Death was like slipping into a dream, a transition so gradual, so imperceptible, that I didn't realize it had happened until I was already adrift.

  I could feel myself unraveling, my body tearing apart at the seams as I siphoned the Bck Queen's power, an endless, seething torrent of raw, unfiltered energy. It was too much. Far too much. My skin cracked, bckened, splitting open as rivers of unbearable heat coursed through my veins. I was burning, I was disintegrating. But I wasn't dead yet. The sheer magnitude of the power surging through me kept me banced on the knife's edge between existence and oblivion. I hung there, suspended in that thin veil of in-between, where time ceased to hold meaning.

  The world around me faded. The battlefield, the chaos, the Queen's shrieks of rage. It all dissolved into a weightless silence. My consciousness drifted, unmoored, and then… I saw it. A theater of memory unfolding before me.

  A py of my own life.

  It wasn't like reliving my past through my own eyes; instead, I watched it, as though I were an unseen observer in the shadows of a grand stage. The first thing I saw was not my birth, not the moment of my arrival into this world, but my awakening.

  The first time I opened my eyes in this life.

  I saw the Crib that had been both my home and my prison. The cold iron bars gleamed under the dim glow of artificial mana lights, a sterile cage that held me before I even understood the concept of confinement. I was a young boy, with a mind of a confused old man. I felt something deep in my core. A pull. A weight. A connection to something that I could not yet name. The first tast of mana in this new world.

  Had I been born here? Had I been sold? Had I belonged to someone before this life? The memories before this moment were lost, inaccessible, as if the transition between my past and present had traded them. No recollection of this world, another self. Just the cold, unforgiving cage and the quiet hum of an underground facility where I was nothing more than an asset to be prepared.

  The scene shifted.

  I was being introduced to him.

  My only friend in this wretched hellhole. My brother in all but blood. They told us from this day forward, we would be together always, from dawn till dusk, through every moment, through every trial. A pair.

  We shared everything: our meals, our clothes, our cell, even our punishments. We promised each other. Sweared to be each other's tether in the darkness. Promises whispered between trembling lips, sealed in the unbreakable bond of survival. We won't let them break us. We will endure. Together, to carry each other burdens.

  The scene shifted.

  I was strapped to a chair, thick leather restraints cutting into my wrists and ankles. Wires trailed from my body like vines, coiling over my bare skin, leading back to the machine that hummed ominously behind me. Electricity surged through me, again, and again, and again. Each jolt sent my body into violent spasms, my back arching, my vision blurring with agonizing light. I didn't remember what I had done this time. I didn't care.

  The punishments were the price of defiance. A cost I had long accepted. They could break my body, but they would never cim my soul. I would endure.

  But then—

  The pain stopped.

  The machine went silent. The wires were ripped away. My head lolled forward, breath hitching in exhausted relief.

  And then I heard it.

  A scream.

  Not mine.

  His.

  I forced my eyes open and saw him, strapped down where I had been only moments before. The same chair. The same wires. The same electric agony now searing through his body instead of mine. His voice cracked, raw and terrified, as he writhed under the onsught. His eyes met mine, pleading. Begging.

  Why?

  Why won't you stop this?

  A cold voice echoed behind me. Obey.

  I swallowed. The bile rising in my throat tasted of failure.

  I bowed my head.

  The scene shifted.

  I was older now. Barely more than a teenager.

  They paraded me through vish halls of the Crib, past masked patrons and leering monsters draped in finery. My steps were light, almost floating. I was drugged, barely conscious. A pretty little puppet, dressed and primed for dispy. Hands roamed over me, ciming, vioting. Their voices blurred together, a sickly-sweet chorus of amusement and desire.

  My body responded automatically, not because I wanted it to, but because I had been trained to. Conditioned. Forced.

  Bliss and shame. Pleasure and degradation. They made sure I felt both. They made sure I would never know where one ended and the other began.

  The scene shifted.

  A cell.

  Cold, damp, reeking of unwashed flesh and misery.

  I was curled in the corner, knees drawn to my chest, watching him. My friend. My brother. My only family.

  He was lying on the floor, unmoving.

  His body was broken, not just in flesh, but in mind.

  They had taken too much. Gone too far.

  The Rut they had forced him into was endless. A hunger he could never satisfy, a spiral that would never end, until it did.

  I cradled his head in my p. He was trembling, breath shallow, his once-vibrant eyes dull and hollow. A husk. A remnant of who he used to be.

  I knew what would come next.

  His mana reserves were depleted. He had drained himself over and over again, too many times. The next cycle would kill him.

  I had no choice.

  I pressed my forehead to his, whispering words only he could hear. A final promise.

  My hands trembled as I reached for his neck.

  I twisted.

  The scene shifted.

  I was in an operating room. The air was sterile, thick with the scent of antiseptics and something darker. Coppery.

  My limbs were heavy, my thoughts sluggish. I tried to move, but my body didn't obey.

  The Bck Queen Avatar loomed over me, her presence suffocating, her smile cold.

  I had cost her an asset. I had taken something from her.

  And now, I would pay it back.

  Forever.

  I watched as they forced the bck ooze down my throat. I felt it crawl inside me, filling every crevice of my being, ciming me. I wanted to scream, to fight, but my body was no longer mine. My will was no longer mine.

  I could only watch and feel as they took from me piece by piece.

  First, my toes. A scalpel, a flick of the wrist, and they were gone.

  Then my fingers. Hands. Feet. Arms. Legs.

  They carved me apart like a butcher dismantling meat, taking everything that was not deemed essential to my function.

  They took my tongue, so I could not scream.

  They took my ears, so I could not hear.

  They took my nose, so I could not smell the rot around me.

  But they left my eyes.

  They wanted me to see.

  I was lifted, carried into the abyss of my new prison.

  Hundreds of men hung impaled on spiked constructs, their bodies surging with forced mana flow. Their cores strained, refined, purified an endless factory of mana.

  Milkers were attached to their crotches, ensuring no ounce of mana was wasted.

  This was our purpose.

  Our fate.

  The st thing I saw before they finally took my eyes, and my world dissolved into endless, unrelenting agony and bliss.

  I don't know how many times I died in that horrid barn. But each time I did, they forced my soul back into that wretched body. My eternal debt unpaid. Until that finally, time and my torment ended.

  And then, I saw her with restored eyes.

  Maeriel.

  She stood amidst a sea of corpses of my tormentors. Cradling me like an infant as she took my from that pce.

  She was dressed in flowing armor of the eight-color rainbow, the kind of attire befitting legends of old than a contrast to this cold, sterile pce. But it was her eyes that I remembered most vividly. Her double pupils were piercing and calcuting and yet… soft.

  I watched as she cradled my younger self, her long, elegant fingers reaching toward my face. Her touch was cool against my burning skin. A contrast.

  "My precious boy, Mommy here now. Everything will be alright," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper.

  And then, the memory blurred as I was back in the present.

  Darkness swirled around me, an abyss stretching into eternity. I could feel the weight of a thousand lives pressing against me, the echoes of my today, the voices of my dead, the whispers of suffering. It was all-consuming, suffocating, dragging me deeper into oblivion.

  And yet, through the haze of memories that weren't quite memories, I saw myself again, reliving the today like a spectator in my own story.

  I saw the morning the start of another ordinary day that, unbeknownst to me, would spiral into chaos. I walked into King Victor's Bar, the way the air smelled of old wood and bitter ale. The nods from my bosses.

  I saw the Kitsune hands that grabbed me, the leering faces, the moment of helplessness. Then, the steel grip of an avenging orc saving me.

  I felt the echo of Taimi's ughter, the manic joy of her ugh. The pulse of energy as I resonated in a bathroom, the warmth of a bond forming where none should have been.

  I tasted the burn of alcohol, and felt the weight of a Champion's gaze as I gambled my fate in a drinking contest. The taste of victory, the warm presence at my side as hungry golden eyes comforted me.

  I remembered the battlefield. The csh of titans, the roar of a dragon, the fre of Excalibur slicing through the night.

  Then, the bck tide. The weight of the Queen's will. The moment my hand found purchase on her core.

  And now, here I stood.

  I could let go. Let the power consume me. Let the darkness take me and erase me in a final act of surrender, granting me the oblivion I had long craved. Rest. After a life of suffering, pain, and endurance, I could simply… cease.

  Or…

  I could fight.

  I could survive.

  I could continue to suffer.

  My hands clenched. My breath hitched. The choice was never really a choice at all.

  A sound rumbled through me, and a dragon's roar came from the depths of my soul. It was my voice, and yet, it wasn't. Something greater stirred within, something that refused to be conquered, something that remembered.

  I tched onto the power I had stolen, not to be consumed by it, not to contain it, but to wield it. To bend it, force it under my will. To make it mine.

  Our wills cshed, a battle unseen but no less violent. The Bck Queen surged against me like a raging tide, a river carving through stone, grinding me down inch by inch. I could feel her in every fiber of my being, pressing against my thoughts, my memories, my very sense of self. She was endless, eternal, a will that had crushed countless before me.

  I was a rock, unbroken, unbending but a rock could not withstand the tide of the sea forever.

  I was losing.

  But then. I felt it.

  A hand on mine. Small, calloused from swordpy, trembling with effort. Adora.

  Then another, gripping tight, warm with determination. Asah.

  More followed, one after another, their wills joining with mine, intertwining like threads weaving an unbreakable tapestry.

  Maeriel.

  Taimi.

  Lotha.

  Kori.

  Rhea.

  Medarda.

  A Union of Eight and One.

  Together, we pushed.

  Thus, the Bck Queen's will shattered.

  Codex

  Psalm 28 The Commentaries.

  O Crystal Dragon, You have woven the bonds of Union,

  A sacred thread of love and trust,

  A shelter in the storm, a light in the dark,

  A gift that reflects The Wholes' endless grace.

  When my heart is heavy, my partners uphold me,

  When my feet falter, they walk beside me,

  Their voices are as balm to my spirit,

  Their ughter a melody of joy.

  You have taught our hearts a love unshaken,

  A kindness that mirrors the Wholes' own,

  For as iron sharpens iron, so do lovers refine each other,

  Lifting souls toward grace.

  In times of sorrow, they are my comfort,

  In times of triumph, they rejoice with me,

  Bound not by blood, but by a love deeper still,

  A covenant of the heart, sealed in Wholes' name.

  Blessed are the one who walks with true Union,

  For in their presence, is love known,

  And through them, goodness shines,

  A reflection of the eternal love offered.