Metanoia — a profound, fundamental transformation of one's mind, character, or worldview. Often described as a change of heart. Originating from Greek: to change one's mind. To repent. It signifies a deep reorientation of life rather than a trivial adjustment of it.
The Greeks were fond of such words. They understood that some changes could not be undone — only survived.
***
The rift behind him closed.
The world changed again.
He turned around, and caught a final glimpse of the mountain chain through the rift's closing edge — then it was gone, replaced by sky, and beneath the sky, a vast and endless desert.
'What's... happening...'
They were so high up in the air, it would take him another couple hours to hit the ground.
Leon had barely processed the heat, before the Cursed Devil's wings struck the air again, and Leon was spinning around. The world blurred. His stomach lurched.
The creature opened another rift.
'No...'
The Cursed Devil had not been attacking him. It had simply been flying, and he had been caught in the pressure of its movement, pulled through the rifts like debris.
He had been caught in the wake of something that did not know he existed. Leon was once again forced through another rift because of the winds pulling him around like a ragdoll.
Going through this one, he felt the mountain of pain again, but this time he recovered quickly.
Passing through the second rift, he looked around again, and this time—
It was the Coral Labyrinth.
He looked down and saw the endless amounts of coral below him, and right there, like an elephant in the room, was the humongous crater.
Leon could see one of the edges of the crater from how high up he was, as he kept falling down and down.
'How?...How is it doing this?'
It was clear that the bird was opening portals. Actual portals through space, and travelling through them like a door.
He had travelled back to the coral labyrinth again.
Leon gritted his teeth, and glanced at the Cursed Devil. The giant creature ignored him — perhaps it was never aware of his existence at all, and it flapped its wings again.
It opened another rift, and went through it, while Leon was dragged along.
At the at the very last moment, however, he missed the rift by a few meters.
The rift sealed shut behind the Cursed Devil and left Leon alone in the sky above the Coral Labyrinth, falling.
He swayed around in the air, hoping that Birdie had recovered by now, but the Trace didn't materialize.
The coral peaks rose to meet him with every passing second.
He tried to balance himself but his speed was too great. Leon gritted his teeth, and tried summoning Birdie again, to no avail.
The crown flickered against his brow — a warmth, like a hand placed on a shoulder, and then nothing. No ember.
His eyes then widened slowly, as he summoned the Halo of Cinders.
The broken halo unraveled from his wrist and he forced it into a wide circle, something like a cloth, the strings coiling tightly around his torso, catching the air. His body jerked hard.
'Ok...where the fu—'
SCREECH
Leon turned around to find two Spire Messengers flying toward him.
'Fuck Fuck Fuck!'
He took a deep breath, calming himself down, as his cape immediately clouded his presence.
But it also meant that he couldn't use the parachute anymore.
The broken halo transformed into a whirl of sparks and disappeared, causing him to freefall again.
The pale birds saw Leon disappear. The Messengers circled the empty air where he had been, confused, and did not find him.
Thanks to his flaw, Leon remained calm as he fell down. He still had to worry about the impact, though.
***
Leon finally landed on the ground after using the broken halo a few times. Careful enough to not attract anymore birds.
He looked around everywhere, trying to figure out where he was, only to be surrounded by a whole maze of coral.
'Coral Coral Coral, where am I!?'
He punched one of the coral protruding from the ground in a fit of rage.
'Sunny, Kai...'
Leon had managed to escape the Cursed Devil, whose ability was to open portals, or something similar to that.
One of the locations he had been taken to was a desert with endless sand. He knew what region it was.
'The desert...'
He summoned the codex, and skimmed through the book.
The Desert:
I went to the border once.
Once was enough.
I won't describe it in detail because the description won't help you. What I'll tell you is this: the Desert is not simply dangerous. It is categorically different from the Shore in ways I couldn't fully articulate even after years of observation.
The creatures there are not variants of what you've seen elsewhere. The rules are different. My essence manipulation, which had kept me alive everywhere else, was useless.
Do not go to the Desert. It is just as worse as the Hollow Mountains.
'Nightmare Desert...'
"Noah, how bad is the desert?"
There was no reply.
"Damn it Noah! Now's not the time!"
He looked around and found him sitting on the mud a few meters away, not looking at anything — his expression just lost.
"Leon..." Noah spoke is a soft, weak voice. "If Sunny and Kai are in the desert, they're probably already dead."
Leon remained quiet for a moment. He walked toward Noah. and fell to his knees.
"You can't be sure right? You—"
"You saw the pyramid." Noah's voice did not rise. "It means they're already inside a territory with things beyond your comprehension. They barely made it through as Masters. They're Sleepers, Leon. There was no gateway."
Leon shook his head. "We don't know if they went to the desert—"
"And if they didn't? If they're near the mountains instead?" Noah stared at him. "The Cursed Devil ran. Use your brain. A Cursed Devil ran from something. Whatever caused that — whatever is at the edge of that region right now — Sunny and Kai don't have the option of running from it."
"BULLSHIT—"
The word rang through the coral.
Somewhere above them, on a nearby mound, a Carapace Scavenger lifted its segmented head and began to descend.
It began approaching him.
Leon turned. The halo shaped itself into a spear, wrapped in Nephis's flame, and he threw it. The spear went through the creature's head and buried itself in the coral.
The creature's body grew lifeless, and slowly fell down.
"We're going back," he said.
"Leon—"
"I'm going."
"Going where?" Noah stood up. "Going to do what, exactly? You couldn't stop a Cursed Devil. What do you plan to do against whatever made a Cursed Devil flee? Tell me. Describe the plan. Give me one fucking sentence."
"I'll find Nephis. She can help—"
"And if they're already dead?" Noah's voice remained level, and level, and level, but then something cracked through it for just a moment. "If you walk into those mountains and you die there with nothing changed — what was the point? What was any of it for?"
Leon turned to face him.
"What am I supposed to do?!" Leon's voice came out louder than he intended. It bounced off the coral nearby, creating a loud echo. "What am I supposed to do, Noah? Tell me. Because everything I do keeps going wrong and I don't — I don't know what the right decision is anymore."
For a moment neither of them spoke.
The coral stood around them, indifferent and ancient. The wind moved through the maze.
"We only got there in days because of the Builder Statue, Leon. It takes three months to—"
Noah looked at him for a long time. Leon's expression remained determined to go back.
The Aspect Ghost let out a soft breath.
"Go back to the castle," he said finally. "Find Nephis. Take her with you. Don't go alone."
Leon breathed.
"Alright." He looked at the coral walls around them, the maze that stretched in every direction without mercy. "First I need to figure out where I am."
He found the tallest spire within reach and began to climb.
Every time his palm grabbed onto the crimson, his thoughts went back to Sunny and Kai.
He didn't feel worry — he couldn't.
He felt responsible.
It was not the same thing as guilt, though guilt lived inside it somewhere. It was the understanding.
Responsible for going there in the first place, responsible for leading them through the journey... responsible for their lives.
Everything you do, all the consequences of your actions always fall upon you.
Taking a life. Giving a life. Torturing one, embracing one. Every action has a consequence — not only to yourself, but to everyone the action touches. Everyone it reaches.
With great power, comes great responsibility.
As he reached the peak, he stood on top of it and looked around. Coral stretched ahead of him as far as he could see, with no mountains in sight.
"Leon..." Noah spoke in a shaky voice.
Leon turned around, and saw the coral disappear slowly across the regions like a whisper of receding water.
Where the coral disappeared, a few miles away, was...
Sand.
Hundreds, if not thousands of miles of sand everywhere, like a vast, unbroken expanse of ochre and gold.
"The Nightmare...desert..."
He was far away from home. He never had one, but the closest thing to it was his friends, and they were...
Leon stood there, as wind whistled through his ears.
"Trust me. If they are in the region of the desert where the pyramid is visible..." Noah's voice was tired. "You'll never make it there."
***
Leon had already begun travelling west. He had been doing so for the past few days, with no sign of the coral ending.
He ran and ran, kept running till his legs gave out, and his chest burned. Every time he couldn't take another step, the crown shined, healing his fatigue, only for him to continue running.
He moved through the labyrinth in silence, blade finding the gaps between chitin plates. He had stopped trying to be impressive and had simply begun to get the creatures to die.
The crown collected the silence of each death.
He ran for days before Birdie returned to him, reforming in his Soul Sea like a flame rekindling.
Eventually, Birdie was restored within his Soul Sea, and with its help, he flew across the labyrinth at great speed.
Since both him and his trace were unseen to the naked eye, it was only a question of when his ember would disappear.
Birdie would fly till its wings gave out, only for the crown to heal it once more.
When the ember dropped, Leon would drop down, and massacre tens and hundreds of carapace scavengers.
The crown collected ember every time there was a profound silence to the creatures who had a blade sticking into them.
He didn't think the way he usually thought. Usually his mind was loud — running scenarios, storing information.
Now his thoughts felt slower, more looped around one particular topic.
"Think back to every time you did something, anything. When had your actions not affected someone else?"
He thought about the First Nightmare.
He had run. That was the entire summary of it.
He had told Aurelia he had a plan, let her fly at the titan believing someone was working to save her, and run. He had told himself it was survival. He had told himself she wasn't real.
She wasn't real.
He was the first person to ever look at her and say you're my friend, and she had believed it for a while. She had believed it.
He beat her to death with a rock.
And then he had carried her with him, in the Crown, in the constellation, through every month and every danger since — and he had never once apologized to her.
Their conversations always felt...wrong.
Now he understood why.
'She forgave you', he thought. 'She just never believed you had anything to be forgiven for.'
The Soul Devouring Tree battle. He charged toward the Awakened Demon all alone, telling himself that he was keeping his friends safe.
He had not once considered that they would come back for him.
He thought about Nephis.
You never trusted me. From the first day at the academy, you've been watching. Keeping everything at a distance.
He had told himself that was intelligence, that it was necessary. That in a world where trust was a gamble, what he was doing was survival.
But Aurelia had trusted him immediately, and he had named that naïveté.
Cassie — he had approached Cassie because Noah told him she would be useful. He had been kind to her because she was starving for it.
How was he any better than Nephis then?
Selfish.
He had read a story, once, about a man like that.
***
Achilles.
The Greeks believed that hubris was not your flaw. It was your identity.
Achilles didn't have pride. He was pride — expressed as a person.
And so Patroclus died.
Patroclus was Achilles' closest companion, mentor, and deeply loved friend.
Patroclus died because Achilles believed his own importance so completely, that everything else was secondary. His companions. His king. The war itself.
People forgot something about Achilles, though. After Patroclus died, Achilles didn't become humble. He became grief. He became the war — he burned.
He killed and killed, dragged a man's corpse behind his chariot, calling it mourning.
There was no redemption in that story. Only consequence.
Achilles never once considered that his choices had weight until the weight landed on someone he loved.
He had never looked at the people around him and asked himself what cost they paid for his actions.
***
He passed the Broken Knight's statue at some point.
He understood from the statue's location approximately where he was.
2 months, passed by just travelling on top of his Bird.
Every now and then, Leon would let Birdie rest, but the thoughts of Sunny and Kai fending for their lives in a death zone that killed even Saints, just pushed him back to travel again.
He eventually landed on the hill the Soul Devouring Tree once rested upon. Looking down at the charred land beneath him, he recalled the fight that day.
He knelt down near the humongous tree that once held souls in its grasp, and moved his hands through the burnt remains.
Shadow Slave, was a story to him. He entered its world on a random coincidence, and decided to have fun.
He had been inside a story for so long that he had looked at these people and seen their functions first.
Sunny: useful. Cassie: prophetic. Nephis: important.
Human beings, last.
'When did I decide that was acceptable?'
He already knew the answer. He had never decided it, it had just happened.
He pressed his palm flat against the charred ground.
He was Leonar, an actual person in an actual world, where Sunny or Nephis weren't characters of a story anymore, they were human beings, just like him.
"Is this who you were on Earth?" Noah said quietly. "Is this what we were?"
Leon kept his gaze on the ash.
"No," he said.
No.
He pressed his hand deeper into the earth, as if he could reach through it to something.
He could not.
***
The outer settlement had changed.
It felt... more organized. The fortifications Nephis had been building when he left had been completed and extended. There were more people, more noise.
Leon descended and let Birdie dissolve into sparks behind him.
He walked through the settlement without his cape.
He walked through it without the cloak. He had stopped caring whether people recognized him.
The building that had been Nephis's headquarters was still there.
Inside, a hall full of young men and women stared at him, their expressions frozen in fear.
"S-Stop!" One of the men said.
"I need to see Changing Star, now."
The man who had stopped him shook his head. "Leave now, or we will make you leave."
Leon looked at the man with a dark gaze, causing the man shudder.
"I need to see Changing Star," Leon said.
"Leave now," the man said, "or we'll make you leave."
Leon looked at him.
The man did not step back. He was shaking, but he did not step back.
Leon grabbed his arm and pulled him into the nearest empty room. No one moved to stop it.
Why would they? It was the fucking Mad Scythe. They didn't have a death wish.
Leon stood in front of the man. "Where is she."
The man gritted his teeth. He lifted his head, and straight at Leon's eye.
"Go ahead, you madman. Take my life."
Leon stared at for a while. "What..."
"Kill me! But I'll never betray my lady."
Both him and Noah stared at the man with dumbfounded expressions. He could clearly see the emotions in the man's eyes.
Fear.
Fear.
And more fear.
Yet behind all that, the man stood firm, refusing his orders.
Leon reached for the bag of soul shards he had collected over the months, and tossed it to the man.
The bag fell to the ground, a few orbs scattering away.
The man looked at it.
Then he kicked the bag aside.
'What...'
"I won't be bribed, you demon!"
Leon summoned the broken halo in the form of a katana.
The man flinched and scrambled back against the wall. He shut his eyes tightly, preparing for the worst.
He was shaking. He was terrified.
Yet he did not tell Leon where Nephis was.
"This guy..." Noah said. "He's actually prepared to die..."
This was the loyalty people had toward Nephis. Or rather, the devotion.
His hand coiled around the katana tightly, preparing to threaten, if not torture the man...but...
He just stared at the man for a moment.
Leon let the katana disappear.
He fell to his knees.
He touched his forehead to the floor.
"Please," he said. "People are going to die. I need her help. Please."
The man slowly opened his eyes, confused.
He widened his eyes.
That Mad Scythe, responsible for defeating Harus, responsible for beating up Changing Star, was now prostrating in front of him.
The room was quiet for a moment.
"W-what kind of trick is this? You—"
"It isn't a trick." His forehead was still on the floor. "I am begging you."
The man stared at Leon for a moment, his shoulders loosening a moment later.
"Lady Nephis has gone on a journey. She left a few months ago..." The man said with a frown. "I don't know when she will be back."
Leon slowly raised his head.
The man still looked at him with the same expression.
Leon stood up, and left without another word.
***
He walked through the outer settlement.
He walked without purpose or direction, while the crowd moved around him. The noise of the place filled his ears without much meaning, and with every step the thing in his chest grew heavier.
Nephis was gone.
She had probably gone for the Dawn Shard herself. Cassie probably told her. Her oracles' eyes — very few secrets stayed hidden from it.
He was halfway across the outer settlement when he looked up at the castle gate.
He stopped walking.
He saw severed heads.
The heads were displayed in a row above the gate, mounted on iron stakes that had been driven into the stone.
There were eleven of them.
There were numerous severed heads displayed on top of the gate. And he recognized every, single, one of them.
The faces had been left there long enough to decay, but not so long that he couldn't recognize them.
He knew every face.
They were the very people who followed him, who looked up to him. People from the rebellion.
The young woman who had organized the supplies and briefed him. The three who had been at the last meeting before he left for the Dawn Shard.
Others whose names he had learned over months, whose stories he had heard, whose reasons for joining the rebellion varied, but personal...
Leon's mouth gaped open, as he continued staring.
They had joined because Leon had come to them in their lowest moments and told them there was a way out.
He had told them that.
He had said those words.
They had believed him.
Leon stood in the street of the outer settlement and looked at what Gunlaug had done with the belief of eleven people.
He looked for a long time.
Then he walked toward the gate. One of the guards noticed his approach and reached for his spear. Leon moved faster than the reach and had the man pinned against the wall with the spear's own shaft across his throat.
"Tell me right now, what happened to those people."
The guard's eyes were wide. "Please— I don't—"
"Who gave the order for those heads."
Tears began flowing from the guard's eyes. "The Bright Lord— sir... please—"
Leon looked at him.
The guard was young. He was shaking so badly that the armor plates against his chest were audible. Tears ran from the corners of his eyes.
He saw someone who was probably here because there was nowhere else to be.
Leon released him.
He stepped back, and looked up at the heads one more time.
Eleven heads. Eleven people who had trusted a stranger who arrived at their lowest moments
Every action has a consequence. Not only to yourself, but to others as well.
***
Seishan was in her office with her face in her hands.
She had been in this position for the better part of the morning.
The situation had developed in ways she hadn't anticipated.
She had expected Gunlaug to move against the rebellion once he became aware of it. But she underestimated how little he cared for human lives.
Seishan then heard the voice of her handmaidens grow restless outside the door.
She slowly raised her head and looked up, almost recognizing the footsteps.
The door opened.
Leon stood in it for a moment before entering.
He looked different.
Not physically different — although he was. He just looked...tired.
The way he entered, the way he would sit down without anyone's permission, sipping tea and talking to her with a smile on his face — none of it was there anymore.
He closed the door behind him and sat down across from Seishan.
He looked down at the table, his expression was something she had never seen before.
"What happened." His voice was quiet, cracking around the edges.
Seishan frowned slightly. "Gunlaug... he blew up most of the rebellion safehouses, killed—" She paused, unable to form words.
"Killed a lot of people," Leon said.
She nodded.
Leon slowly looked up. "Are you alright?"
Seishan flinched. She felt something warm in her chest.
"Rick was the only one who know my connection to you and well..."
"Well?"
"He's...very strong. Still alive, don't worry."
Silence stretched between them for a while.
"Where's Nephis..."
"She left a few months ago. After we spoke a few times." Seishan tilted her head slightly. "She's going after the Dawn Shard. I don't know how she found out."
"Probably Cassie."
Seishan gave a small nod. "Where are Sunless and Kai?"
Leon remained quiet for a moment.
"We went to the edge of the Shore. To a new region."
Seishan's eyes lit up.
"Hollow Mountains."
She froze. Her shoulders dropped. "The...death zone?"
Leon nodded slowly.
She lowered her gaze. "So we're...isolated?"
Leon sighed softly. "After we reached there we... encountered a Cursed Devil."
Her mouth gaped open, her face contorting into utter disbelief. "A—"
No words came out.
"The devil threw me far away, and I thought I'd come here to get some help but..."
She remained quiet for a while, contemplating everything.
"Are they..."
"I don't know."
He said it so quietly that Seishan almost missed it.
Seishan slowly stood up.
She approached him. She bent down, and wrapped her arms around him.
Leon closed his eyes, his head lowered to her shoulder.
"They'll make it," she said. "Somehow."
After the brief hug, she moved to make him a cup of tea, hoping it would calm him down.
"Shan."
Seishan returned his gaze, her fists clenched tightly.
"Prepare yourself," he said. "I need you in this fight."
Seishan looked at him for a moment.
"I'll have my people in the castle ready."
***
Sunny woke up.
For a moment he simply lay there, staring at the sky, and let his mind catch up to the fact of his continued existence.
His breath hitched, as he slowly sat up.
He looked around frantically. After not seeing any creature around, he sent one of his shadows to look around, while he wrapped the second one around his body.
After a while of searching, he found Kai lying down nearby. Sunny rushed over to him, while his shadow still looked around for any Nightmare Creatures nearby.
He saw Kai, lying down on his back, his hair disheveled and his body covered in wounds.
"Kai... Kai!" Sunny's voice cracked, still too tired to speak.
He knelt down, checking Kai's pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief once he confirmed that he was alive.
His shadow still looked around for Leon, but couldn't find him anywhere.
The last thing he remembered was...
Sunny shuddered in fear, remembering the Great Titan.
"Kai wake up," Sunny said frantically, slapping Kai a few times. "Wake up Kai!"
But Kai remained unconsioucs.
'Damnation!'
He finally saw it through his shadow.
The Great Titan lay on the ground some impossible distance away — so far that he should not have been able to see it, and yet its scale was such that distance didn't matter.
It lay on the floor, with its body cracked all over it like a honeycomb.
The titans eyes were open, but they didn't have the red glow. They were just empty eyes now. Two enormous, lightless cavities.
Sunny stared back at it through Gloomy for a long time.
'It's dead...It's...'
The Great Titan was lying lifeless on the floor.
'Did the Cursed Devil kill it...No, that thing ran away... so.'
A creature that killed a Great Titan.
A creature that caused a Cursed Devil to flee.
Sunny picked Kai up from the floor. He called his shadow back, and began running in the opposite direction with Kai on his back.
Sunny's body stiffened at the realization.
'Unholy...'
He felt his breathing grow uneven, as he kept running with the strength of two shadow cores.
Gloomy still swept the area for any Nightmare Creatures, but there were none.
Why would there be? After all, no sensible creature would stay around to face and Unholy creature.
Sunny thought of all the decision he made that led him here. All the choices, all the talks and meetings, all the travelling.
'Why...Why did we come here? Damnation...'
***
In the great hall of the Bright Castle, Gunlaug sat on his throne as he always sat.
"If you belong to the eye-patch's rebellion," he said, without raising his voice, "I would encourage you to surrender now. Before I find out myself."
He looked at the assembled faces below him. Not one of them met his eyes. That was as it should be.
Right then, from the tables in front of him, someone raised their hand.
"My lord," the man said. "Will there be mercy for those who surrender?"
Gunlaug chuckled softly. "Of course. Everyone deserves a chance at education." He turned his gaze slowly across the room. "Right and wrong are not difficult concepts. They simply require the proper teacher."
At the far end of the table, a figure in a dull grey cloak rose, the hood covering his face.
He slowly walked to the center of the hall, and looked at Gunlaug.
After a moment, he moved his hand, taking off his hood.
Gunlaug tilted his head slightly.
"Here I am, my lord." His voice carried easily through the quiet. "And you're right. Some lessons do require proper teachers."
Everyone looked at the man with surprise filling their eyes.
It was the Mad Scythe himself.
The crown on his head lit up, detonating an explosion above everyone's heads.
The part of the roof that had been patched up after Birdie's entrance had been torn apart once more, as sunlight burst through the large opening, illuminating Leon in the center of the hall like a spotlight.
"So let me teach you."
He summoned the broken halo in the form of a katana, and slowly raised it, pointing it at Gunlaug.
"The consequences."