Aurelia stood her ground as the fog creature loomed over her. Around them, planks and branches spun through the air, crashing into the water — the sea's tranquility completely gone.
"Words can't settle this anymore."
She stepped back, planted her foot, and thrust her arm forward. Fire came out in a solid beam, casting hard shadows across the water. It punched straight through the creature's bulk.
The beam of pure fire shot at the Fog Creature's pile of flesh, burning through piles of it, and inevitably being consumed inside the maze of flesh and bark.
The creature's tendrils shot out in every direction. She moved through them — ducking, jumping, angling her body through the gaps. Where she touched them, the flesh turned orange, and then black, crumbling at the edges of her palms.
Her palms glowed imperceptibly.
She moved gracefully — weaving through the mass of flesh, quickly approaching the Fog Creature. But suddenly, a pillar of wood shot right at her.
Aurelia raised her arms as the tree collided against her, which sent her skidding across the sea's surface, the tendril-wrapped timber following after her.
The three-way Soul battle continued with a quiet observer on the sidelines.
Noah watched all this, with a huge grin etched on his face.
Will: 76% Possessed
He had no idea why the counter had jumped so fast, or why none of them had noticed him, much less attack. He wasn't thinking too hard about it though. At 76, the math was simple. He was almost home.
Aurelia's eyes were bright enough to hurt to look at. The fire around her wasn't staying close to her body anymore — it was spreading, the heat distorting the air above the water.
And all at once, pillars of flame shot up from above, piercing through the forest of flesh tentacles and wood — creating multiple, jarring holes in them.
She didn't stop. Her hands moved like she was conducting something, and the fire followed — eating through flesh and splintered trunk indiscriminately.
The creatures moved toward the source of flames, as she grinned back.
Outside, Leon and Sunny were nearly done fighting Nephis, Cassie and the Carapace Centurion.
Leon snickered, then burst into loud laughter.
The centurion screeched loudly, reacting to Leon's laughter.
The flames devoured the colossal trunk like a pillar of sun. The sky above the island turned orange, and sparks drifted through the air like a storm of fireflies.
And eventually...
[You have killed an Awakened Terror Soul Devouring Tree.]
The roots that lurched toward Aurelia, suddenly stopped, and began shaking. Then, they crumbled into fine pieces of dust, as though they never existed.
Bright orange flames danced everywhere. Fragments of tree bark shattered all around the empty space.
"Why go so far?" The creature asked.
Its body was ruined. Countless wounds, most of the flesh charred black. But this wasn't a physical battle — what that meant for the creature, was unknown.
Aurelia breathed deeply. Her flames ran on ember charge. That charge was gone now.
She kept her face composed.
"Tell me...princess." The creature tilted its grotesque head.
"Why fight for the man that betrayed you?"
Aurelia straightened her back.
"Corrupted like you would never understand."
The creature chuckled.
"That is correct. Creatures like me simply move to devour the flames of desire."
Noah gritted his teeth.
Will: 46% Possessed
'Why? WHY?'
After the influence from the Soul Devouring Tree vanished, so did the big number on his counter.
Both Aurelia and the creature froze at the same moment. The sea rumbled as though something had just invaded its vicinity.
They turned their heads up simultaneously. At the top of Leon's Soul Sea, something seemed to be falling down at a rapid pace.
Aurelia looked down and...
The fog creature was gone.
Noah widened his eyes. He was too slow to follow whatever had entered.
Right ahead of him, stood a figure. It was a beautiful lady, whose posture looked strong, her presence unfaltering and domineering.
She then smiled. Her smile looked bright and radiant. Almost as if it was of the heavens.
"Who are you?" Aurelia asked, her voice still tense.
The lady remained quiet for a while. Her smile then widened.
"Take care of him for me."
Then she was gone. Vanished, or moved — Aurelia couldn't tell which.
Noah just stood there. But that smile... He knew that smile from somewhere.
The Soul Sea pulsed again, and Noah was thrown out.
***
He opened his eyes again, this time outside the Soul Sea.
The aftermath was everywhere — the charred skeleton of the Soul Devouring Tree, the Carapace Centurion's body, Leon standing alone at the island's edge. Noah checked his runes without thinking.
He hurried to summon his runes.
Will: 7% Possessed
Noah's knees slowly buckled.
Back to being a ghost. Back to just watching.
He gaze drifted to Leon, who was staring at the horizon.
He was used to it by now. That was the worst part — how used to it he'd become.
The countless nights of Leon breathing steadily in the dark while Noah just... existed alongside him. No body. No voice.
Watch. Observe. Wait.
He'd told himself it was fine. Told himself that patience was all that he had. Every flicker of Leon's emotions. Every stray thought. Every small, private moment that Leon never knew he was sharing. Noah had watched all of it, not because he wanted to — but because there was nothing else to do. No other way to pass the time inside a life that wasn't his.
Watch. Observe. Explain it away.
He doesn't know. He can't help it. Just wait.
Then there was Aurelia. He hadn't known how to react when he first saw her — the fight had begun too fast, and he'd been too focused on the counter climbing to think straight. Now, he didn't know what to do with the sight of her.
Would she remember him?
No. Of course she wouldn't. She knew Leon. Not Noah.
Just like that, Leon had stolen a friend from him. His body and soul weren't enough.
Aurelia knows Leon. She fought for Leon. She nearly died in that sea for Leon.
Not for Noah. Never for Noah.
He thought about all the nights he'd watched Leon sleep. Watched him wake up. Watched him speak to people, earn their trust, fill the spaces that should have been Noah's with Leon's face and Leon's voice.
Just watch, endure, and wait.
Not once, had Leon planned on how they would help Noah. There was never helping Noah. There was only how to be cool, how to kill the next biggest monster.
And Noah would just watch him throw away his body.
He wanted to help Leon some way. And Leon, just never cared. He cared about his friends, but never the very version of him always standing beside him.
Something hardened in Noah's chest. The thought was simple and clean.
Kill him.
Noah slowly got up to his feet, and took a step forward.
'No. Killing you wouldn't be enough.'
He took another step.
'I want you to watch now.'
Noah appeared beside him. "You shouldn't be walking."
Leon didn't answer.
I will help you, Leon.
"Your soul sea hasn't stabilized yet."
I will help you create the most wonderful life you can think of.
"You were lucky."
"You keep saying that." Leon's voice grew irritated.
I will help you make friends. Maybe even love. Whatever you want.
"Because you keep needing to hear it."
Silence settled between them. A long one.
Leon lowered his gaze slightly.
"...Yeah."
And then... When you're happy with yourself, with your life...
"Build a boat," Noah said. "Cross the sea. Get stronger before the next thing tries to kill you."
Leon let out a tired breath, and nodded his head.
'I'll take it all. Every piece of it. The same way you took everything from me.'
Noah's expression was flat, not letting any of the malice show on his face.
But he was already determined.
At the end, Noah let out a remark in a low tone. "You should try leaving these three."
Leon let out a soft hum, his focus immediately shifting to Nephis who had just arrived.
Noah closed his eyes.
Soon.
***
Leon wanted to tell the others.
"Guys—"
A tentacle the width of a tree trunk closed around Leon and pulled.
He couldn't move. His entire body had been frozen as though he were a statue made of stone.
Noah watched the giant tentacle pull Leon into the sea, as he got separated from the trio.
Will: 12% Possessed
The realization dawned, cold and sharp, like a shard of ice in his throat.
'So that's... how it works.'
Every time Leon moved against his own instincts, the counter climbed. It wasn't about Noah pushing. It was about Leon yielding.
'...No. That's not exactly right.'
Not because Leon lost.
Because Noah, for just a moment, had been more than him.
Every spike in the counter, every drop — he lined them against his memory and looked at what they had in common. Not Leon's defeats. Not Leon's pain.
But Noah's influence.
The thought was horrifying.
As his astral form was pulled into the sea of darkness, Noah couldn't help but shudder at the similarities between the void and the dark sea.
But he didn't falter. Noah kept himself calm. He knew Leon would survive. He always did, after all.
Now all that Noah had to do, was consume Leon's will.
So he started small. A nudge here — go left instead of right. A whisper there — dodge it, don't block it. Patient, careful, invisible.
The counter barely moved.
It crept up when Leon listened and dropped when he didn't, dancing around the same few numbers like it was mocking him. Noah watched it tick up one point and back down two. Up again. Down again.
Weeks of this.
With each passing day, Noah's frustration just grew.
He stopped thinking about anything except the counter. It had become the only clock he had, the only measure of progress in a life that otherwise refused to move.
But forcing it wasn't working. Every time he pushed, Leon pushed back without knowing he was doing it. The man was stubborn down to the bone.
So he stopped forcing it, and decided to think like Leon.
If Noah saw a creature that Leon didn't, he would encourage him to go kill it. At least that way...he could get there—
Will: 18% Possessed
Will: 17% Possessed
Noah clenched his fists.
He understood immediately. Leon's will was already moving in that direction. He'd bent himself to Leon's will rather than the other way around.
He wanted to scream. Wanted to throw something, break something, let out the weeks of it all at once. The grinding, invisible, pointless weeks.
But no. He couldn't.
Noah's gaze drifted to the large bird beside him.
Birdie. The spawn of the abominable Vile Thieving Bird.
The Trace could see him, just like Leon.
Its ruby eyes gazed at him for a moment too long.
Noah looked back at it. After a moment, he smiled — almost genuine. "Doesn't it bother you? How reckless he is?"
The bird let out a low screech. Agreement, maybe. It's always hard to tell with Birdie.
He stared into the distance again.
But a thought surfaced. The Vile Thieving Bird had stolen Sunny's fate. Could Birdie do the same?
He shook his head. There was no point in thinking about plans that had too many variables.
Noah only had one goal right now.
And that was to take his body back.
***
Leon stared at the Lord of the Dead as it rose through a cloud of ash and ember.
The bones had gathered themselves together, piling high until they formed something enormous — a giant of skeleton and marrow, each bone faintly glowing red.
Then, slowly, it turned around.
"Oops."
Noah let out a short breath.
He leaned forward, and whispered something into Leon's ears.
Leon's eyes lit up. "That's...kinda genius..."
'Let's see how this turns out.'
Noah was confident Leon could kill it. And if not — they could always run. But what he wanted to test was the possession counter.
What made it move?
Leon's hand grazed through Birdie's feathers. "Just one more push. Come on."
Birdie was exhausted from absorbing every flame that had swept toward them. And yet the bird screeched, its voice cutting through the vast emptiness between them, swallowed only by the roar of the giant skeleton ahead.
Birdie surged forward. Leon jumped off its back, his crown glowing deep red.
Birdie's dark feathers also lit up, every one of them bleeding into a dim, steady orange.
The Lord of the Dead moved.
Thousands of small bones shifted at once, redistributing mass upward through the column of its body, funneling into one enormous arm. Every skeleton in the structure lent what it had to the swing.
Birdie's feathers shifted, it rolled across the arm, going over it. The arm passed through empty air.
It flew faster and faster, circling around the Lord of the Dead in wide arcs.
The crown glowed, and so did the spawn. As it kept circling around, flames erupted all across.
SCREECH
Winds tore out of the bird in great, heavy gusts. The [Prysmatic Abyss] seized them, amplified them, and spun them around.
A tornado began forming around the Lord of the Dead, and the it did not move. It stood at the epicenter the way a mountain stood against rain.
The crown flared.
Flames erupted along the wall of wind, threading through it, consuming it, until the tornado was no longer a tornado. It was a spinning pillar of fire.
For the bones to crack, or even melt, the flames needed to hit at least 800 degrees.
Leon rose through the smoke on a chain of explosions, each one punching him higher, until he hung above the column's open mouth like a conductor standing over his orchestra.
The heat was immense. It pressed against him from all sides, trying to burn him. But the crown kept him intact.
Below, the Lord of the Dead began to suffer.
The outermost skeletons were first. The flames consumed the ones at the edges first — the ones with their arms fused to another's ribcage, their skulls tilted at angles that had never been natural — and it burned through.
Bone blackened in patches, spreading the way rot spreads. Finger bones curled in on themselves. Femurs developed hairline fractures that spiderwebbed toward the joints.
The hive stirred.
It was the first movement Leon had seen from it that wasn't aggression.
Something like a shudder passed through the outer layer — dozens of skulls turning their heads simultaneously, their eye sockets flooding with cold light, as if searching for the source of the pain. As if confused by the concept.
'Interesting,' Leon thought, from very far away.
Could the skeletons really feel pain?
Birdie screamed again, and the winds answered its call. The outermost skeletons began to lose their grip. Joints the hive's will had held rigid for Spell knows how long started separating.
A ribcage peeled away from the mass, and was immediately taken by the wind, spinning up into the fire.
The Lord of the Dead reached upward.
Leon detonated an explosion beneath his feet and rose another twenty meters.
Below him, the outer layer of the Lord of the Dead continued to blacken, crack, and quietly come apart — and the thing that had never learned fear began, very slowly, to learn it.
The outer skeletons were shedding now — like bark peeling away from a dying tree. The fire consumed everything it caught — and the thing that had never learned fear began, very slowly, to learn it.
The hive shrank.
The remaining skeletons pressed inward, toward the center, abandoning the outer dead to the flames.
It didn't help.
The column followed the compression, tightening around the new shape. Birdie hadn't stopped screaming.
The [Prysmatic Abyss] pulsed, and the fire pulsed with it, the whole system feeding itself in a loop that Leon was no longer entirely sure he was controlling.
A sound rose from below. It didn't even feel like a voice, or perhaps it sounded like something close to one.
His teeth ached. His vision blurred at the edges.
The crown flared.
The sound stopped.
Leon descended ten meters, just enough to see the damage clearly.
The Lord of the Dead was visibly smaller than it had been. The blackened bones of its outer layer lay scattered across the ground below — some still faintly glowing, some already crumbling to as.
What remained was the surviving skeletons locked together so tight that the gaps between them had nearly disappeared.
It looked almost like one thing now.
The fire did not stop until there was almost nothing left to take.
It was a slow process. The hive kept compressing, kept sacrificing its outer skeletons to preserve whatever was left, and the fire kept consuming.
Bones that had taken years of death to accumulate, blackened and split, eventually being taken by the wind in pieces. Femurs. Ribcages. Skulls.
Noah could see small gaps of what was happening. He looked at the way the skeletons burned and flew away.
All those people who had died on the Forgotten Shore, only to be swallowed by a Fallen Tyrant, now being swallowed by flame instead.
And the one responsible, was just smiling madly.
The Lord of the Dead shrank.
And shrank.
And shrank.
Until there was only one.
A single human skeleton stood in the dying column of flame, stripped of everything it had stolen.
Just bone, scorched black at the joints, cracks running the length of every limb, and two points of pale fire in a single skull, fluttering like candles at the end of their wick.
Leon fell down, the crown cushioning his fall, while Birdie had consumed the entirety of the flaming vortex.
Ash rose around him in a slow cloud. The heat was still immense, but the crown had kept him intact this long. It would keep him intact a little longer. All he had to do, was bear the pain.
The skeleton lunged.
Fast, for something that was mostly cinders. The cold light surged in its sockets, and something like fury could be seen — a last, total expenditure of whatever had animated ten thousand dead.
It crossed the distance between them in a second.
Leon leapt.
He went over it, one hand catching the skull. The skeleton's momentum carried its body forward while its head stayed in Leon's grip, and the separation was clean.
The body stumbled three steps forward. The bones came apart at every crack simultaneously, and by the time Leon turned around, there was nothing left of it but dust.
He looked at the skull in his hand.
The pale fire was still there. The jaw moved — trying to close, trying to open.
It tried.
It kept trying.
Leon watched it for a moment.
"Find peace within me," he said.
He closed his fist.
The skull shattered immediately, its structure already brittle from the heat. Leon opened his hand, only to find dust.
The Spell spoke softly into his ears.
Noah looked at him. And slowly, his gaze shifted toward his runes.
Will: 20% Possessed
It had risen 3 more...
His gaze traced back to Leon, who was looking at his new Shard Memory.
Noah smiled, so effortlessly, so elegantly. "Good job, Leon."