen in time like paused memories.
And then, her voice.
GLAE (not heard, but felt in the marrow)
"Emotion is heat."
V stumbles mid-flight. His heart flutters. His thoughts slow. Nazz screams inside his mind, his voice now primal.
NAZZ
"MOVE!"
V slashes the blade down, willing its energy to spark. The blade glows again, heat, yes, but now laced with Nazz's obsidian hue, flickering purple-black like a bruised sky. It fights against the frost, forming a thin bubble around V.
Time resumes. Snow falls once more, crashing like a tidal wave.
V lands violently in a drift, rolls, then sprints into the unknown white. His thoughts whirl.
V (gasping)
"What the hell was that?!"
NAZZ (low and rattled)
"Glae. The Construct of Ice. And we were never meant to see her. Not yet."
V (panting, shaking)
"She wasn't even chasing us…"
NAZZ
"No. That's what makes her worse. You'd want to be chased. She doesn't chase. She waits."
The blizzard fades behind them. Silence resumes. But the echo of Glae's presence lingers, a weight on the chest, a frost behind the eyes. V doesn't speak again for a while. Neither does Nazz.
Only the snow… falling, soft once more. For now.
The wind howls.
Snow billows like shattered glass through the storm-thick sky, carving spirals around V as he hovers midair, blade glowing deep obsidian-purple, heat rolling off it in waves that steam the air. Lightning cracks above him, thunder snarls beneath the clouds.
Then
Stillness.
Everything halts.
Even the snow refuses to fall for a moment.
And then… a voice.
Not distant.
Not loud.
But shivering, like silk unraveling from frozen lips.
"…help… I can't hold… much longer… too much warmth… too loud…"
The wind collapses inward.
Nazz, inside V's head, growls low, furious, scraping his words through his host's consciousness like claws through frostbitten wood.
NAZZ (V.O.)
"NO. You hear me, V? TURN AROUND. That voice, it's hers. It's Glae."
V (softly, eyes wide)
"…she sounds scared."
NAZZ
"She's always quiet, V. Silence is her weapon. Her silence could choke gods. If she's speaking, if she's pleading, then something's gone wrong. Something ancient."
V's boots drop back into the snow, now nearly chest-high, and he begins walking, blade held low, slicing through the storm like a beacon.
NAZZ (snarling)
"She is the Construct of Ice. The frost before death. The memory before forgetting. You don't help Glae. You survive her. You flee."
V keeps walking.
V
"She's alone."
NAZZ
"She likes being alone."
V
"She asked for help."
NAZZ
"She kills planets with a thought. Her breath can stop time from flowing. She once froze a civil war into stillness for three thousand cycles just to make the idiots think harder. Glae doesn't need saving."
V (without looking back)
"Maybe not. But I need to try."
A jagged hiss from Nazz, frustrated.
NAZZ
"You don't understand. She's not made of sorrow, she is sorrow. She's a god-shaped regret. She once fell in love with something warm, and it died in her arms. That's what made her like this."
The wind thickens again, this time colder, harsher, but V presses on.
NAZZ (quieter now, almost a whisper)
"She is abandonment crystallized. She remembers you before you broke. She gives you the lie of peace… until you stop fighting to be alive."
A sound now, like cracking bones beneath a glacier
"…someone… please… I don't want to go alone again…"
That was not a goddess.
That was a woman on the edge.
V doesn't stop. His sword begins to hum, then heat, then glow, not from fury, but from purpose.
NAZZ goes quiet.
The kind of quiet that feels like a breath being held for too long.
Then..
NAZZ (softly)
"…if you reach her, and she turns… we both die, V."
"Then we'll die standing in the heat."
A pause.
Then, with the coldest laugh yet, Nazz speaks one final time.
NAZZ
"…you're an idiot. I like that."
And so, V walks through the storm, not away from danger, but toward the heart of something ancient, vulnerable, and deadly:
Glae—the one who silences eternity.
But for once… she whispered.
And someone heard.
The world halts.
Wind.
Snow.
Sound.
All silenced in a snap, like the universe flinched.
But not her.
Not Glae.
The Remnant of Ice.
Her form is vast, impossibly vast, yet coiled in human stillness. Her body is made of a translucent substance that looks like sculpted winter: shifting frost, star-dusted glass, veins of glacial blue running deep under skin that glows like snowfall under moonlight.
She floats above the ground, not walking, not gliding, hovering in a silence that screams. Fractals ripple behind her, etching frozen runes into the air.
V stops walking.
His breath curls upward like smoke caught in slow motion. His blade dims. The world holds its breath.
"…this isn't just her. Something else is here. Something old."
Then
She moves.
In an instant, Glae is before him.
One blink ago she was a hundred meters off, silent and broken in the snow. Now, her face, if it can be called that—is inches from his. Her expression unreadable. Her eyes like dying stars behind ice.
V can't speak.
His body doesn't respond.
Even Nazz has gone still.
"Don't speak. Don't think. Just observe. That's not Glae talking. She's… a door."
A crackle. Not sound—thought.
And then..
Her mouth opens.
But the voice that leaks out… isn't hers.
It's distorted. Glitching. Like radio static layered over a choir. It speaks not in one voice, but in many, echoing, clashing, whispering over each other in slow, horrible unison.
"THE CHOSEN CARRIER APPROACHES."
V's heart pounds like thunder inside an iron drum. The snow around him rises, not falls, suspended in air like shattered time.
"HE BEARS THE MARK OF THE FORGOTTEN FIRST."
"No. No, no, no. That name was buried. I buried it, we buried it."
V twitches.
His hand shakes. His blade almost slips. But he forces himself to speak.
"Who are you?"
THE ONE WHO WATCHES THROUGH THE MIRRORS OF OLD.
"They're not supposed to see anymore…"
"HE WHO WALKS WITH NAZZ WILL WAKE THE PRISM-SOUL."
V (furrowing his brow)
"Why me? Why am I seeing this?"
Glae's body flickers.
Not in light, but in form. For a moment, she shifts into something massive—wings of broken constellations, arms of molten frost, a face with three eyes. Then, just as suddenly, she snaps back into her silent, human-like shape.
"BECAUSE YOU… ARE THE VOW UNKEPT."
And for just a second..
the voice becomes one.
Feminine.
Mortal.
Terrified.
"Please… don't let me go cold again…"
That was Glae.
The real one.
A sliver. A gasp. The girl under the godhood.
Then her body collapses gracefully, like snowfall. She drops to one knee, frost spidering out around her as if the ground is mourning.
Time resumes.
The wind screams back into existence. The cold strikes V like a blade. Snow races around him like wolves reclaiming the world.
V drops beside her, catching her before she hits the ice completely.
Her body is light. Too light. As if most of her isn't here anymore.
"…they used her as a vessel, V. A signal flare from the old realm. Someone's reaching through."
V (softly)
"She didn't ask for this."
NAZZ
"Neither did we."
V pulls Glae into his arms.
Her skin hums with frostbite and fading divinity. Her breath stutters. But she's alive.
Barely.
And for now… that's enough.
He rises, carrying her through the storm.
And somewhere deep in the storm behind them, something ancient laughs—
because the door has been opened.
V drops to his knees, cradling Glae's limp form. She trembles—shallow breaths, frost blooming across her collarbones, light leaking through the cracks in her skin like she's made of frostbitten glass.
V (desperate)
"Come on. Don't disappear. Stay with me."
He unslings his blade, still humming with the obsidian-purpling touch of Nazz, and presses its flat edge gently across her back, trying to share its heat, its energy.
But it only makes it worse.
Her body begins to shift color not dark, like before, but white.
Snow-white.
Transparent.
Her edges begin to fade.
"Stop! Stop that, you'll unmake her. She's too raw right now."
V jerks the blade away, eyes wide.
NAZZ
"Put her in the snow. Now, V."
"That'll kill her—"
"No. It's where she breathes. Trust me."
Against instinct, V gently lays Glae into the snow. As soon as her back touches the frost, her body shudders, and then glows.
The transparency pulls back.
Her light restores.
She stabilizes.
"She's… healing?"
NAZZ
"She's not human. Not like you think. She's a Remnant. Cold is her cradle."
Then, V's body convulses.
Obsidian veins crawl up his arms. His pupils bleed violet. His breath clouds not from cold, but from power.
NAZZ
"Let me handle the rest."
V collapses inward.
His consciousness is pulled beneath, into the mirrored walls of his mind.
V stands inside a dim chamber of mirrors and stormclouds. His reflection stares back, but it isn't him, it's Nazz, stretching, rising, unfolding from the mirrored edges of the room like shadow-silk woven into form.
Outside, in the real world, Nazz emerges from V's body. His full height towers, lean and sharp, like carved obsidian in motion. Not monstrous, elegant, but wrong in the way statues are wrong when they start to move.
He walks over to Glae, now curled in the snow like a being rebooting into life.
"You called through the ice. And someone answered."
"I… didn't mean to reach that far."
Her voice is hers again, but fragile. Her eyes flicker, trying to understand who or what this being is.
NAZZ
"You knew what would hear you. Don't pretend otherwise."
Inside the obsidian room, V stares in disbelief at this scene through the mirror surface.
V begins to declare outraged.
"You've been like this for years?! What are you even?"
(he walks in a circle, eyes wide)
"You're walking around in my body, talking to gods like it's a Tuesday. That's not natural!"
NAZZ
"No, V. It's not natural. It's inevitable."
He turns his face slightly toward the mirrored wall, toward V.
NAZZ (quietly)
"I didn't wake because I wanted to. I woke because you couldn't carry this alone anymore."
In the snow, Glae sits up slowly, watching him, cautious but not afraid.
GLAE
"Who… are you, really?"
NAZZ
"A scar that never healed. A shadow that chose to stay. The part of him that the world couldn't break, so it buried."
He crouches in front of her.
NAZZ
"You and I… we're not so different."
GLAE (blinking)
"You're not like any Remnant I've seen."
NAZZ (grinning darkly)
"That's because I'm not one of them. I'm one of his."
He places a single hand on her shoulder, ice doesn't spread. She doesn't wince. Their energies ripple like overlapping wavelengths.
NAZZ
"They're waking up, you know. The others. Glae was just the first flare. The war Graves warned you about… it never ended."
Inside the mind, V's fists clench.
V
"This was never about survival, was it? This is about who we become when the war starts again."
NAZZ
"Exactly."
Scene holds.
A Remnant reborn.
A shadow loosed.
A war beginning not with fire, but with ice.