The mirrors were gone.
No more echoes. No more voices. No more splitting.
Only breath. My breath. Ours.
The first thing I felt was heat, not the kind that burns flesh, but the kind that breathes life back into frozen things. When my eyes opened, the air around me shimmered red and gold, like the inside of a dying star. The cavern walls pulsed with faint veins of molten Killiden, the light reflecting in Glae's crystalline form as she watched over us.
I moved slowly, aware of every joint, every muscle. My hands no longer shook. They hummed, steady, deliberate, alive. The blade at my side vibrated like it recognized me for the first time.
Nazz stirred within, but it was no longer the same snarling, directionless thing.
His voice was heavier, contained.
"You finally stopped fighting yourself," he muttered. "About damn time."
Zane's tone followed, colder but sharpened with purpose. "Integration achieved. Alignment confirmed. Functionality, optimal."
I smiled faintly. "So this is what peace feels like?"
"Peace?" Nazz laughed darkly. "You really think this is peace? No, Zane. This is clarity. Peace comes after everything burns."
Before I could answer, Glae moved. Her body rippled with light as she turned toward the molten lake, the edges of her form shedding flakes of frost that melted before they touched the ground. Sage stood beside her now, pale but alive, the frost still clinging to her lashes.
"You've returned," Glae said without turning. "All three of you."
"Not returned," I answered. "Merged."
Her gaze shifted toward me, and for a moment, just a moment, she looked almost human. "Then we can begin."
"Begin what?" I asked.
"The unmaking of Malfious," she said. "But first…"
The floor beneath us groaned. The molten veins glowed brighter, pulsing like the heartbeat of something colossal and buried. Sage stepped back instinctively, her hand reaching for the wall.
"What is this?" she whispered.
"The Furnace," Glae said. "The place where the first Remnant fell. It is where Killiden was first conceived, and where all of it must return when the end comes."
I stepped closer, feeling the heat intensify but not harm me. The air rippled. Power hummed under my skin like thunder beneath water.
"You brought us here for a reason," I said. "Tell me."
Glae looked at me now, her tone colder than any storm. "You are no longer just V. No longer Zane. No longer Nazz. You are the convergence. The only being capable of wielding Killiden without being consumed by it. Malfious cannot be slain by force, he must be rewritten. And to do that, you must enter the Furnace."
Sage's eyes widened. "Enter it? He'll die!"
"No," Glae interrupted. "He'll either ascend or vanish. There will be no middle ground."
I looked down at my reflection in the molten surface. Three faces stared back, all mine, all one.
"I've already died once," I said softly. "Might as well see what living really means."
The molten light flared. Nazz stirred again, eager, whispering.
"Let's melt a god."
And together, the human, the weapon, and the chaos, we stepped toward the fire.
The furnace stood before us like a living wound carved into the planet.
The air shimmered red and gold, the snow around it hissing and melting before it even touched the molten rim. I could feel it, whatever pulsed from within, it wasn't heat. It was consciousness.
Nazz stirred inside me, his presence flickering like static.
"That aura," he muttered. "It's unstable. No, not unstable, different. Not power, not energy… something else entirely."
Glae remained still, her crystalline form casting fractured reflections across the obsidian walls. The light bent around her, refracting like broken prayers.
"What will I see?" I asked, tightening my grip on the blade.
Glae's voice was soft, but it carried through me like a chord vibrating in bone.
"Everything."
I didn't hesitate. I stepped into the light.
And fell.
At first, I thought I was burning. My skin prickled, my lungs screamed, and every nerve felt stretched until it begged to snap. But the pain wasn't physical. It was memory.
The world around me changed.
The flames dissolved into colorless fog, and I stood in a place built from fractured recollection.
I saw a boy. Me.
Thin, quiet, small.
Always watching the door for a mother who never came back, for a father who was never real.
They passed me from hand to hand like a broken toy, families that smiled in daylight and screamed at night.
Every home had a different wallpaper.
Every goodbye left another crack in the glass of who I was.
Still, I survived. I learned to smile.
To study.
To be perfect.
I became V.
The son of graves. The model child of a godless world.
College, medals, government service.
They said I was special. Gifted.
But all I did was obey.
All I did was try not to vanish.
Through it all, I could feel it, something watching.
Always behind the glass.
N
A
Z
Z
The name whispered like a pulse.
He stood in the corner of every memory, arms crossed, grin wide, eyes hollow.
He never spoke. He only watched.
And when I looked too long, the air itself began to hum.
The fog thickened, turning the world to metal. The walls stretched high, crowned in iron beams and surgical light. The smell of blood and burning steel filled the air.
Miller's voice echoed in the distance, sharp and cold. "Contain him. Don't let him move."
And there he was. Mercier.
His presence froze me in place, calm, collected, terrifying.
"You are nothing," he said, placing a molten seal against my chest. "But you will become something."
The pain wasn't human.
It tore through me like light through glass.
And when it ended, I was no longer me.
Zane stood where V had been.
No voice, no tears, no mercy. Just obedience. The weapon forged by Mercier himself.
The one who wielded the Blade of Malfunction.
The one who tamed chaos.
He looked down at the table.
my table.
and saw my corpse still strapped beneath the straps.
"Thank you," he said. "For dying for me."
Then came the breaking.
All three lives began to fold together.
The boy, the soldier, the weapon.
each one bleeding into the next until their voices became one long scream.
"You were made to kill."
"You were made to survive."
"You were made to be me."
The sound tore itself out of existence.
And I was left standing in an endless mirror.
I looked around and saw myself reflected a thousand times over.
V, Zane, Nazz
the man, the weapon, the chaos.
Each reflection spoke, overlapping, whispering, chanting.
You are us.
We are you.
There was never separation. Only denial.
I dropped to my knees, gripping the blade as the weight of it all finally pressed down.
The pain, the loss, the confusion, they weren't fragments. They were the whole
The world pulsed once more.
Molten light bled through the reflection.
I could feel Glae beyond it, her voice calling out from the other side of the furnace.
"Why am I not burning?" I asked aloud, my throat raw.
Her voice was distant, like something spoken through time.
"Because you are Zane."
The words struck something deep, something that wasn't ready to be touched.
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
The heat roared louder, and the mirror beneath my feet cracked.
Inside my head, Nazz stirred, silent this time. No grin. No mockery.
Only stillness.
And in that stillness, I finally saw it.
V, the son of graves.
Zane, the weapon of Mercier.
Nazz, the chaos born of their suffering.
Three souls. One body.
The furnace didn't burn me because it knew me.
I was a creation of both fire and frost.
A child of ruin.
And the world, my world, was only beginning to remember what I was capable of.
The air shakes.
I can't tell if it's the ground moving, or me.
The heat from the furnace rolls upward, thick and alive, wrapping around my body like breath from something ancient. The walls vibrate with every pulse, as if the world itself knows what's about to happen and wants to run.
I can't.
I feel the blade humming in my hand, alive, no, awake. It's screaming, trembling like it's in pain but feeding on it. My arm burns. The Killiden veins glow through my skin, light bleeding from me.
Then it happens.
A violent surge builds from the center of my chest, crawling up my throat, pouring into the weapon until I can't hold it anymore.
The blade screams again, and from its tip, a beam erupts, pure light and energy, ripping the sky open.
The sound is deafening.
The world explodes in white.
Clouds split apart like torn fabric, and a storm bursts open above me. Rain. Real rain. The first I've seen in what feels like forever.
When it falls, it freezes, instantly. Glae's aura twists it into ice shards midair, the storm turning into a field of suspended glass knives
It should be terrifying.
It's beautiful.
I look down at my hands. My skin flickers between forms, human, crystalline, black.
I feel my body rising, weightless.
Rain flows around me instead of hitting me. The ground becomes a blur.
It's happening again.
That pull. That tearing.
Like something, or someone, is trying to crawl out of me.
My veins blaze white.
Then violet.
Then black.
It hurts.
But it feels right.
The air hums around me, bending to something inside. I see flashes, faces, places, memories that don't belong to one person but three.
V, Zane, Nazz.
All of them breathing through me.
The snow swirls faster, and the shards orbit my body like a storm of glass drawn to gravity. My voice breaks from my throat, not mine, not anyone's, just sound.
The weapon howls with me, its glow turning from white to blood-red.
For a second, I think I see Glae's face below, her frostlight glinting upward, her eyes wide, not in fear, but in something else.
Recognition.
Then everything goes quiet.
The energy leaves me in a single pulse. I drop.
The fall isn't long, but the landing shakes the world.
I taste iron in my mouth. The heat fades. My breath returns in slow bursts.
I feel… cold again.
The clouds above are gone. The rain that falls now is gentle, soft. The earth smokes beneath me.
Glae moves closer. I can sense her even before I see her. The air turns sharp, ice crawling through the cracks of the ground.
I open my eyes.
And everything feels different.
The colors are wrong.
The sounds too clear.
Even my heartbeat doesn't sound like mine anymore.
The blade is in my hand, quiet now.
The obsidian shine reflects something I've never seen before, me, but not me.
Half Killiden.
Half flesh.
Half something else entirely.
The world hums around me, feeding on whatever I've become.
I rise slowly. My voice comes out strange, deeper, layered, like I'm speaking and echoing at the same time.
"…Vice."
The name leaves me before I even think it.
Not a choice.
A truth.
The rain freezes in midair again, hanging like silver needles before dissolving into mist. Glae's gaze sharpens as she takes a step forward, her aura brushing mine.
"So the furnace chose," she says quietly. "You are not born of frost or flame. You are the bridge between them."
I look at the sky, split open, light bleeding through the wound I made.
The storm trembles.
So does the world.
If I'm the bridge, then maybe it's time to burn what connects us.
I tighten my grip around the blade, my pulse syncing with its steady hum. I can feel V's calm, Zane's focus, Nazz's hunger.
All inside me.
All one.
"Then let the bridge burn," I whisper.
The rain stops.
The storm dies.
And I
am Vice.
The world is still trembling when I touch the ground again. Steam rises from the crater I left behind, carrying the scent of molten earth and frost. My boots hiss against the cracked stone as I steady myself, breath shallow, pulse slow.
I feel everything.
The air, the vibration of Glae's aura, the faint thrum of Sage's heartbeat even from several feet away. It's as if my senses no longer belong to me, but to something larger—something that can't decide if it wants to live or consume.
Sage's voice is the first thing that cuts through the static.
"V…? Or, no… what are you?" she whispers, pulling herself up, eyes wide with both fear and awe. Her hair clings to her face, damp with the leftover mist that Glae's presence turned to frost.
I look at my reflection in the blade still pulsing faintly in my hand. My face shimmers like shifting glass, skin flickering between human warmth and obsidian cold.
"I don't know," I manage, my voice fractured, three tones overlapping.
One steady.
One sharp.
One low and cruel.
Glae moves closer, her towering figure framed by shards of lingering frost, every step carrying divine gravity. Her expression is impossible to read.
"So, the furnace didn't destroy you," she murmurs, eyes scanning my form like studying a volatile artifact. "It merged you."
"Merged?" Sage asks, her tone caught between confusion and disgust. "With what?"
"With himself," Glae replies simply, her voice cold as glacier stone.
Inside, the noise begins.
"This… this isn't right. I don't feel like myself."
"That's because you're not, kid. You're us."
"Focus. Don't lose control. You know what happens when the mind fractures again."
Their voices echo inside my skull, overlapping like a thousand whispers bouncing off metal walls. I clutch the side of my head, grimacing.
"Stop talking, just stop!" I hiss aloud.
Sage recoils slightly, unsure who I'm even speaking to. Glae, however, doesn't move. She's seen this before, probably something worse.
"They're speaking to you, aren't they?" she says flatly.
I nod. "All of them. V… Nazz… Zane. I can hear every single thought they have. They're not gone."
Glae studies me for a moment, her eyes narrowing like she's reading something written across my soul.
"They are fragments of the same whole," she says finally. "You are Vice now, the balance between your chaos, your weapon, and your humanity. But balance does not mean silence.
Sage looks between us, her brow furrowed. "So… all those names, the things you kept saying before… they were real? They were all you?"
I don't answer right away. I just stare at my reflection again, at the obsidian flicker crawling up my neck, the faint pulse of white light under the skin.
"They were me," I finally say. "All of them. Every scream, every memory, every kill. I thought I could bury them, but the furnace didn't just burn away what I was, it showed me what I've always been."
Inside, Nazz laughs softly, a deep rumble that shakes the back of my skull.
"You finally said it. Kinda proud of you, mutt."
"Proud? For what? We're losing ourselves!"
"Control. Hold it steady. Let him talk, but don't let him drive."
I exhale slowly, shaking my head as if that'll quiet them.
"You three never shut up," I mutter under my breath.
Glae steps closer until her presence chills the very air around me. "You'll need to learn to live with them, Vice. They are not your burden, they are your weapon. Each of them represents what Malfious fears most."
I look up at her, meeting her gaze through the haze of frost. "And what's that?"
"Unity," she says, her tone almost reverent. "Chaos can destroy a world, but unity between chaos and will can rewrite it."
Her words settle heavy in the air. For the first time since the furnace, I feel something like clarity, sharp and fragile, but real.
Sage crosses her arms, staring at me like she's trying to decide whether I'm still human. "So what now, Vice? You gonna rewrite the world?"
I tighten my grip on the blade. The pulse from it syncs perfectly with the rhythm of my heart, with our hearts.
I say quietly. "Not yet."
"Heh. But soon."
"If we survive what's coming."
"If we can even keep ourselves together that long."
The storm above rumbles faintly, echoing their words. The frost under my feet cracks and reforms, and I finally lift my head toward the broken sky.
"I don't know what I'll become," I say aloud, voice steady now, the blend of all three tones forming something entirely new. "But whatever it is, it won't be something that kneels."
Glae's lips curve just slightly, almost a smile.
"Then perhaps the world stands a chance."
The cold deepens. The blade hums again.
And within the echo of three minds speaking as one,
I finally take a step forward.
as Vice.