Order.
The air thins the higher I rise.
The clouds split around me like wounds being pried open. The world below shrinks to a white scar, Nia, suffocating under the gas that made it what it is.
I hover at the edge of the atmosphere, the Blade of Malfunction humming in my grasp. Its light bends space, warping the storm around me into spirals of raw energy. Every pulse from it syncs with my heart.
This power, it doesn't feel divine.
It feels inevitable.
The clouds above are not clouds at all, but gas, the same chemical veil that trapped this world in eternal frost. It stretches endlessly, an artificial shroud born of the Remnants' war.
Glae's voice whispers faintly in my mind.
"End it."
I tighten my grip and raise the blade skyward.
The weapon trembles, vibrating with a soundless roar. Then a torrent of energy bursts from the tip, a beam so bright it splits the dark into two. The world quakes beneath me. Clouds evaporate. A second sun burns across the night.
The explosion shatters the heavens. Wind whips downward in catastrophic waves, clearing the veil that imprisoned the sky.
For a moment, I think I've done it.
I think I've freed Nia.
Then the light bends.
The beam fractures.
Something pushes back.
The pressure crushes me midair, and the Blade screeches, a sound not of steel, but of will breaking against something older. The sky darkens again, but not with gas. With presence.
A ripple spreads across the horizon, thick, black, reflective. Like the ocean had learned to float above me.
And from that rippling void, he steps through.
Malfious.
The air collapses around him. The mere outline of his body bends reality like gravity gone wrong. His skin is void, not black but negative, an absence that devours the concept of color. His eyes burn with inverted light, two collapsing suns that pulse like dying stars.
Around his crown, serpentine shadows twist and devour each other endlessly, his symbol made flesh. His armor drips with liquid reflection, engraved with the shattered sigils of the Vault. Every movement hums with restrained apocalypse.
He doesn't stand on air. The air stands because of him.
When he speaks, it's like hearing every voice that ever defied its master.
"So the hybrid awakens. The child of graves. The echo of disobedience."
His tone is both praise and condemnation.
"You're the one who created this, this frozen hell
"I created nothing. I liberated it. The ice you see, the stillness you curse… they are consequences of order rebelling against itself. Do not blame the rebellion, little remnant. Blame the throne that forbade you to breathe."
I raise the Blade again, though the tremor in my hands betrays something deeper than fear.
"You talk in riddles. You rot worlds and call it freedom.
Malfious smiles, and the sky ripples. His voice shifts, not through air, but through thought.
"You think your blade can unmake me? That little echo of rebellion forged by Virago's envy? That weapon was mine before it was yours. Everything born of disobedience answers to me."
The Blade hums violently, like it's trying to escape my grasp. I hold it tighter. My skin begins to crack, fragments of obsidian forming across my arm.
Nazz's voice stirs inside me, guttural and sharp.
"Vice. That thing… he's the rot beneath everything. The first flame turned inside out."
Glae's voice follows, cold and distant.
"He was the Vault's right hand before he fell. The Betrayer of Order."
Malfious tilts his head, his expression unreadable.
"The Ice Remnant still breathes? How poetic. The stillness that tried to stop movement itself… and failed."
Glae materializes behind me, hovering in the storm. Her aura freezes the rainfall midair, turning droplets into shards of glass.
"Malfious," she says, her voice cutting through the void. "You don't belong here."
His smile widens. "And yet, here I am. The Vault imprisoned me in silence. You think a prison made of stillness could hold the one who mastered the absence?
The space between them warps, flickering
like broken reflection.
I step forward, gripping the blade tighter.
"If you want this world, you'll have to take it from me."
He laughs, the sound like collapsing stars. "You misunderstand. I don't want this world. I want the truth that hides within you."
I feel his presence pressing into my mind, thousands of thoughts screaming in unison, a choir of betrayal and reason.
And beneath it all, a single whisper.
"Tell me, Zane… do you remember why you were made?"
The name strikes me like a blade through the chest.
Zane.
My vision blurs. My body trembles.
Inside me, the voices rise, V, Zane, Nazz, all speaking over one another, all fighting for air.
"No… no, that's not me."
"He knows you. He made you."
""We were born from his design."
I fall to my knees midair, the world spinning beneath me.
Malfious's eyes flicker with satisfaction.
"Ah. The fracture still bleeds. The mirror cracks, but it does not yet reflect."
He lifts his hand. Space distorts. The Blade of Malfunction screams, caught between my grasp and his will.
And then, silence.
The world freezes, as if time itself is holding its breath.
"You are not my enemy, Vice. You are my continuation. A rebellion that forgot why it began.
He takes one step closer.
And the stars bend to watch.
The world shudders.
Clouds curl inward like frightened beasts. Every molecule of air strains under the weight of what's coming.
The moment Malfious takes his step, I feel it, that invisible force, heavier than the sky itself. My aura responds like a feral thing in a cage, thrashing beneath my skin. Killiden veins ignite beneath the flesh, glowing a molten violet.
Nazz hisses inside my head.
"This is it, Vice… don't let him think. Make him bleed."
Zane's voice follows, calmer but razor sharp.
Zane: "He'll try to get inside your head. He always does. He wins wars without lifting a finger."
Glae descends behind me, frost spreading out from her feet like a halo of white death. The atmosphere temperature drops violently. Raindrops freeze midair, hanging like shards of glass suspended on strings.
Malfious watches it all with a grin that doesn't belong to mortals. His aura expands, a black star swallowing the edges of reality.
And then it begins.
I lunge first.
The Blade of Malfunction howls as I slash downward, splitting the air like silk. Energy erupts from the tip, a storm of violet and black carving through the sky.
Malfious doesn't block. He moves. One flicker. He's behind me.
The impact detonates in the distance, carving a fissure through the stratosphere itself. The stars above flicker like candles before a storm.
His hand wraps around my throat.
The air folds inward.
"You swing like a child who just learned what power is."
I twist my wrist and let the blade pulse. A kinetic burst detonates point-blank, slamming us apart in a deafening explosion. The shockwave ripples down through the clouds, hammering the ocean below.
Before he recovers, Glae steps forward. Her voice fractures the air
"ENOUGH."
A storm of frozen shards erupts from her chest, forming spears of solidified stillness. They scream through the air, turning moisture to white dust.
Malfious raises one finger.
Every single shard stops. Midair. Silent. Then one by one, they reverse.
The ice storm curves back toward Glae with surgical precision. She raises both arms, summoning a veil of frost that shields her. The shards collide, shatter, and reform into a swirling ring around her
Nazz roars inside me.
"MOVE."
I blink out of sight, the world blurring as I dash through condensed kinetic streams. I reappear above Malfious, slamming my blade down in an arc that splits the wind itself
For a heartbeat, I feel it land.
A pulse, the Blade digging into something real.
But Malfious doesn't scream.
He laughs.
His chest splits apart like a shadow peeling back. A hand emerges from within him and grabs the blade.
Cute."
His other hand lashes upward and punches me in the ribs. Reality folds. It's not pain. It's erasure. The world in front of me ceases to exist for a blink, and then I'm crashing through the storm, ribs cracked, breath gone.
Glae catches me mid-fall with a slab of crystalline ice, breaking my momentum.
"He's pulling you apart from the inside out. Focus. You're three, not one. Use it."
Her words slam into me. I close my eyes.
Inside my head, three voices roar.
Nazz: chaos, heat, hunger.
Zane: cold precision, the blade.
V: me. The anchor.
I open my eyes.
My body begins to shift, human, killiden, obsidian, all in rhythm. My form flickers like a strobe, too fast for mortal sight. When the pulse settles, I'm something else again. Vice. Entire.
The ground below Malfious fractures as I kick downward. Kinetic trails burn the sky as I collide with him head-on. The impact splits the night apart. Stars ripple.
We trade blows in silence. Every strike echoes through the upper atmosphere like distant thunder.
Malfious swings his arm, the void expands, devouring everything in its path.
I counter with kinetic bursts from the blade, carving holes through his darkness. Nazz lends me raw strength, Zane sharpens every move, and I, V, am the rhythm that holds them together.
Glae joins in from the flank, chanting a language older than planets. Pillars of ice surge upward from the clouds, piercing through Malfious's shadows like spears. She twists her hands, and the spears explode into frost chains that bind the void like it's flesh.
"You're stronger than before."
"And you're not untouchable."
I thrust the blade into the chains. The weapon absorbs their energy, the runes along its surface blazing violet. A wave of raw kinetic force ignites from the blade and shoots upward, consuming everything around it.
For the first time, Malfious staggers.
But he doesn't fall.
He raises both hands. His aura spikes, tearing the frost chains like paper.
Above us, the sky splits in two. A serpent of void coils in the air, devouring stars as it moves. The temperature drops. My breath freezes in my lungs.
"You carry their hope. Their fear. Their chains. But do you even know what you are?"
He appears in front of me, faster than thought, pressing his palm against my chest. A surge of raw void floods through me, prying at every corner of my being.
V screams.
Nazz howls.
Zane growls through clenched teeth.
I push back
The blade roars like a living thing, absorbing my fury. My aura ignites with three colors, violet, white, and black, swirling in violent harmony.
"I know exactly what I am."
I slam my forehead into his. A sonic boom erupts across the sky.
We crash downward, locked together. Clouds part. Lightning streaks like veins across the night.
The storm begins to break.
And this is just the beginning.
The atmosphere is a wound.
It bleeds light, thunder, and the sound of divinity breaking apart.
Malfious and I spiral through the clouds like two colliding gods, black flame and violet light crashing, tearing holes through the firmament. Each impact fractures the sky itself; every breath I take feels like inhaling stars and ash.
His hand wraps around my throat again, a black corona of energy flaring behind his skull.
"You think you fight for freedom. You fight because you were made to. You are an echo of their failure."
I grin through blood.
"Maybe. But echoes can still break glass."
I grip the Blade of Malfunction in both hands and twist. The runes erupt in pure, prismatic light, not violet, not black, not any color the human eye was meant to see. It hums with the voices of all three within me.
V whispers calm.
Zane calculates precision.
Nazz laughs, unhinged, primal, hungry.
Our unity becomes rhythm. Purpose.
I pivot, dragging the blade through the air. The motion doesn't cut space, it unthreads it. Sound drops away. The world pauses.
For one beat of silence, I see everything:
The frozen earth below, the molten veins beneath its skin.
The dying stars above.
And beyond them, the Void, the prison that made him.
Malfious lunges, claws wreathed in voidfire. He slams into me, and the universe convulses. My bones hum like tuning forks, vibrating with impossible frequencies. He speaks directly into my head now, his voice like smoke and authority intertwine.
"You cannot kill what enforces existence. I am rebellion. I am the necessity of breaking."
My grip tightens.
"Then I'll just have to unmake the necessity."
I pull the Blade close to my chest, its edge burning through the palm of my hand. Every ounce of kinetic energy I've ever absorbed, every blow, every impact, every scream of violence, floods into it.
Glae's voice cuts through the void from below.
"Vice! Remember the furnace! Remember why you burn!"
And I do.
Because the fire was never meant to destroy.
It was meant to reveal.
The blade begins to sing, a low hum that rises into a roar, louder, purer, until even Malfious falters. The black flame around him flickers, uncertain.
I raise the weapon above my head.
The clouds above spiral inward, forming a vortex of shadow and light. My veins glow molten white. My body trembles, caught between collapsing and ascending.
"You wanted evolution. Change. Then change with me."
I thrust the blade forward.
A beam explodes from the tip, not light, not darkness, but willpower incarnate. It spears through Malfious's chest and beyond, a torrent of energy so fierce the sky screams. The void around him howls, shredding apart as the beam continues upward, through the gas cloud that has sealed Nia for centuries.
The world holds its breath.
Then the cloud cracks..
..and breaks.
Sunlight.
Real sunlight floods through for the first time in an age. It pours down over the frozen wasteland, across the ruined continents, washing the world in gold. The ice doesn't melt at once, it sighs, hissing, weeping, releasing eons of silence as vapor. Rivers awaken. Snow turns to water. Water turns to light.
Malfious stumbles backward, clutching his chest. His once-endless black aura flickers. The corruption that defined him begins to peel away, flaking into nothing, his form collapsing into the very ash from which he was born. His voice, once thunder, now cracks into whispers.
"You unmake… the idea of me…"
I step closer, the blade still humming.
"No. I'm unmaking what made you inevitable."
I drive the blade into his core. The energy releases in one final surge, a pulse of pure intent, a song of resistance and rebirth
Malfious's form disintegrates completely, turning into dust that scatters into the newly thawed wind.
The void-fire dies.
The silence breaks.
For the first time, I hear rain, not shards of ice, but rain. Real, living rain. It falls over Nia like forgiveness.
I drop to my knees, gasping, the blade steaming in my grip. My aura flickers violently, obsidian and white, killiden and human, fighting for balance. Glae lands beside me, her own glow steady now, her expression unreadable.
The ice goddess kneels, placing a hand on my shoulder. Her touch is cold, but it feels… alive.
"It is done. The gas is dispersing. Nia will breathe again."
The sunlight glints off her translucent skin as she looks skyward, awe softening even her stone face.
SAGE emerges from the shadows behind her, watching the thaw spread across the horizon, oceans forming again where tundra once ruled. Her voice trembles.
"He did it… we did it."
But I can still hear them inside me.
V, whispering, exhausted but content.
Zane. silent, analytical, watching.
Nazz, low laughter, fading into satisfaction.
For the first time, they're not fighting for control.
They're breathing as one.
I look up, toward the clearing sky. The beam still glows faintly above, threading through the clouds like a scar across heaven.
I didn't save Nia. I unmade what killed it.
And maybe that's enough."
The sun rises higher, painting the ruins of a reborn world.
Glae exhales, a single, frosted breath.
Her eyes, luminous with old sorrow, drift toward me.
"The Betrayer of Order has fallen. But remember, Vice… every void that closes leaves another waiting to be filled."
I close my eyes. The light is too bright.
"Then let's make sure this one stays empty."
And for the first time, the world begins to thaw.