The pulse of thunder leads us deeper into the deadlands.
The sky is a washed-out gray, stretched thin like something sick trying to hide its bones.
The ice cracks under every step, veins of blue lightning flickering beneath the surface, guiding me without mercy or pause.
Sage keeps pace.
I feel the hum inside my chest.
Shakore's soul burns there, an electric heart that is not mine but moves like it is.
And for the first time in a long time, the cold can't touch me.
We crest a ridge.
The land drops into a valley of shattered buildings.
Old towers, half-frozen, half-collapsed, their iron frames twisted into shapes that look like frozen screams.
Snow packs the windows.
Corpses of civilizations long erased by Nia's rebirth.
Sage whispers, "People lived here once."
"People died here too," I answer.
"Because of Remnants."
We descend.
The pulse grows stronger.
It beats through my ribs like a second heartbeat.
No.
More like a memory.
Shakore's memories.
His fear.
His final moments before I tore his soul out.
He ran from something.
Something fast enough to nearly catch him.
A Remnant that hunts speed itself.
Sage senses my tension.
"You feel it too?"
I nod.
"Shakore left a trail. I can read it."
"What do you see?"
I stare at my hands.
Human.
Killiden.
Obsidian.
All shifting under the skin like a tide.
"A predator," I say.
"Something he feared in the last second before I killed him."
Sage's face tightens.
"Another Remnant?"
"Yes."
She breathes in sharply.
"And Serkauis. Another piece of his body."
"Exactly."
We reach the valley floor.
A spire of frozen steel juts upward like a fang.
Lightning curls around it, silent but bright.
"That," Sage says, pointing, "is the source?"
I shake my head.
"No. That's the grave marker."
"For what?"
"For the thing Shakore didn't escape."
Sage falters.
Her voice small.
"V… what are we walking into?"
"A hunt."
I grip the blade of Malfunction.
I feel it respond.
I feel the killiden bow on my back vibrate.
"And this time, I'm not the prey."
Sage swallows.
"V… did you ever ask yourself if this is too much?"
"Every day."
"And you still go forward?"
"I have to."
"Because of your father."
"Because of everything."
I stop walking.
She almost bumps into me.
"Listen," I say.
My voice steadier than I expected.
"I'm not pretending this is noble.
I'm not pretending this is destiny.
I'm doing this because if I do nothing, I rot.
If I stop, I drown.
If I let these things live, the universe keeps spinning like I never existed."
Sage goes quiet.
She watches me like she's seeing all three versions of me at once.
"You were never meant to just exist," she says.
"You were meant to change something."
"Or break something," I answer.
"Sometimes that's the same thing."
We move again.
The pulse becomes a roar inside my skull.
Even Sage can feel it now, her magnetism reacting to the foreign presence ahead.
A shape crouches atop the steel spire.
Skin of pale stone.
Hair like icy tendrils.
Eyes glowing green with a hunger that isn't hunger at all.
A Remnant.
One I've never seen.
One older than the ice itself.
One dragging the scent of Serkauis like a wound that still bleeds.
Sage steps back.
"V…"
"I know."
The creature tilts its head.
Then it speaks.
Its voice is cracked glass and dying breath.
"I smelled thunder on your skin.
Sage trembles.
I don't.
I step forward.
"I killed Shakore," I say.
"I'll kill you too."
The Remnant smiles.
Slow.
Crooked.
Cold.
"Good.
The dead should come to die together."
And then he moves.
And the valley explodes into war.
The valley falls quiet.
No wind.
No echo.
No breath.
Only the soft creak of something shifting on the spire.
And then he rises.
Not a silhouette.
Not a monster.
Not a Remnant I recognize.
Something worse.
A figure sits on a throne built from Killiden fragments, blades jutting at uneven angles.
Some curve, some crack, some twist like metal trying to imitate bone.
All of them wrong.
All of them beautiful in a way that should not exist.
A sculpture shaped to be perfect, yet its perfection stabs the eyes, like harmony bent until the sound cuts instead of soothes.
He stands.
Slow.
Graceful.
Not a ripple of malice in the movement, yet the ground withers in the cold that follows.
A ripple of something like a perfume, only it smells like roses bruised underfoot.
His skin glows faintly, not with light, but with attention.
Just looking at him makes your mind adjust, like it is correcting its own memory to match him.
His beauty is not normal.
It is a warning.
Sage's voice breaks in a whisper.
"What… is that?"
I don't answer.
He steps off the throne.
His feet don't crunch the snow.
The snow retreats.
His hair moves like silken smoke.
Not a strand out of place, yet every strand flickers wrong, like a reflection in rippling water pretending to be still.
His eyes are soft, kind, almost sad.
And somehow crueler than anything I have ever seen.
He circles us.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Measured.
Every step shifts the air.
Sage shivers.
I don't.
Something cold inside me recognizes something cold inside him.
He stops in front of me.
His voice is gentle.
Like someone comforting you while digging out your ribs.
"What an interesting shape you wear," he says.
His eyes trace my obsidian veins.
My shifting form.
The flicker of thunder under my skin.
"Oh yes," he murmurs.
Quiet.
Reflective.
Almost nostalgic.
"I remember that color. That texture. That hunger."
He touches his chin as if trying to recall a dream.
"Yes… someone wore it. Someone close. Someone I hated. Someone I… loved? I cannot recall."
Sage steps forward.
"What are you talking about? Loved who? Hated who?"
He tilts his head toward her.
Not mocking.
Not teasing.
Just studying.
His smile is soft enough to break bone.
"I do not know anymore. The memory is fractured. Piece missing. Piece stolen. Piece… eaten, perhaps."
He looks back to me.
He steps closer.
My blade of Malfunction hums, warning me.
His presence bends the air.
Not with power.
With intention.
He lifts a hand to my obsidian shoulder.
His fingers hover an inch away, never touching, yet I feel them like nails scraping inside my skull.
"I know you," he whispers.
"But I do not know why."
I grit my teeth.
"Then say your name."
He laughs quietly.
Soft.
Sad.
Perfect.
"My name?" He sighs.
"As if a name matters. Does a mirror need a name to reflect you? Does rot need a title before it takes root?"
Sage grabs my arm.
"V… step back."
I don't.
I stare into him.
"Then tell me what you are."
His smile widens, but his eyes stay hollow.
"I am the flaw in beauty.
The bruise in affection.
The thing people call lovely while falling apart in their own hands."
He leans in.
Close enough for me to see my reflection in his iris.
It looks wrong.
It looks like three reflections overlaid into one.
"And you…" he whispers.
"You are familiar in a way that frightens even me."
My grip tightens on my blade.
"Why?"
His expression shifts.
Like clarity flickering through a broken lightbulb.
"I think," he says slowly,
"someone I once despised wore your shadows."
His eyes narrow.
"And someone I once cherished carried your face."
Sage pulls me back.
"What does that mean?"
He closes his eyes.
Soft.
Painful.
As if remembering hurts him.
"I do not know," he whispers.
"But I feel the absence.
Where a memory should be…
there is a wound."
He touches his own chest.
"And it bleeds when I look at you."
He moves before thought, before breath, before instinct.
One blink.
He is gone from the throne of broken blades.
Another blink.
He is behind us.
A hand rests on my shoulder.
Another on Sage's.
Cold sinks into my bones.
Not frost.
Recognition without memory.
Sage stiffens.
I match her glance.
We both understand the same thing.
This Remnant sits above every threat we have faced.
Power rolls off him in quiet waves.
No sound.
No pressure.
Only fact.
He speaks.
"You are wrong in your shape," he says.
His voice sounds patient.
Almost polite.
The tone of someone reading a text he already knows by heart.
"You were altered. You were fractured. You were not meant. Yet you exist."
His grip tightens without touching.
My skin reacts as if pressed by ice and heat at once.
"You are built to change something," he continues.
"Or someone."
I turn my head. Barely.
His face is too close.
His eyes track every shift in my expression.
He studies me like a puzzle missing pieces.
"You wear her face," he murmurs.
"You hold her manner. But inside…"
His head tilts.
"I see myself. My errors. My breaks."
Sage breathes out, small and sharp.
"Who is she?" she asks.
He lowers his lashes.
A long pause.
Heavy.
"My twin sister."
Nothing else.
No name.
No history.
No identity.
Only that title.
The weight of it presses against my mind.
Something about those words prick at old instincts, old pain.
He walks around us again.
Slow.
Even.
Measured.
Every step cuts the ground in a perfect arc.
"You are not natural," he says to me.
"Not born by an honest sequence. Not shaped by hope. Your seams show."
He taps his own temple.
"Yet you carry purpose that was never written for you."
He circles back.
His eyes sharpen.
"And that is why you pull at memory."
A faint exhale.
"Yours. Mine. Hers."
Sage steps closer to me.
A small gesture.
Protection or fear.
Both.
He watches her.
Not hungry.
Not angry.
Quiet.
Then he looks at me again.
"Your obsidian skin," he says.
"I recall it. Somewhere. The color of a betrayal I was part of."
A pause.
"The texture of a wound I once survived."
He reaches out, stops an inch from my cheek, and studies the air between us like it holds a lost message.
"But the memory is broken. Someone removed it. Someone erased the reason."
His eyes shift.
Clear for a moment.
Cold.
Focused.
"I know only this."
His voice lowers.
"You are wrong in this world."
A breath.
A hair of silence.
"And wrongness has purpose."
He stands behind us, both hands still resting lightly on our shoulders.
His voice folds over itself, smooth, calm, too careful to be accidental.
"Purpose is a fragile thing," he says.
"Do not mistake it for truth."
He steps around us again. Slow. Measured. Each footfall feels intentional, as if he is shaping the room with his movement.
"In this reality, nothing is clean," he continues.
"Every meaning hides another. Every fate coils around something unseen."
His eyes shift toward the air, as if reading a script written across the dust.
"Life holds a second life beneath it. Death holds a second death behind it. Every design carries a shadow that argues with its own birth."
He lifts a hand, fingertip tracing a small circle in the air.
"Nothing here is what it claims to be. Not your world. Not your origins. Not the bodies you wear."
His gaze returns to me.
Heavy. Too knowing.
Not cruel.
Not kind.
"Purpose exists," he says.
"But purpose is flawed. Always flawed."
A pause.
"Everything you cling to has another face. Another intention. Another cost."
He lowers his hand, eyes thinning.
"You are no exception."
He stops in front of me, eyes sinking straight through my skin.
There's no warmth in his stare, no hate either.
Only recognition. Something old. Something threaded into my bones before I was born.
Then he vanishes.
One blink.
He is back on the throne of uneven Killiden blades, lounging as if he owns gravity. One leg crossed, one arm draped over the jagged armrest, posture elegant, cruel, and bored all at once. A king. A god. Something worse.
His voice settles over the room.
"Of course," he murmurs. "I should have noticed sooner."
His fingers tap the throne, slow and rhythmic.
"That shell you wear, boy… the obsidian that coats your soul."
His smile is tired, nostalgic, almost disappointed.
"That is our doing. Mine and hers."
He doesn't say her name.
He doesn't have to.
Then his tone sharpens.
"But I never named the thing inside you."
A pause.
"I only gave it form. A title. An identity."
He leans forward, eyes bright and cold.
"Chaos."
The word hits like a physical blow.
My body locks.
Sage's breathing hitches.
And then the flashbacks rip through both of us at once.
Sage sees it first, from outside, the way she witnessed it long ago.
Nazz smothering my voice.
Nazz bending my posture.
Nazz using my body as if it had always belonged to him, obsidian crawling over my arms, my throat, my jaw, his power mutating the air.
I see it at the same time from the opposite angle.
Inside.
Trapped behind my own eyes.
Watching him press against the walls of my skull, stretching my mind like wet paper, moving my limbs while I pounded against a door that wouldn't open.
My voice muffled.
His laughter echoing.
Reminding me I was not alone in my own skin.
The memory collapses, leaving both of us shaking.
Sage whispers the name like a wound reopening.
"Nazz…?"
The being on the throne tilts his head, pleased.
"Ah," he says softly.
"That name. I do adore it."