Sage was still staring at me, her breathing quick and shallow, when it started again.
N
A
Z
Z
The letters burned across my thoughts, not spoken but carved. The white room in my head flickered black. My chest clenched.
Then I was gone.
The world tilted. My vision turned obsidian, heat licking through my veins like fire meeting oil. My hand gripped the Blade tight before loosening on its own.
When my head came up again, it wasn't me.
Nazz stood.
His massive frame unfolded from me like a shadow stepping out of its owner. His obsidian skin drank in the cold light of the chamber, and when he moved, the snow underfoot hissed and cracked as if recoiling from him.
Sage recoiled, scrambling backward.
"Wh-what is that?!" she stammered, her voice breaking.
Nazz tilted his head, slow, deliberate, before grinning wide enough to show every sharp tooth. "Me," he said simply, his voice carrying that deep rasp that sounded older than the room itself.
Sage pressed herself against the ice wall. "That thing's been inside you this whole time?"
He chuckled, stepping closer, kneeling until his glowing eyes were level with hers. "Longer than that. Since before he ever called himself V."
Glae finally moved, the frost on her body shifting like distant glaciers groaning. Her massive gaze turned toward him.
Nazz stood tall now, towering, his aura curling the air around him.
"You have your strength back," he said, gesturing lazily toward her chest where the Killiden bulb had phased into her. "The girl's rib, your ritual. You're whole. So why do you halt?"
Glae didn't answer.
"You do nothing," Nazz pressed, his voice tightening. "Unless…" His grin widened into something feral. "You're afraid."
The room seemed to shrink under that word. Even the air got colder.
Glae's crystalline eyes narrowed, her shadow cutting through the frost like a spear.
"You dare," she said, each word heavy with quiet rage.
"Oh, I dare," Nazz said, stepping closer until they were face to face. "You can't best him, can you? Malfious. That's why you're here, hiding in your pretty ice shell. You've been running."
For a long moment, there was only the sound of snow cracking in the distance.
Finally, Glae spoke, her voice lower than before, bitter like frozen iron.
"Yes," she said.
The admission cut the air clean in half.
Sage's eyes widened.
"Yes," Glae repeated, louder now, her words like shattering glass. "I cannot best him. Malfious is beyond me. Beyond most of us. Even if I stood at my full strength, I could not end him alone."
The ice around her feet fractured, spiderwebbing outward.
Nazz's grin softened, but only slightly. "Then you admit it. You need me. You need him." He jerked his head toward where I still lingered somewhere inside. "You need us both."
Glae said nothing. The silence that followed was not empty but weighted, like a tomb door slamming shut.
Sage looked between the two of them, terrified, confused, yet unable to look away.
Inside, I could feel Nazz's satisfaction radiate through me like heat in the frozen dark.
The frost on Glae's body shimmered like shattered stars as she finally moved again, lowering her massive, crystalline face until it loomed directly over Nazz.
"You are correct," she said, the words sounding like a glacier grinding against stone. "I cannot defeat Malfious. Not alone."
Her gaze shifted slightly, as though she could see through Nazz's obsidian frame, past him, straight into where I lingered within.
"But you," she continued, her voice quieter now, like ice cracking in the dead of night. "You and the boy are different. You are chaos. He is resolve. Together, you are the hinge the world turns on."
Nazz tilted his head. "You make it sound poetic."
"It is not poetry," Glae said sharply. "It is necessity. You are not natural, ash-born. You are the scar left behind when Virago and Allure tore the heavens apart. And he…" Her gaze hardened on me, though I wasn't standing there. "He is the only one stubborn enough to wield you without letting you consume him."
Sage swallowed hard, her eyes darting between the two.
Glae straightened, her voice now resonant enough to make the frozen walls hum.
"You two are the key," she said. "To ending Malfious. To halting the decay that has swallowed this world. No Remnant alone can do what you will be forced to do."
Nazz's grin returned, but this time there was no humor in it, only something grim, satisfied.
"You finally say it," he said, his voice low, almost intimate. "You finally admit you need me."
Glae's eyes narrowed. "I do not need you. I need the one who carries you. Without him, you are a storm without a sky. Aimless. Wasted."
Nazz let the words hang there, unbothered, before stepping back and letting his form waver slightly, like smoke ready to return to the fire.
Inside, I could feel the weight of Glae's words pressing down on me like ice on my chest.
Key to defeating Malfious.
Key to everything.
But at what cost?
I felt my right arm twitch, that familiar obsidian ache pulsing through it like a reminder.
Sage broke the silence first, her voice small but sharp in the still air.
"So you're saying… he's supposed to be some kind of weapon too?"
Glae turned her head slightly, her tone colder now. "Not a weapon. A convergence. The last convergence."
Nazz chuckled again, his voice curling around my mind like smoke.
"You hear that, Zane?" he whispered inside me. "She just called you the last hope of the world. How's that for irony?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't. My throat felt tight, like ice was forming in it.
Glae turned back toward the frozen wall, her voice heavy with finality.
"Prepare yourself," she said. "Both of you. Because Malfious will not wait for you to be ready. And when he comes, there will be no time for doubt."
Her words sank into the silence, into me, until I could hear nothing else.
Inside my mind, everything goes still.
Zane.
Nazz just called me Zane. And I didn't even flinch.
The thought ripples through me like a stone dropped into black water.
"Is that me?" I whisper into the quiet of my own head. "Am I… it?"
The name feels wrong on my tongue, but not foreign. Like a coat that doesn't quite fit anymore but was once mine.
N
A
Z
Z
The word crawls across the inside of my skull, painting every thought obsidian.
"You've always been it," Nazz's voice says softly, not mocking, not laughing—just stating fact. "You can deny it, but you cannot change it. You are V. You are Zane. And I am you."
My right arm tingles, obsidian bleeding across the skin like ink spreading through water. I look at it, feel the pulse of the Blade calling to it, the heat of what just happened still humming in my bones.
"Is this all I am?" I mutter under my breath, though Glae and Sage can't hear it. "A name I can't remember choosing? A monster wearing a mask?"
No answer comes.
Just silence.
But the silence feels like agreement.
I look up at Glae again, forcing my voice to stay level.
"Then tell me why," I say. "Why me? Why does it have to be me who carries this thing?
Glae's gaze cuts through me like the edge of a glacier. "Because you were born for it. Because your soul was already cracked, and he could seep inside. Any other host would have broken."
The words settle heavy in my chest.
Born for it.
Not chosen.
Born.
I don't say anything more. I just sit there, staring at my arm as the obsidian slowly retreats back under my skin.
Sage shifts uncomfortably next to me, her voice quiet but enough to pull me out of my thoughts.
"You went quiet for a while," she says. "What's wrong with you?"
I don't answer her.
Because I'm still not sure.
The silence in the cavern thickens until I feel like I'm breathing ice.
My arm is still half-obisidian, the Blade still faintly humming in my grasp, and for once, I don't try to push it back.
I let the words leave me, not as thought, but as voice.
"I am V," I say, my voice low, but carrying through the frozen chamber. "The human-half remnant. The son of graves."
The air seems to tighten around me, my breath frosting harder as if the world itself is listening.
"I am Zane," I continue, louder this time, my chest tightening as if every syllable cracks something open. "The weapon forged by Mercier. The one who wields the Blade of Malfunction. The one who tames Nazz."
My arm pulses fully obsidian now, and I don't flinch. I grip the Blade harder, grounding myself in its heat.
"And I am Nazz," I finish, my voice rasping like his, as if he speaks through me. "The rabid monster within. The unknown. The unstable entity of chaos."
For a moment there is no sound but the hum of the Blade. No snow. No wind.
Just me.
All of me.
The tension that's been in my chest since this all started slowly releases, leaving behind something strange, not peace, not exactly, but a raw, sharpened clarity.
Sage stares at me like I've grown a second head. Glae's storm-lit eyes soften, just slightly, as though she sees what she's been waiting to see all along.
Inside, Nazz laughs, not cruelly, not mockingly, but with something almost like pride.
"There it is," he says. "Finally. You said it."
I exhale slowly, the obsidian slowly retreating back into my skin, leaving me standing there, not just V, not just Zane, not just Nazz, something more. Something whole.
"Good," Glae rumbles, her voice lower than before, almost approving. "You will need all three if you are to stand against Malfious."
The Blade pulses once more, like a heartbeat in my hand. This time, I don't feel like it's dragging me anywhere.
It feels like it's waiting for me to move.
The world around me fractures.
Not literally, but in my mind. The snow, the cavern, Glae, Sage, all of it shatters into shards of light and vanishes until I'm left standing in a void so dark it almost feels wet.
And then
Three figures step out of the nothing.
The first is me as I remember being before all this, V, human, scarred but resolute, standing upright with hollow eyes that still hold something like hope.
The second is Zane, taller, sharper, dressed in Mercier's marks, carrying the Blade with practiced ease. His expression is colder, but his stance is balanced, a soldier ready for war.
And the last—, .
Obsidian, monstrous, grinning like something that should never have learned how to smile. The air around him hums with pressure, like a storm ready to break.
I stare at them. They stare at me.
"Who am I?" I ask, my voice small in this endless place.
"You already know," V says. His voice is quiet, pained, but unshaken. "You're me. The one who survived everything. The one who keeps walking even when the world dies around him."
"No," Zane interrupts, stepping closer. "You're me. The one who was forged, broken, reforged again. The one who carries the Blade because no one else could. You are weapon and wielder."
Nazz laughs, low and guttural. "Wrong. You're me. You're hunger, chaos, every unholy scream you've swallowed since birth. I am the part you keep trying to bury, and every time you swing that Blade you dig me back up.
I shake my head, taking a step back. "No… you can't all be me. You can't."
V steps closer until he's face-to-face with me. "You've been running from this for a year. Maybe longer. Stop running."
Zane's voice cuts like steel. "If you keep denying it, you'll never be strong enough to stop what's coming. You'll never be able to face Malfious."
Nazz bares his teeth in something that might be a smile. "Say it. Out loud. Claim me. Claim us. Or next time I take control… I'm not giving it back."
The void around us trembles, as if the whole mental space is holding its breath.
I close my eyes and feel all three of them—the human grief, the forged weapon's disciplin, , the primal storm of chaos, and for the first time, I don't try to tear them apart.
I let them overlap.
And I speak.
"I am V."
"I am Zane."
"I am Nazz."
The three figures smile, not in unison, but in some strange harmony. The void shatters like glass and the world rushes back into me.
I open my eyes to find the Blade still glowing faintly in my grip, as if it felt everything too.