High above a shattered realm of floating citadels and fractured suns, another him stood on a marble balcony, wrapped in radiant armor that hummed with holy resonance. The air shimmered like glass catching dawn.
The people below called him The Guardian of Dawn.
He didn't remember why the name fit so naturally.
He only remembered a voice that whispered, "Protect them as you always did, always."
And he obeyed.
He raised a hand, releasing a beam of light that sealed a rift in the sky — a wound bleeding shadows. His soldiers bowed as the sky calmed. Yet inside him, something shifted. A flicker of static, a phantom echo.
A heartbeat that wasn't his.
> System Fragment Detected.
He froze. "Who speaks?"
The light around him trembled, as though something older and deeper stirred beneath the armor. Images flashed: a boy's laugh, a hologram's smirk, a girl named Emily under sunlight.
Then came hunger. Not for power, but for completion.
> Assimilate Fragment to stabilize core.
Warning: Devouring will alter consciousness priority.
He hesitated. "Devour… or merge?"
The system didn't answer.
His lieutenant approached, face pale. "My Lord, you're bleeding light again."
He looked down; radiant cracks spidered across his forearm. His essence was leaking. The Guardian clenched his fist.
"If I don't consume, I fade again."
The thought chilled him. The same light that saved worlds now whispered of consumption, of taking his own kind to survive.
He looked toward the horizon, where another fragment pulsed faintly — the same energy he'd felt through the rift. Darker, heavier.
The Blooded One.
The Guardian exhaled slowly. "So it begins."
He turned, cape flickering like flame, and walked toward the edge of the citadel. His boots rang with the sound of judgment.
"If I must fight my own soul," he murmured, "then let it be for the world that still believes in me."
He leapt into the sky, leaving a trail of golden fire as the two echoes of Frank Winchester — light and blood — began their march toward collision.