As I stared at Carlos's falling body below me, only one thought rang through my head.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that I had to do this to you.
The words repeated over and over again, but they did nothing.
They did not bring him back.
They did not clean my hands.
They did not make the branch feel any less empty.
Over this trip, I had been forced to come to terms with something I had desperately wanted to deny.
Carlos was not a bad person.
But he was not some perfect saint either.
All he was—
Was normal.
That was the fact that wrecked me.
Not his kindness.
Not his dream.
Not even the betrayal in his eyes when I stabbed him.
It was how ordinary he was.
How painfully, horribly ordinary.
He was insecure.
He was tired.
He was awkward.
He wanted to be useful.
He wanted to be loved.
He wanted to become someone people were relieved to see.
He was just a person.
And I had killed him.
I had murdered someone who was just like me.
The thought split something open inside my chest.
My knees hit the bark before I realized I had fallen.
Tears dropped from my face onto the branch.
This time, they came easily.
Too easily.
Like my body had found the water only after it was useless.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
My voice cracked.
"I'm sorry."
The wind swallowed the words.
Carlos was gone.
The branch below stretched into clouds and mountains and endless empty air.
There was no body to hold.
No grave.
No final answer.
Only the shape of what I had done.
Then a voice came from behind me.
"It's not done, Kamrik."
I could only turn my head.
Slowly.
Tiredly.
The hallucination stood behind me again.
The other me.
But he looked different now.
Unlike last time, and even the times before that, his face had a distinct expression on it.
Tired.
Not cruel.
Not mocking.
Tired.
He looked at me with the most weathered face I had ever seen.
Not old.
Not physically.
It was the face of someone worn down by impossible decisions.
The face of someone who had already buried every version of himself that wanted to be clean.
He gave me a small smile.
Tiny.
Broken.
Then he pointed to the tree.
"Just because Carlos is dead," he said, "does not mean the future is saved."
My breath stopped.
Slowly, I turned.
And he was right.
The withered tree was dying.
No.
Not dying.
Collapsing.
Its blue-black bark cracked apart. Its shriveled silver leaves curled into ash. The thin branches bent inward as if the whole tree was being folded by invisible hands.
Dust spilled from it in silent waves.
But the fruits remained.
The two dark fruits did not wither.
They moved.
At first, I thought my vision was breaking again.
Then one of them twitched.
Its smooth blue skin rippled.
The second fruit uncurled from the branch.
Not falling.
Not dropping.
Unfurling.
Like a snake waking from sleep.
Both fruits began to slither away from the dying tree, their round bodies stretching into long, fluid shapes as they slipped toward the branch beneath them.
Toward the God Tree.
Toward the wood.
Toward somewhere else.
Trying to escape.
Trying to return.
Trying to find another host.
"Ah."
The sound left my mouth before I understood it.
Then I did understand.
And the world went hollow.
This whole trip had been pointless.
If Carlos died early, who cared?
If one option failed, fate would simply move to the next.
The fruit would find another mouth.
Another body.
Another soul.
Another poor bastard standing at the end of a road with no idea what waited inside the food he was desperate enough to eat.
And that meant Carlos had only been one thing.
An option.
Just an option in some grand weave of fate controlled by something that did not care what shape its tools took.
The greatest fear I had carried through this trip finally came to life.
The fear that killing Carlos would not save the future.
The fear that whatever gave him his power would simply create something new.
A variable.
A replacement.
A different disaster.
I had killed him for nothing.
The thought crushed the air out of me.
For a moment, all I could do was kneel there, dazed, watching my sin slither away from me.
The ghosts were around me.
I could feel them now.
Faint outlines moving at the edges of my sight.
Knight.
Bloody.
Lazy.
Sleazy.
Their shapes jerked and shifted, their arms making frantic gestures.
They were trying to tell me something.
Trying to warn me.
Trying to reach me.
But I still could not hear them.
Not properly.
The only thing I could see clearly was the hallucination.
The other me stepped closer.
"Kamrik."
His voice was quiet.
I looked up.
He stood over me, his face stern now.
Tired.
Fierce.
"You know what you must do."
I blinked.
"What?"
"You know."
"No."
My voice shook.
"No, I don't."
His brows furrowed.
His patience was running thin.
"You must become what you hated most."
The fruits slid farther across the bark.
My stomach twisted.
"What are you talking about?"
His gaze sharpened.
"To save the future," he said, "you must usurp fate."
I stared at him.
The words did not make sense.
Or maybe they did, and that was why I could not breathe.
"Wh-what?"
The hallucination stepped closer.
"You killed Carlos because you believed he was the path."
His voice lowered.
"He was not the path. He was a door."
The fruits continued to slither away.
"And now the door is looking for someone else."
My hands shook against the bark.
"No."
"Yes."
"No!"
"Kamrik!"
His voice struck like a slap.
I looked at him.
His eyes were mine.
His face was mine.
But the expression on it was something far heavier than anything I knew how to carry.
"You must become the next Carlos."
The branch seemed to vanish beneath me.
For a second, there was only wind.
Only sky.
Only the endless falling shape of Carlos beneath my memory.
"That is the only way," the hallucination said. "The only way to save the future. The world."
His eyes narrowed.
"Everyone."
I could not move.
I could not think.
The fruits were almost at the bark now.
The tree behind them had nearly vanished into dust.
The other me gritted his teeth and pointed.
"Go!"
His voice cracked through the air.
"Before they disappear!"
My legs moved before my mind did.
I ran.
The ghosts erupted around me.
I could hear fragments now.
Not words.
Noise.
Panic.
Warning.
Knight's voice, distant and distorted.
Bloody snarling.
Sleazy shouting something I could not catch.
Lazy speaking too fast.
I ignored them.
I could not understand them anyway.
All I could hear was the hallucination's command.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Bloodrend roared inside me.
Carlos's stolen blood still burned through my body, mending torn muscle and forcing strength into limbs that should have collapsed days ago. My shoulder pulled itself tighter. My ribs stopped screaming long enough for me to move.
It was not healing.
Not really.
It was theft pretending to be salvation.
I dashed across the branch toward the withered tree.
The air changed.
Something pressed against me.
A force.
A denial.
As if the worlditself understood what I was trying to do and wanted to stop me.
The pressure hit my chest.
My knees buckled.
I snarled and pushed through.
The bark cracked beneath my boots.
The fruits slipped faster.
"No you don't."
My voice came out as a wheeze.
I threw myself forward and landed in front of the dying tree.
My hands shot out.
I grabbed the fruits.
Its body was cold.
Wrong.
Soft like flesh.
Smooth like oil.
"I've got you now," I rasped.
The fruit moved.
My fingers tightened.
Before I could take a bite, the fruit unfurled completely.
Its round shape split and stretched into a long, fluid body, dark blue-black and slick with corruption. The surface rippled like liquid skin.
A head formed.
No eyes.
No mouth.
Then the mouth opened anyway.
It bit me.
The shock was sudden.
Almost stupid.
For one tiny, impossible moment, through all the horror, through all the grief, through everything—
I thought:
Did this fruit really just bite me?
Then the pain came.
Swift.
Violent.
Absolute.
It was the second-worst pain I had ever felt.
Only the white world had been worse.
Maybe.
The fruit's teeth sank deeper into my hand, and something poured into me.
Not blood.
Not mana.
Taint.
It dug into my body first.
Then deeper.
Into my bones.
Into my nerves.
Into the places under my skin where magic slept.
Then deeper still.
Into my soul.
I screamed.
Or tried to.
No sound came out.
Black sludge burst from my mouth instead, thick and burning, clogging my throat as I choked on it.
The second fruit reached me.
It bit into my arm.
Another wave of corruption slammed through me.
My vision shattered.
The sky vanished.
The branch vanished.
Everything became dark pressure and screaming color.
Destruction.
Corruption.
Taint.
Destroy.
Break.
Rot.
Devour.
The words were not words.
They were commands.
Images.
Feelings.
Orders carved directly into my mind.
Cities collapsing.
Children crying.
Hands reaching from black water.
A crown made of bone.
A tree rotting from the roots upward.
A god laughing without a mouth.
Darkness poured through me, trying to change the shape of my thoughts.
Trying to hollow me out.
Trying to make room for something else.
Trying to make me a monster.
Was this what Carlos would have endured?
This?
This endless darkness?
This despair being fed straight into his soul?
My knees hit the bark.
The fruit stayed attached.
The corruption kept pouring.
How could he endure this?
How could anyone endure this?
Was this why he became so monstrous?
Was it because he had been forced into becoming a creature of destruction without permission?
Without warning?
Without even understanding what had been done to him?
The image of Carlos appeared in my mind.
Not future Carlos.
Carlos.
The starving boy under the open sky.
The awkward smile.
The quiet voice.
"I wanted to become a hero."
Black tears spilled from my eyes.
I mourned him then.
Properly.
Too late.
Always too late.
The corruption surged again.
My thoughts began to break apart.
My name loosened.
Kamrik.
Kam—
K—
No.
No.
I heard something.
A voice.
Then another.
Then many.
"Young man! Hold on!"
Knight.
"Seer! We have you. Hold tight!"
Sleazy.
"Don't die, you maggot!"
Bloody.
The voices cut through the dark.
The ghosts.
I could hear them.
I could not see them anymore. The taint from the fruits had already taken my eyesight, drowning everything in black.
But I could hear them.
Faintly.
Desperately.
Then Lazy's voice slipped through, thin and exhausted but clear enough to understand.
"Listen. The ooze from the fruits is trying to taint your soul. It is trying to change you completely."
I gasped.
Black sludge crawled over my tongue.
Lazy continued.
"The only thing we can do is resist."
A pause.
Then, somehow, I could hear the grin in his voice.
"Lucky for you, there are four of us."
Something moved inside my soul.
Four presences.
Four hands reaching through the dark.
Knight's steadiness.
Bloody's violence.
Sleazy's cunning.
Lazy's cold calculation.
Each one pressed against the corruption from a different side.
Lazy spoke again.
"Each of us will take a portion of the corruption onto our souls. That should leave a wide enough opening for you to control it."
My body shook.
The fruit bit deeper.
The darkness screamed.
Knight's voice came next.
"Young man. Breathe."
I tried.
Sleazy laughed softly, but there was strain beneath it.
"Preferably before your soul collapses."
Bloody snarled.
"If you die here after all this, I will kill you myself."
That almost made me laugh.
Instead, more black sludge spilled from my mouth.
Lazy's voice sharpened.
"It is all up to you, Kamrik."
The corruption pressed harder.
The fruits fed.
The ghosts held.
And somewhere inside the collapsing ruin of my soul, I reached back.
Not with my body.
That was already gone.
I reached with what was left of me.
The corruption flooded everything at once, black and heavy, forcing new meanings onto everything it touched.
Hunger became destruction.
Fear became obedience.
Guilt became weakness.
Mercy became failure.
Carlos became unnecessary.
"No!"
The word tore out of me, raw and furious.
Carlos wasn't unnecessary.
He was dead.
That mattered.
The corruption didn't care. It pressed harder, searching for a center, something to claim, something to turn into a throne.
Destroy.
Corrupt.
Devour.
Become.
My thoughts bent.
My name slipped.
Kam—
"No!"
Knight's voice cut through it like a blade.
"Breathe!"
There was no air, but I forced it anyway.
Calm.
Contain.
Conceptualize.
The three principles slammed into place, barely holding me together.
This wasn't mana.
This was something older.
Something that didn't want control. It wanted submission.
I forced my mind inward.
The grey sea appeared.
My soul.
Or what was left of it.
Black veins spread through it, thick and alive, twisting everything into something else. Above it, the sky was gone—just pressure, like something massive waiting to crush everything flat.
The ghosts stood around the edges, half-consumed.
Knight held his sword in the sea, unmoving despite the cracks spreading across his armor.
"Stand," he growled, the anger in his eyes visible and straining, his voice unyielding. "Or I will drag you upright myself."
Bloody laughed through clenched teeth as corruption wrapped around his throat.
"Ah—there it is," he rasped, grin twitching. "Thought I'd die bored. Don't make me regret this, maggot!"
Sleazy's coat stretched thin, his skin pulling in unnatural ways, catching what they could.
"Oh, this is dreadful," he muttered, smile brittle. "I would hate to die again. If you've got a plan, I'd say do it now, Seer."
Lazy hovered above, cutting pieces away with precise hand chops, his eyes more focused than I'd ever seen before.
"This is inefficient," he snapped, movements sharp despite the tremor in his hands. "We are losing ground. Fix it. Now."
They were holding it back.
Barely.
"Act," Knight said, the word heavier now, almost cracking.
"We can't hold this," Lazy snapped, voice rising despite himself.
Bloody's grin twisted, even as the corruption tightened around his neck and slammed him onto the ground.
"Hurry up, maggot," he choked out, laughter breaking into something harsher.
I looked at the sea.
At what it was trying to turn me into.
A vessel.
No.
If it wanted one, I'd give it one.
Just not me.
I stepped forward.
The black water climbed my legs, pain ripping through me as it reached for my memories.
My sister walking ahead of me.
Carlos smiling.
The future breaking apart.
My hands pushing him.
Each memory twisted, trying to prove something.
That mercy was weakness.
That people were tools.
That I should just let go.
"No!"
I clenched my teeth so hard it hurt.
Those were mine!
My doubts!
My sins!
My mistakes!
If I lost those, I wasn't me anymore!
I forced my hands into the sea.
My gritted teeth snapped into a gruesome grin filled with desperation.
"Calm!"
The water surged violently.
I pushed harder.
"Contain!"
My skin started to crack with black tremors.
The ghosts pushed harder, straining.
"Conceptualize!"
I shaped it.
Not a weapon.
Not a throne.
Chains.
Thin, sharp, wrapping around the black roots spreading through my soul.
The corruption fought, but the chains formed anyway.
One by one.
The profane taint that invaded my soul slithered and fought, trying to corrupt, trying to change my soul.
But it still lost.
The chains forced it to fuse, turning the many into one root of sin.
Too one-shaped like Carlos.
That one almost broke me.
I saw his face again.
Shock.
Then nothing.
"I'm sorry…"
The chain held.
For one second, one fragile, desperate second, it worked.
Then the sea split open.
A mouth rose from beneath it.
Endless.
Smiling.
I knew it.
The dream I had forgotten came back into my head.
Everything froze.
The corruption bent toward it like it belonged there.
Then it spoke.
Mine.
The word crushed everything.
The chains shattered.
The ghosts faltered.
My name slipped again.
I didn't even get to speak as even sound ceased.
Kamrik disappeared.
Everything did.
There was only the mouth.
Waiting.
Hungry.
I couldn't fight it.
I didn't even know how.
Part of me didn't even try.
Then—
An eye opened.
Everywhere.
Watching.
The same one from before.
My memory opened, a long seal finally coming loose.
The one from the white space.
It didn't speak.
It didn't help.
It just looked.
And that was enough.
Kamrik.
The name slammed back into me like a hammer.
Not a vessel.
Not a tool.
Kamrik.
The mouth paused.
Not stopped.
Delayed, as if confused.
That was all I needed.
The chains came back, weaker but real.
I grabbed them.
"Hey, this is my soul your trying to take."
I gripped the chains with both hands.
A smirk adorned my face.
"I'm not gonna become the thing you want me to become, you big shark!"
This time I didn't try to contain it.
So I did the only thing left.
I took it.
I wrapped the chains around the corruption and dragged it inward, forcing it into a center I controlled.
Deeper
into me.
It fought.
It screamed.
The mouth watched.
The eye watched.
And I stood between them.
Simply holding.
My soul cracked, then mended.
Power surged through me, raw and wrong.
The pain was horrifying.
But I still held on.
Bloodrend formed, red stained with dark veins.
My body changed, breaking and rebuilding at the same time.
Tier one shattered.
Tier two formed.
Then something more
Not quite tier three.
Something in between.
The fruits dissolved into me, sinking into my blood, into the chains.
The corruption didn't disappear.
It settled.
Burrowing into the deepest part of my own soul, escaping even the most prying eyes.
The sea calmed, but the black root was still there, chained and waiting.
The ghosts stood around me, damaged but somehow still standing, breathing heavily.
No one looked victorious.
Because this wasn't victory.
We just survived.
The eye curved as if smiling, then disappeared.
The mouth passed, then let out a cosmic chuckle, saying only one word before it vanished.
Keeper.
Then everything snapped back.
I woke on the branch, choking.
Black sludge spilled from my mouth as I clawed at the bark.
Everything hurt.
Everything felt too alive.
I rolled onto my side, coughing until it stopped.
My body shook.
Power crawled under my skin.
Red markings covered my arms, threaded now with dark veins.
I pushed myself up.
The tree was gone.
The fruits were gone.
Burred inside me and chained.
"I… did it?"
"Barely," Bloody said.
"Tier two," Lazy added. "With overflow. How fascinating."
"Tier two and a half," Sleazy corrected with a thin smile.
Knight stepped closer.
"You are alive."
I looked at my hands.
At the marks.
At where Carlos had fallen.
Alive.
That was the problem.
A shadow passed overhead.
A sharp cry split the sky.
I looked up.
A griffin descended, wings wide, eyes locked on me.
Bloody grinned.
"Well, let's see what you've got."
I stood, barely steady.
Bloodrend formed in my hand, darker than before.
It gurgled in pleasure.
Like it wanted something.
So did I.