In this world, against the very nature of all things, names were absolute.
Names were so absolute that merely speaking the name of a great being could allow it to reach you.
Names were what gave identity to beings beyond identity, and names were what granted definition to things that should have remained undefined.
A name was vital to one's existence, a fragile tether preventing the self from dissolving into the vast.
It was an indifferent value that lingered beyond the stars, where thought itself was devoured by deeper hungers.
And I had just been granted a title.
A name that gave power.
Though the power it offered was minuscule, too small to alter anything now, its meaning was far greater.
It meant the title was true.
It meant reality had accepted it.
It meant something ancient, something predating this planet and all the lives clinging to it, had acknowledged me.
I froze in the weight of that revelation, long enough for confusion to rise among those around me.
I forced a cough, dragging my mind back.
"Back to the topic at hand," I said quietly. "Do we all agree with my proposition?"
Malachi let out a soft laugh before sighing. "Alright. Let's set this system into place."
The others nodded.
I exhaled slowly. "Good. Now onward with the war."
My head tilted slightly as we resumed discussion, our voices weaving with growing intensity.
And as we spoke, the world turned, indifferent, while the hours blurred into fiction, swallowed by planning and fear and ambition.
***
We finished the talk, and Malachi decided to leave, to go start preparing swiftly.
I watched him go, feeling the risk of the coming days settling over me like a second skin.
It was something I could not peel away no matter how hard I tried.
Meanwhile Sansir was going to start amplifying the training for the recruits, pushing them harder than ever before.
Part of me wondered if even that would be enough, though another part of me clung to the quiet conviction that it had to be.
We no longer had the luxury of doubt.
We had decided that the war would occur in two weeks, and that we would prepare quietly, moving in shadows rather than pride.
Silence had always been a better ally than arrogance, and for once we all agreed on that.
Other than that, I had other plans forming restlessly in my mind, as I just now remembered that maid's name.
The memory flickered like a candle, delicate yet persistent, whispering that I should have faced it long before now.
I left Mirabel in our room, much to her own dismay, and I set out to find that maid.
Her frown had lingered in my thoughts, tightening something in my chest, but this was something I had to confront alone.
I searched for a while, wandering through quiet halls until I came across her dusting an old painting.
It was a portrait of our mother and father, and the sight of it pricked something raw inside me, something I had been avoiding for far too long.
A reminder that I came from flawed blood.
And that flaw was exactly why I intended to reshape the world.
"Nicole." I spoke out in a haze, the name tasting heavier than I expected. "Do you recall that day?"
She turned to me, surprised, almost wounded. "So you do remember my name. How… cruel."
[Nicholas was a terrible person, he often chose to forget things too hard for him to bear.]
Her bitterness cut deeper than I let show, and for a heartbeat I felt a sting of shame rise like heat behind my ribs.
She wasn't wrong.
Forgetting had always been easier than facing myself.
I grit my teeth. "I will never forget. You are my kin. My older sister. The one whom I must save."
As the words left me, I felt an uncomfortable truth rising.
I needed to save her not simply out of love, but because saving her meant saving myself.
She was my reflection.
My sin with a different face.
She looked dazed, staring at me as though I were someone else entirely, then she laughed.
It was sharp and brittle, half amusement, half accusation.
Some part of her wanted to believe me. Another part refused to.
"Alright," she said softly, "what happened that day?"
The reason my sister, my older sister at that, was a maid was simple.
She was vile. Just like me. But what she lost, I kept. What she envied, I embodied.
"It was the day me and Mirabel met," I said slowly. "You saw the love in her eyes, my eyes, our eyes. You decided to steal it."
She began to laugh. A terrible laugh. One that cracked mid-sound as tears streamed freely.
"Yes, keep talking."
[Nicholas was doing all he could to hold back.]
Her laugh wasn't directed at me.
It was aimed inward, at the version of herself she despised.
The same way I loathed the pieces of myself that mirrored her.
"You attempted to steal that love, and as a price you were stripped of your power. You tried to steal something too grand."
She began to walk forward, throwing down her brush, each step trembling between fury and longing.
"Yeah, keep going."
"You, ever as envious as you are, were forced to become a maid, to pay for your sins and to shield you from your doom."
She stopped before me, her eyes lowering, her breath shaking. "And now what?"
[Nicholas could hold back no longer.]
Her question stabbed into my heart far deeper than it should have.
Because she wasn't asking about punishment. Or consequences. Or even the past.
She wanted to know if she still had a place in my world.
If she still mattered to me.
If a monster could be loved by another monster.
My arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, my face pressed to her chest and neck, clinging to warmth I had missed for far too long.
"I love you, dear sister," I whispered. "So for this, you must love yourself."
Because if she couldn't learn to love herself, then how could I ever justify loving the parts of me that were born from the same sin?
She hated me.
But she hated herself more.
And both truths carved deeply into my ideology.
Her surprise came swiftly, and then I felt tears fall onto my cheeks, hot and trembling.
"You're selfish," she breathed, her voice cracking. "Doing something like this so suddenly."
She wasn't wrong.
I was selfish.
I would save her because I refused to lose anything precious ever again.
I would reshape the world because its cruelty had taken too much from me.
My sister died in my previous life.
She had protected me along with Sansir, and yet before she died, she gifted me something.
She gifted me power.
Nicole was not one to give gifts, and the power was weak… and yet it was the very thing that allowed me to come back.
That fragile spark was the foundation of my second chance.
The world had tried to end me, and I clawed my way back with the last sliver of her envy-tainted love.
It was that small, fragile gift that let me act just once more.
"Yes," I said quietly. "I know. And so… could you indulge your selfish little brother, and become powerful once more?"
Because if she rose again, then so would I.
If she redeemed herself, then perhaps I could believe in my own redemption.
She hugged me back. Her strength was impossible, instantly surging to Sansir's level.
Maybe even higher, and the warmth that wrapped around me felt like home and heartbreak all at once.
"Alright, little brother," she whispered. "I shall give to you this gift."