It was subtle at first, the familiar weight of my body vanished, and in its place, something unfamiliar pressed down on me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even twitch a finger. I wasn’t in control. Again.

  I stood in a vast hall, the air thick and unmoving. Shadows stretched long across the marble floor, lit only by the faint, flickering light that danced from dying sconces along the walls. The hall felt eternal, walls stretched far beyond reason, and above us, a ceiling never came into view. There was only darkness, endless and suffocating.

  But what hit me harder than the scale of the place was the weight of the emotions coursing through my body.

  Rage. Sorrow. Betrayal. Despair.

  It all surged through me like a flood, violent and drowning. The body trembled as it stood barefoot at the center of the room, the ends of a torn robe trailing along the ground. Breath hitched and shallow. Hands clenched and unclenched.

  And then my eyes locked on him.

  At the far end of the throne hall, seated atop a colossal throne that reached into the sky like the spine of some ancient god, sat a man. Or something that looked like a man. His face was hidden in the shadow cast by the throne’s towering back, which devoured all light.

  The throne itself wasn’t stone or gold. It was… something else. A swirling, endless construct, black as the void and yet shimmering with distant, flickering specks, like stars trapped inside a night sky made solid. Each one pulsing gently like a heartbeat.

  And then, she spoke.

  “You promised…”

  The voice wasn’t mine.

  That was the moment I realized.

  I was in the body of a woman.

  Tears ran freely down her face. Her knees shook, but she stood tall, fury bleeding into every word.

  “You promised this world would never suffer again! You gave us hope! You said we would be free!”

  Her voice hitched, rising and falling like a wave, anger and heartbreak lacing each breath. “You… you believed in the truth! You believed in them! How could you—how could you betray everything you stood for?”

  Silence. The man didn’t move.

  The throne shimmered again, and slowly, he raised a pale hand. With two fingers, he plucked one of the faint stars from the throne’s surface. The moment it left, a thread of energy, like a living string of light, tethered it to his chest, his heart.

  Then, with a quiet finality, he crushed it.

  The light dimmed instantly. Its remnants scattered into dust, drifting silently down like ash.

  When he spoke, his voice was not cold, it was empty. Void of feeling. A hollow whisper echoing through eternity.

  “There is no truth.”

  He didn’t look at her. Didn’t need to.

  “This world... is built on ignorance. Its people praise gods they do not understand. They speak of light, of balance, of destiny, as if they know what those words mean.”

  His fingers curled again over the throne’s armrest, more stardust falling from his skin like snow.

  “But the truth?” He paused. “The truth is rot. Buried beneath their temples. Their songs. Their illusions of peace.”

  “You’ve lost your mind…” the woman whispered through gritted teeth, tears streaking down her cheeks, her voice shaking. “You used to fight against that rot...”

  He turned slightly now, just enough for the crown of shadow on his head to catch a glint of the fading light. His face remained hidden, but his voice carved through the dark like a blade.

  “I have not lost anything. I have only seen.”

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  “The world will fall. The gods will fall. Their time has passed. They were never what they claimed to be.”

  The stars embedded in the throne pulsed, one by one, as if reacting to his presence.

  “I will not share their fate.”

  He stood.

  The floor beneath him didn’t creak or shift, it obeyed. It revered.

  “No one will remain,” he said. “No kings. No gods. No heroes.”

  His head tilted slightly, almost as if amused.

  “Only me.”

  And as he said those words, the woman—I—took a staggering step back, choking on the sheer weight of his declaration. The room itself dimmed further, the light extinguishing around us like dying stars.

  Then he moved.

  Slow, measured steps echoed across the marble floor like the toll of a final judgment. Each one deliberate, each one sounding louder than the last. And then, he stepped into a single sliver of dying light that pierced through the towering black throne behind him.

  My breath caught.

  His face… it was mine.

  Or rather, it had been.

  Zane, older, sharper, twisted. His features more refined, his jawline cut with age and resolve, yet still unmistakably mine. But his expression was devoid of warmth. His eyes, once human, now glowed faintly like dying embers in a hearth long gone cold. Hauntingly beautiful. Terrifyingly still.

  The woman, stumbled back again, her sob cracking through the air like shattering glass.

  “Don’t come any closer!” she cried, tears streaming.

  “Please… just stop.”

  But he didn’t.

  He walked with the certainty of someone who no longer questioned anything. Like the world itself moved around him, not the other way around. His figure loomed, tall and immovable, like a mountain forged from inevitability.

  She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. She just stood there trembling, her legs locked, her chest heaving.

  He stopped only when he stood right in front of her, looking down with something that might’ve once been pity. Or maybe he was just remembering what it felt like to care.

  “I know the truth,” he said, voice calm and echoing as if it belonged to the throne itself. “The pain you carry… the hope you cling to. You don’t need it anymore. Follow me. Let go of what you’re holding on to.”

  Her eyes widened, lips trembling. “What I’m holding on to… is you.”

  Her voice cracked completely now. “The you who looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Who smiled like I was your light in the dark… like I was your home.”

  His face didn’t change.

  “That version of me is long gone,” he said simply.

  And something inside her broke.

  In one sudden, fluid motion, she pulled a slender sword from the folds of her robe and plunged it straight into his abdomen.

  The sound—wet and hollow—ripped through the silence.

  “Give him back…” she sobbed.

  His expression didn’t change.

  “Give him back!” she screamed again, pushing the blade deeper.

  Again. And again.

  “Give him back!”

  Her hands shook violently on the hilt, her entire body collapsing forward as she cried into his chest, still holding onto the sword that had done nothing to bring the man she loved back.

  And still… he didn’t move.

  "AARGH!!"

  My eyes snapped open with a scream.

  My entire body jerked, but I couldn’t move far, thick leather straps held my arms and legs tightly to the bedframe. Sweat poured down my forehead, my breath coming out in ragged gasps. The room spun around me in a blur of light and shadows, and the searing pain in my chest made it impossible to think.

  On top of me, straddling my torso with one knee braced beside my ribs, sat Lysara.

  Her expression was tight with focus, but pain glinted in her eyes too. Her hand was glowing, covered in flickering blue-white mana, and she pressed it directly over my bare chest, right above where thick, purple-black veins pulsed outwards from my heart like roots from a dying tree.

  “Focus, dammit!” she barked, her voice strained. “If you don’t get your heart under control again, your body’s going to keep decaying!”

  I groaned through clenched teeth. Fucking hell. I passed out again...

  It came back to me, barely. The session had started like before. Intense, painful, maddening. A desperate, brutal attempt to neutralize the corrupted mana that now used my heart as a core, pumping its vile energy through every vein, every nerve, every breath.

  Every pulse was like poison being spread by the thing meant to keep me alive.

  I forced my eyes open again, locking onto her face, and clenched my jaw.

  Alright, alright—focus. Keep your damn heart steady.

  I reached inside, mentally diving into that space I barely understood, the hazy inner realm where mana flowed. It was chaotic. Like trying to hold back a flood with bare hands. But I gathered what little mana I had, forcing it to respond, to move.

  Lysara’s mana was already there, threaded carefully into mine. Guiding it. Wrapping around it. Binding it temporarily to the heart like a barrier to slow the rot.

  I felt it, her energy was strong, stable, completely unlike mine. It moved with purpose. But it wasn’t just riding along, it was dragging my mana with it, forcing the corrupted flow into something manageable, something less wild.

  She was doing most of the work.

  Because I couldn’t.

  My mana was still too weak. I couldn’t control the flow on my own, not while the corrupted core was thrashing inside my chest like a caged beast. So she was doing it for me.

  And it was killing her.

  I could see it in the way her arm trembled, in the sweat beading along her jaw, in the sharp twitch at the edge of her mouth every time her mana made contact with the corrupted flow.

  God can you not just let me rest for a single day.