The end was not an end, but a severing. The heat, the weight of Mikaze, the tears—they were ripped away into a silent, cold vacuum. There was no transition, only the absolute negation of everything.
Then, a sensation of spinning.
Velcrion—no, Vel—came back to a form of awareness not with a gasp, but with a slow, dawning cognizance, like a deep-sea creature rising from abyssal blackness. He was standing. He had a body, or the ghost of one—a humanoid form composed of shimmering, faintly luminous energy. He looked down at his hands, turning them over. They were familiar, yet translucent.
And they were covered in tattoos.
The same intricate, dark patterns that had been inked onto his skin in his previous life were now etched into the very fabric of his soul. The thorns, the obscured faces, sprawling across his arms, his chest, visible through the spectral form. But they were different now. They were alive with a slow, internal pulse of deep violet light.
He stood in an infinite, subspace-like venue. There was no ground, no sky, only a formless, grey expanse that stretched into eternity. The only source of light, the only feature in the void, was directly before him.
A massive, vertical wheel, easily a hundred feet in diameter, hung in the nothingness. It was forged of the same dark, metallic-looking energy as his tattoos, and its face was a complex, shifting mandala of interlocking symbols and arcane geometries that he somehow knew were the same patterns on his own soul. It rotated with a profound, silent slowness, each incremental turn seeming to grind against the foundations of reality itself.
This was it. This was his punishment.
A cold, grim acceptance settled over him. The fire, the betrayal, the death of everyone he loved… it had been a one-way ticket. This was the afterlife he had earned. Not a lake of fire, but an eternity of nothing, chained to this… this thing that had haunted him in life and now owned him in death.
He remembered everything. Ace's laugh turning into a death rattle. Mikaze's desperate grip. The feel of the chain. The look in Daisy's eyes just before he ended her. The memories were sharp, crystalline, and they carved at him from the inside. This was his hell. To be trapped with the full, unblinking memory of his failure, his rage, his fall.
He took a step forward, his non-foot making no sound on the non-ground. He stared up at the rotating wheel, his soul-tattoos pulsing in time with its slow revolution.
"So this is it?" his voice echoed, not in the space, but within the confines of his own consciousness. "My own personal oblivion."
The wheel offered no answer. It just turned, its ancient, unknowable purpose a mockery of his existence.
He wasn't a king here. He wasn't a ghost or a glitch. He was a prisoner. And the wheel, and the tattoos that bound him to it, were his warden.
He clenched his fists of shimmering energy, a familiar, defiant fire igniting in his core, even here, at the end of all things.
Fine.
If this was hell, then he would find a way to break it, too.
The profound silence of his personal hell was shattered by a light that was not light. It was a searing, white-hot negation of the void itself, bleaching the infinite grey into absolute nothingness. Velcrion threw up his translucent arms, the tattoos flaring in protest, as the sheer force of the light threatened to unmake his spectral form.
Then, as instantly as it arrived, it vanished.
The grey expanse was gone. He was no longer alone.
He stood on a circular platform of polished, iridescent stone that hummed with latent power. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and blooming mythic Arts. And he was surrounded.
---
The ten souls floated in the formless, golden expanse, their luminous forms shifting with confusion and a dawning, shared anxiety.
Solar Soul: (His voice a warm, radiating pulse) "Where is this? The last thing I remember... was the light. A pain in my chest, and then... light."
Crystalline Soul: (Her form shimmering with each word) "I was falling. The ice of the Northern Peaks gave way beneath me. There was cold, and then... this warmth. This is not the afterlife I was taught to expect."
Mountain Soul: (His tone low and resonant, like grinding stone) "I fell in battle. An axe in my back. This feels like no hall of warriors."
A soul that flickered with verdant, leafy light spoke next. Sylvan Soul: "We all remember death, then. That is the common thread. But why are we here? And why are we... us? I count ten points of light. Ten."
Solar Soul: "Ten. A significant number. A number of completion."
A soul that seemed woven from shifting shadows and whispers interjected, its voice dry and subtle. Umbral Soul: "Or a number of judgment. Are we on trial? Is this a purgatory?"
Aqueous Soul: (Her form flowing like water) "It feels like a beginning, not an end. There is a... potential here. As if we are waiting for a purpose."
A soul crackling with barely-contained energy, like a contained storm, sparked with impatience. Tempest Soul: "Purpose? I want answers! What entity has brought us here? Show yourself!"
Ferric Soul: (His form had the hard, unyielding quality of polished steel) "Patience. Rash action in an unknown environment is folly. We must observe."
Luminous Soul: (She was a being of pure, soft, white light) "Observe what? There is nothing but us. Ten souls in a golden void. The question is not just 'why', but 'why us'? What connects a fallen soldier, a drowned sailor, a frozen scholar?" She gestured vaguely to the Mountain, Aqueous, and Crystalline souls.
Sylvan Soul: "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps we are random. A collection."
Solar Soul: "No. I cannot accept that. This feels orchestrated. We are here for a reason. We are ten. A perfect set. We must be meant for something together."
It was then that the Crystalline Soul, whose perception was the most refined, suddenly stilled. Her shimmering intensified.
Crystalline Soul: "Wait."
The others fell silent, their light flickering with attention.
Crystalline Soul: "I have been counting the resonance... the unique frequencies of our spirits. I... I may be mistaken."
Tempest Soul: "What is it? Speak!"
Crystalline Soul: "There are not ten unique spiritual signatures in this nexus."
A ripple of disbelief passed through them.
Solar Soul: "What do you mean? We are ten. I have counted."
Crystalline Soul: "There is an eleventh. Faint. Muted. Its frequency is... dissonant. It does not harmonize with ours. It's there, on the edge of our gathering."
All ten souls turned their focus inward, sensing the space around them. One by one, their confusion deepened into profound disquiet as they detected it—a silent, shadowy presence they had all unconsciously overlooked. An eleventh point of consciousness, feeling utterly alien amidst their luminous gathering.
Umbral Soul: "By the great void... she is right. There is another. What is that?"
Ferric Soul: "It feels... cold. Old. It doesn't belong here."
Solar Soul: (His light flaring with a mix of alarm and authority) "You! Eleventh soul! Identify yourself! Why are you here with us?"
But before the silent, shadowy form of Velcrion could even be perceived clearly, the golden nexus suddenly flared with an overwhelming, divine pressure. The conversation was cut short, their questions left hanging in the air, as the Celestial Guardian began to manifest, its arrival instantly commanding all their attention and erasing the brief, troubling discovery of the eleventh.
The nexus of liquid light trembled, not with power, but with panic. A presence manifested above the eleven souls—a being of pure, geometric light, its form a shifting pattern of iridescent triangles and spheres. The Celestial Guardian. The architect of this rebirth.
Its attention, which should have been a benevolent beam bestowing purpose upon the Ten, was instead a frantic, searching lance, locked onto the eleventh. The anomaly. The shadow in its masterpiece.
+ANOMALY DETECTED. SOUL SIGNATURE: VELCRION MORKULL SCHATTEN. ORIGIN: UNREGISTERED REALM. CAUSE: SYSTEM CORRUPTION/UNKNOWN.+
The communication was not for the souls, but the Guardian recoiled as if struck. The ten luminous souls looked on in confusion, feeling the Guardian's distress but unable to comprehend the source.
"What is happening?" the solar soul pulsed with light. "Why does the Guardian falter?"
+PROTOCOL: PRESERVATION OF THE SACRED DECAGRAMMATON. INITIATE.+
The decision was made in a nanosecond. There was no deliberation, only cold, celestial calculus. The masterpiece—the ten perfect heroes—could not be tainted. The flaw had to be erased from the narrative before it could even begin.
With a surge of will that made the very firmament weep, the Guardian acted.
Tendrils of liquid light snapped out, not towards Velcrion, but towards the ten chosen souls. They were enveloped, their brilliant forms pulled into a vortex of creation.
"Behold your destinies!" the Guardian's voice boomed, a forced grandeur masking its panic.
One by one, they were remade. The solar soul was plunged into a forge of dawn, emerging with a body of golden, sun-kissed flesh, radiating heat and light. The crystalline soul was washed in a river of stars, becoming an elf with skin like polished moonstone and hair like flowing mercury. The mountain soul was wrapped in elemental earth, becoming a giant of living granite and strength. Perfect, powerful, physical bodies, each a testament to the divine plan.
They gasped, looking at their new hands, feeling the incredible power coursing through their real, solid forms. Their confusion was washed away in a tide of awe and purpose. They were the Heroes. They knew it now in their very bones.
In their radiant transformation, they forgot the brief discord. They forgot the shadowy eleventh soul that had stood among them. The Guardian had carefully edited the memory from their divine inception.
And as they marveled, the Guardian dealt with the flaw.
Velcrion felt a different kind of pull. Not the loving, creative embrace bestowed upon the others, but a violent, shoving ejection. It was a cosmic dismissal, a deletion command. The same power that lovingly sculpted bodies for the Ten was used to tear a hole in the fabric of the nexus.
He was not granted a form. He was not given a class. He was not woven into the tapestry of destiny.
He was thrown out.
Like garbage being tossed into the void, his soul was hurled through the ruptured reality. There was no body waiting for him on the other side. There was only the dizzying, nauseating sensation of falling endlessly through raw, unformed space.
The last thing he saw was the Celestial Guardian, its geometric form already turning away, the ten new Heroes blinking in the light of a world they were destined to save, utterly oblivious to the soul that had been scrubbed from their story for the crime of existing.
He landed not with an impact, but with a silent, seamless integration into the background radiation of the world. A wandering spirit. A ghost without a body, without a purpose, without a name anyone would ever know.
The system had hidden its mistake. The masterpiece was preserved.
But as the Guardian turned its attention to guiding its perfect Heroes, a single, malfunctioning glyph in its core programming flickered with a persistent, worrying light. It had deleted the error from the narrative.
But it hadn't destroyed it.
Somewhere, in the uncharted wilds of the very world it was meant to protect, a soul marked with thorns and fury began to stir, utterly alone, and completely free from the script.