My limbs were heavy, each movement an act of defiance against my own body. They felt wrong in a way I couldn't quite describe – as if they were filled with lead and not muscle, or as if someone was using me like a puppet through strings that I couldn't see or feel.
I tried to move through the forms, the familiar katas that had been drilled into me, but it was like wading through a pool of thick machi, each step a struggle against a viscous, resistant force. My body resisted, each muscle rebelling against my will as if it belonged to another, a stranger, a weapon that was not to be used by me.
My hand twitched, wanting to grasp my Daito’s hilt, to feel that familiar, reassuring weight, but it recoiled at the very thought, as if the very idea of it was an anathema, a forbidden thing that was no longer mine.
I hurt Anna’s feelings and should feel like garbage. I hurt Jessa, too, so wanting to draw the Shoto should also disgust me.
The metal was cold and unforgiving. It was not something I could ever allow myself to touch again.
Why was I hesitating?! I needed to train…?
Huh?
Why am I being forced to do this?
The questions swirled in my mind, becoming an insistent buzz that I was desperately trying to ignore, a growing sense of dread that started to push away all of my earlier training. Time was a resource that was too precious to waste on things that would resolve themselves if I were strong enough to get out of this mess.
"Send me out," my voice was rough and strained, barely a whisper that seemed to be echoing through a tunnel, "I need to think."
Kirin's expression flickered. A subtle downturn of his lips, a barely perceptible shift in his golden eyes that then vanished too quickly. Had I imagined it? It was a spark of something, but gone so fast that I wasn’t sure it was ever there, leaving a chilling sensation of unease that settled deep inside me. Not like before. It wasn't playful this time. The amusement had a different tint. There was more cruelty to it than before and it scared me more than anything he had previously done.
"Sure," he said, his voice flatter and devoid of its usual taunt, "Get back here soon. Don't fuck around and you won't find out. That necromancer nearly erased you, and I can't have my successor getting knocked off permanently, you hear?" His words were a statement, but they were also a threat. There was something under his words. Something that made him seem irritated. Something I hated.
Then, everything went black, and I was falling. The world twisted as reality gave way as I was slammed into the darkness of unreality and then slammed onto the dusty road outside the city. My boots hit the hard packed earth with a dull thud. The air felt cold, biting, and the taste of metal clung to my tongue like blood, an aftertaste of something that had not happened yet, but I still remembered so vividly. Why did it taste like that?
The road stretched out before me, the cobblestones uneven and cracked. Each step felt awkward, my movements heavy and ill defined. I moved to the gate and noticed that the guard was different.
His mustache was too short, and his smile too kind, too forced, his eyes tracking me with an unsettling familiarity as if he knew exactly who I was, but in a way I knew he didn't.
I paid the fee, my hand moving almost on its own as my mind recoiled with that strange feeling of wrong.
It was as if my past self was moving, but my new self was simply along for the ride, a passenger in a vehicle that had started to move on a path of its own.
The city itself felt wrong. The scents were too muted, almost artificial. The sounds were too hushed, the usual clamor of the marketplace replaced by an unsettling silence. The layout was subtly off, all of it creating a sense of dislocation, as if this place was a poor imitation of something I had experienced, or was about to experience again for the first time. Everything felt just wrong enough to make my stomach churn. It was a place that was almost but not quite as it should have been, and that made me feel uneasy, because I knew that it should not be like this.
Where the hell was the Grand Darkness Dojo? They just almost killed me for good!
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I forced myself to move forward, putting one foot in front of the other, following a path set by someone else, not myself. I needed to focus.
The recruitment poster caught my attention as I moved to pass by. It was the same poster, the message almost the same as the ones I had memorized, but with one key difference that made my breath catch in my throat. Fifteen? It was supposed to say 18. It had always been 18. There had never been a world where it was 15.
Then, a whisper, "Sorry, kid, you can't know this. Not yet," The voice, my voice, yet not mine, echoed within my mind as the nausea crashed into me and my vision swam as if I was being pulled down into the depths of some horrible ocean, as dizziness hit me with a force that was almost physical and made my body feel as if it was made of lead. I staggered back to lean against the nearest wall, as the world seemed to tilt dangerously, the street before me becoming a shifting, swaying, and unstable thing that I wanted to throw myself away from.
My eyes sharpened as my mind cleared.
A lot was still missing, but it was absolutely clear.
I needed a plan.
A real one that was not just about reacting to events that were happening to me, but something of my own making.
Something that went beyond simply repeating the same damn actions.
Something to save Anna, to save Jessa, to save myself from the endless cycle of death and despair.
A cycle that I had repeatedly found out was more of a dead ended path to the death of billions.
No, you damn well listen to me, Darren! We can’t feed them! Every timeline that is doomed needs to be chucked into the void like a goddamn pile of shattered glass!
Now forget!
What could I even do to stop such a vast and powerful entity, what could I do to save them?
To protect them, to change the path before us? To ensure that the love we shared was not for nothing? What could I do other than keep trying?
Then, Kirin’s voice, sharp, and dismissive, crashed through my thoughts: "Are you a goddamn moron, successor?! I didn't save you from oblivion so you could get your soul yanked out and your body puppeted by a champion class threat that had turned himself into a goddamn devourer who you poked out of ignorance!
That bastard is not meant for YOU to deal with at your current level! He was living out his stupid ‘sealed master’ fantasy that sealed monsters like to play at and you jumped in like a moron! Your soul could have been trapped in THAT SPECIFIC timeline forever while your body shambled around doing busywork for a goddamn senile nutcase who would only wake up upon prime-devourer calling him! What the hell, successor?!"
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Kid, you can’t just try something that obvious. You won't remember this until the final battle and you’ll hate me then, but for god's sake, think things through!
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Why do you three still keep remembering this? The memory seal should work!
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A sealing key? A good try this time. Try distracting me with something inane next time. Might work. I’ll take those telepathy earrings, maybe try bracelets. Eh, fuck it. Don’t actually ever remember this. I’m doing something more hardcore this time. Fuckin’ unpredictable, this witchery shit.
The words, now like physical blows against my mind, felt like they were scraping at my very soul, bringing with them flashes of other worlds, other failures, and the echoes of countless deaths that all belonged to me, to me, and only me as a mountain of pain and a sense of hopelessness came crashing into my consciousness all at once. The faces of countless versions of myself all dying in different ways all reached out to me with a desperate plea for salvation. The power he offered was a truth, but wrapped in too many lies. I was not an ally, I was nothing more than a tool, a thing that was to be used. But clearly not to be discarded.
I knew it deep within my very core, that he needed us alive, so I’d use that against him.
A cold rage settled in, a calm that felt as solid as a stone, as the rest of my emotions recoiled and sought any form of escape. The training, the deaths, and the endless timelines - everyone died and it wasn’t just my fault due to ignorance.
He orchestrated this shit, and I needed to fucking kill him just as much as I did the prime devourer.
How, though?
Direct action didn't work last time, I realized, a new, chilling thought taking hold, I needed a new way.
A way to seal him and to remove his control over my existence and the existence of those I loved.
Jessa.
Anna.
A way to use his own machinations and hints against him.
I needed to make a plan. A real one that would leave him with no way out. To make it so that even if I died, he wouldn't be able to just shrug it off and move on. To make him feel a fraction of the pain and hopelessness that I was feeling right now, and would do all along my road to becoming his executioner.
I also needed my body to age back to our bodies' natural ages.
Being 13 again physically is garbage!
You want to know why? Well, the mortal limit needs to be reached before the age of 14 to unlock the best possible expression of Ki. So you’ve done that, I’ll turn you back when I feel you’ve earned it, soon.