280 New Instructions
[POV: Cordellia]
Roughly twenty years ago, a man ca to with a story that sounded like madness.
He claid to be a ti traveler.
I didn’t believe him.
Not at first.
Then he started telling things he shouldn’t have known, events that hadn’t happened yet, details that couldn’t be guessed. He spoke of Lockworld, of a visitor who would arrive wearing the face of a man I hated, and how that sa man would beco its liberator.
I waited.
And when it happened exactly as he described, doubt stopped being an option.
So I listened.
He gave instructions, precise and deliberate, each step leading toward a single outco. The death of the Entity.
Now, standing in the middle of this battlefield, I realized this was the mont he had been preparing for.
I reached outward with my animakinesis, calling to the souls that lingered, the remnants left behind by everything that had already died here. For a brief instant, my perception expanded beyond the physical, and I saw her.
The real Alia Caldwell.
She stood beside Griffin, or what had once been Griffin, her presence faint but unmistakable.
At the sa ti, Tony’s power surged, reality bending under his influence as the illusion took hold. The environnt shifted, stabilizing into sothing cohesive.
I didn’t stop.
There were more souls to gather.
The wraiths the Entity had released, the fragnts of existence it had discarded, they were still here, scattered but not gone. I pulled them together, guiding them with careful intent, drawing them into the massive biomass that remained from Griffin’s forr body.
It was crude and unstable.
But it could work.
It had to.
…
..
.
[POV: Old Nick]
I blinked, and Mars was gone.
Detroit stood around , whole and intact, the buildings rising exactly as I rembered them. The air felt different, heavier in a way that carried mory with it.
Pain anchored .
The tarot cards embedded in my body pulsed with it, keeping aware, keeping present as the shift settled into place. I looked forward, and there she was.
Amy.
For a mont, everything else fell away.
Then I felt him.
Nick.
Close.
Closer than he had been before.
“I found him,” he whispered, his voice threading through my thoughts. “The part of you that you locked away.”
No.
The realization hit harder than any attack.
Not that.
Anything but that.
He hadn’t just found a weakness.
He had found everything I had buried, everything I had cut away to beco what I was now. My sanity. My restraint. My humanity.
My hand trembled.
Tears ford before I could stop them, blurring the edges of a world I no longer deserved to see.
“Amy… I’m so sorry,” I said, the words breaking as they left . The weight of it all crashed down at once, every world I had destroyed, every life I had erased, every choice I had justified unraveling in an instant.
“I’m trash.”
…
..
.
[POV: Nick]
I watched it happen from within and without at the sa ti.
Old Nick unraveled.
The thing he thought he had buried, the humanity he had carved out of himself piece by piece, clawed its way back to the surface. It wasn’t gentle. It didn’t return in fragnts. It surged upward all at once, breaking through the structure he had built to contain it.
That was his mistake.
He thought he could take my body, wear it like a tool, and walk away unchanged. He thought identity was sothing you could suppress without consequence.
He was wrong.
I woke with a sharp inhale, the taste of blood thick in my mouth. My body felt like it had been torn apart and stitched back together wrong, every nerve misfiring before settling into place. There were flashes in my mind, disjointed but vivid, monts of tearing at sothing intangible, sothing that didn’t belong.
His soul.
Or whatever passed for it.
The mories followed, pressing in harder than they should have, asserting themselves as if they had always been mine. I pushed through them, forcing my vision to steady until I saw her.
Alia.
We were already close, too close, and before I could think, our lips t. The contact was real, grounding, sothing that cut through the noise in my head. For a mont, everything else fell away.
She pulled back, her eyes searching mine.
“Nick… are you back?”
“I’m back.”
The words ca easily, but the feeling behind them was complicated. There was sothing else there, sothing lingering from the Entity, a sense of fulfillnt that didn’t belong to . It stirred in my chest, unfamiliar and intrusive.
I held it back.
She steadied as my legs gave slightly, my balance not fully my own yet. I leaned into her without aning to, catching myself before I put too much weight on her.
“You must be cold,” I said, my voice rough, glancing down briefly. “You’re… not wearing anything.”
She raised a brow, the corner of her lips lifting despite everything. “What, you don’t like the show?”
“There’s a kid watching,” Cordelia cut in flatly.
That pulled my attention imdiately.
Tony stood there, his eyes wide and glassy, emotions spilling over faster than he could process them. Then he moved, rushing forward and throwing his arms around both of us.
“I have my mom and dad again!”
The words hit harder than I expected.
Before I could respond, reality shifted subtly. Fabric ford over Alia’s body, threads weaving themselves into existence with a fluid precision that could only belong to Tony. In seconds, she was clothed, the construct stabilizing as if it had always been there.
I reached out, resting a hand on his head, ruffling his hair gently. The mories I had taken in settled into place, giving context I didn’t ask for but couldn’t ignore.
Tony wasn’t just a child.
He was engineered.
A fusion of the Entity, Alia, and Dr. Ti. A design with purpose behind it, even if that purpose had shifted or failed along the way. The Entity’s thoughts lingered in , fragnts of intent. A vessel. A possibility. Sothing the doctor might have claid if things had gone differently.
“You’re looking at the wrong people,” I said quietly, guiding his gaze forward.
They stood there.
Two figures, faint yet undeniable.
The liberated souls of the Entity and Alia Caldwell. She appeared as she had at the end of her life, aged but steady, carrying the quiet weight of years that had already passed.
Tony didn’t hesitate.
He ran to them, wrapping his arms around both as if they were solid, as if nothing about this mont was fragile or temporary.
“Mom! Dad!”
They held him.
Not physically, not truly, but enough for it to matter.
The Entity looked at then, his expression stripped of everything that had once defined him.
“Can you take care of him for us?”
I t his gaze evenly. “I thought you never liked him.”
A faint shift crossed his face. “You know that’s not true.”
I did.
Buried beneath everything else, there had been sothing else there. Fear, maybe. A desire to spare the boy from becoming what he had beco, from being used the way he had been used. It didn’t erase what he had thought, but it explained it.
“I’ll take care of him,” I said.
Both of them looked at , and there was sothing like relief in it.
“Thank you,” they said together.
Alia Caldwell leaned down slightly, her hand brushing over Tony’s head. “You’re going to do great things. Listen to Nick, okay?”
Tony nodded, though tears were already forming, his understanding limited but his emotions overwhelming.
“Don’t be like ,” the Entity added quietly, resting a hand against the boy’s shoulder.
I stepped forward slightly, sothing unresolved pulling at . “You know your afterlife won’t be kind, right? You could stay. Let him keep you here.”
He gave a small, pained smile. “I’m just a ghost now. The dead can’t stay.”
I didn’t argue.
After everything I had seen, I wasn’t sure there was any point.
He turned to his wife, and despite her aged appearance, there was no hesitation in him. He kissed her, fully, without restraint, as if ti itself had no claim on them anymore.
“What’s it like?” he asked softly. “On the other side. I never made it past the dark veil…”
She smiled, though it carried its own weight. “I’ll miss you. But I’ll always be with you. And you’ll always be with .”
There was nothing left to say after that.
They faded together, and then they were gone.
I stood there, trying to make sense of what remained, when Cordelia spoke beside , her voice quieter than I had ever heard it.
“It almost feels like a fairy tale,” she said, looking at the space where the souls had vanished. “The evil is defeated with the kiss of a maiden, the monster freed from itself, and in the end, a fragnt of sothing good shines through just long enough to say goodbye. He reconciles with everything he’s done, even if only for a mont.” She paused, her gaze lowering slightly. “But that’s not how this ends, is it? There’s no victory here. No heroes standing above it all. Just loss. So many dead… all of it for nothing.”
Her words settled into the silence that followed.
And she was right.
The battlefield was a ruin beyond anything I could justify. Bodies of capes lay scattered across the red Martian ground, mixed with broken machinery and the remnants of Huston’s creations. Tree creatures lay in splintered heaps, their forms half-decayed into sothing unrecognizable. In so places, it was worse. Masses of rock fused with flesh, gore and debris indistinguishable from one another, as if reality itself had given up trying to keep things separate.
A mory surfaced, uninvited.
The Entity, in one of his final monts of desperation, turned his killing intent toward Alia Morose. Griffin. He tried to kill her before everything collapsed inward. That instinct, that last grasp at control, lingered in the fragnts he left behind, the ‘anger’ echoing at the back of my skull.
Thankfully, Cordelia had been ready for it.
Even now, I could see the remnants of her work. Constructs ford from Griffin’s own biomass stood nearby, crude dolls shaped from flesh and bone, animated through her control over souls. They remained, staring at .
My eyes drifted toward what remained of Griffin’s carcass.
The carcass was massive even in ruin, its upper half completely gone, torn away in a display of violence that left little to the imagination. What was left behind looked less like a body and more like a resource that had been used and discarded.
A few of the animakinetic dolls still stood, motionless now, their purpose fulfilled.
Cordelia snapped her fingers, letting go of her power as her hand shook from overextending herself. They collapsed instantly. Whatever souls had been bound to them were released, dispersing into sothing unseen, sothing I still couldn’t fully grasp no matter how many tis I witnessed it.
I exhaled slowly.
I would never get used to that.
Souls, afterlives, fragnts of existence persisting beyond death. It was all too real, too consistent to deny, and yet it refused to feel normal.
Still, it was almost over.
That thought had barely settled when sothing shifted.
The Fuhrer appeared in front of without warning, his presence tearing through whatever cloaking he had used. His grin was feral, unhinged, like a man who had already accepted the outco but chose to fight anyway.
He swung a jagged piece of tal, its edges wrapped in null energy, aiming straight for my face.
I couldn’t react.
My body was still recovering, my powers barely responding. Griffin was in no better state, and Cordelia and Tony were too far, too slow to intervene in ti.
Then sothing moved.
From my shadow, Jacob surged upward, his body unraveling into tendrils that lashed out and wrapped around the Fuhrer. The two of them crashed together, montum disrupted as Jacob forced him off course, restraining him with what little strength he had left.
A single gunshot cut through the chaos.
The sound echoed sharply across the battlefield.
The Fuhrer froze.
Then he fell backward, his expression still twisted in that sa grin, his body failing to register what had already happened.
Abner stood in the distance, the weapon still raised in his trembling hand.
“I… I can’t believe I’m still alive,” he said, his voice uneven, disbelief written across his face.
He looked like he shouldn’t be.
His exo suit was gone, reduced to fragnts barely clinging to him. Beneath it, parts of his body were exposed, and I could see it clearly now. Machinery. Implants integrated into his form, sustaining him in ways I hadn’t realized before.
Precognition alone hadn’t saved him.
Still, it was amazing he survived this long.
“Just take the win,” I said, though the words felt hollow even as they left .
There was no real victory here.
The Godslayers were gone. Every one of them except Abner and Jacob.
And Jacob…
I turned back to him.
The shadows that once defined him were gone, stripped away, leaving behind nothing but the man underneath. He looked smaller without them, more fragile, his body failing to hold itself together as blood spread across his chest.
He had been stabbed.
Multiple tis.
I moved to him imdiately, grabbing onto him, trying to force my power to respond. “Hold on,” I muttered, focusing, pushing for even the smallest spark.
Nothing ca.
I couldn’t even teleport.
Tony rushed forward, dropping beside him, his hands glowing faintly as he tried to channel whatever energy he had left into healing. It flickered, unstable, barely forming before collapsing again.
Cordelia’s voice ca from behind us, steady but final.
“He’s already dead.”
The words landed with a weight I couldn’t ignore.
I bit the inside of my cheek, hard enough to taste blood again, forcing myself to stay grounded, to not let it spiral into sothing worse.
There wasn’t ti for that.
Alia’s voice cut through the mont.
“We should go,” she said, her tone firm despite everything. “This isn’t over. There’s still work to do.”
“I know.”
“What were your instructions?” she asked, sounding impatient. “The Ti Traveler should have told you the entire plan by now.”
I didn’t answer imdiately, because I didn’t have one. Or at least, not a complete one. Fragnts moved in my head, pieces that didn’t fully connect yet, but one thought surfaced stronger than the rest.
Destroy the SRC.
The idea settled heavily, and for a mont, I froze.
Then I saw him.
Standing just beyond the edge of everything, untouched by the destruction, as if he had never been part of it to begin with.
“Guesswork,” I called out, my voice cutting through the stillness. “What’s next?”
Tony shifted beside , confused, looking around without focus. “Who are you talking to?”
None of them could see him.
Guesswork tilted his head slightly, like he expected that reaction. “It’s ti to et the other ,” he said calmly. “Here are the coordinates.”
The numbers ca fast, precise, embedding themselves into my mind without effort.
“You’ll receive the rest of your instructions from your Guesswork,” he continued. “Don’t be late. Also, good luck.”
And then he was gone.
Just like that.
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