Noah collapsed.
His knees buckled without warning, body folding like a man who'd been holding himself up for years too long. Jasper lunged in, catching him by the arm before his skull could meet stone. The breath tore out of him from the sudden weight—Noah was heavier than he looked. Like he carried something more than a body.
Evodil slowed mid-stride, turning his head just enough to glance at the pair. The corners of his lips curled. Then came the clap—slow, deliberate, echoing through the empty Citadel halls.
"Nice show," he said, voice smooth, almost lazy.
James exhaled through his nose, rolling his shoulders as heat shimmered faintly off his skin. "I'll need a month," he muttered. "Burned through too much Vestige."
Evodil's laugh followed—short, sharp, too pleased with itself.
"See? You and the nerd might be smarter. Stronger. Better fighters. But when it comes to their little divine hocus-pocus—"
He tilted his head toward the sky.
Colorless. Starless. Empty.
"I'm still the best."
He didn't wait for a reply. Boots clicking against the pale stone, cloak swaying with every step, he turned and walked toward the far end of the Citadel—toward the bridge, toward the Manor.
The wind shifted.
Something hollow moved in his chest.
He stepped through the entrance of his house, closing the heavy oak door behind him. The sudden shift from the Citadel's cold air to the manor's warm stillness made his shoulders loosen slightly. The flower pattern on the wallpaper greeted him as always, faded but untouched. Even if he scratched it, even if he tore it in frustration, he always replaced it. It was a constant.
The chairs along the walls were in their usual positions, though he could already tell they weren't perfectly straight. They never were. No matter how many hours he wasted dragging them back and forth, they always seemed off. He gave them a quick glance and clenched his jaw, forcing himself to keep walking instead of trying again.
One of the paintings on the wall caught his eye. Normally he wouldn't have spared it a second glance, but tonight he stopped. It showed a man standing in a graveyard, leaning against a shovel. The gravestones in front of him all carried the same name, only the dates were different. The man's badge read that same name too.
Evodil stared at it for a moment, frowning faintly. He couldn't remember ever hanging it there. Maybe Noah had. Maybe it had always been there and he'd ignored it. He rubbed his temple and moved on. The manor was going to be dust in a few weeks anyway.
At the archway leading into the dining room, his eyes drifted to the small table pressed against the wall. Beside it stood the old coat rack. Normally his coat would be there, but he still wore it. What drew his attention wasn't the rack but the object on the table. A fruit bowl sat there, neatly placed and filled.
He stopped. There hadn't been a fruit bowl before. Something else used to be there. A vase? A clock? He tried to remember but nothing came. The harder he searched for the memory, the more it slipped away.
The radio on the same table buzzed with its usual static. He slapped the top of it, expecting nothing more than the same white noise. For a moment, that's all it was. Then the sound shifted.
A voice bled through. Clear enough to recognize.
"You shouldn't have come back here."
Evodil's body stiffened. That was Noah's voice.
He turned his head slightly, staring at the buzzing box. Noah wasn't here. Noah was outside, barely holding himself upright. He grit his teeth.
"Who's there?" he asked.
No answer came. The radio went back to static, filling the room with its soft hum.
Evodil kept staring at it, not moving, his fingers curling against the side of his coat.
He sighed, shoulders heavy as his blindfold slipped down by an inch. The edge of his pale dot-eyes peeked through the fabric, faint and distant, but he didn't fix it. There were more important things clawing at his mind.
That voice—Noah's voice. Was he awake? Did he follow him here? Maybe he'd recovered faster than expected. Or maybe it was some stupid prank. They never listened when he told them to leave him alone.
He tried to piece it together, but every thought led nowhere. None of this made sense. The Citadel was silent, his house felt wrong, and the air pressed down like it wanted to smother him. His head ached. The only thing he knew how to do—how he'd always done—was ignore it. Push it aside, bury it deep, and move forward.
He turned away from the small table, footsteps slow as he started toward the observatory. He needed to focus. The shades weren't ready. He still had to figure out how to fuse them, mold them into something solid—something James couldn't tear through. He just needed quiet. A plan.
But as he reached the archway, another sound slipped in.
A voice.
Not Noah's.
"You named the city, right?"
Evodil froze mid-step.
His eyes darted to the wall, to the floor, to the empty hall behind him. That tone—light, casual, too human to mistake. Jasper.
His throat went dry. The words kept going, quiet but clear, overlapping with his own memory.
"Depends who's telling the story."
"Good enough. Name the pub."
Then his own voice, answering without thought—
"…Astral Pub."
He blinked, hard. The room stayed still. No boy. No echo. Just the faint hum of the radio, the soft creak of settling wood.
A chill ran through his hands as he rubbed at his temple. This wasn't like the voice. Not that one. This wasn't the usual gnawing whisper, the command in the back of his head. This was them—their voices. Real. Familiar. Close enough to hurt.
He shut his eyes and exhaled slowly through his nose. "I'm losing it," he muttered.
The air didn't answer. The house just listened.
He didn't move. Not this time.
Evodil stood there, still as stone, waiting for something—anything—to speak again. His fingers hung loosely at his sides, his breathing slow and even. One second passed. Then another. The house stayed quiet. No echo. No whisper. No footsteps behind him.
He kept waiting.
The silence pressed in, heavier with every breath. The same quiet that had always filled this manor—once comforting, now sharp and foreign. He stayed that way for a long moment, not even lifting a finger, not daring to shift a single inch.
Nothing came.
At last, he sighed, dragging a hand across his face. Maybe he really had gone insane. Maybe the voice in his head had finally grown bored of its own ramblings and started wearing other faces. If that was the case, then his plans weren't worth much anymore. Hard to take over a city when you couldn't trust your own mind.
He forced a small, humorless chuckle. "Wonderful," he muttered, voice rough.
Enough. He wasn't going to stand here waiting for ghosts. He turned back toward the observatory, boots scraping lightly against the floor. If he just kept moving, if he just got back to work—
A sound cut through the air.
Not a voice he knew. Not one he'd ever heard.
Cold. Smooth. Amused. Like someone telling a joke over a dying man's breath.
"Me? Oh, if you must call me by a name, refer to me as ☐."
That was all.
No presence. No form. Just a voice, slipping through the stillness like a blade through water.
Evodil froze mid-step, every muscle in his body tight. The air felt wrong, colder somehow. His pulse climbed in his throat.
He didn't know that tone. Didn't know that thing.
Fear crept in, sharp and unwelcome. He hadn't felt it in years. Not like this. Not the kind that clawed behind his ribs and whispered that something was very wrong.
His foot met the floor with a soft thud. He stared at the archway ahead, its shadow spilling across the tiles. For the first time in a long while, he hesitated.
If he took one more step, he wasn't sure the ground would hold him.
He didn't move.
Thoughts clawed up faster than he could shove them down, piling over each other until they didn't even feel like his. Why was he afraid? He wasn't supposed to be afraid. He wasn't supposed to know how it felt to die—yet he did. The memory was there, sharp, undeniable.
Had he already died?
The idea pressed into his skull until it rattled. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was dead, and this voice—this house—was nothing but his own personal hell.
But why would he even ask that? Why would he wonder something he should already know?
His mind folded back on itself. Alive. Dead. Both. Neither. He'd died before, hadn't he? He'd lived before, too. Over and over. Was it his fault? Hadn't it always been his fault?
The questions wouldn't stop. They came too fast, slipped in too easily, like someone else had planted them in his head and let them grow teeth.
What situation was this supposed to be?
The one where he carved Jasper's arm off and left him bleeding in the dirt?
The one where James fell screaming into the crater's fire?
The one where Noah split in half like rotten fruit beneath his blade?
No. None of those.
Except—yes. All of those.
Wait. No. That wasn't right. James was alive. Jasper still had both arms. Noah was unconscious, not dead. Those things hadn't happened.
Had they?
His breath quickened. He turned in place, scanning the hall.
This wasn't his manor. Not exactly. The wallpaper was paler, its flowers faded to near white. The table by the archway didn't hold a candle—it held a fruit bowl. Not his. Not right.
It was the manor, yes. But it didn't belong to him. Not really.
He staggered back a step, his chest tightening. His throat clenched. Then came the cough.
It ripped through him without warning, violent, heavy. Black essence splattered against the floor, thick and wet, burning his tongue as it poured out of his mouth. His knees buckled, hitting stone.
His weight gave out. His body sagged under him.
Each breath dragged weaker than the last.
He pressed a hand against the floor, his fingers digging into the wood as he tried to push himself up. His breaths came sharp and uneven, each one scraping his throat raw. The strength he'd had minutes ago was gone, slipping out of him with every drop of black essence spilling onto the floorboards.
It poured freely, thick and slow, spreading beneath him like ink soaking through paper. He grit his teeth and slammed a fist against his chest, desperate to stop it—to make it listen—but the only answer was another wet cough and more darkness spilling past his lips.
His vision swayed. His body refused every order. His muscles locked in place, trembling under their own weight. Then came the sound—an eruption of screams echoing through his skull.
They weren't from the manor. They were inside him.
Each voice twisted over the next, so loud they could've torn the walls apart, yet none of them made sense. Clear and sharp, but impossible to understand. Words that didn't form, syllables that slipped away the moment they reached his ears.
He tried to cover them with his hand, pressing harder against the floor to steady himself, but his palm was already slick. The black essence crawled over his skin, thick and warm, dripping from his fingertips. His arm shook, slipping inch by inch until it barely held him up.
Then came the images.
Flashes—like glass shattering behind his eyes. The crash. Caroline's body. Not one, but many. In one, her arms were gone; in another, her skull torn open; in a third, she hung limp, impaled through the chest by a tree branch. Each image sharper than the last, layered one over another until they blurred into a single moment of death.
He'd seen her before. He'd found her before. Just an hour ago, hadn't he? But this felt older. Too familiar. Too exact.
Something—or someone—was showing him this. Reminding him. Punishing him.
Or maybe this was just his body collapsing, breaking under the weight of what he'd done. Maybe he'd burned too much, erased too much, and now the cost was coming due.
The strength left his arms. His hand slipped. His face hit the floor.
The black essence spread further, coating his cheek, staining the edges of his blindfold. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears, slowing, stuttering.
More visions came—futures, pasts, all bleeding into one. Each one led back to the same place. The same outcome. The same end.
Proof that no matter how many times he lived, no matter what choices he made—
he never changed.
Finally, the downpour stopped.
The black essence slowed to a few weak drips against the floor, then nothing. The silence that followed was almost enough to make him believe it was over. He drew a long, ragged breath, the sound shaking in his throat. Every inhale scraped through him like glass, sharp and wrong, as though a blade had been driven through his ribs.
He coughed once—more essence spilled from his mouth, but it didn't return in a flood. Small mercy. The first he'd had in hours, maybe days. He let his head rest for a moment, feeling the tremor in his arms settle into a dull ache.
He pressed his hand down again, trying to lift himself—just an inch, enough to breathe without the floor pressing into his cheek. His arm shook. His palm slid across the sticky mess beneath him. Slowly, he raised his head—
Then the pain hit.
It tore through his elbow so suddenly that his vision snapped white. His body jerked, a strangled noise cutting from his throat. It felt like one of his own tendrils had turned against him, driving clean through his arm, shattering the bones of his hand.
He hit the ground again, this time screaming. The sound scraped out of him raw, desperate.
But the pain didn't stop.
A wave of heat followed, searing through his skin. It crawled over him in a single flash, blistering hot—James's fire, reborn inside his veins. His blindfold clung to his face with sweat and blood. He looked down, expecting to see flames licking across his coat, but there was nothing. No fire. No marks. Just pain, spreading deeper and deeper, until every inch of him burned.
He tried to yell, but the air caught in his throat. His chest seized, the breath cut off. Panic flared.
He clawed at his neck, choking on nothing, gasping between sobs he didn't recognize as his own. He called out then—hoarse and frantic.
"Jasper!"
No answer.
"James! Noah! Anyone!"
His voice cracked under the weight of it, the names slipping into broken gasps.
No one came.
The next pain drove through his torso, sharp and constant, twisting like a drill burrowing through flesh that wasn't supposed to bleed. He arched forward, hands trembling as he fought to breathe, to move, to do anything.
It didn't stop.
The pressure built and built, tearing through his core until it felt like something was hollowing him out, chewing through bone and organ alike. His scream faltered, caught in his throat, his body convulsing against the floor.
He kept calling.
For mercy. For help. For someone to make it stop.
But nobody came.
New pain tore through him before the last could fade, raw and vicious, each wound folding over the next like layers of punishment. It didn't feel like his own body anymore—it was as if someone else's suffering had been carved straight into him, forced under his skin.
Something slammed into his forehead—a piercing pressure, sudden and absolute, like a bullet trapped behind bone. He reeled forward, groaning, barely catching himself on shaking arms.
Then came the break. His leg snapped under him with a sharp crack, brittle like old wood giving way beneath a falling weight. His scream split the air, rough and strangled, echoing through the empty halls.
More followed. His palm seared, skin peeling in sensation alone, scraped down to nerve and bone by hands that weren't there. The same palm he'd been leaning on moments ago blazed with agony, trembling violently as he tried to keep upright.
He cried out again, but not for help this time. No pleading, no bargaining—just a voice ripped raw from his throat, a sound of pure torment tearing free as his body convulsed under the weight of every phantom wound.
And then—suddenly—it stopped.
Only silence.
Only breath.
He didn't wait.
He staggered forward, forcing himself to move. His body didn't feel like his; it jerked and stumbled as though pulled by strings, a puppet dragged to its feet by an unseen hand. He lurched through the archway, eyes fixed ahead, refusing to glance at the dining room. He knew if he saw one more thing out of place, if anything else was wrong, the pain would come back stronger than before.
His boots struck the base of the staircase. The moment the heel touched wood, another surge tore through him.
This one started deep, clawing up from the bone. His entire leg lit with agony, ripping apart from the inside out.
He didn't stop.
He screamed—high, ragged—blood bubbling back up through his lips, spilling down his chin and splattering the steps as he climbed.
One step.
Another.
Each one worse than the last.
But he didn't look back.
His vision blurred; the edges of the hall smeared into streaks of color. He had one thought, one desperate anchor: the library. The observatory was too far. He'd never make it. The library had a bathroom, small and cold, one he never used.
If he could just reach it—if he could see himself, see something real—maybe he could prove this was all in his head.
Maybe then the pain would stop.
His foot slammed down on the last step. The archway opened before him, but he didn't stop to think—he couldn't. A scream tore out of him, raw and ragged, cutting through the stillness as he pushed forward. The pain still clung to him, a living thing gnawing at his bones, wrapping around his nerves, climbing up his spine.
Fear clawed its way into his chest, faster than the pain, sharper than it. A voice buried in the back of his mind whispered that this was it—his end. These were his final moments. He wouldn't see his brothers again. Wouldn't see anyone again. He'd die here, the same way he made others die—alone, terrified, forgotten.
The library swallowed him whole.
The shelves loomed overhead, towering higher than ten meters, stretching into the dark above. Once, he'd slept on top of them, a careless god in a house too large. Now, they felt like a maze he'd built to trap himself.
He dragged himself along one, shoulder pressed against the wood, leaving streaks of black behind. His breath came heavy, wet, uneven. Another cough shook him—thick essence splattered across the spines of books, staining their faded titles. The shelf creaked under his weight, leaning with him until it nearly tipped into the next.
He stumbled away, shoving off it before the whole row could collapse. The effort sent another flash of pain through him, ripping a shout from his throat. His nose began to bleed, dark trails dripping down to join the ink-black mess already smeared across his face.
He couldn't feel his hands anymore. His legs felt hollow, as though the bones had splintered and scattered behind him, still lying on the stairs below. Every step was borrowed, stolen from some last reserve that shouldn't have existed.
He left a trail behind him—footprints and handprints, each one wet and dark, forming a broken path toward the back of the room.
A single wooden door waited there, plain and narrow, tucked into the wall like it didn't belong.
He reached for it without thinking, fingers slipping against the handle. The wood was cold, steady.
He didn't hesitate.
The door swung open.
He stepped inside.
All he wanted—all he could want—was for the pain to end.
To die, and have it stay that way.
He opened the door, and a flood of light struck him. It was sharp, unfiltered, forcing his eyes to narrow as the blindfold slipped from his face and fell to the floor. For the first time in what felt like lifetimes, the darkness behind it was bare—those tiny white dots flickering weakly, shrinking in the black hollows of his eyes. The last pieces of him that still glowed.
He stepped forward, leaving the door ajar. If anyone saw him now, it wouldn't matter. Maybe it'd even be a mercy.
The room itself was nothing remarkable. Plain tiles. Pale walls. A toilet with a half-used roll hanging beside it. A tub with a showerhead crooked at an angle. A sink, streaked with faint cracks. And above it, a single mirror.
That was what he wanted. The mirror.
Something solid. Something honest.
He needed to see. To know if his mind was unraveling or if his body truly was the broken shell it felt like.
He limped closer. The pain returned the moment he moved, stabbing through every limb like a punishment for daring to look. His knees buckled. He dropped with a groan, catching himself on the edge of the sink. The marble was cold against his palm, slick with the sweat and blood still clinging to him.
He pulled himself up, inch by inch.
A pathetic shape clinging to the last anchor it had left.
Then he saw it.
The reflection staring back wasn't a god. It wasn't even a man. His face was pale, streaked with dried black essence, his coat soaked through. His hair—once stark white—was running dark again, the dye bleeding away in strips to reveal what lay beneath. The same black his brothers shared. The same they'd all been born with.
He'd dyed it once, wanting to stand apart.
To be different.
Now the color returned, as if the world itself was stripping him bare.
He stared at himself, at the mess he'd become, and the memories came unbidden.
Jasper's hand—sometimes the right, sometimes the left.
James—falling, burning, bleeding.
Noah—split clean through.
Sometimes they made it.
Sometimes they didn't.
Sometimes he survived. Sometimes he didn't.
Every path, every loop, every desperate grasp ended the same way—
back in that void, beneath that thing's eye, dying again and again.
Always different. Always the same.
He looked closer, into the shrinking dots of his eyes, their glow fading like embers snuffed under ash. His throat tightened, a laugh crawling out—dry, weak, more breath than sound.
"Can I rest now?" he whispered.
His fingers slipped from the marble.
"I don't want to come back. I don't want to save anyone. I never did."
The words hung in the air as his body sagged forward, breath shallow, eyes fixed on the mirror—
watching the last spark fade.