Kaelix floated in a void that felt too vast to be real.
There was no floor beneath him, no sky above. Only a cold, colorless expanse, pulsing with a pain so profound it had dulled into numbness.
He was sure he was unconscious.
Yet he could feel. And he felt absolutely horrible.
He could think, and all he could think about was his last moment.
And worst of all—he could read, and what he could see before him was anything but calm.
Incomprehensible glitching symbols flickered across the dark space, chaotic and ethereal. But somehow, they began to make sense. Each jagged glyph reshaped itself into jagged words he understood. Cold, mechanical, final.
[Adulteration Is Ongoing]
[Your Body Is Almost Completely Adulterated: 95%...]
[Your Soul Is Almost Completely Adulterated: 87%...]
[Your Mind Is Almost Completely Adulterated: 94%...]
[Stabilizing Distortion...]
[Conversion Still In Process...]
It was over.
His already being able to read these words, these Runes, meant that he was already far gone.
He had maybe a minute or two left—before everything that made him Kaelix was erased. Before he became like the ones who had torn into him, twisted and maddened and no longer real.
Just like his brother.
Thinking of Nick sent a new pang through his fading soul—not just pain, but guilt.
Could he have stopped this?
Could he have seen how deep the despair ran in his brother?
If he hadn't brushed off those angry, bitter conversations… if he had just held on longer, stayed with him more—maybe Nick wouldn't have taken that cursed Tome from the hands of some bastard Clergy.
His fists clenched—metaphorically, as his body no longer obeyed. That clergy. The one who had handed his brother a gateway to damnation.
Why did a member of the Clergy even have such a thing with them?
Why had no one stopped him?
Why had he not stopped him?
The anger flared bright, brighter than anything else in this void. But it was useless, just like the person who held it, as it died fast—drowned by regret and the sensation of slipping.
He was slowly becoming something else.
The glitching symbols blurred. His thoughts did too.
He was seeing scenes of things he had never been involved in.
He was a farmer, toiling hard in their field under the bright golden sun. He felt tired, yet proud as he knew the crops he was growing would provide food for his family to eat.
Then he was a herbalist, concocting a new potion in the darkness of her hut. Curiosity filled her mind as she documented the results of her experiments to find the correct cure to the disease plaguing her people.
Then he was a mother, carrying her newborn baby with pride in her arms. She made sure to check they were alright, their thoughts filled with the things she would get for them to ensure they grew without want.
He was seeing scenes of people with much more purpose than him. He who couldn't even achieve anything for his brother.
Then—a new scene appeared before him.
A small boy sat alone in a dark, quiet space. Ten years old. Red-haired. Hollow-eyed. Himself.
From all around came the voices. Not cruel, not angry—but calm, and so very condescending.
"Look what you did, Kaelix. Now your brother's in the hospital."
"You know you have no talent for machines, yet you still mess with them."
"You can't fight for anything, so why were you training in the halls?"
"Just stop being selfish! You're hurting your hurting your brother's chances at his destiny."
"If you love your brother, stop being the burden in his life. Sit quietly where no one can see you and let him be."
He had heard these words before. All his life, whispered by family, friends, teachers. Words masked as kindness. They didn't scream. They simply decided for him.
You are nothing. You will never be more.
Then in front of the young ten year old, was a medical bed.
Another boy, same hair color, slightly softer facial features lay on the bed. He had been wrapped thoroughly in bandages after surviving a serious accident. He was barely alive.
And the young boy on the chair, who was worth nothing could only watch as he could do nothing. He had caused this. Kaelix had caused this.
And so he had listened.
Every time he tried to be something, the world punished not just him—but Nick for daring to stand by his side.
He'd stopped trying. He removed himself as the burden everyone said he was.
And now? Even in death, he was still hurting Nick. Just like always.
Maybe… maybe it was better this way. Maybe the other Unmarked had the right idea. They had all gotten rid of themselves early in life.. What was the point of them living if there was nothing they could add to the world.
They had spared their families the grief of their failure. Maybe he should've followed them and spared Nick.
Maybe now, as an Adversary, he could contribute to his brother's twisted final wish. As a weapon, a mindless thing, he wouldn't ruin anything else.
He felt the last flicker of resistance fade.
[Adulteration Of The Body Almost Complete: 99%]
[Adulteration Of The Soul Almost Complete: 99%]
[Adulteration Of The Mind Almost Complete: 99%]
[Reclassification: Pawn-Grade Adversary]
[Congratulations. You Are Now The Enemy Of The World]
Kaelix said nothing.
The screen blinked one last time before dissolving into the void.
And in that vast black silence, where there should have been grief or screams or denial—there was only stillness.
He was done.
As Kaelix faded into oblivion, his fragmented consciousness made peace with the inevitable. "Finally," he whispered to himself in silence that had no echo, "I'll be able to help Nick. I won't be useless anymore."
But then—
No. That's what pisses me off the most.
The voice wasn't his own.
Kaelix's withered thoughts flinched. That voice—he knew it. It carried that old, unmistakable frustration. Familiar and sharp, like a cut that never healed. Nick's voice. But clearer. Angrier. And… disappointed.
How can you just accept it? Nick barked.How can you just lie down and take it, like your life means nothing, just because some fucking crystal sphere didn't glow the right color for you?
Those words cracked something in him. Not physically—he had no body left to break—but somewhere deeper. The kind of place where lies rooted themselves as truth.
But Kaelix resisted. "I had to accept it," he thought with what was left of his mind, more to himself than in reply. "Nothing ever came from me fighting it. We did everything the same—read the same books, trained in the same rooms, sat in the same classes. But he had potential. I didn't. I was only being selfish by hurting him."
Nick's voice grew louder, more furious.
Fuck it. Fuck it all.
But this time, that wasn't the end.
A second voice joined it. Lighter. Younger. Familiar in a different way.
His own.
If we were never meant to be or have anything, then why were we born?!
A chill surged through the remnants of Kaelix's being.
Why did we live and breathe in a system that decided we had no worth?
Because they lie, his younger voice continued. They put these restraints on us and lie over and over, just because they can do something easier than someone else.
And the ones who lie the most are the ones who find it the hardest. They claim they have nothing, and they use that as an excuse to do nothing.
I hate them the most.
Because none of them can decide who has worth. Not even the gods!
Kaelix remembered. Not the words—no, the fire. The raw, blistering defiance.
And it stunned him.
How had a younger version of himself understood what he, now older and supposedly wiser, had completely forgotten?
It hadn't been about being Unmarked or powerless.
It hadn't been about failure. He hadn't hated himself because of some innate inferiority.
It was because of how deeply he'd betrayed that fire—that promise.
He had abandoned the very dream he'd shared with Nick. The one Nick had believed in so much he followed him, consequences be damned. Nick had gotten hurt because of him—but he had never hated him. He had walked beside Kaelix not just for Kaelix's sake—but for his own.
Because they both understood that no one defined their worth.
And Kaelix had left him alone.
He had left him with a dream he had built.
That was his real failure.
Not the absence of potential. Not the curse of being Unmarked.
But the betrayal of their shared dream.
And with that realization, something in him shifted.
Like heat rising from deep within the black ice of his broken soul, a slow warmth ignited. His drive—his real drive—came roaring back. Not to be someone. Not to get back at fate. But to keep his promise.
He had sworn to rip something human out of the thing that killed Nick.
And nothing—not even an Advent—would stop him.
The glitching runes flared to life in the nothingness again.
[ADULTERATION COMPLETE]
But this time, he didn't care.
Kaelix stared at the runes, and for the first time, didn't cower.
"Then let it be complete. It won't change what I am going to do."
The runes glitched harder—shaking, distorting, panicking. Like code being rejected by its host.
And then Kaelix stood.
He had no body left.
He had no mind left.
He had no soul left.
Just will.
And that was all he needed to stand.
Because who said he couldn't?
Because who decided he shouldn't?
Not them. Not fate. Not the world.
Only him.
And as he defied their call, their curse, and their logic, something broke in the void.
Like waking up for the first time, Kaelix opened his eyes to the feeling of biting.
*******
Kaelix felt teeth sinking into him. Rows and rows of gnashing maws clamping onto flesh, digging, chewing, scraping—yet he felt nothing. Not pain. Not panic. Nothing at all.
He stared up at the black-and-grey sky. It rippled above like an oil-stained veil, flickering and glitching with stray fractal lines of luminous blue.
The silence of the void had given way to a twisted world—dim, surreal, and utterly broken. This was no longer that numbing emptiness from before. This was somewhere else. Somewhere... tangible.
He tried to take a breath, an instinctual gasp—nothing came. No air. No lungs. He felt no discomfort, though.
No need to breathe, no scent in the air. A stillness had overtaken his senses like he had become something that no longer required such mortal functions.
Slowly, he looked down.
His body—if it could still be called that—was transformed beyond recognition. The humanoid frame remained, yes, but that was where the familiarity ended.
Large segments of his flesh had been replaced with sleek black carapace, like sculpted black bone polished to a mirror sheen. Veins of dark red metal pulsed beneath its surface.
Organic lines converged with angular structures. Strands of iridescent filaments extended and coiled from his limbs like forgotten data trails. His fingers were longer now, subtly jointed with delicate yet lethal precision. He wasn't grotesque like the other Adversaries—he was refined. Sharpened. Balanced. Alien, but not monstrous.
The Adversaries gnawed and clawed at him endlessly, their malformed limbs and uncoordinated bodies smashing against his form with brutal force—and failing. Claws that tore through steel found no purchase. Teeth scraped and screeched against his armored flesh. It was like they couldn't comprehend what he was. Or maybe they knew... and just couldn't overcome it.
He stared at them blankly. No emotion. No rage. No pity.
His gaze shifted upward.
The stage.
His eyes locked on the entity.
The being, floating gently above the fractured platform that had once held the Adversarial Tome, was staring at him. Its form flickered—humanoid in outline, but endlessly layered with floating runes, stitched wings of glitching glyphs, and eyes that opened and closed like blooming flowers all across its translucent body. Its face was a rotating pattern of impossible geometries.
But it still held one common face in that pattern.
And for the first time since meeting this entity, he saw—
Confusion.
Kaelix saw it in its posture, in the minute change of its shifting runes, in the delayed flicker of the Tome pages around it.
It had expected something else. It had planned for something else. But now, its calculations, its certainties, had slipped.
Kaelix tilted his head slowly, his body creaking with a mechanical hum. He could feel something within his chest. Not power, exactly. Not strength in the conventional sense. But presence. Density. Like his very existence had condensed into something heavy. Unignorable.
[Nexus Has Formed...]
Their eyes met again—one an entity from beyond the veil of realms, the other a boy who the world claimed was nothing.