Victor didn’t celebrate after the city had been claimed. He didn’t celebrate even when they could walk through the streets again easily. He hadn’t the time for them.

Because while everyone else was glad to see some normalcy return to the world, he was working. Securing buildings, fortifying them, training Wielders and doing whatever he could to against the biggest fight of his life.

He trained day in and day out, working his muscles and his Seeds until he couldn’t push them any further. He trained with Loki too, and the rest of them. but when they’d wipe the sweat off with a towel and invite him out to relax, he’d refuse.

He knew it alienated them. A few years in most of the others only gave him a nod when they passed by. Amadeus tried to make conversation, but Victor couldn’t find a topic to hold it. There was always something else on his mind, some corner of the city that he’d forgotten to take care of.

Lillie had completely fallen off his radar. Last he heard of her she was with some guy from New York, if what Amadeus said was true. Ashley was still mourning her brother, but the kids had helped her with that. She’d taken quite a liking to Amadeus too.

And Amadeus himself was happy in turn. But whenever Victor saw them together, he felt a pain in his chest. If he failed now, he would be ripping away what his friends had. He poured himself into his work to ignore that fact. Ignore the isolation his position brought to him.

He was the only one who would ever know.

When it wasn’t food crisis, it was water. When it wasn’t water, it was some clever Angelos who thought they could take over Angel Heights for themselves. But Victor beat them all away, kept his little haven for himself for as long as he could.

His sole companion through it was Loki. The man didn’t speak much, but neither did Victor these days. They could stay in silence and carry out whatever mission the leaders had assigned for them.

He gave Loki a cutting Seed he found among Altar’s corpse. It looked strong, and Loki made great use of it afterwards. He returned to the same fighting style Victor remembered him for, if a bit different in some moves. Throwing slashes around seemed to be the man’s forte.

They’d take the cars outside for weeks at a time to scout out the perimeter. Find any news of especially powerful monsters who would be heading their way. They’d take care of them before they became a threat, before they had a chance to rampage across America and grow stronger.

Victor tried his best to keep the survivors together but in the end, even he had to admit they couldn’t be bound to one place for too long. Some of the guys went around the world, taking supplies with them to establish their own. Others were curious of what had become, and needed answers Angel Heights couldn’t provide them.

Professor Cooper had been one of the latter. He promised Victor he’d come back after, and took Chekhtana in tow as they explored the wasteland. But he never did hear back from them.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they made it past the End. Protected their home and succeeded.

Victor knew he’d failed when the monsters came early.

****

He was standing atop a building like usual. A Gate had opened up on the horizon, and monsters had started pouring out by the thousands.

He thought he’d been doing everything right. But they’d come two years too early. Only eight had passed, and Victor’s Anchor had not reset yet.

As he mowed down hundreds of his foes, Victor was perplexed. There were no Metamorphs, no Imperials, no Titans and certainly no Vintarics. All he found were Daughters of Mara. Every kind that he knew of.

He was used to dealing with them mixed within other formations, but when they came at him by themselves, he couldn’t fight them back. Some of them had Seeds that rivalled his own powers, and though Victor shouted and warned his Wielders to stay away, they stubbornly refused.

They fought with their very hearts, only for those hearts to change and turn them against each other. Some froze in space as a million thoughts flooded their minds. Others were lured in by the siren calls of Ragas.

A disorganized defence broke apart like paper in front of the invading army. Ripe for the picking by stronger monsters. Titans came and stomped down buildings into dust and debris. They levelled the city one pace at a time with barely any opposition.

Victor took down three or four, aiming floating weaponry and shooting them at the enemies. He infused each with an attack and gasped for breath afterwards, but still it wasn’t enough. More and more came through the Gates, endless and unceasing.

And behind them was their leader. Or Leaders, if Victor wanted to be accurate.

Four bodies floated in the air. Without his increased Senses, Victor wouldn’t have been able to discern a single thing about them. There was something about them that felt more solid, more sure than the rest of the invading forces.

Red-skinned and horned, with fangs jutting upwards from their jaws, they wore matching professional suits with a face emblazoned on the front. All four of them looked the same, like they were quadruplets.

When one of them waved his hands, Victor felt something lurch from his body.

His Seeds. Something was tugging on them, trying to free them. All except the Timewalker’s Origin. The longer he stood, the stronger the pull became, and Victor knew that some time soon, they’d escape from his body.

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Fear and panic overtook the young Timewalker and he started to run. Away from the crowd of Wielders, monsters and civilians. He ran and ran until he could find the parking for the cars, hoping to get out of the city as quickly as possible. When he arrived, the vehicles were destroyed.

Most were cut into pieces, not unlike the work of a certain Seed that Victor had given Loki. A fight was going on atop the rooves near the cars. Parts of the building were cut with perfectly straight lines, sending pieces down into the street.

Victor rushed to reach the roof, but the fight came to him long before that. Loki rocketed into the street below and crashed into the ground, forming a crater around himself.

Victor jumped into it and kneeled down next to Loki. he was cut in a hundred spots as well, and Victor feared he’d lost his Seeds to one of the Daughters. But the truth was something stranger.

A figure dropped down across the street from Victor and Loki. He was made of glass pieces that floated around a central human-like mass. Each of those pieces floated in a different direction, before moving back into place to form a single shape.

Victor could see straight through the monster, and there was nothing inside. But what scared Victor most was the face.

It was Loki’s.

Glassy and transparent as it was, it was his. Victor knew that.

“Loki, what is that thing? I’ve never seen you get knocked on your ass so hard,” he asked.

“M-me. A me that wants to end me…” Loki replied miserably.

Victor’d never seen the conflict on his face. Before he could ask anything else of Loki, the monster sent a flying slash at them.

Victor and Loki jumped apart as the slash cut through the road. The monster reinforced it with more, tearing up more of the asphalt as it swung around its long piecemeal arms. They stretched further than normal, giving the monster the look of a stretchy toy.

Victor shot at it with his guns, but the monster cut them out of the air. Loki matched the monsters with slashes of his own, but the monster had wider range. Its cuts came from more directions than the Wielder could deflect with his own.

Victor stepped back a moment and combined his twin pistols into a Combination Forge. The guns broke into parts and put back together into a red and blue hand cannon that Victor had to hold up with both arms. He aimed the cannon in between Loki and the monster and fired. The resulting blast knocked the road into the air, and provided enough cover for Loki to step away.

The Wielder greeted Victor with a raise of his enchanted bastard sword, before the both of them hid.

“Where did it come from, Loki? And why does it have your powers?” Victor asked.

“If I knew, I would have told you long ago! It’s as alien to me as it is to you.”

“I wish the professor was here…” Victor lamented. Out of the alley, the monster had recovered, and was searching for its prey.

“Whatever. Tell me, can you distract it long enough for me to get a hit in behind?”

Loki nodded before jumping back into the streets. The monster instantly locked eyes with Loki once it saw him again. That gave Victor enough time to jump on the rooves and get around the monster.

He tried not to look at the approaching carnage and instead readied his Combination Forge once more. When he did, he aimed the bullet right at the monster’s back.

Another blast shook Victor back in the air. It travelled through and hit the ground where the monster had been standing, exploding along with it. Once the burst of steam and pressure cleared, he saw its glass face cracked shaking.

The monster briefly turned its attention to Victor and tried to shoot another slash onto the building he was standing in. But before it could get the attack off, Loki came in behind it and slashed it into pieces.

The monster fell in chunks. The life seemed to drain out of the glass as it did, and Victor saw a notification on his screen, alerting him to a new entry in his bestiary [4]. He dropped down near the street and grouped up with Loki, but the man was staring intently at his own visage reflected in the monster’s body.

“It spoke to me a little, beforehand,” Loki told him.

“About what?” Victor asked, curious.

“About giving relief,” Loki said. His eyebrows were knit together in confusion.

“Some of the monsters try to get inside of your head. Come on,” Victor urged him away from the body, even though Loki glanced back every now and then.

They ran to one of the more armoured vehicles in their camp. It was one that Victor had personally Infused with a Seed. The Seed had made the car more durable and quicker, less reliant on fuel to get further. It had taken some tinkering beforehand to get it compatible enough, but once he had, the Seed stuck to it like glue.

He revved it up and started the engine. Loki chose to stand on top of the car in case they ran into any more enemies. When they did, he’d slash them apart and rescue the Wielders they’d been hunting down.

Victor wanted to stay behind. To try and save the city as best as he could. But by the time they’d been done with the Mirror, half of it had already fallen.

When the others cried and begged him to stay, Victor left. Because they needed to survive. He needed to survive.

The city didn’t last the day. When night had fallen, there weren’t many survivors. Victor’s group was among the few. He kept driving and driving, the others’ arguments gone.

Most of them were non-verbal for the rest of their time there. they did as best as they could to find food, shelter and survive the coming months. Victor among them. he set himself to the work and refused to even hear a word out of their mouths.

Maybe he’d grunt an agreement or something else, but he’d never engage. That’s how he spent the rest of his time, and it became obvious to the man how much he hated it. All alone in the world, with not a single soul to tell about his worries, not a single person to understand what it was like.

If Amadeus had survived, Victor hoped he wouldn’t meet him. he’d pushed them away this time around. He’d thought it best, as most of his time was wasted with people and among them. Maybe Victor thought that, without the interference, he’d help build a wall that could stand up to the coming tide.

But that wall he’d built had become a signal instead. To the monsters out there that he was doing well. That his people were doing well. That must have been why they attacked so early.

In his previous lives, Victor had known of the Grand Settlements. Chief among them were Germany and Atlantis. They had weathered the Fall better than any other, and survived far longer than most other communities did. But he also knew that before the world ended, even those had been broken down.

Now he knew why. Those figures he’d seen in the sky were undoubtedly Mara, leading his Daughters to destroy Angel Heights and the city surrounding it.

Victor chuckled while he drove the car. No one else shared his mirth and some even glared at him as they made their way across the world.

Maybe he should’ve been glad. They’d saw him as enough of a threat to eliminate him early. That was something to be proud of, right?

Their little caravan travelled across America for the next two years, unsheltered and starving. Victor had to make terrible decisions during those times, but he did it for the sake of the future.

He needed to be quicker. Even quicker in establishing bases. Not just in Los Angeles like he’d done this time around, but across the world. He needed to kill Mara. Needed to stay close to his friends. Needed to ask the Professor for a more permanent solution and needed to do it all within the ten years he’d been gifted by his Seed.

When the anchor finally recharged, Victor awaited the end. He didn’t resist when the ground cracked under his foot and magma burst from it. He just knew he needed to be quicker next time around.

But oh God, how? Was his last thought as the earth came up to swallow him whole.

[Ability Unlocked: Speedup]

[Ability Unlocked: Sense of Time Boost]