My throat tightens, but I force the words out anyway.
"What do you mean your doing?" I step forward, voice low. "Why would you put something like that in me? Why give me Chaos at all?"
Sage crosses in beside me, fists trembling. She doesn't sound scared. She sounds angry.
"And why him?" she asks. "Why V? Why not someone else? What do you even gain from that?"
The remnant barely reacts. His lips curl, faint amusement flickering like a candle in a windless room.
"You two demand answers as if you deserve them."
He lifts his chin.
He doesn't look annoyed.
He looks entertained.
I push again.
"You said I'm altered. Fractured. What does that mean?"
My voice cracks, more from rage than fear.
"Tell me what you did."
Sage adds sharper words, leaning in like she wants to rip the truth out of him.
"And what about Nazz? If you created him, shaped him, whatever… why? What was he meant for? And why does V have to carry that weight alone?"
It drums his fingers against the Killiden throne. The sound echoes like ticking bones.
"You ask as though I crafted some prophecy," he says. "As though you are owed clarity."
His tone softens into a quiet mockery.
"Chaos is not gifted. Chaos is placed."
He studies me again, too closely, like he's peeling me back layer by layer.
"You were… convenient."
Sage snaps.
"Convenient for what?"
He laughs once, the sound cold and musical.
"For everything you fear," he says. "And everything you will become."
I clench my jaw.
"Answer the question."
His eyes narrow, not with threat, but with patience thinning.
"You want truth?" he says. "Then listen."
He leans forward.
The entire throne creaks under him, blades shifting like eager wings.
"You were not born incomplete."
A pause.
"You were made incomplete."
Sage swallows hard. "Made…? By who?"
He smiles.
"Do you think I would create Chaos without a vessel? Without a body to anchor it?"
He lifts a hand, as if displaying me like a relic he lost and finally recovered.
"The fracture within you is intentional. You are missing pieces no human should live without."
My chest tightens.
Sage whispers, "V…"
He continues, voice smooth, each word a cut.
"And in those empty spaces, Chaos found room to grow."
I take a step closer, heat rising in my chest.
"Why me?"
My words shake.
"What did you see in me?"
He shrugs, elegant and indifferent.
"Nothing," he says.
"That was the point."
Sage steps forward before I do, her voice cracking but fierce.
"Did you… what, give him hope?"
The Remnant stops moving.
Then he laughs.
Not the kind anyone wants to hear.
Thin. Curled. Designed to poke where it hurts.
"Hope..?" he repeats, tasting the word like something sour.
Another laugh follows, deeper, more manipulative. It echoes against the blades making up his throne.
"That is a word… but it does not fit."
He rises with a grace that feels rehearsed, each movement calculated to unsettle. The uneven Killiden blades behind him shift as if reacting to his mood.
"I did not give the boy hope," he says. "Hope belongs to softer hands."
His attention snaps to me.
"What I gave you was potential."
He takes a slow step closer.
The sound is like fractured glass.
"You were manifesting without any. Do you know how absurd that is? Every being starts with potential. To triumph. To collapse. To love. To lose. You, boy, had nothing."
Sage flinches.
My jaw tightens.
He doesn't give us time to adjust.
"Have you ever seen nothingness in action?"
I try to speak.
Nothing comes out.
He doesn't wait.
He squares his shoulders for the first time, his aura sharpening, the playful cruelty stripped away.
"As serious as I ever become," he mutters.
Then his eyes lock onto mine.
"Nothingness is not black. Not dark. Not silence. Not void."
His fingers trace the air, outlining something that feels wrong to look at.
"It is the complete disregard of anything and everything. Not absence. Not emptiness."
His tone sinks low.
"It is where meaning goes to die before it can even be born."
Sage steps closer to me, breath tight.
He continues.
"And I was trapped there. For longer than you can understand. Long enough to learn the truth that no Remnant wishes to admit."
He lifts his chin, a brittle smile slicing across his face.
"We are all flawed. Every one of us. Every creature that ever existed."
He leans in just enough that I feel the weight of the words.
"Nobody is pure. Not even the ones made to be."
I step forward, just one pace, but it feels like crossing a line.
My voice comes out steady, sharper than I expect.
"How did you lose your memory?" I ask him. "Did another Remnant do that to you? Did someone injure you? Damage you?"
He blinks once.
Slow.
Almost human.
Then the corner of his mouth lifts.
"Injury?" he repeats. "Damage?"
A soft laugh, too soft for the cruelty behind it.
"No, boy. If one of my kind harms another, the wound is remembered. Etched. Worn like a scar in the soul."
He taps a finger against his temple.
"This… haze… is something else."
He starts pacing again, hands trailing along the uneven blades jutting from his throne as if they steady him.
"Memory loss is not common among my kind. We are made of remembrance, after all. We do not forget unless someone forces us to."
He stops pacing.
His eyes lock onto mine.
"And none of them could force me."
A pause.
A breath.
"Which leaves only one answer."
His voice drops.
"I did this to myself."
My throat tightens before I even speak.
The sound that comes out isn't mine.
It's deeper.
Harsher.
Rasped through a memory of obsidian.
Sage flinches.
I can see it in her eyes. She hears Nazz in me. Maybe more than Nazz.
I take one step toward the thing on the throne.
"What," I say, each syllable dragging out of my chest like gravel, "did he name you."
The air in the room folds.
Not bends, not shifts-folds.
The Remnant freezes mid-motion, not shocked, but interested in the way a predator perks at a wounded animal that somehow bares fangs.
He tilts his head.
Slight.
Elegant.
Wrong.
"You ask that question?" he murmurs.
His smile doesn't widen. It deepens.
"Be careful, boy. Names are not sounds for the mouth. They are weight. Authority. Bond."
His fingers tap the arm of his killiden throne.
"You speak of him. The maker. The archivist. The one who speaks identity into form."
A pause.
A subtle shift in his tone.
"Only those who stand at his height speak the names of my kind without consequence."
He leans forward.
Just enough for the air to thin.
"You are not there."
Another pause.
"Not yet."
He sits back.
"As for what he named me…" His eyes sweep over the both of us, amused and cold. "That is not a question you speak into the air, little obsidian. That is a question you ascend into."
He taps his temple once more.
"And you are still climbing."
I hate how small my voice feels before I even speak.
But I force it out anyway.
"If I am still climbing," I say, slow, gritty, "then push me. Aid me in the ascent. Tell me how close I am."
The room chills.
Not cold, not frost.
Stillness.
Like the world is holding its breath so it does not interrupt something sacred or stupid
The Remnant's eyes lock onto mine.
Not blinking.
Not kind.
Measured.
Then he moves.
Not walking.
Not stepping.
He appears in front of me, so close our shadows merge.
He leans in slightly and studies me.
My breathing.
My stance.
The flicker under my skin.
Then he vanishes.
A heartbeat later he hangs near the ceiling.
Silent. Watching.
He flickers behind Sage.
She gasps.
He ignores her.
He stands across the broken arena.
Then two feet from me again.
Then at the farthest wall where the crystals hum.
Then back at his throne.
Then in front of me again.
He does this for minutes.
No pattern.
No rhythm.
Just impossible movement and evaluation, like he is reading my existence frame by frame.
Finally he stops.
Center of the room.
Hands behind his back.
Regal. Mocking. Perfectly composed.
"I have seen your fractures," he says.
"I have watched your mind ripple. Your aura slant. Your soul pulse in and out of alignment."
He lifts one finger.
"Seventy three percent."
The number hits harder than any strike.
He walks once in a circle around me, voice smooth and unsettling.
"You are seventy three percent along the path that would allow you to speak a name like mine without collapsing into dust."
Another circle.
"Seventy three percent toward standing in the same room as him without evaporating."
A final circle, slower.
"Seventy three percent from becoming what you fear. What you chase. What you already are but refuse to accept."
He stops behind me.
A whisper rides along my spine.
"You are close, little obsidian."
A beat.
"But not close enough."
He goes quiet.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that makes your spine remember what fear feels like.
He tilts his head, studying me with slow, precise curiosity, like he is inspecting a fracture he didn't expect to find.
"You wear Chaos," he murmurs again, voice soft enough to slice. "How quaint."
His eyes trail over me, mapping the shape of my aura, tracing where the remnants of Nazz still curl inside my ribs like a sleeping animal.
"One body. Two echoes. Three stories trying to occupy the same breath."
He clicks his tongue. "Untidy. Improvised. Barely holding."
He circles me, steps light, movements elegant in a way that feels wrong.
"I should separate you."
He says it casually, as though recommending I trim my nails.
Sage stiffens beside me, breath catching.
He continues pacing.
"I could carve the Chaos from you. Pull the void-born thing out by its name, silence its trembling, and leave you… simple."
A faint shrug. "Pure."
He lifts a hand, fingers drifting through the air.
Reality bends toward his palm.
"But simplicity bores me."
He examines his own fingers, as if checking whether the universe still obeys him.
"And Chaos without a host tends to scream. Loudly. Inconveniently. It stains things. Leaves a mess."
He lowers his hand.
"To split you open is easy. To let you remain bound is dangerous."
He leans in, close enough for me to see reflections folding in his irises.
His voice sharpens.
"Danger is more entertaining."
He takes one slow step back, then another, returning to his throne of uneven killiden blades.
They adjust around him like something alive.
He sits with a posture too perfect, too deliberate, as though claiming the space itself.
"I will not separate you," he decides, tone firm now. "Not yet."
His gaze locks into mine again, unreadable and cold.
"I want to see what seventy three percent becomes."
He rises from the killiden throne with a sigh that sounds like boredom wearing silk.
"Seventy three percent," he repeats, almost to himself. "Still climbing. Still hungry."
Then he lifts his hand.
Space folds. The air buckles inward.
Something drops from the distortion and lands in his palm with a wet, metallic thud.
A fragment.
Small at first glance, but the moment I look at it, my stomach twists.
This thing… hums. A steady pulse. The kind of rhythm that belongs to something that never dies, even when killed.
Sage steps back, hand over her mouth.
I feel my mind sting, like the fragment is trying to open me from the inside.
He smiles.
"You came for this," he says, rolling the piece of Malfious between his fingers. "A shard of the Betrayer's body. The marrow of rebellion itself."
He studies the fragment like it is a memory he once loved and now despises.
"This is what he left behind when he slipped through the cracks of the Void. A bone. A thought. A promise."
He closes his fist.
The world darkens for a heartbeat.
When he opens his hand again, the fragment floats above his palm, suspended by its own hunger.
"Take it," he says, tone deceptively soft. "Before it remembers who it belonged to."
Sage flinches as the shard vibrates, warping the air around it.
I step forward.
The thing reacts immediately, tugging toward me, as if drawn to the Chaos sleeping beneath my skin.
He laughs.
"Oh, it knows you," he says. "How lovely."
The fragment shoots into my hand, scorching cold, burning through my nerves, filling me with a surge that tastes like hatred and gravity combined.
Sage gasps, reaching out but stopping herself.
He sits back on his throne.
"There," he murmurs. "A piece of the fallen lord. A piece of the war you do not yet understand."
His smile sharpens.
"Collect the rest, boy. And pray the next one is as polite as this."