"Even gods flicker."
The air cracked before it screamed.
I stood in a crater of light and ruin, thunder curling off my shoulders like breath made of storms. The blade of Malfunction hummed in my right hand, still wet with the residue of something divine. Every swing had torn reality apart like paper. Every pulse had erased a fraction of the horizon.
And beneath my boots, what was once Shakore twitched, a dying pulse, a severed current. His body was nothing but a flicker, a shape made of lightning that no longer remembered how to move.
I didn't speak. I didn't need to. The wind around me finished his sentence for him.
He tried to rise, his body reforming in spasms of blue and gold. The air shimmered with what was left of his pride.
"You can't kill speed," he said, voice static, fading between tones. "You can only delay the inevitable."
I walked closer. Each step vibrated with static and molten sound. "You ran too fast for meaning. You never noticed when you crossed the line."
He laughed weakly. "Meaning? You think killing me gives you that?"
"No." I raised the blade. "It gives me silence."
I plunged the weapon through him. Not through flesh, through existence. His scream wasn't sound; it was electricity burning language itself. And then, I reached out with my left hand.
The world darkened.
I pulled.
His soul, if that's what Remnants even have, tore free from his chest in a stream of light, pure thunderlight spiraling up my arm. The essence hissed and tried to escape, but my body absorbed it, the veins of my forearm glowing gold for an instant before dimming to their usual obsidian hue.
When it was done, the crater went quiet.
I exhaled smoke and thunder. The air no longer smelled of ozone, it smelled like victory, and I hated how much I liked it.
It has been three years since I came to Nia.
Two since Glae left.
One since I stopped pretending to be anyone but myself.
Nazz is gone. Not dead. Not asleep.
Just me now.
I carry the obsidian mold like a second skin. It moves when I breathe, listens when I think. Sometimes I forget what my hands used to look like. The blade of Malfunction never leaves my side. The bow, made of pure Killiden, hums when I draw it, its arrows forming from my Psy like whispers made sharp
And me? I don't sleep anymore. I don't dream. I calculate.
Sage watches from the ridge above. She's different too. Her control over magnetism has turned her into something between human and force of nature. The air bends around her, metal dust forming patterns when she's lost in thought. We don't talk much, but we understand each other.
The work changed us.
The fights. The silence. The waiting.
I walk toward her now, my steps still sparking from Shakore's remains. The thunder still echoes inside my chest, I can feel it crawling under my ribs, begging to escape.
She looks at me, her expression cold but her eyes searching. "You did it," she says quietly. "You killed the Eminent of Speed."
"No," I answer. "I ended a noise."
She stares, and I can tell she wants to ask why I look so calm. Why I'm not shaking. Why I didn't mourn. But she doesn't. She knows by now what I've become.
"Do you feel anything?" she finally asks.
"Movement," I say. "That's all thunder is. Motion that forgot what it meant to stop."
I walk past her. The clouds are gathering again, heavy and gold, pulsing with the remnants of Shakore's essence that I haven't yet consumed. I lift my hand and call it back, the electricity folds inward, twisting into my arm. My body hums, the new power integrating itself like an infection that feels right.
Sage watches, her lips parting slightly. "You're changing again."
"I've always been changing," I tell her. "Now it's just visible."
She looks away. I can hear the faint vibration of her magnetic field responding to her heartbeat, sharp, controlled, uneasy
"Was it worth it?" she asks.
"For me?" I look at the horizon where the storm used to be. "Everything is worth it, until it isn't."
The silence after that stretches long enough to feel eternal. The world around us, what's left of it, hums with faint life. Nia is waking again, piece by fractured piece.
But even in the calm, I can feel it. The tremor in the air. The whisper under my skin. The part of Shakore that didn't die, still alive, still restless, still racing inside me.
I close my eyes, gripping the Blade of Malfunction.
For a second, I swear I hear Nazz laugh.
Then I remember.
It's my voice now.
And it doesn't stop.
The storm never fully left.
It just followed me.
Everywhere I go, the sky trembles, like it remembers Shakore screaming. Maybe it does. Maybe I do.
The thunder's quieter now, but not gone. It hums beneath my ribs, whispering things that sound like memory. When I close my eyes, I see flashes. Galaxies burning themselves out just to feel something. Remnants arguing over how to sculpt life from chaos. The beginning and the end of things that were never supposed to have names.
That's what I took when I consumed him.
Not speed.
Understanding.
A curse wrapped in awareness.
We sit near the frozen ridge of what used to be a city. The buildings are long dead, their corpses half-buried in glassy snow. Time stopped here centuries ago. The wind doesn't even bother anymore.
Sage sits opposite me, her back against a fractured wall. The faint hum of her magnetism runs through the metal beneath us, like a pulse that refuses to die.
She looks at me the way you'd look at something you're trying to forgive. "You're different again," she says.
"I'm evolving."
"That's what monsters say before they stop pretending to be human."
I smirk, but there's no humor in it. "If you think I'm still pretending, you haven't been paying attention."
She doesn't respond. Just watches as I slide the Blade of Malfunction into the ground beside me. The blade hisses faintly, as if disapproving of rest.
Finally, she asks, "What's the point of this? Of killing the others?"
I look at her. For a moment, I see the question behind her eyes, not fear, but fatigue. She's seen too much. Felt too much. And she wants to know if I'm still fighting for the same thing we started with.
I inhale slow. The air feels heavy, older than it should.
"The Remnants…" I start, my voice lower now. "Each of them carries a part of Serkauis. The serpent of the old void. The first god eater. When the Vault tore him apart, the Remnants took his remains, fragments of his essence, forged into themselves. They didn't just kill him. They divided him."
Sage frowns. "And you want to-what? Take those pieces back?"
"I want to erase the theft," I answer. "Serkauis killed my father. Glae told me before she left. She sent one of her frozen messengers, right before she vanished. The Vault made the Remnants using parts of Serkauis's corpse. They made me from what was left."
She blinks, trying to keep up. "So you're saying-"
"I'm saying they took divinity and stitched it into puppets." My tone sharpens, the edges of my words cutting through the air. "They thought they could chain creation. Rewrite instinct. Manufacture balance. But Serkauis wasn't balance. He was consequence."
Sage's eyes narrow. "And you're what? The reckoning?"
I stare past her, watching the snow fall in slow spirals, each flake turning to vapor before it hits the ground. "I'm what happens when you teach consequence to think."
I stand. The wind whips around me. My coat flares with the motion, obsidian threads catching faint light.
"When I killed Shakore, I didn't just end him. I saw everything he ever was. Every flash of life. Every scream he left behind. Millions of years of motion compressed into a heartbeat."
Sage looks uneasy. "That kind of knowledge should've burned your mind."
"It did," I admit. "But fire's familiar to me."
She watches as I raise my hand. The air hums, faint blue lines forming around my arm, energy from the storm I absorbed. I let it crackle for a second before clenching my fist, letting it die.
"Each Remnant I take brings me closer to him. The real Serkauis. The one they tried to erase."
"Closer to revenge," she says bitterly.
"No." My voice hardens. "Closer to the truth. If I destroy what they built from his body, I can trace the pattern back. I can find the source. The Vault wants silence. I'll give them something louder."
Sage stands now too, facing me. "And after that?"
I meet her gaze. "After that, I stop pretending any of this can be fixed."
She sighs, rubbing her temple. "You talk like you're already gone."
I turn away, looking toward the shattered horizon, the world half-ice, half-memory. "Maybe I am. But I'm still here long enough to finish what I started."
The wind shifts. The storm returns.
Lightning dances above the clouds, faint, pale, not from nature but from something remembering how to be alive.
I grip the Blade of Malfunction. The thunder in my chest answers.
One Remnant down.
Many left.
Each carrying a piece of Serkauis.
Each one a sin.
And me?
I'm the collector of what's owed.
The silence stretches.
Then I whisper to the blade,
"Let's unmake gods."
"Beauty is the mercy of those who don't understand power."
The wind never stays still anymore.
It's alive.
It moves when I move.
The aftermath of Shakore still hums in the air, faint echoes of electricity trembling through the frozen ground. His voice, if you could call it that, still rattles inside my bones. Not words. Just motion. Pure, restless motion.
I crouch, sliding my bow case off my back. The straps creak from frost and old blood. Inside, the bow rests silent, forged from raw Killiden two winters ago. Sleek. Efficient. Mine.
I pull it free and feel the hum of Killiden respond to me, like it's breathing through my veins.
Sage watches me quietly, standing a few feet away, her aura pulsing faintly with magnetism. She doesn't ask what I'm doing. She's learned not to.
I reach behind me and draw energy into my palm. The air ripples. Purple light flickers between my fingers, Killiden taking form, obeying thought, building shape.
The arrow begins to construct itself. A long spine of silver light forms first, then fletching carved from energy, then the tip, razor-edged, flickering like it doesn't want to exist in one color.
But I'm not done.
I close my eyes and whisper one word.
"Shakore."
The name itself triggers a surge. Lightning dances around me, crawling up my arm and into the arrow. I watch as the currents shift color—blue at first, then red, until they collide, merging into a vibrant, volatile purple.
Sage inhales sharply. "It's… beautiful."
I shake my head. "It's predictable."
I draw the bowstring back. The world narrows to silence. The arrow hums, trembling against the pressure of my pull. Then I release.
The arrow vanishes, gone in less than a blink, before the air implodes where it once was.
A small, tight explosion forms miles ahead, a brief violet flare that distorts the horizon before collapsing in on itself.
Sage flinches. "What was that?"
"Signal."
I straighten, eyes tracking the distant distortion. The lightning from the explosion ripples upward, like a beacon made of static and sound.
"It's leading me," I say, slinging the bow back across my shoulder. "Shakore's body piece. The fragment he stole from Serkauis. It's calling home."
Sage narrows her eyes at the purple glow bleeding across the clouds. "You're following that?"
"Of course."
She exhales, frustrated. "You act like it's simple. Like this doesn't terrify you."
"It does," I say. "That's how I know it's real."
The Blade of Malfunction hums faintly at my hip, reacting to the arrow's signal. I can feel the energy path forming, a thread of thunder and Killiden intertwining through the air, pulling me toward the next ruin, the next kill.
I start walking. The ground cracks beneath my boots, lightning still whispering through the veins of the world.
Sage hesitates before following, muttering something under her breath. Probably another lecture about control, about what's left of me.
But I don't slow down.
The pulse is clear now.
The next fragment is waiting.
And wherever Serkauis's body still lies scattered, I'll find it.
One by one.
Until the gods remember what they tried to forget.