It's been a day since Glae, the ice remnant appeared on Earth. My thoughts have grown clearer, although maybe that's just a side effect of being near divinity. She's constantly following my every move.
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"Don't you mean our every move?"
Nazz's raspy voice cuts through my head.
"Yeah, our every move," I restate.
He hasn't been as infuriating lately, probably because of Glae's appearance. A goddess?Honestly, I'm not sure what to call her. The concept of Remnants is confusing, their story… tacky yet full? Contradictory, like everything about them. What makes me laugh, though not in a funny way; is how Glae despises Nazz but still cherishes him, wishes to protect him. That, I can't wrap my head around.
I've learned how to block my thoughts from Nazz's, something I didn't even know I could do. It creeps me out, him being there from the very start but also makes sense, in a way. His origin… it surprises me. But that's just because I only ever get fragments. Pieces. Never the full story.
Then there's the Blade of Malfunction. Another mystery stacked on the pile. So much within Nia I still don't understand. Why? I'm supposed to be the smart one. Compared to Remnants or whatever the hell Nazz is I'm nothing. A peasant. It's idiotic. I'm idiotic. None of this should've happened if I hadn't listened to Miller.
But it's what I wanted.
These conversations, this split dialogue with myself… Who am I? Am I V? Am I Zane? Am I Nazz? I keep telling myself I'm V, but then why does the name Zane tug at me like a shadow I can't quite turn to face? It's been me for a year now. I don't want to accept it, but I must.
Did it all start from her? Has Nazz always been here, just hidden? Or did he manifest because of what I've been through? I want peace just me, only me, but that'll never happen. I'm the man of many names. The man who doesn't get to resign to one, no matter how much I hate it. And I do hate it. But I can't change it. I must accept, live with it, move past it… whether I want to or not.
That sharp burn inside, it's Nazz. I can sense him better now. He can sense me too.
"Sage, that girl… is she actually going to help us?" Nazz asks, voice uncertain. Nothing like his usual monstrous edge.
"I have no clue," I answer quickly. "I expect her to be cautious at least. She ran because she was scared, and now we don't know her capabilities, her location, anything."
"You do know you can pinpoint her location, right?" His confidence throws me.
"How?" I stare back, confused but intrigued.
"That blade we use. You can locate Killiden with other Killiden," he says, as if it's the simplest thing in the world.
"You can?" My question is rhetorical, but I want more out of him.
"You already know you can. That blade wasn't made out of nothing. We both heard what those two said, all that time ago."
All that time ago? It was just days ago. Maybe a week. Has it been a year? Two? My sense of time's collapsing in on itself. I force myself to snap out of it.
"Yeah… I guess you're right. I'll try it."
I exit the stillness of my mental refuge and return to the cold, white wasteland.
I lift the blade. It hums with an instinctive energy as I ignite it, something I've only seen Nazz accomplish before. That obsidian entity bends, moves under my grip. I raise the weapon over my head and focus on her. On Sage. A fresh Killiden.
The blade jerks violently, dragging my body forward. I stumble but catch myself, grip tightening.
Glae notices immediately, but before she speaks, I cut her off.
"I have a location on her. Not far. But you'll have to walk if you can, it'll keep your melting at bay."
"Good. Then don't be a distraction." Her voice drips with irritation, sarcasm laced beneath it.
I chuckle. "Me? A distraction? I want the truth to return. To restore Nia. To make Earth what it was before, lush, alive, beautiful. The way only those of us who remember can know."
I begin moving toward the pull of the blade. Its pulse matches my heartbeat, my hand trembling, not violently but with an odd elegance. Glae notices.
"Your hand… she's under physical strain. That's why you're shaking."
"Physical strain? What, is she lifting weights or something?" My sarcasm masks the uncertainty
Glae exhales slowly. "No. She's undergoing the Remnant Weapon Ritual. It's dangerous. She could die. But it doesn't happen to just any weapon. Only those made of pure Killiden. Meaning… that girl is the key to it all."
The words hang in the frozen air, heavier than the snow around us.
And for the first time, I realize, this isn't about me, Nazz, or even Glae.
The axis is shifting, and it's turning toward her
The snow keeps falling, quiet but endless. It doesn't pile in soft mounds like it used to; here it grinds itself into the earth, hard, jagged, suffocating. I don't think the world here remembers softness.
We've been walking for what feels like hours. Glae drags herself beside me, her massive, frozen form leaving trenches in the snow. Each step she takes groans like glaciers shifting. She looks weakened, melting but she still terrifies me more than the endless cold.
Nazz is humming in my skull. Not a tune, not anything human. It's a vibration, a rattling noise like obsidian being struck. He does that when he's restless, when he's waiting for something to bleed.
The landscape has begun to change. At first it was just snow, white horizon and sky stitched together until my eyes blurred. Then the shapes started showing. Buildings. Not alive, not even abandoned. Dead.
Concrete half-swallowed by ice, steel frames bent and snapped, towers slanted and crumbling, their lower halves buried so deep they looked cemented into the snow itself. Whole streets stretched into frozen nothingness, as though this place had been smothered by a blizzard for centuries. Some of the windows still reflected light, like they remembered being warm once.
I don't know why, but the silence of these ruins crushes me more than anything. They don't scream of destruction, they whisper of something forgotten.
"This was a city," I mutter under my breath, voice almost breaking the fragile stillness.
"Yes," Glae rumbles behind me. "One of many. When Nia first began to rot, places like this fell silent. And then they were buried. Snow became their tomb."
I don't respond. I can feel Nazz leaning into the thought though, pressing his voice against my mind.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he croaks. "All this death… a canvas painted white."
I ignore him. Keep walking.
Hours pass before the snow begins to thin, the air warming. At first it's subtle, like the bite of frost dulling, until the ground itself begins to rumble beneath our boots. Ahead, the whiteness splits.
I see it.
A volcano, rising black against the gray sky, fire breathing faintly from its mouth. The heat makes the snow retreat, leaving a scar of scorched earth spiraling up its body. It looks alive. Pulsing. As though the mountain itself is waiting for us.
"We're going up there?" I ask, even though I already know.
"Yes." Glae's voice has no hesitation. "The path lies within. You will climb into the lava."
Nazz doesn't stay in my head for that. He tears himself out, form spilling into the open like a living shadow of obsidian. His jagged body towers, his green-lit veins pulsing like fury.
"Lava?" His voice snarls across the rocks. "You'll die! He'll burn to ash the moment he sets foot inside!"
Glae doesn't flinch. Her frost-rimed head turns slowly, eyes like frozen galaxies locking on him.
"This earth's heat," she says coldly, "is nothing compared to the heat of the Remnants."
Her words hang there, heavier than the mountain itself.
And I know, deep down, she's not warning us. She's promising.
The heat swallows me whole.
At first, it's unbearable, like walking into a furnace. But the longer I remain, the more unbearable it isn't. My lungs should be blistering. My skin should be tearing away, blackened and shriveled, a corpse sinking into magma. But none of it happens. My boots crunch against brittle stone as I step deeper into the volcano, the molten flow licking at my body, and still… nothing. No pain.
Nazz writhes inside me, his voice scraping the inside of my skull.
"This isn't right. We should be screaming. We should be ash. Lava doesn't forgive. Lava doesn't let you walk away."
The words echo like claws dragging along glass. He's unsettled, maybe even afraid. That's rare. He usually greets impossible things with hunger or mocking laughter, but here? He sounds small. Small, but still venomous.
I don't answer him. Not yet. I don't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I'm just as shaken.
Every nerve in my body tells me I should be dying. The heat presses down like an ocean, thick and smothering, yet my body resists. Not even a scar forms. Sweat doesn't pour from my skin. Instead, the fire feels… natural. Like it's supposed to be here with me.
Glae enters last.
The cavern roars as her colossal, frost-rimed frame lowers into the molten stream. Steam explodes upward in violent bursts, lava recoiling around her as if offended by her presence. She doesn't melt, doesn't break. She's carved from something beyond flesh and bone. Where I expect her to burn, she glows, her frost meeting fire in a defiance of nature itself.
Her pale eyes lock on me. A storm bottled within an endless glacier. The air hisses between us, as if the volcano itself holds its breath.
I can't stop the question. It tears out of me before thought can muzzle it.
"Why am I not burning?"
For a long moment, her gaze holds me, piercing. Then her voice comes, steady, but jagged at the edges, like a blade dragged across stone.
"Because you are Zane."
The word detonates inside me.
Nazz goes silent. His constant hum, his maddening pulse against my ribs, it all vanishes in a moment of pure shock. I'm left alone in my skull, the silence screaming louder than his voice ever has.
Zane.
It doesn't sound foreign. It doesn't feel like a stranger's name. It fits. Like a lock snapping open.
My chest tightens. My breath stutters. It's as though Glae reached into my ribcage, wrapped her hand around my spine, and twisted. My own body recoils from the sound, yet something deeper leans toward it. Accepting. Wanting.
No
I grit my teeth and stare into the molten river below, trying to drown the word. Trying to bury it under fire.
But Nazz won't let me.
He stirs, quiet at first, then sharper. I can feel the grin stretching across his unseen face, feel the satisfaction bleeding from him like poison.
"She said it. She said what I've been telling you all along. You're not just V. You've never been just V."
I press my palms against my temples, as if that will keep him caged. As if I can silence him by force of will.
"I am V." The words come out weak, even in my own head. "I am not"
But the name echoes again.
Zane.
Like an anchor dropped into black water.
I stumble forward, boots skidding against the slick volcanic rock. The heat grows heavier, suffocating, but still painless. My heart hammers, but it's not fear of burning, it's the fear of not burning. Of what that means.
Glae doesn't look away. She studies me like I'm prey circling the edges of a trap. Her voice drips with the same venom as before, the same disgust.
"You wear that name whether you want it or not. Zane. The mutt born of ash and chaos. And you will obey it… or be destroyed by it."
Nazz chuckles low, the sound vibrating in my ribs.
"Did you hear that, boy? Even she knows. Even she admits it. You're me, and I'm you."
I can't respond. My throat closes.
The silence stretches as molten rivers shift around us, glowing veins pulsing through stone. The entire volcano seems alive, as if it too is waiting for me to accept something I refuse to.
I want to deny it. To scream that I'm V. That Zane isn't me. That Nazz isn't me. But the fire won't let me lie.
I take another step deeper, the magma churning at my legs, licking higher, and still nothing. No pain. No scars. Only the weight of the truth, pressing down harder than the heat ever could.