He who fights monsters must be careful lest he become a monster himself. For if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
***
Leon was climbing the stairs toward the Bright Hall when Noah fell into step behind him.
"What do you think Nephis wants with an army of that size?"
"Doesn't feel like an army to me," Leon said.
Noah considered that. "No. You're right." He let a moment of silence pass. "The way they look at her is more like—"
"A cult."
Noah smiled. "Now that you say it."
Leon glanced back at him. "You already knew the answer."
The smile immediately faded, settling into a more serious expression.
"I wanted to hear yours."
Leon looked at him for a moment longer than usual, something faintly suspicious in it, then turned back and walked into the Bright Hall.
Noah followed.
That's when Gunlaug entered.
Noah sighed softly, looking at the golden tyrant.
"You should say hi," he murmured. He glanced at Leon, whose expression had opened into something bright and eager. "Though... I think you've already decided."
Noah hung back and watched. He had nothing to do, during these moments. Leon didn't need steering — he only needed the occasional door left open, the occasional nudge toward the thing he already wanted. That was the art of it. Not force. Just... arrangement.
***
Later, when Leon was travelling on top of Birdie, Noah whispered to him again.
"You said there's no reasoning with Gunlaug." He paused. "Why was that, again?"
Leon frowned. "Did I?"
"Yeah."
A long pause settled between the two. Leon scratched at the back of his head. "...Probably. He does look like he'll be a problem."
Noah nodded, saying nothing more, looking at something in the distance that wasn't there.
He'd noticed it happening more lately — the gaps in Leon's memory — small at first. Leon filled them in with whatever felt right. Whatever Noah had quietly shaped it to feel right. It was almost elegant, how little effort it took. A suggestion here, a silence there.
He watched the counter.
Will: 24% Possessed
The number looked wrong somehow, too small. He had been at this for almost a year now, and he was barely a quarter of the way into a body that had once been his.
He had begun entering the Soul Sea on his own by now. Short, careful trips.
It felt less like stepping inside, and more like pressing his face against glass — he could see the room, feel the warmth leaking through, but he still couldn't own it.
The problem was Aurelia.
He wanted to experiment with the Soul Sea. To see what he could do there, what he could reach, whether the Resonance Core would respond to him.
But there was Aurelia.
He was hesitant to face her. He had beaten her to death, and she would never remember it. She would never remember him — not as he actually was. She would see Leon's face, hear Leon's voice. She would smile at him the way she had smiled at him then.
For reasons he couldn't explain, he would feel something heavy in his chest whenever he saw her face.
That's guilt, some part of him said.
He told that part to shut up.
Aurelia would probably not trust him. She could protect his Soul from a Corrupted creature. What was Noah going to do against that?
Noah considered telling her everything. How him and Leon split after the First Nightmare.
But he held himself back.
***
Leon reunited with his friends. He had his usual dry humor. His usual arrogance.
"Then I stumbled onto you guys." Leon finished, and sighed.
Cassie smiled. It was small and genuine — nothing like the smile she used to give him. That old careful distance was gone.
Noah watched. Something welled up in Noah's chest.
Something welled up in his chest. It happened every time — every time Leon came back to someone and was welcomed without question. He couldn't name it properly.
He wanted to hit something.
...He had no hands.
***
They were inside the Soul Sea when Leon finished talking with Nephis.
Noah explained the American Disaster to him. The three great clans. Nephis' parents.
When he finished, Leon looked across at Aurelia — she was half-listening, eyes closed, tilted toward the warmth of her own fire.
"Someone once told me not to be selfish."
She opened one eye. "That was directed at your friends. Not your strategic planning."
"I'm choosing to apply it broadly."
She shook her head. But she was smiling.
Noah kept his expression neutral.
He didn't know what it was, exactly. Why it irritated him, watching people lean toward Leon on instinct. Leon who was reckless, Leon who was selfish, Leon who couldn't remember conversations they'd had three days ago. Why did everyone keep smiling at him like he'd earned it?
'You know why', that part said again.
'Because he has the face', Noah answered himself. 'Because he has the voice. Because when people look at him, they're looking at the thing you had.'
He stayed in the Soul Sea after Leon left. He wasn't sure why.
Aurelia noticed him still standing there, and tilted her head slightly.
"You look like something's bothering you."
Noah froze for just a moment.
'Worried. She said you look worried.'
He almost left. He should have left.
"Can I ask you something?"
He hadn't planned on saying that.
"What is it?"
"He killed you." Noah looked at her directly. "In the First Nightmare. He killed you." He paused. "So why do you still—"
"I know," she said.
She said it so casually. No bitterness, no performance of peace.
"I've had to learn not to hold onto things," she said, after a moment. Looking down at nothing in particular. "It doesn't— it's not easy. But." She was quiet. "He was my first friend. And I'm already dead."
Noah remembered the warmth he'd felt the first time she'd smiled at him — really smiled, the one that reached her eyes, the one she didn't give to everyone. He remembered feeling, for one stupid moment, that he had done something right.
Now all he felt was the familiar rot. Like something was pressing against a bruise continuously.
"He's lucky," Noah said. Quietly, warmly, the performance sliding into place almost without effort. "To have you, Aura."
He left the Soul Sea before she could answer.
Because if he had stayed another moment, he thought he might actually mean it.
Aurelia sat still for a while after he was gone.
Something was wrong with that conversation that she couldn't figure out what.
Aura.
Her uncle had called her that. The Flamekeeper. It had been his word, specifically his.
Noah shouldn't have known that...
***
Leon was walking back toward the outer settlement as the dark sea crept in at the edges of the labyrinth.
He had mapped out most of what the Bright Castle's politics were.
He'd decided not to talk to Seishan this time. He'd wait for an opportunity.
Wait for...an opportunity?
Leon frowned. He wasn't sure why he did that. He stood there for a moment, trying to remember why he had made that decision.
That wasn't usually how he operated. He wasn't the type of person to usually pass up on something interesting like this.
He looked at Noah.
Noah was looking out at the outer settlement with an expression of vague boredom.
Leon was fairly sure he heard Noah mention something...but he couldn't remember.
That was when he spotted Caster moving into a hut.
Noah saw it too. His expression remained unchanged, almost like he was keeping it that way.
Leon began walking faster, when Noah's voice sounded in his ears, too soft.
"Nephis works fast," Noah said, not quite to Leon, almost to himself. "Building here. You'd think she's been planning this longer than anyone knew."
Leon glanced across at the hut. Then he was walking toward it.
Noah followed, and said nothing more.
As he entered the hut, Leon and Noah saw Sunny talking to Caster. And in front of him, was Harper.
Noah kept talking — something about Nephis and the great clans, something about what she might actually want. The words were filler.
Leon wasn't listening anyways. At least, not on the surface.
***
The fight with Nephis was something Noah had seen coming from so far away that by the time it arrived, it felt almost boring. He'd known it would happen.
Leon slowly stood up. He stared down at Nephis as he wiped the blood dripping down his bruised mouth.
He spat out blood as he summoned the Broken Halo, which slowly materialized into the form of a scythe. Gripping the scythe in his hands, he raised it slowly, pointing it up at Nephis, as she did the same with her sword.
Noah leaned in toward his ear. "You don't have to do this Leon. You don't have to kill Nephis."
His voice was calm and steady. The calm of someone who wasn't really trying to stop anything.
"Don't fight her."
Thunder cracked across the sky, rolling through the shore and rattling the walls of the outer settlement.
The moment the sound faded, they both moved.
Leon was now locked in a battle with Changing Star. And Noah, slowly slipped into Leon's Soul Sea, almost as soon as the fight began.
Inside Leon's Soul Sea, Aurelia was standing still, her eyes closed, and focused. She always knew when something was wrong outside. He didn't know whether she could actually see what was happening, or just feel it.
He walked toward her. He made his steps unsteady. He made his voice shake.
"Aurelia... he..."
His expression turned frantic. "He's going to kill her."
She opened her eyes. Looked at him with an expression he couldn't quite read — she was always a little harder to read than he wanted her to be.
Noah continued his performance. "What do we do?"
'Does she know...'
He waited. Deep down, he almost wanted her to realize what he was doing, and just burn him into cinders.
"We need to stop him, before it's too late." Aurelia's voice was calm.
Noah's expression froze for a second, but went back. "Y-yes. Please try stopping him somehow. I'll speak to his Traces—"
She became fire and vanished.
Noah stood in the quiet for a moment.
'Exhausting', he thought. 'All of it, exhausting.'
He moved toward the constellations beneath the Resonance Core. He looked at the nodes of light, each one a creature Leon had killed. The Carapace Scavenger. The Carapace Centurion. The Iron Spider. The worm creature.
And Aurelia.
He looked at hers for a moment. The light was soft. Patient. Then, his gaze drifted to another one nearby.
Lord of the Dead.
He raised his palm and pressed it against the node
As soon as Noah's palm came into contact with it, the node of light stirred immediately. Wisps of bright light poured out everywhere, the constellation began shimmering.
His head began to split. He clutched his head, his knees almost buckling.
Noah knelt in the Soul Sea with his hand still pressed to the light and he laughed.
It was the first real pain he'd felt in a long time. His own pain, not borrowed from Leon. His. He'd almost forgotten that it was possible to feel something that belonged entirely to him.
The constellation slowly began dimming, it's edges turning dark.
Noah's vision grew blurry.
The light then dimmed completely, folding in on itself. It became pitch black.
[You have gained an Echo.]
The node of light representing the Lord of the Dead slowly began to crack, and then it crumbled.
Noah grinned madly.
His hand dropped. His breaths were frantic, as he tried to touch another constellation.
But before he could, he sensed something.
He immediately left the Soul Sea.
Outside, Noah saw Sunny carry Leon's body, and fly away on top of Birdie, while Nephis remained standing.
Noah chuckled softly. "Unfortunate."
He looked at his runes.
Aspect Ghost: Noah
Will: 39% Possessed
Echoes: [Lord of the Dead]
Noah closed his eyes.
Almost there...
But not yet.
***
"You should be fine," Noah said. He was leaning against the wall of the dark room, his back to Leon's chair, looking at nothing in particular. "The journey for the dawn shard originally had no real threats. To Sunny, or to anyone else."
Leon, sprawled on the chair, the way he always sat when he thought nobody was watching, hummed. "So you're saying it's easy?"
"I'm saying it's not dangerous. There's a difference." He kept his eyes on the wall. "Don't go without Nephis."
Leon chuckled. "You just said it was easy."
"I said it wasn't dangerous." He paused, his lips slowly curling upward. "Fool. Stop doing things that get you killed."
He said it lightly, like it meant nothing.
His plan was simple. Leon gets the shard first. Defeats Gunlaug. Takes the throne. Then, naturally — because this was Leon — he'd start squeezing Nephis. Pressuring her position of 'Saint Nephis' from all sides.
Just enough to make Sunny doubt him.
After all, considering his arrogance, Leon wouldn't pass up the chance to authority.
And Noah would be there, indispensable and inevitable, until the percentage reached a hundred and there was nothing left of Leon.
Simple.
He had not planned for the Cursed Devil.
He felt his own pulse for the first time in years, watching that thing move. His thoughts went jagged. There was nothing like it anywhere in what he remembered.
He felt his own pulse for the first time in years when that thing moved. His thoughts went jagged. There was nothing like it anywhere in what he remembered of the story — nowhere in the canon, no chapter, no author note, no offhand comment about a creature like this.
For a moment, Noah genuinely believed Leon was going to die.
'If you die,' he thought, 'I die with you. We go nowhere. We go nowhere together, and it doesn't matter who deserved what.'
Leon didn't die.
Noah didn't know whether to feel relief or disappointment. He also didn't know whether Sunny was alive or not, but he didn't really care right now. He only cared that the body was intact.
'Let the protagonist die.' His gaze was dark. 'Once I've taken over his body. I'll take over the story next.'
***
As Leon made the journey back to the Bright Castle, Noah only had a few silent remarks. Present but untethered, a shadow without a surface to fall on.
"We shouldn't have gone alone," Noah said.
"It was my call. If anything happens to them—"
Noah almost let himself smile. "Then focus on getting back. You know how you are right now."
Leon opened his mouth.
Will: 59% Possessed
Leon thought that maybe getting Neph's help wasn't such a bad idea. It had been his own arrogance that led to Sunny and Kai being in danger.
Maybe, for once, him and Nephis could—
Nephis was gone when they got back.
Leon went very quiet, very still. Like someone had plucked the strings out of him.
Noah could perhaps scream in joy right now.. He could laugh. He could do almost anything, because the plan had not died — the plan had accelerated.
But he couldn't. Not yet.
Leon didn't know what to do. Noah could feel it, he was sure the fake wanted to decide that the whole thing wasn't worth it, to go somewhere quiet and not come back—
"None of this," Noah said quietly, "would've happened if Gunlaug wasn't here."
Noah didn't say anything else. He could feel Leon's breathing shift. Watched him start walking — toward the Bright Castle, toward Gunlaug, toward the only direction Leon knew.
Leon had promised himself he would never endanger anyone's life again.
Noah hadn't.
***
Hundreds of faces, every single one of them staring. Leon with his hand in Gunlaug's hair, dragging him across the floor of the bright hall.
"Is this your Bright Lord!?"
Leon slammed his fist into Gunlaug's face.
He didn't realize when he had made the decision to fight Gunlaug, let alone kill him. But did it matter anymore?
Noah watched it happen with something that might have been satisfaction, if satisfaction was something he still felt.
The Spell whispered into Leon's ear — You have slain... — Nephis stepped out of the crowd.
"Was she ever on a journey?" Noah's voice came out quieter than he meant it to, half-swallowed by the silence in the hall.
Leon barely heard him, and everything in Leon had narrowed to one burning point.
Kill her.
But he couldn't.
They were underground now. She took a step forward, and pulled him into a warm embrace.
Noah watched Leon's expression collapse into something human. He watched him go unconscious in her arms, and felt something move through his chest.
He let out a long, slow breath.
Will: 73% Possessed
He could feel it more clearly now. Something almost physical — his fingers growing more solid, his presence in the space between them thickening.
His limbs felt like limbs again when he forgot not to think about it. The gap between him and the body was getting smaller, measurably, day by day.
Soon...
***
But then, Leon had managed to do something unexpected again.
Copy Cassia's ability.
'That blind witch... why does she even exist?!'
"Are you fucking serious right now," Noah said.
Will: 70% Possessed
Just like that, Noah's control was slipping again.
Leon explained his vision to Noah, while Noah was already planning what to do next.
But no, his plans were futile.
"I'm going alone."
Noah gritted his teeth, but remained calm. "Let's just focus on the siege. If we can do it fast enough, I'm sure we'll avoid the fog creature altogether."
Leon didn't answer.
***
Will: 57% Possessed
"Turn back." Noah said it quietly. Not a plea — an instruction. He'd stopped bothering with softness, this far in.
Leon kept flying.
The crimson spire shrank behind them, while Noah watched it disappear.
"Our life," he said. "Everything we built. It ends if you die." He paused. "You know that."
Leon didn't answer.
Noah hadn't really expected him to. But he still tried.
"Aurelia dies with you."
Leon flinched. He lowered his head, but didn't turn back.
Will: 43% Possessed
Noah clenched his hands — the hands that weren't really his, that he couldn't feel, that belonged to someone else by some cosmic accident of narrative — and watched the percentage drop as Leon battled the Fog Creature's army.
Everything was falling apart. Leon was undoing everything, one good instinct at a time.
His plan to retrieve Weaver's Mask had failed.
His plan to have Leon escape into the Waking World early, leaving Nephis to enslave Sunny, had failed.
He would've loved enslaving Sunny himself, if it meant he could get his body back.
Everything kept falling apart because of him.
Noah stood there, wondering to himself.
Enslave Sunny? Why had something like this entered his mind? What had he...become?
He stayed still for a moment, watching Leon dance through hordes of Nightmare Creatures.
'You just want your body back', he told himself.
'That's it. That's all. You're not the villain.'
He believed it, completely.
'Fine.'
Noah entered Leon's Soul Sea.
***
He had done it enough times that it no longer felt like crossing a threshold. It felt like stepping into a room he'd been locked out of — a room that used to be his, whose furniture he still knew by touch in the dark.
'You want to be a hero? You want to die so bad?'
His expression contorted. 'I'll give it to you'
He moved toward the Resonance Core.
She was already there.
Aurelia stood between him and it, her outline traced in fire. Her feet were unsteady. She was spending herself to be here, he realized. Every moment she held this position was costing her ember charge.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Noah tried to let his expression grow softer. But he, just, couldn't.
"Noah," she said. Then, softer, in a way that was somehow worse: "Or should I say — Leon."
Noah widened his eyes. Something stirred inside his chest. The same feeling he had felt when he watched Leon smile.
"Aurelia." His voice was pleasant. "You look tired."
"I've been watching you." She didn't move from the Core. Her eyes moved over him slowly, reading something. "The way you... I don't know. Move through him." A small exhale left his lips. "I think I understand, now. Who you are."
"And who's that?"
She looked at him. "Leonar."
The same feeling welled up in his chest again.
What was this, again?
Why did he feel like scratching his ribs out?
Noah would've vomited if he could, right now.
"You think—"
"I don't know what you're trying to do," she said. She took a step toward him, unsteady, steady, both at once. "But please."
He waited.
She raised her hands and held his face.
Her palms were warm.
Noah looked at her hands. Looked at her face. The fire still burning through the exhaustion.
He could already see how tired her face was. He closed his eyes, resting his face into her palms.
He had not felt warmth that wasn't his own in a very long time. He had not felt warmth that was directed at him — maybe ever. He had spent a year and a half learning how to inhabit someone else's warmth.
"You don't have to be this," she said quietly. "You know that, right?"
Just for a moment, he let himself rest into her palms.
He thought about it. Standing there in Leon's Soul Sea with a dead woman's hands cupping his borrowed face, and he thought: 'what if she's right? What if I stopped? What if I just—'
'You alone have no body,' That part of him spoke again. 'No senses. No feelings.'
He thought about cool water on a hot day. He thought about what it felt like to breathe in sharply when the air was cold. He thought about blah blah blah — all the small ordinary things he had catalogued in the early days.
When he still kept a list of things he'd do when he had it all back.
He thought about what he had said, in those first days: 'I would like to stay in this world.'
'No, you DON'T.'
No. He didn't want to stay in the in-between. He didn't want to be a ghost watching someone else eat and breathe and laugh and belong. He had watched and watched and watched — never for him to feel rain, never for him to taste anything, never for him anything at all — and he had begun to hate.
HATE. That was the feeling in his chest.
He'd been so long in the dark that he'd started calling it home.
Noah smiled softly. "Yeah," he said. Softly. "You're right."
She smiled.
He thought, in the half-second before it stopped mattering: 'She actually believed me.'
What a thing. To be believed.
SPLASH
Her entire body jerked, her palms falling into his shoulders.
Aurelia looked down.
A large bone-like blade was buried in her abdomen. The Lord of the Dead stood behind her, its visage enormous and still. Its blade went deep.
Noah had already moved — one hand at her waist, steadying her. Catching her. It would have looked, to anyone watching, like he was trying to keep her from falling.
"I'm not the villain," he said. Quietly. Conversationally. "He is."
She slowly looked back at Noah, who was just... smiling.
"What do you, even know about me?" One his hands slowly crept up to her neck, holding it in a gentle grip. "I'm not Leonar, anymore."
She shook her head, weakly. "I know you, because..." She smiled. Her fire was sputtering at the edges. "You were my fri—"
Another blade pierced her heart. Noah's grip on her neck became tighter, almost suffocating her.
"I was in hell, looking at heaven."
Her body wasn't material. He knew that. The Lord of the Dead knew that. None of this should have been possible — except that it was, because she was already spending herself, already thin, already tired.
But she still felt the pain. And combined the constant stress of fighting the Fog Creature, Aurelia was slowly dying.
He watched her light stutter.
He had thought, in the very beginning, that this would feel like winning. That there would be some clean satisfaction to it — the moment the last obstacle fell, the moment the last thing holding him back was gone. He had imagined the weight lifting.
He hadn't imagined this.
"Go on, then," Quiet. Almost gentle. "Go die for him. Like you always would've."
And as he said that, Aurelia disappeared into sparks.
"Goodbye."
With that, one of the hurdles stopping him from possessing Leon...was now gone.
He stood in the Soul Sea for a moment after she was gone.
It was very quiet.
A character. They're all just characters, Noah.
That part of him spoke again, perhaps for the last time.
'The human soul is deeper than hell. Because at least hell doesn't pretend to be good.'
He slowly exited the Soul Sea, and wished he never did.
***
The Symbiote was too intelligent. The only other Nightmare Creature he'd read about that came close was the Mad Prince himself.
Perhaps, there was a universe where the Mad Prince escaped.
But right now, there was no escape.
He watched it feed information into Leon — so much, so fast, that Leon's mouth was foaming and his eyes had gone somewhere far away. Too much input. The brain fighting to hold something it wasn't built to hold.
Leon would soon go into a coma perhaps.
Noah... fell to his knees.
He had given up.
He'd been so precise. Every calculation. Every move, every sacrifice and the long, grinding year of it.
And the answer the world was handing him now, was a Great Terror settling into his body. Taking over it, when he had failed to do so for more than three hundred days.
Will: 92% Possessed
Noah's eyes widened.
He looked at Leon, who was probably already unconscious by now.
He understood what it meant.
If Leon's brain died, the body would be empty. Empty, waiting and his, finally, his.
Except there would be a Great Terror inside it.
"Fascinating," the symbiote said. Very softly.
"Earth... Weaver... Shadow...Slave"
Noah froze.
All the anger and hatred seemed to disappear for a moment.
The Symbiote knew. It knew it was inside a book. It knew everything.
"That curiosity of yours", the symbiote said — wearing Sunny's face, Sunny's voice — "will be what kills you. Your brain will simply stop — overwhelmed, consumed by its own hunger. It is a beautiful flaw, really. We really are alike."
Leon drooled.
Noah watched the counter.
Will: 99% Possessed
He could feel it.
He could feel the pain Leon felt, pressing through the thin membrane between them — his head felt like it was going to crack.
He had not felt pain in a very long time.
He had not felt anything in a very long time.
Noah then heard a sound, of someone laughing.
'Oh wait...'
It was his sound. He was the one laughing.
'It hurts.' He chuckled, helplessly. 'It hurts.' He felt tears on a face that wasn't his and the laughter got louder, as he let it, because it was the most real thing that he had felt in a year and a half.
"It hurts," he said, to no one. To the cave. To Leon who was already somewhere else. "It hurts."
What a thing.
What an extraordinary thing, to hurt.
Leon's light was almost gone. A last filament, guttering — and then it would be over, the body would be empty, the body would be his.
it didn't matter if the Symbiote was waiting right there, because at least he would be real again, at least he would be something—
"Y..es."
Noah stopped.
Leon's lips had moved.
'Yes?'
A golden sphere suddenly materialized in front of them, in slow sparks. And before the symbiote could do anything, the the golden sphere suddenly separated into two streams of beautiful, radiant liquid.
Noah widened his eyes in sheer horror.
"No."
The laughter was gone. The ecstasy was gone. He had seen that before, he had read about it, he knew exactly what it was—
"NO—"
He got up. He reached forward with his hands, trying to grab, trying to stop—
The streams flowed into through the air, and approached Leon's face. He felt a gentle touch caress his cheeks.
Will: 80% Possessed
"Please—"
They were already past his reach.
Will: 56% Possessed
The streams found Leon's eyepatch.
The golden liquid passed through it without resistance, and entered through the pupilless eye beneath.
Will: 10% Possessed
"NOO—"
It disappeared.
ዐ፪ረጎህጎዐክ
Will: 1% Possessed
He was in hell, looking up at heaven.