"You said you were once a god, right?" the young man asked, perched atop the clock tower, his amethyst eyes tracing the stars scattered across the night sky, his dark purple hair whipping in the wind.
Yes... why do you ask? a voice murmured in his mind, deep and ancient.
"I just want to know... why did you choose to become a demon?" he replied, letting the question hang in the night air.
The silence that followed felt eternal.
...I never chose my path. Just like you, I was made the incarnation of evil.
"But... couldn't you have chosen not to follow that path?" he countered, eyes still fixed on the heavens.
I did.
"What?" His brow furrowed as he snapped his gaze toward the voice echoing in his mind.
You truly don't understand what this so-called 'fate' is.
You can't escape it.
You can't avoid it.
You can't change it.
You can't rewrite it.
Every action you take, every choice you think is yours, it's all accounted for. There is no way out. There is no way around.
...That was why I played right into the hands of the fates.
...And so will you.
"So... there really is no way to change my fate?" he asked, a bitter smile curving on his lips.
...At least, that's what they want you to believe.
"Huh?" He blinked, momentarily thrown off.
In a past incarnation of mine, before I became this, I was known as the Moon God.
"What...? The Moon God?" He searched his mind, trying to recall the tales he'd heard before.
Forget it. That doesn't matter. The point is, I was never truly the Moon God.
"I... don't understand."
You will. There was a Moon God, but I killed him and took his place.
"What?" He shot to his feet, shock cutting through him like a blade.
It's true. I went by the name Neburus.
"Neburus... but isn't that one of the primordial evils?" he exclaimed, a dawning realization crossing his face.
Yes. That was my attempt to defy fate, but fate is a patient, insidious thing.
"...I see." He sank back down, his mind reeling.
From the very start, I never knew my name, where I came from, or how I arrived here. But I knew what I was. I was no god, at least not of this world. I was something else entirely, a being whose existence was bound to one element above all.
"What?"
Reality.
Boom!
"What was that?" His attention whipped toward the distant part of the academy, where a dark forest lay far from the clock tower.
It seems we have visitors.
"Friends of yours?" he asked, the humor in his voice thin.
...You could call them that.
"Damn it!" He rose, fingers gripping the hilt of the katana at his waist. 'Where's the useless protagonist when you need him?' He muttered under his breath before drawing his blade.
"Astarion's Bloodline," he whispered. His amethyst eyes blazed a searing blue as he said, "First Form: Resonance," and with a single step, reality itself seemed to bend to accommodate his movement, shifting in ways it shouldn't.
You know what happens when you use my bloodline, yet you continue to use it.
"Quiet," he murmured, his voice sharper now, more arrogant than before.
...
"Speaking of bloodlines... why doesn't it bear your name?"
...Even I don't know that. Not yet.
"You said your existence revolves around reality."
It does.
...And so does yours.
"Then how can that help me avoid the inevitable?"
It can't.
But I saw something back then, while trying to comprehend my own existence.
"What?"
A Weaver.
"Weaver?"
A being whose existence is one with the time stream.
"A God?"
...I don't know. But I saw it. He's weaving a reality that goes against the fates themselves into existence, and that might just be the key.
"Is that so?" he asked, his tone biting. "One more question."
What?
"What do you hate the most?"
Aside from the fates?
"Yeah. Aside from the fates."
Well... I don't know why, but it's someone, someone named... Venera.
The young man's eyes widened. "No... way."