’I am what you will beco...’
Those words echoed in my skull far longer than I wanted them to.
They didn’t make sense.
No, scratch that—they couldn’t make sense.
It was utter bullshit. Complete, unfiltered nonsense.
And yet... I wanted to believe them.
That was the dangerous part. I wanted it to be true. Not because I enjoyed the idea of so rotten corpse in my old body, but because deep down, a tiny voice inside murmured—
"What if?"
But even if I entertained that thought, what if this was all so elaborate, sick joke played by Vorr’Kael? Maybe this guy was nothing more than a puppet—an illusion.
Yet that still wouldn’t explain why he had my body. My original body.
Not this Cassius shell.
I narrowed my eyes. "Hey... bastard. If you’re really supposed to be what I beco, then why the hell are you wearing my old body? Why not the one I’m in right now? If you’re , shouldn’t you look like ?"
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, the pressure around him vanished. That suffocating dread that had earlier choked the entire forest dissipated. He returned to that crouched position—hunched over, hands digging into the soil, eyes dim.
"The reason," he said quietly, "is simple."
He looked up, and that smile was back. "You’re Cassius."
...
Another fucking riddle. My temples throbbed. I bit the inside of my cheek and hissed, "For fuck’s sake. Care to actually explain what that ans? Or are you just here to dump cryptic horseshit and vanish into mist like so third-rate villain?"
He exhaled. Long. Tired. Heavy.
"I know you’re frustrated. And you have every right to be. But there are things you’re not ant to know... not yet. This isn’t so trial or test. This is ... trying to give you ti." He lowered his head. "You’ll understand eventually."
I stared at him, fists clenched, words dancing at the tip of my tongue—each one a curse I wanted to hurl at this rotten freak. But I stopped myself.
If he was really my future... cursing him now would just be cursing myself.
So I inhaled through gritted teeth and asked with forced calm, "Then at least tell why you’re here. What’s the point of all this? Why now?"
He looked up and nodded slowly. "I ca to give you a warning. A very specific one."
A pause.
Then he spoke the na.
"I want you to stay away from Sophia."
Silence.
Every muscle in my body tensed.
My head tilted slightly to the side, disbelief clawing up my throat like bile. "...What?"
"I said—"
"I heard what you said!" I snapped, fury bubbling to the surface. "First, you co to with this whole ’I’m your future self’ circus act, and now you’re telling to stay away from Sophia? What the fuck is your deal, you rotten bastard?!"
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. He just exhaled again, like soone resigned to watching a train wreck he couldn’t stop.
"It doesn’t matter if you believe . You will see. Just... stay away from her, Arawn. That’s all I’m asking."
I clenched my fists, my voice shaking with rage. "SHE’S NOT EVEN HERE! SHE’S NOT FROM THIS WORLD! How the fuck do you expect to—?!"
His expression twisted. For the first ti, he looked... annoyed.
"What the fuck do you think the rifts are for?!"
That stopped .
My lips parted, but the words didn’t co out.
"...What?"
He took a step forward, voice hardening. "You think the rifts were just random? Just so magical mishap by Vorr’Kael so he could vomit monsters across Cronica?"
"...Weren’t they?" I asked, guarded.
He stared into . "Those rifts are dinsional tears, Arawn. Not just portals for monsters. They’re bridges. Tunnels. Wounds. And they’re bleeding across every world they connect to. Vorr’Kael might’ve triggered it—but he’s not the only one who will use them."
"...Use them for what?"
"To co here. To conquer. To clash. To collide."
I blinked. "You’re saying..."
He nodded grimly. "Yes. They don’t just link realms. They connect people. Worlds. Those rifts are bringing together countless worlds, people, races and they won’t get along."
I felt the blood drain from my face.
He looked skyward, the wind brushing through his decaying hair.
"This is the beginning, Arawn. The prelude. Soon, Cronica won’t just be fighting off Spawns... they’ll be fighting off everything. This is the lead-up to sothing far worse."
I stepped back. "What are you saying?"
He t my gaze.
"This is the start of the Fourth Great War."
...
I returned to the wall overlooking the forest, my boots crunching faintly against the stone as I leaned over the railing.
At the far edge of the trees—barely visible through the gaps between the leaves—I could still make out the faint, hazy distortion where the rift had once lingered. The place where... he had stood.
My so-called future self.
Now, the rift—the swirling purplish-black gash in reality—was beginning to warp. It shimred, shimred... then with a quiet but powerful WHOOSH, it collapsed into nothing.
Future Arawn... vanished.
I stood there for a while, unmoving.
Should I be relieved?
Should I be furious?
Should I feel... anything?
Truth was, I didn’t know. On one hand, I was bitter—furious even. His riddles, his half-truths, his cryptic warnings about Sophia and Incarnations and wars too massive for my current mind to fathom.
But on the other hand...
He had warned . And I couldn’t shake the weight of his words.
Even if they were lies... they still left scars.
Yet I couldn’t fully believe him. Not just because of what he said, but because of what he was.
He was .
That body. That face. That twisted, half-rotten flesh—it was mine. My original body. My original self. The part of I had left behind the mont I beca Cassius Lancaster.
And if I was being honest... that version of ?
He wasn’t trustworthy.
In fact, that body still held every secret I had buried under years of survival, cruelty, and blood. Every twisted part of my past. Every unspeakable thing I did in the na of living one more day.
Things I could never let Mia know.
If she did—if she ever discovered even a fraction of the truth—I knew exactly what would happen.
She wouldn’t look at as a brother anymore.
She’d look at like a stranger.
Soone to be feared.
Soone to be hated.
I sighed, long and low, gazing up at the morning sky as it began to lighten with threads of rose and gold.
"...What am I even living for?"
That was the last thing he’d asked . The final question before I left that forest.
"What’s your goal in life?"
Funny.
You’d think I’d have an answer to that by now.
But truth be told—I never really had a goal.
Not one I could be proud of.
When I was born, I was just a kid. Just... normal. Not gifted. Not brilliant. Not so prodigy. I was below average in everything—academics, sports, even socializing.
But I tried. I genuinely tried.
I did my best to blend in, to earn praise, to be helpful. I wasn’t looking to be the best—I just wanted to make my family proud.
That was my only dream. My only reason to live.
Until I turned eight.
That’s when everything changed.
That’s when my father sold .
Sold like an unwanted object to so back-alley gangsters.
The mont those chains wrapped around my wrists and ankles, the only thing left inside was a simple desire:
Escape.
I wanted to get out of that hellhole. I wanted to claw my way back ho.
To see my mother.
To see Mia.
To return and hear soone—anyone—say, "You’re ho. We’re sorry."
And you know what I found when I finally got out?
Nothing.
They were living happily. Without a care in the world. Like I’d never even existed. Like they hadn’t sold their son and brother off like trash.
No missing person report. No search. Nothing.
That’s when the last piece of my soul crumbled.
I didn’t return to the hellhole.
I beca it.
From then on, I lived how I wanted. I survived. I killed. I maid. I manipulated. I honed every survival instinct into an artform.
Killing beca... comfort.
I never felt guilt. Not even a twitch of hesitation.
The first ti I slit a man’s throat and watched his eyes go cold, I didn’t flinch. His blood was warm. It soaked my hands like water. He gasped, gargled, fell limp.
And I felt nothing.
As if I’d just stepped on a bug.
But then she entered my life.
Sophia.
She wasn’t so savior. She wasn’t even gentle. But she understood.
She looked at and saw not a monster, but sothing useful. Sothing to sharpen.
And that’s what she did.
She honed . She broke down and rebuilt into sothing... terrifying.
I beca her blade.
Her weapon.
Her executioner.
The one who stood between her and any threat.
She gave a new reason to live. Not for love, not for family, not for kindness—
But for her.
And in doing so, she unlocked sothing I didn’t even realize was buried inside .
The ability to kill without restraint.
To fight like a beast. To be rciless. Efficient. Inhuman.
She replaced Mia, in a way. For a while, at least.
But she also turned into sothing else entirely.
A title born from blood and shadow.
"The Sin of the Underworld."
That’s what they called .
A na spoken in hushed tones across city slums and criminal dens.
The man who didn’t hesitate.
The one who made corpses disappear.
The butcher with a smile.
And now... here I was.
In a world not my own, wearing a face not my own, being warned by a corpse that used to be —
To stay away from the one person who defined what I’d beco.
Sophia.
My past and my future were pulling in opposite directions.
And I was still standing here on a fucking wall, with no idea which path I should take.
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