"Some things aren't remembered.Some things remember you."
The cold was gone.
There was no wasteland. No tunnels. No Violet, no steel, no sky.
Only the hush of black water running beneath marble floors—and the stillness of a world untouched by time.
Matte stood at the edge of a vast chamber, circular, open to a starless void above. Soft violet light pulsed from lines etched in the floor—veins of energy stretching like roots across the polished stone. It was warm here. Calming. Like the eye of a storm that had not yet reached the world.
She stood in the center of it all.
Nyxia.
Not caged. Not whispering from beyond. Just there.
Her hair was endless black woven with streaks of faint light, as though constellations lived inside her. Her eyes shimmered with shades that could not be named—deep, ancient, but curious. She was barefoot, her steps leaving no sound, her body wrapped in dark silk that floated as if underwater.
And she was watching him.
"I thought you'd be taller," she said softly, tilting her head. "The way the echoes speak of you… they make you sound like a god-slayer."
Matte blinked, confusion already coiling behind his eyes. "Where… where is this?"
Nyxia took a single step closer, and the air changed—like something within it recognized him.
"You're not dead," she whispered, almost amused. "Yet."
He took a breath, but it felt heavy. "Do I know you?"
"No," she said, studying him. "But I've known of you for a very long time."
Matte stepped forward instinctively, unsure why his feet moved but unable to stop them.
Her voice lowered, a thread of reverence slipping into it. "There's something inside you, Matte… something far older than your flesh. Something I've never felt in anyone else."
He stiffened. "What does that mean?"
Nyxia didn't answer. Instead, she reached toward him—her fingers hovering near his chest, not touching, just feeling.
"It's like standing at the edge of a storm that hasn't broken yet," she murmured. "And all it wants to do is remember itself."
He stared at her, searching for something—an anchor, a truth, anything—but her expression was unreadable. Too much emotion wrapped in silence.
"Why me?" he asked.
"You'll understand when you fall," she said.
And just like that—
—the light shattered.
Pain. Blinding, all-consuming.
Matte gasped as his body was thrown through the air, crashing into stone with a force that broke the ground beneath him. The stars were gone. So was Nyxia.
Now… there were gods.
Four of them.
Demios stood in front—the only one whose face wasn't cloaked in divine shadow. Pale skin laced with glowing sigils. Long hair slicked back, wet with blood that wasn't his. His eyes were pits of gold burning with fury. He said nothing—but the weight of his presence alone was suffocating.
The other three stood behind him—faceless, shapeless, but monstrous in posture. Like their forms struggled to stay in this plane. Like their bodies were trying to forget they existed at all.
Matte tried to move—but one of the gods stepped forward and slammed a boot into his chest.
His ribs cracked instantly. Blood erupted from his mouth. A second god grabbed him by the throat and lifted him like he was nothing—then hurled him against a wall that split down the middle from the impact.
Demios approached.
Still silent.
Still watching.
Then he raised his hand.
Matte barely saw it before it hit—an open palm that didn't just strike—it disintegrated part of him. A chunk of shoulder vanished in a burst of gold static, leaving only agony and light.
He screamed, but it didn't echo.
No sound carried here.
The gods were methodical.
Ruthless.
One held him down. One carved into his skin with a sigil-shaped brand that glowed blue and hissed with NULL energy. Another whispered something into his ear—and though Matte couldn't make out the words, they made his vision blur, his thoughts melt, his very essence start to slip.
He was being undone.
And through it all, Demios just watched.
They wanted him to break.
That much was clear.
Not kill—break.
To fracture whatever core he carried, piece by piece. And the worst part wasn't the pain. It was that some part of him—deep inside—recognized this.
This had happened before.
Maybe not in flesh. Maybe not in this lifetime. But the agony was familiar. Like a long-lost scar being torn open again.
One of the faceless gods extended a hand—three fingers long and skeletal, tipped with bladed light. It didn't touch Matte directly. It hovered inches from his chest…
…and began to pull.
His Essence surged, violently trying to retreat inward, but it wasn't fast enough. His vision split in two. He saw himself from above and below at once—two angles of a man being unwoven.
Memories bled out like smoke.
Voices he couldn't place.
Laughter that wasn't his.
A field of white fire and a woman screaming—
"DON'T FORGET WHO YOU ARE!"
Nyxia?
No. Not this time.
Another voice. One buried far deeper.
His body hit the floor with a sickening crack. His legs weren't moving. Arms barely responded. Blood pooled beneath him, thick and black.
Demios stepped forward at last.
Still no words.
Only that look.
A god staring at a mistake that shouldn't have survived.
He crouched down and placed a hand on Matte's head. Not violently. Almost… tenderly.
And Matte saw everything.
The inside of a dying star.
The shattering of a thousand timelines.
The VOID. The truth of what lay beyond it. Nyxia's prison. The place not even gods could understand—only fear.
And then—
It began to swallow him.
The black walls of the chamber rippled. The faceless gods leaned in, chanting in a language that made the space cry. Matte's soul buckled. NULL energy wrapped around his spine, slithering upward like it was trying to crawl into his mind.
He was disappearing.
Not dying.
Not bleeding out.
But being removed.
And just before the last of him began to unravel—
he saw her.
Across the divide.
Not in the chamber.
Not in the physical plane.
But within the tear being forced open by the gods. A rupture in the boundary of existence.
Nyxia.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came through. Her hands slammed against the invisible barrier that separated them. Tears spilled down her cheeks, burning through space like comets.
Matte couldn't reach her.
He couldn't even move.
But her eyes burned into his.
And in that moment, something pushed back.
A ripple.
A spark.
One spark in a sea of annihilation.
"You are not theirs."
The words came from nowhere. Or maybe from within.
Suddenly, the sigils on his skin cracked.
The NULL began to shriek.
One of the faceless gods reeled backward as his fingers ignited with fire that bled inward.
Demios took one step back. Just one.
It was the first sign of fear.
Matte didn't rise.
He couldn't.
But his soul did.
A pulse of Essence erupted from his chest—wild, unstable, fractured—but pure. It slammed into the gods like a tidal wave, sending cracks through the chamber floor.
The NULL retreated.
The portal began to collapse.
The light of Nyxia's eyes faded into black as the tear sealed—and her hand, pressed against the barrier, was the last thing he saw before—
He woke up screaming.
Back in the present.
Sweat poured from his skin. His breath came in short, ragged bursts.
Violet jolted awake across the small camp they'd set up. "Matte?! What—what happened?"
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because the gods weren't just memories.
They were waiting.