Serpentine opened his eyes, glassy and unmoving, to an endless blue sky. The sunlight, filtered through wisps of cloud, warmed his skin. He lay sprawled on rough grass, the texture prickling his senses like static.

The grass was cold, just as the wind was, contrasting the rays of warmth shining down from the high heavens. Abruptly, Serpentine's chest convulsed, and he inhaled sharply, and the smell of grass assailed his nostrils, sending him into a coughing fit.

'How... am I alive?'

As Serpentine slowly started to remember who he was, fragments of memories started flowing in one after another, and each recollection led to another, like an intrinsic web of intrigue.

But the most vivid memory – the most recent too – was his utter defeat, loss, and humiliation against Fate, the imagery of his final move – the symphony born of the very tapestry of fate – still fresh in his mind, the dull pain echoing in his flesh and soul.

And yet, here he was – bloody, battered, and broken down, yet breathing all the same. Though, granted, his body felt like it had been crushed and reassembled with some parts gone missing.

His mind deliberately rowed away from the conversation he has with Fate towards the end, well aware he wasn't strong, stable, or healthy enough to tackle it right now. Instead, he did the wise thing and moved on, planning to revisit the topic later. He absolutely hated it, and terrified of it even, but if there was one thing Serpentine had that triumphed all else, it was spite.

He flexed his long, slender fingers, the motion slow and deliberate, feeling every joint creak in protest. But as if to spite the weakness of his own flesh, despite being dazed, Serpentine clenched his fists nonetheless, an instinctive act of defiance overriding his sense of pain.

His chaos-infused strength, once capable of bending reality, seemed absent. He struggled to summon the wild, unhinged energy of the Chaos Force, but that too was weakened. If earlier he could draw entire lakes and river's worth out from an ocean at a time, now he could only draw a bucket's worth of Chaos Force at best.

'Wait, doesn't Chaos Force directly correlate to your madness–... oh no.'

A realization thundered upon him. His bond with the fourth wall – the maddening, omniscient awareness that let him see through the fabric of reality – was no longer as prevalent as it used to be.

He could barely hear the incessant narrative hum that accompanied his actions, but even that required conscious effort. He could no longer feel the relentless pull of his own meta-awareness.

"This… isn't right," he muttered, his voice rasping with strain.

He had already realised his revival wasn't perfect. Now, the question was just how imperfect it was. The loss of his memories had affected his master of weapons, combat, and powers, so those were first.

Chrono Grace was first. He could still alter the flow of time, yet no longer as freely as before. If earlier he was a cyclone in time, then now he was barely a fart in the wind, if he had to say so himself.

He felt the light suddenly distort slightly, appearing slightly purple as he speed up his own body. He was faster, yes, but not by a lot. He could run slightly faster, and if he put in conscious effort, slow down the effects of gravity on himself, allowing Serpentine to run on walls, or in this case, trees.

Not for longer, of course. He could barely shift the timeframe he was in enough to reduce the force of gravity from dragging him down nearly ten metres per second to six metres per second. Outspeeding one of the fundamental forces was no simple task, after all.

He could also decelerate time in front of him, causing refraction as he altered the index on a whim, and also slow down the air in front of him enough to serve as a practical wall of defence.

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That was it.

Dissatisfied but resigned, he moved on to his next powers.

Dimensional Travel was... strange. He felt he could still momentarily phase between dimensions, but... something was off. A sense of danger warned him to not even bother trying. It wasn't him – it was the dimension he was currently in, a threat that was neither sheer stability nor the instability of space, but something else he couldn't quite put his finger on.

He had definitely sensed a similar anomaly before, the nature of it closer to time and fate rather than space. But it was neither of those in this context. Instead, it reeked of a familiar ability. It reeked of...

"Probability Manipulation..." Serpentine muttered under his breath, recalling the ability.

A strange yet powerful force, one of even God's mightiest weapons. He had no clue why he sensed a similarity to it in a metaphorical barrier that prevented him crossing dimensions, but he chalked it up to some lingering effects of Fate's mightiest blow.

He'd revisit the issue later.

For now, he only tried out some simple applications, such as phasing through dimensions to walk through the trees, increase his space manifolds by altering the dimensions of his steps, and a few more. Then, he moved on to his final ability.

Curse Manipulation.

As he focused his mind, whistling a vortex of wind, cold and turbid, the cursed energies around and within him suddenly sprang to life. A menacing aura shrouded the space around him, the enclosure suppressed tyrannically as something rose from beneath the earth.

Hands.

Thousands of purple hands, each desperate to claw and latch onto a target, to leech them dry of life energy, physical stamina, and mental fortitude. The grasses where they sprouted from dried and decayed, while the trees they hugged spontaneously burst into water – the nutrients, water, and minerals leaking out as the tree perished, the mycelium between beneath the earth only serving to nourish the hands even more.

Serpentine maintained his cursed dominion for half a minute, before dispersing it as he clicked his tongue in frustration.

'At least I can still do some basic Ascended Demon curses I guess.'

That concludes all three of his powers, so next, he summoned his weapon. Once more, a familiar phantom pain spread through his breast, shoulder, arm, and hand as black tendrils and appendages crawled out of them, weaving and hardening into a scythe of voiden black.

Serpentine gripped its staff tightly, his knuckles soon turning white as the scythe shook in his grasp. His breathing was labourer, sweat forming above his brows. It seemed the fragments of his memories lost also affected his pain tolerance.

After taking a few seconds to collect himself, he focused back on his scythe.

It was glorious as ever. The scythe was a symbiotic weapon, and was forged from the void, giving it a sleek, lightless black tone regarding both the handles and the blade, one that could seemingly cut through anything. Though, bonding with Serpentine seemed to have left its mark, as a damascus pattern emerged on the edges.

The Enchantments were still there, and the void energy radiated by his scythe still swirled inside his being, spiralling in the same vortex within his soul that contained the energies of curses, chaos, and even cosmic energy, each leaking its signature onto his life energy.

However... he noticed something off. A new power, one that he didn't recognise, mixed into the vortex that was his soul. Something similar to the Faith that powered Gods, yet not quite. The golden energy was mired with white, and it spiralled violently within his soul, not to be outdone by the rest.

And it was not minute in quantity either. It came in pulses. Four pulses as of now, beating wildly in his soul in an enchanting rhythm... a rhythm that the rest of the energies all synchronised with, and a rhythm that danced along the beat of his heart.

Serpentine stared blankly at the clear sky as he felt the foreign energy in his soul. 'When did I get that? From where?'

He simply could not remember what this was or how he had acquired this strange energy, the memories slipping through his fingers like grains of sand.

His first thought was The Avatars of Time, due to the colour scheme, but it didn't feel temporal. It was far too different from when he used Chrono Grace. His second thought was Primordial's Favour – the energy of the Primordials usually granted to a chosen champion, but perhaps he had accidentally stolen a small portion when he had survived Fate's last attack–

And then it clicked.

'The Kickstarter Campaign.'

He wasn't dead because the Kickstarter Campaign had hit a goal, which had revived him with all the grace of a Diogenes's Chicken. The four pulses of the strange energy, each was a miracle bestowed upon him as they hit a Kickstarter Goal. One of the five pulses of energies had already been used up for his revival, which left four.

This also meant he wielded a tool of stupendous, unpredictable power, sourced solely from the Kickstarter Campaign. This implied if more of the Kickstarter Stretch Goals were to be met, he would acquire more such Pulses of Kickstarter Energy.

Of course, that all depended on how many people actually decided to back the campaign.

The absurdity of it all almost made Serpentine laugh. 'Resurrected by crowdfunding. Figures.'

But there was no laughter in his heart. Not this time.

Not yet, at least.