The Thing He Chose Not to Forget
Delta did not mourn Nyx's absence.
Mourning implied loss that could not be processed.
This was not that.
He acknowledged it the way he acknowledged collapsed stars and erased pantheons—facts in a universe that moved forward whether emotion followed or not.
Nyx had left because she could not stand beside what he was becoming.
That did not make him wrong.
It made her incompatible.
And Delta did not slow for incompatibility.
He walked.
Not driven by bloodlust now. Not seeking validation. Not responding to threat.
He walked because there was one thing still unfinished.
The Deltonic Saber.
Not as a weapon.
As a constant.
The gods had hidden it early—long before Heaven fell, long before Delta's name carried terror. They had taken it from him during the era when they still thought of him as manageable.
Because the Deltonic Saber did something no other construct in existence did.
It did not amplify power.
It refused lies.
When Delta wielded it, there was no dissociation, no abstraction, no narrative buffer between thought and act. Every strike carried intent unfiltered. Every decision was mirrored perfectly back at him.
Heaven could tolerate a killer.
It could not tolerate self-awareness without doubt.
So they buried it.
Delta never searched before because he did not need it.
Now, he did.
Not to soothe his mind.
To sharpen it.
---
The trail was not difficult to follow.
He simply ignored the places gods would have looked.
No sanctums. No armories. No guarded vaults.
He followed the absence—the way reality avoided remembering something that contradicted its preferred version of history. Where Balance lost interest. Where Hell felt no incentive to catalogue.
Where responsibility had been deliberately misplaced.
The space existed outside narrative priority. A null-probability region where conceptual weight collapsed into stillness.
Delta stepped into it without hesitation.
The universe did not resist him.
It recognized him.
---
The vault was unguarded because guards implied fear.
This was not fear.
It was confidence that no one would dare want it back.
The chamber was sterile—no symbols, no inscriptions, no warnings. Nothing to reframe the blade as holy or cursed or necessary.
Just the sword.
Embedded in nothing.
Waiting.
Delta wrapped his fingers around the hilt.
And the universe did not react.
No tremor. No backlash. No surge.
Because the Deltonic Saber did not change the world.
It changed him.
The moment contact was made, all excess noise in his mind collapsed—not erased, not suppressed, but ordered. Berserk impulses aligned rather than dissipated. His hunger stabilized into clarity.
Power stopped asking for use.
It waited.
This was not peace.
This was coherence.
Delta smiled faintly.
"They were right to fear this," he said.
Understanding Without Forgiveness
Balance arrived without pressure.
It did not announce itself.
It simply occupied the space beside Delta once its calculations updated.
> "You have retrieved the stabilizer," Balance said.
Delta didn't look at it.
"No," he replied calmly. "I retrieved the mirror."
The Deltonic Saber rested easily in his hand, its presence neither feeding nor restraining him. It did not judge. It did not urge.
It reflected.
> "This will not absolve you," Balance said.
"I didn't ask for absolution."
> "It will not undo the damage."
"I'm not undoing anything."
Balance paused.
That was new.
The being processed Delta again, not as a threat profile but as a resolved entity.
> "Then why reclaim it?" Balance asked.
Delta finally turned.
His expression was steady. Grounded. Dangerous in a different way.
"Because uncertainty is inefficient," he said.
"And uncontrolled certainty is sloppy."
He lifted the blade slightly.
"I don't regret what I've done," Delta continued. "The worlds I erased. The systems I collapsed. The beings I ended."
Balance waited.
"I regret only inelegance," Delta finished.
The saber hummed—not agreement, not pleasure.
Recognition.
"This ensures that if I act," Delta said, "there is no distance between decision and consequence. No berserk haze. No emotional interference."
> "You are refining yourself," Balance said.
"Yes."
> "Toward what end?"
Delta considered the question—not emotionally, not defensively.
"Toward final accuracy."
Balance was silent for a long time.
> "You understand that this makes you harder to stop."
Delta nodded.
"That's acceptable."
> "Hell will resist you."
"They already are."
> "Nyx may return."
"Or not."
His voice did not change.
"That is her choice."
Balance recalculated again.
> "You are no longer behaving like a corrective force," it said.
Delta sheathed the Deltonic Saber with deliberate ease.
"I never was," he replied.
"I was a consequence waiting to be acknowledged."
He turned away from the vault.
From the gods' last attempt at control.
From regret as a moral framework.
And stepped back into the universe not as a monster spiraling toward collapse—
—but as something far more precise.
Something decided.
Balance watched him go.
Not alarmed.
Concerned.
Because rage could burn itself out.
Certainty wielded with understanding did not.