CHAPTER 35: I MET MYSELF...

Keiser’s mind split open under the weight of panic and pain.

His body twitched against the suffocating sludge, his hand clawing at the ground as if by instinct, searching for something... anything... to anchor him. His thoughts spiraled, grasping for a way out, a trick, a memory, a spell, even a lie he could wield like a blade.

Memories rushed in, unbidden, slamming through him as though his skull had been split. Gideon’s laughter, Aisha’s soft chiding... faces blurred between warmth and regret. Their voices mingled with the bitter sting of betrayal, the gut-deep wound of trust broken by those he once called brother, comrade, family.

And then the other memories.

Manufactured smiles.

Carefully crafted illusions.

Comforts fed to him like meat to a starving dog... happiness that had never been his, but something molded, controlled, manipulated. He could see it now, the cracks behind every tender word, every fleeting embrace.

Even the memories after waking as Muzio came rushing back... awkward, unfamiliar, like a second skin he had been forced to wear.

The stolen life, the alien body, the moments he had no right to but still clung to as if they were his only proof of existence.

Each memory was a knife, but he seized them all.

Bittersweet or poisoned, they were still his.

And in the storm of them, as his lungs fought for air beneath the crushing sludge, he forced his mind to sharpen around one truth.

He would not let it end here.

The sludge crept lower, smothering half his face, seeping into his left eye until his vision warped into a blur of shadows and crimson haze. Through that suffocating veil, the world burned red... familiar red.

It was the same tint that had clouded his sight on the day he fell.

The day his dragonbone-hilt sword had pierced him, its weight both weapon and reminder of the creature he had sworn to free. The poor beast... majestic, chained, and broken... had trusted him. Them.

And they, in turn, had betrayed that trust. Not by intent, but by weakness. He had believed the serpent’s honeyed tongue, embraced the venom of lies until it coiled around his heart, and in the end, he was left with nothing but poison.

A poison that clung to him still.

Even in this stolen body, even across death itself, it lingered, etched into his soul as surely as any scar.

His chest tightened.

His teeth ground together.

And beneath the drowning pressure of the sludge, a thought cut through, sharp and merciless.

Oh.

Keiser remembered.

Not the lies.

Not the betrayal.

Not the weakness.

The promise

.

The vow made in blood and fire... that he would see freedom won, even if it tore him apart. That he would never again bow to the chains others tried to fasten around him, nor let the innocent bear the weight of his failure.

And in that instant, beneath the crushing darkness, the memory blazed like a brand.

And once again, his vision bled into red.

It wasn’t just sight... it was pain, searing and absolute. His left eye burned as if molten iron had been pressed into it, the sludge bubbling away under the heat that radiated from within him. The Gula shrieked, its monstrous cry rattling bone, reeling back as though scorched.

For a heartbeat, Keiser felt relief... his chest no longer strangled by the beast’s suffocating weight, his limbs freed from its crushing sludge.

His ears, moments ago clogged and muted, burst open to sound.

What he heard first was not the Gula’s screams, but a boom... a thunderous detonation that cracked through the air like a war drum.

The shockwave tore into the hulking abomination.

Limbs the size of tree trunks exploded apart, sent flying like grotesque shrapnel.

Claws, hooves, and half-rotted torsos rained down, slopping into the dirt with sickening splatters.

One grisly mound landed just short of Keiser’s vision, twitching as it tried to crawl back to the main body.

But it wasn’t the thunder or the grotesque fragments that seized Keiser’s attention.

It was the voice that followed.

Low, hard-edged, with a cadence he recognized as well as the scars burned into his own memories.

A voice that carried the bite of command, the weight of familiarity.

"How the hell did this thing get here? I made sure no more could form... none of them should have escaped."

Boots crunched on broken limbs. The sound was unhurried, confident, belonging to someone who had already fought such nightmares a hundred times before.

"No wonder I couldn’t see the torches," the voice muttered, more irritated than alarmed.

The road to the village had been straight, clear... he should have spotted the glow of firelight long before now. Instead, all he’d passed were smoldering heaps of ash, the remains of beasts burned beyond recognition.

And then, at the last bend, the answer loomed before him.

Something vast, a shape so massive it swallowed the horizon whole, squatted between him and the village. Its bulk blotted out every flicker of flame, every torch that should have marked civilization.

The voice gave a low, humorless chuckle. "So, this thing’s what’s been blocking the view."

That voice... Keiser knew it. Knew it deep in his bones.

Keiser forced his aching body to turn, every movement dragging against muscles that felt half-dead.

The sigils carved across his skin had burned themselves into raw, smoking marks... no longer conduits, just scars. They pulsed with dull pain, but he barely spared them a thought.

All that mattered was keeping Muzio’s mana tethered to the ward. If it collapsed, the gate would be open, and the village would be in danger.

Even now, his skull throbbed as if still clogged by the Gula’s suffocating sludge, pressing down on his thoughts like a weight.

Through the writhing haze of the half-ruined monster, he saw him.

The Gula’s body had been split apart, its bulk scattered, twitching in heaps of sludge and flesh as it clawed to rejoin itself. Severed limbs dragged themselves through the dirt, oozing like rivers to crawl back to the core. In the middle of the chaos, standing unbowed, was a man.

Light armor clung to his frame, more stripped-down than protective, the plates strapped only across his arms as though made for speed rather than defense.

In his hand, outstretched and steady, was a sword Keiser knew... an old knight standard blade, worn but resolute, its edge gleaming faintly under the gore it had just torn apart. With a single sweep, the man slashed aside a tide of sludge, the shimmer in his motion scattering the filth like smoke on the wind.

Keiser’s eyes locked onto him.

Onto himself.

Onto the man he had once been... Sir Keiser.