Ozzy stared at the hole as more rubble collapsed inward, stone grinding against stone until the sound finally settled into silence.

  To an outside observer, it would’ve looked like cruelty.

  And it was.

  But not the careless kind.

  Ozzy’s intuition had always been a double-edged blade. It guided him, saved him, warned him—but it also demanded payment. His crew was proof of that. He had followed the mission to the letter. He had trusted the flow. And everyone he loved had paid the price anyway.

  He exhaled slowly.

  That was life.

  As much as Ozzy loved his people—every laugh, every argument, every stupid inside joke—there was something deeper than affection guiding him. Loyalty. Devotion. A love that didn’t dim, didn’t bend, didn’t forgive.

  Mi’Lentra.

  The Occulted Moon.

  That loyalty came first. Always.

  He had been patient with the Blood Prince. Let him choose. Let him fail. Let him become. Ozzy hadn’t interfered when North made the wrong calls. He hadn’t corrected him when he should have. Because regardless of whether a decision was right or wrong—it was North’s decision.

  But now?

  Now Ozzy had seen enough.

  He’d noticed it the moment they met.

  First—North rarely used blood.

  For someone bearing the title Blood Prince, that was… telling.

  Second—after “Ascending”, North’s aura had changed. Still unreadable. Still dangerous. But no longer refined. It was like a blade forged in divine fire and never honed afterward.

  Third—his attacks didn’t carry the same weight.

  Before, they were comparable.

  Now?

  Physically. Literally.

  North was below him.

  And then there were the marks under his eyes. They had gone from horizontal to vertical. Resembling red tears.

  All of it added up.

  Ozzy’s jaw tightened.

  North had gone through more in a short span than most did in a lifetime. Identity. Loss. Betrayal. Power. Grief. Rage. And—Ozzy snorted quietly—he was pretty sure North had slept with Destiny.

  That alone would’ve been enough to unbalance a lesser soul.

  Ozzy looked back at the hole.

  He needed North to stop reacting and start acting.

  He Ascended.

  Now it was time to live like it.

  Ozzy rested his hand on the hilt of his blade, posture relaxed.

  He didn’t care how many times it took.

  He would rip North apart again.

  And again.

  And again.

  For his own good.

  For the legacy of the Occulted Moon. So that all those he loved didn’t die for nothing.

  ———

  Silence pressed in on him.

  Not the kind with echoes or distant wind—but the absolute kind. No breath. No heartbeat. Just the slow, nauseating thrum of something thick around him.

  North tried to move.

  The resistance answered immediately.

  Not water.

  Blood.

  Endless, warm, and heavy, clinging to him like it knew his shape. Like it remembered him. He floated there, suspended on his back, arms slack at his sides, the crimson pool swallowing the horizon in every direction. It soaked into his skin, not cold, not hot—just there.

  Intimate.

  And for some reason accusatory.

  Then he felt it.

  A presence.

  Above him.

  He tilted his head back.

  And froze.

  It wasn’t a dream.

  It wasn’t a memory.

  And it definitely wasn’t a hallucination.

  His aura was watching him.

  It had shape now—if you could call it that. A monstrous silhouette loomed in the crimson haze, just far enough away to avoid definition. It writhed slowly, horns phased in and out of reality. Tendrils melted into wings. Wings collapsed into shadows that shouldn’t have had depth.

  And its eyes—

  God.

  Its eyes were wrong.

  Two glowing voids stared down at him, each one a spiraling sigil, chains of symbols rotating endlessly inward. They didn’t blink.

  North swallowed, even though his throat didn’t feel like it existed.

  The thing leaned closer—slowly, carefully.

  “Oh great,” North muttered. “You again.”

  “Oh great,” the thing echoed, voice layered over itself, distorted like sound passing through metal. “You again.”

  North grimaced. “Gonna copy everything I say?”

  “Gonna copy everything I say?” it replied instantly.

  “…Right.”

  “…Right.”

  North pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, letting himself drift back a little in the blood. The black abyss above, the red abyss below.

  Fantastic setting. Real five stars.

  “What even are you?” he asked.

  For the first time, it didn’t repeat immediately.

  The sigils in its eyes slowed.

  North waited.

  “…That,” it finally said, voice splitting into harmonics, “is the wrong question.”

  North glanced around to make sure no one else was here. No walls. No ground. Just blood and darkness and this thing hovering over him like a bad conscience with fangs.

  “Cool,” he muttered. “Then what’s the right one?”

  The silhouette shifted, its outline momentarily stabilizing into something almost… human-shaped.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “You are asking who,” it said. “When you should be asking why.”

  North snorted. “Why am I here? Because Ozzy decided to turn training into attempted murder?”

  The thing tilted its head.

  “Ozzy,” it repeated, tasting the name. “Catalyst. Shepherd pretending to be executioner.”

  North blinked. “Wow. You got opinions now.”

  “I have always had opinions,” it said. “You simply lacked the depth to hear them.”

  North stared up at it.

  “Look,” he said finally, exhaustion bleeding into his tone. “If you’re here to give me some cryptic speech about power or destiny or how I’m not living up to my potential—”

  “You are not living up to your potential.”

  North groaned. “There it is.”

  “But not for the reasons you think,” it continued smoothly.

  The blood beneath him pulsed once, rippling outward.

  “You suppress,” it said. “You hesitate. You negotiate with yourself when you should decide. That is the foundation of intent.”

  North’s jaw tightened. “I don’t want to become him.”

  The sigils flared.

  “Him?” the thing asked softly. “You mean Jafar.”

  North didn’t answer.

  He didn’t need to.

  The aura descended until its face—if it had one—hovered inches above him.

  “You fear becoming a monster,” it said. “So you choose to be incomplete.”

  Its voice lowered.

  “You fear blood,” it whispered. “So you bleed inefficiently.”

  North’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not afraid of blood.”

  The thing smiled.

  It was not a nice smile.

  “Then why,” it asked, “do you refuse to use the one thing the world already calls you?”

  North felt the blood around him stir.

  Not violently.

  Expectantly.

  He clenched his fists.

  “I don’t want to lose myself,” he said quietly.

  The aura studied him again—longer this time.

  Then it leaned back, drifting upward, its form expanding until it once again became something vast and unreadable.

  “You misunderstand,” it said. “You are not at risk of losing yourself.”

  The sigils in its eyes rotated faster.

  “You are at risk of never finding yourself.”

  The blood pulsed again.

  Stronger.

  North closed his eyes.

  “…Great,” he muttered. “Guess this is the part where I either grow or drown.”

  The thing’s voice echoed one last time, layered with something almost like approval.

  “Correct.”

  And the blood began to rise.

  North’s body began to shake. A furious pressure started to emit from him.

  The blood beneath him rippled violently now, waves crashing outward as if something immense had just shifted its weight. The aura above him wavered, its silhouette distorting, sigils flickering like stressed circuitry.

  “God damnit!” North shouted.

  He spread his arms wide and pushed.

  The blood exploded away from him in a violent ring, clearing space as if his will had weight now. Sigils flared in his eyes. Across from him, the aura’s eyes changed, their spirals aligning, matching his.

  “I’m done with this bullshit!” North roared. His voice cracked. “I already went through this! I Unraveled, I broke, I wised up and then—then I ascended, I did the thing—and now it’s something else?!”

  Tears welled in his eyes, hot and furious.

  “It’s bad enough I fucked up,” he continued, chest heaving. “Now I’ve got people babying me. Watching me. Waiting for me to screw up again like I’m some unstable bomb!”

  The aura squinted—actually squinted, like it was trying to understand how someone could be this dense.

  “Well—”

  “Well nothing!” North snapped. “What the fuck even are you?!”

  The aura didn’t raise its voice.

  “I’m North.”

  North froze.

  “…What?”

  “I’m North,” the aura repeated, this time without echo, without distortion.

  North laughed. “No. No that’s not how this works. I’m North. You’re—what—my aura? My Jafar half? Some leftover cosmic malware?”

  “No,” it said calmly. “I’m North.”

  North’s head shook automatically. “That can’t be right. That’s not— I’m North. You’re—”

  “You are Jonathan,” the aura said.

  The name landed like a punch.

  Silence rippled outward.

  The blood stilled.

  North swallowed. “Don’t call me that.”

  The aura moved closer—not threatening, not looming. Just present.

  “You never committed,” it said.

  North’s jaw clenched. “Bullshit.”

  “You changed,” the aura continued, unbothered. “You adapted. You survived. Those steps were admirable. Necessary.”

  “Then what’s your problem?” North snapped.

  The aura’s eyes softened—not kind, but honest.

  “You’re scared.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “You’re terrified.”

  “I said I’m not!”

  “You refuse to be North,” it said, voice steady. “You wear the name like armor when it suits you. You drop it when it asks something of you. You convinced yourself you fully changed but you know that’s a lie.”

  North opened his mouth to argue—

  Then stopped.

  The blood pulsed once.

  Memories surfaced unbidden.

  Images overlapped—Caroline laughing. S?urtinaui crying. Ozzy’s blade. Destiny’s eyes. The weight of people looking at him not as Jonathan, not as Jafar—

  But as North.

  The blood surged—but North didn’t fight it.

  As it flowed into him, memory followed.

  He thought back to his talk with Jafar. It felt like a lifetime ago, even though time in this place never behaved properly. One moment suspended in a divine garden, the next buried under wars and corpses and choices that never stopped echoing.

  He remembered the way he’d stretched his legs out, trying to look casual on something that clearly wasn’t meant to be sat on.

  “So,” Jonathan had said, hands laced behind his head, “are we answering questions now, or is that too much to ask?”

  Jafar had raised an eyebrow, amused in that infuriating way only someone who knew everything could manage. “Bold, are we?”

  “I mean, you’re me,” Jonathan had shrugged. “And not like I’m… an asshole or anything.”

  He’d paused. Looked at Jafar again.

  “…Wait. I’m not an asshole, right?”

  Jafar had let the silence hang just a second too long.

  Jonathan had squinted. “Okay. Rude.”

  Only then had Jafar spoken, eyes drifting back toward the endless horizon. “A lot has happened for me to become the way I am. A long climb. Through blood. Through betrayal. Through enlightenment.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jonathan had waved him off. “You told me. Seventy years to complete the secret world quest.”

  “That was merely the start,” Jafar had said, and there had been weight there—real weight. “I lived another thirty-five years before that. Wandering. Learning. Shaping small victories in a world that didn’t want me to exist. Then I ruled for over thirty thousand years. Reformed kingdoms. Crushed others. Watched the rise and fall of entire civilizations.”

  He’d turned then, finally facing Jonathan.

  “And when I returned to the past,” Jafar continued, “I ruled again. Not as a man. Not even as a god. As law. For hundreds of thousands of years.”

  Jonathan had dragged a hand down his face. “So we’re just showing off now?”

  “Perspective,” Jafar had replied coolly.

  Jonathan had sighed. “Right. Well, I’m still not sure how I fit into this. You’re not absorbing me—which, thanks for that, I guess—but…” He’d shrugged. “What now?”

  Jafar had tossed the fruit he’d been holding aside. It dissolved into starlight before it ever touched the ground.

  “When I rose to power,” Jafar had said, voice steady and unshaking, “I did it because no one else could. I crushed tyrants. Dismantled gods. Sacrificed friendships, family, even fragments of my soul. I destroyed everything that stood in the way of progress, evolution, and survival.”

  No pride.

  No regret.

  Just fact.

  “Requiem remembers me as a savior,” Jafar had continued, “and as a butcher. I left cities in ash, sculpted laws from the bones of kings, and rewrote the rules of existence in blood and glory.”

  Jonathan had gone quiet then. He remembered the weight in his chest. The realization that this wasn’t a villain’s monologue. It was a history lesson.

  “You get to choose,” Jafar had said at last, turning back to him. “I spared you not as mercy, but as necessity. I have a task—one only you can do.”

  The memory shifted. To a much warmer and more favorable time.

  “I’ll help too,” Caroline had said, flopping back onto her bedroll like the world wasn’t ending for the fifth time that week. “Might not be an elf, but gamer instincts are good for something.”

  Jonathan had smirked. “Appreciate it.”

  “You’re not allowed to die before you beat your god-clone dad anyway,” Caroline had added, grinning at the ceiling.

  The blood around North pulsed.

  Harder.

  Yeah.

  He needed strength.

  Not borrowed.

  Not diluted.

  His own.

  He might even take similar steps to Jafar. He wasn’t naive enough to pretend the road ahead wouldn’t be soaked in blood. But his dominance would be different.

  Not law imposed from above.

  Not submission demanded through fear.

  He felt it crystallize inside him—clearer than any prophecy.

  A compass.

  Not something that pointed outward.

  Something that defined him.

  North: Sovereignty

  West: Jonathan — The Origin

  East: Jafar — The Past and the Future

  South: Submission… never growing or dying before obtaining his goal.

  The arc was no longer vague. No longer theoretical.

  From a confused victim of fate

  to the Blood Prince of Requiem.

  Jonathan had given him the heart.

  Jafar had given him the engine.

  North was the vehicle.

  And as the blood finally settled—no longer drowning him, no longer testing him—one final thought anchored itself into his soul.

  He was no longer running from Jafar.

  He was racing him.

  ———

  North opened his eyes.

  Stone and dust slid off his face as he inhaled, lungs burning. He planted his palms into the wreckage and pushed. Rubble shifted. Cracked. Gave way. He clawed himself free piece by piece, muscles screaming, body heavy with exhaustion—but moving.

  He rolled onto one knee, breathing hard.

  Ozzy was already there, standing at the edge of the crater, blindfold tilted down toward him.

  “Oh,” North muttered hoarsely. “You again.”

  Ozzy crossed his arms. “What did we learn?”

  North snorted, wiped blood from his mouth, and pushed himself fully upright. “To stop bitchin’.”

  He extended a hand.

  Ozzy didn’t hesitate. He took it, pulled him up out the crater, grip firm and steady. For a moment neither of them spoke.

  North glanced down at himself. His Ryun had already started repairing the damage—burn marks fading, torn fabric knitting together—but his cape was gone. He clicked his tongue. “Damn. Imma needs my cape back. The fit doesn’t feel the same.”

  Ozzy smiled faintly, his attention not on the clothes but on the aura.

  It was different again.

  Not louder.

  Not bigger.

  Sharper.

  Refined, like a blade returned to the whetstone after being chipped. North still wasn’t at the strength he’d had before—but the direction was right now.

  “Good,” Ozzy said quietly. “You found your footing.”

  North flexed his fingers. Then, almost idly, he lifted one hand.

  A thought passed through him.

  Intimate enough to draw heat to his face and tension to his spine.

  Black energy spilled over his red-veined skin like smoke caught in slow motion. It wasn’t lightning. It wasn’t Ryun as Ozzy understood it.

  It felt… hungry.

  “I have a way to make up for the gap,” North said, voice low.

  Ozzy stilled.

  He’d seen countless energies in his time in Requiem. Divine. Corrupted. Domain-born. Curse-forged. This was none of those. The sigils in North’s eyes were shifting, rotating in unfamiliar patterns, aligning and misaligning like a system rewriting itself.

  North looked up.

  His grin was wide.

  Almost too wide.

  It was the kind of smile someone wore when they’d stopped asking permission from the world.

  Ozzy felt it then.

  Not fear.

  Recognition.

  A slow smile spread across Ozzy’s face, equal parts pride and anticipation.

  “Nice,” he said. “Nice to finally officially meet you, North.”