Snow hushes the world into silence. The only sound is Glae's shivering breath, and the low hum of the blade held out between her and Nazz, still stained in obsidian glow.
Glae stares at him, eyes once glassy with exhaustion now sharp with recognition.
Then, she touches his head.
A thin shard of ice launches from her fingertips swift, clean, precise, and sinks into Nazz's eye.
"Agh what the hell?!" Nazz says in slight pain.
Inside the obsidian mindspace, V yelps, staggering backward as if poked with a hot brand.
"Ow! What the, what even was that?!" V says grabbing his face.
Nazz recoils, scowling. though it's clear he's not hurt. He plucks the ice shard from his eye and lets it melt in his palm, amused.
"You smug, walking entropy… I should shatter you." Glae states scowling.
"You tried. I'm still here." Nazz says harshly putting emphasis on the last part.
"You're not a Remnant. You're a mistake. A snarl in the thread. You're the embodiment of chaos, and you wear his face." Glae says not with disgust but truth.
Nazz raises an eyebrow. But something shifts in her voice, not fear, not rage… understanding.
She looks toward V, still caught in the mental space, and snarls:
"You. I want to speak to the one still trying to be human." Glae speak, commandingly.
"Tch. Always so dramatic…"Nazz says dramatically.
With a dark pulse, Nazz dissolves, folding backward into V's body like smoke returning to the flame.
V blinks back into reality, gasping like he's resurfaced from drowning. The wind bites at his cheeks. His heart pounds. Glae is in front of him, frost-lit, divine, wary.
"You've been holding that in for a while."
"Years. Centuries maybe. Time bends differently around your kind."
V hesitates, still reeling from the transition, but Glae's voice softens now, something ancient threading into her tone.
"I needed to know who was truly driving. " V asks.
I see it now. You're still trying to be more than the void that stirs in your marrow. Good." Glae commands.
She brushes her hand lightly against V's cheek, not lovingly, but reverently. Like one would touch a ruin and feel its weight.
"Switch back. I need to speak to the rot." Glae says harshly.
V gives a reluctant sigh, then closes his eyes and lets the obsidian veil fall once more.
Nazz steps forward.
Stronger now. More defined. His aura curls the snow around him into tiny obsidian blossoms.
"Turn on the blade."
"As you wish." Nazz says willingly, not with halt but with quickness.
He holds the weapon forward.
The blade glows deep violet-black, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat, its true edge revealed under his influence.
Glae extends her hand and touches it.
The snow around them halts.
A cold, ancient, resonant chill moves from her palm into the blade. It doesn't freeze it echoes. The blade becomes quiet, its vibration slowing, focusing. No longer chaos, but precision.
A weapon meant not to sever but to reveal.
"There. Now it can hold what must be carried."
She withdraws her hand. The blade cools, but doesn't dim.
"What exactly did you put into it?" Nazz asks.
"Memory. Mine. Yours. Virago's. Allure's. What was twisted… and who twisted him."
A heavy pause. The wind lifts her hair like whispered warnings.
"I thought he corrupted Allure. That's the story, isn't it? The fallen twin. The rot behind the mirror." Nazz questions.
"No." Glae says fast, but quiet.
She looks up, eyes brighter than ice.
"Virago was not born corrupted. He was touched. As you were. As Allure was. As I was. And that touch… it came from outside The Vault's design." Glae says almost whispering.
"Who corrupted him?" Nazz and V both say at the same time.
"He has no name. Only a song. A rhythm that should not exist. We call him the First Falsity. The one who sang to Virago when no one else did… and told him he was beautiful in his brokenness."
"That's not a name." Nazz states.
"No. But when he sings again, we all will remember it."
Snow trembles.
The Blade pulses again, stronger now. It holds more than power. It holds a truth long buried in ice and silence.
"He's waking. And you are the only mirror that might not lie when he looks into you."
Fading out Nazz, starts gripping the blade.
And within him, V watches everything, the truth, the curse, the legacy of rot and grace, and realizes:
He's not carrying a weapon.
He's carrying a testament.
Nazz faded away, leaving V over his original body.
"What are you doing here anyway?" V asked Glae. "What does a remnant need within Nia?"
Glae tilted her head to the right and stared at him before speaking.
"This new ice age exists because of the presence of us remnants. That war did not happen for no reason."
V stayed silent. The memories of his dead comrades and the name "Zane"were enough to keep him from asking more.
"I was forced to flee here," Glae continued. "Trapped, used, and materialized into ice, which ironically froze me and caused all of this." Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Is that why you keep fading in and out?" V asked.
"Yes. That fading means I'm melting. Every remnant can melt. It is the only way we can be killed."
"Remnants can die?" V's voice was sharp with both alarm and curiosity.
"Yes. And I am on the verge of it. Unless…"
"Unless what?"
"Unless we melt whoever did this to me. Or you freeze me again, and I will have to sleep until I regain my strength." Her whisper seemed brighter now.
"I'm guessing you don't know who did this to you. How do I freeze you?"
She looked at him, not intently, but with a hint of admiration.
"You are perceptive," she said, pulling herself up to stand without his support. "The only way to freeze a remnant is to bring one into contact with raw, fresh Killiden."
"Fresh?" V asked. "How fresh are we talking?" He turned toward her, gripping the blade, not in preparation, but out of urgency.
"Preferably Killiden forged within the last month."
I turned away, thinking. A month… How long have I been in Nia? A year. A year in this second hell. But SAGE, she had to have been a weapon. If her creation was anything like mine, that means she was forged within the past month. It hasn't been long since I met her. Her perception of time is off, just like mine was after…
"You think loud, turd," Nazz's voice cut in, waking from his brief sleep.
"You can hear my thoughts too?" I asked, surprised and almost annoyed.
"I always could. But that's not what woke me. It was that memory, pain, loss, the identity you refuse to accep—"
"I am not Zane!" I snapped instinctively.
The snowy abyss dissolved into nothing. The world became blank, filled with the word NAZZ in every direction. Reflections appeared, mirrors, glass thousands of me staring back. Only they were not me. They were him, and he was laughing.
"You freak!" I shouted, but the mirrors did not echo. They stared until each one turned obsidian. I checked my hand. "I'm not changing?"
"You idiot," his voice said.
"You lie. You hide the truth. You refuse to see. You are Zane. V is Zane. Zane is V. You must accept that." His tone was harsh, but not loud. The point was made.
"You there?" Glae's voice snapped me back.
"Yeah," I said, still uneasy.
"I think I know someone, or something that can freeze you again. But it's a long shot."
In the mindspace, the mirrors returned, still lingered faintly around me, edges fading into the blank void. Nazz stood there, arms crossed, his obsidian skin drinking in the pale light like a black hole.
"You heard her," I said, stepping toward him. "She thinks you're unnatural. Born of something that should never exist."
Nazz's head tilted slightly, almost amused. "And you agree with her?"
"I…" My throat felt tight. "I don't know what to believe anymore. But if she's right, then you were forced into me. You were never supposed to be here."
"That is where you're wrong," Nazz replied, his voice low and steady. "I have been here since the moment you first opened your eyes. I am not an accident. I am the other half of you. Your strength, your shadow, your instinct to survive when every bone in your body wanted to give up."
"I never asked for you."
"You never asked to live either, but here we are," he said, taking a slow step closer. "And do not forget, every time you felt that sudden surge of power, every time the world slowed down and your enemies fell before you, that was me. I kept you alive."
"That time I turned obsidian…" I murmured. "That was you."
"That was us," he corrected. "And it will happen again. The only question is whether you will stop resisting long enough to use it before it kills you."
I clenched my fists. "You make it sound like I am supposed to embrace you."
"You will," Nazz said with a thin, sharp grin. "Whether you want to or not."
The void rippled, the mirrors shattering silently into nothing as Glae's voice began to pierce through. Her tone was faint but urgent, pulling me out of the mindspace.
Glae's vast, frost-rimed head lowered until the sheer weight of her presence pressed against V's bones. Her voice rolled through the frozen air, not purely hers, but warped, filtered through some other resonance that made each syllable scrape against his mind.
"You carry him inside you… this thing."
Her eyes, two pale storms swirling with trapped constellations, slid to Nazz. Even standing tall in his obsidian mass, Nazz looked small before her.
"He is not natural. Not born of the Vault, not born of Nia. He is the ash-born, spawned from the clash between Virago and his twin, Allure. The fallout of war that should never have existed."
Her gaze flicked to V, sharp enough to draw blood without breaking skin.
"And yet… he is the only way you'll grow strong enough to revert this world. The only way to bring Nia back to what it was before it rotted."
She leaned closer, her tone shifting from icy judgment to a kind of cruel amusement.
"Accept this… Zane," she hissed, the name dripping with disdain. "Listen to the mutt. Obey him, even if his breath stinks of chaos. Even if his every word curdles your blood. You won't like it, but you will need him."
She almost spat the next word.
"Pet."
Nazz chuckled low, but it was a bitter sound. V could feel him radiating irritation inside his head, yet there was also an unmistakable ripple of satisfaction, like someone who'd been right all along.
V straightened, forcing himself to meet the blizzard, churn in Glae's eyes. The frost in the air bit his skin, but he didn't flinch.
"I have a plan," he said, his breath spilling white. "An old friend of mine. Sage. With her, you can come in contact with the said killiden."
From inside, Nazz's voice slid through his skull, carrying a thread of mockery. "That girl…" The way he said it was almost lazy, but there was a faint, knowing curl at the edge of the words.
V's brow twitched. "You know who I mean."
Nazz didn't answer right away. When he did, there was a shrug in his tone, feigned carelessness masking something else entirely. "Maybe I do. Maybe I don't."
Glae's gaze lingered on him, as if she had seen the exchange without hearing a word of it. Her storm, eyes deepened, the constellations within shifting like they were aligning for something far away.
"You think this friend can be moved like a piece on a board," she said. "Pray she doesn't decide to burn the board instead."
The snow around them thickened, carried on a wind that came from no sky V had ever known.