Kael – First Person POV
The room wasn't real.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Not the marble floors, the high ceiling, or the eerie stillness that sucked the air from your lungs.
It was too clean.
Like someone had designed it for theater, not truth.
Lucius stood at the far end—still wearing Julius's face, still smiling that soft, patronizing smile that kings wear when they pretend to be kind.
"Kael," he said, voice light. "You've come far."
My boots echoed as I walked forward. No audience. No captains. No proctors.
Just me.
And him.
"Don't pretend this is a reward," I said.
Lucius's smile deepened—just slightly. The kind of smile a snake makes when it doesn't need to strike because the venom's already working.
"No. Not a reward," he said. "A resolution."
The door behind me vanished.
And the world began to shift.
---
Third Person POV
The space cracked like glass.
Not shattered—peeled.
The floor beneath Kael buckled, folding into fractal patterns that reached into nothingness. A void opened beneath his feet, not darkness, not absence—just other.
Lucius floated above it, robes billowing like ink in water. His voice echoed without echo, impossible and near-divine.
"This world is broken," he said. "People are born to suffer. Born to kneel. Even those like you—no, especially those like you."
Kael didn't respond. He reached into himself.
Not for spells.
For truth.
Lucius raised a hand—and time paused.
But Kael still moved.
Slowly.
Straining.
A thread of blood leaked from his nose, but he took a step forward.
Lucius blinked.
"You're resisting temporal lock?"
Kael's voice was low. Flat.
"I don't move through time."
He looked up, eyes like storm glass.
"I drag it with me."
---
Lucius didn't smile now.
His hand twisted, and the air ruptured. Bone-white threads surged from his palm—no spell incantation, no chant, just will. They struck Kael's limbs, chest, skull—inside him. Not binding him.
Unmaking him.
Kael's scream never left his mouth.
His jaw hung open, but the sound died in the throat, devoured by Lucius's manipulation of causality. The threads dug through flesh, bypassed bone, rearranged what they found.
Heartbeats slowed. Vision fragmented.
Memories bled out of Kael's eyes in the form of black ichor, each drop hitting the floor and whispering—his mother's voice, his childhood fears, every moment he clung to identity—dripping into silence.
Lucius stepped forward.
"This is mercy," he said, voice glimmering with pity that wasn't real. "You're the perfect vessel. A soul fractured enough to mold. Strong enough to endure. And now—empty enough to fill."
He reached for Kael's chest.
And pushed his hand in.
There was no blood.
Just cracking light—like porcelain splitting under pressure. Veins of golden magic burst from Kael's skin, his ribs flexing apart without breaking, exposing something that should not be seen—
—his soulform.
A twisted core of paradox: freedom wrapped in control, chaos braided with order, humming with laws not of this world.
Lucius faltered.
Only for a second.
And Kael opened his eyes.
Not just the ones in his head.
Every eye that existed within the soulform opened—dozens, hundreds—peering into Lucius like knives that learned how to see.
"Still not kneeling," Kael said.
And then his body began to break.
Voluntarily.
---
Kael – First Person POV
I let it happen.
Every joint snapped out of place. Ribs cracked inward. My fingers split open at the seams like peeled bark, veins unraveling into threads of raw mana. I wasn't resisting him the way he expected.
I was shedding.
Like a cage I had worn too long.
Lucius pulled back—not out of fear. But confusion.
"You're—what are you doing?"
My mouth was a jagged tear of breath and broken teeth. I grinned through it.
"Giving you everything you asked for."
The soulform burst.
Not outward.
Inward.
I collapsed into myself. My bones liquefied into symbols. My blood turned to script. My nerves lit up with equations that wrote and rewrote themselves mid-collapse. I wasn't dying.
I was rewriting the price.
Lucius's hand was still inside me—but now it burned.
He snarled and yanked back, but his arm came free only halfway—shoulder to elbow severed in clean, dimensional absence. It didn't fall.
It was simply no longer true.
"You—you removed the outcome," he hissed. "You rewrote the result of cause and effect!"
"Yes," I rasped. "But not the pain."
I stood.
Limbs cracked back into place like a machine assembling itself out of scrap and memory. The space around me trembled. Not because of pressure.
Because reality was now second-guessing its rules.
Lucius stepped back.
And Kael stepped forward.
---
Third Person POV
Lucius raised his remaining hand.
No words. No gestures.
Just intention.
And reality folded.
A second sun bloomed overhead—seething, black at the center, white at the edges, moaning. Not light. Not fire. A burning equation of dominance, etched into the atmosphere. It pulsed once—
—and rained bodies.
They weren't real.
But they were.
Kael's fallen versions. Hundreds. Some clawing at their own throats. Some kneeling. Some hanging by invisible chains. Each one whispering.
"We failed."
"He won."
"We let him in."
Kael's gaze didn't flicker.
He walked through them.
As they wept. Screamed. Collapsed into bloodless ruin.
Lucius's voice boomed, distorted by divinity and distance. "This is your inevitability! A million threads, a million outcomes—and all of them end the same!"
Kael stopped in the center of the storm of corpses.
Then spoke.
"Wrong."
He raised one trembling hand.
The world cracked.
Not visually.
Not physically.
Narratively.
As if the story itself buckled under the contradiction.
The corpses screamed in reverse, folding back into possibility. The sun above dimmed, no longer a godfire—but a dying thought.
Lucius floated above it all, his breath sharp, his aura shaking the void.
"You don't even understand what you are," he hissed.
Kael looked up.
Eyes glowing.
No anger. No pride.
Just a brutal, clinical calm.
"I don't need to understand it."
He vanished.
And reappeared behind Lucius.
"I need to survive it."
---
Kael's fingers drove into Lucius's spine.
Not with force.
With knowledge.
He didn't just pierce the flesh—he slipped between the vertebrae, not cracking them but reading them. Finding the equation of movement. The syntax of divinity. The structure of Lucius himself.
And rewriting it.
Lucius screamed.
Not a human scream.
A celestial rupture. Like a star folding in on itself.
His skin peeled away in slow layers, not from trauma—but recursion. The same second of pain happening again and again and again—each layer of flesh forced to relive its own death before it could regenerate.
Veins writhed out from his skin, wrapping around Kael's arms in self-defense. They pulsed with golden ichor—time magic liquified into nerve endings. They latched onto Kael's bones.
Tried to reprogram him.
Failed.
Kael's blood responded like acid—eating through Lucius's magic. Not as a counter.
As a refusal.
Lucius twisted in midair, trying to pull away.
Kael held fast.
His other hand clawed through Lucius's ribcage, fingers slipping under each bone, not to crush the heart—
—but to extract the soul memory within it.
It came free with a wet pop, like tearing silk soaked in marrow. A small, glowing mass—Lucius's core identity—shimmered between Kael's knuckles.
Lucius convulsed. His face flickered.
Julius's voice screamed. Help me—please, help me—
Kael didn't blink.
He shoved the core into his mouth.
And bit down.
The sound was not a crunch.
It was a shatter.
And Lucius—Wizard King, Angel of Order, godling in mortal form—began to fall apart.
---
Lucius collapsed midair, spasming in pulses like a creature caught in a collapsing timeline. His body bent backward, spine arching, ribs splintering outward like wings made of broken clocks. His mouth gaped open—wide, too wide—jaw unhinged not just physically, but structurally, as if the concept of limit had been revoked.
Inside his throat, runes spun.
A final fail-safe.
Soul Escape Protocol.
A way out. A path to flee the host. To survive through possession.
His essence—a fluid storm of light, rot, and regal command—burst upward, aiming for Kael's skull like a parasite lunging for a nest.
It never reached.
Because Kael opened his own chest.
Not with hands.
With will.
The flesh parted neatly. Ribs withdrew. Organs shifted aside as if obedient. At the center of it all was his soulform, still flickering, still impossible. Still wrong in a way that reality couldn't metabolize.
And as Lucius's core descended—
Kael invited it in.
No seals.
No barriers.
Just open arms.
Lucius hit him like a tidal wave—soul to soul—ready to consume, rewrite, possess.
But Kael didn't resist.
He absorbed.
Lucius's scream echoed not outside, but inside. In bone. In brain. In every thread of Kael's memory. A god wailing inside a coffin made of a boy.
"YOU CAN'T—! I AM ORDER—!"
Kael staggered. Blood poured from his ears. His fingernails blackened and fell off. His spine visibly convulsed under his skin as if something inside was trying to burst out.
Then—
Stillness.
A long, wet breath.
Kael stood straight.
One eye flickered with golden light—Lucius's.
It dimmed.
And died.
Kael exhaled.
And vomited.
It wasn't blood. Not bile. Not magic.
Just ash.
The remains of a soul that tried to overwrite a being that could not be simplified.
Lucius Zogratis was gone.
Not slain.
Erased.
---
Kael – First Person POV
The ash clung to my lips.
It tasted like parchment soaked in centuries. Like law. Like judgment. Like every rule ever carved into the spine of humanity—and I had swallowed it.
My mouth wouldn't stop shaking.
Not because of fear.
Because my body wasn't sure it was mine anymore.
Lucius was inside me. Or had been. Bits of him still lingered. Echoes of thoughts not mine. Concepts that didn't belong. His voice still tried to finish sentences I never started.
But I didn't let them go.
I catalogued them.
Memorized them.
Stored them in the part of me that even I wasn't allowed to touch.
Some part of him had wanted to become me.
Instead, I made him a warning.
My knees buckled.
Blood poured down my arms. My skin split in spiderwebs, hairline cracks that dripped magic like sap from a cursed tree. My heart was beating wrong—like it was arguing with time itself.
My bones itched.
Not from healing.
From disagreement.
They didn't recognize the flesh anymore.
I pressed a hand to my chest. Felt every beat. Every misfire. Every reminder.
Lucius was gone.
But he had left messages behind.
Scars in languages I hadn't learned yet.
Warnings written in marrow.
I fell to one knee.
Not to kneel.
To anchor.
Because I wasn't done.
Not yet.
Footsteps echoed.
And I knew exactly who they belonged to.
---
Third Person POV
Boots scraped stone.
Slow. Deliberate. Each step an announcement—not of authority, but awareness.
Yami Sukehiro emerged from the veil of shadows at the edge of the chamber, a half-spent cigarette dangling from his lips, barely lit. He didn't speak right away. Didn't draw his sword. Just stood there, arms crossed, watching Kael bleed and breathe like someone witnessing an execution that hadn't decided who was the victim yet.
Smoke curled upward.
"Done?" he asked, voice rough like gravel dragged through whiskey.
Kael didn't look up.
He just nodded once.
Yami exhaled through his nose. "Didn't think you'd win."
Kael's lip twitched. "Neither did he."
Yami walked closer, boots crunching over bits of ash—Lucius's ash. He stopped just short of Kael's reach. His eyes narrowed. Not suspicious.
Evaluating.
"You're not the same."
Kael finally looked up.
"I was never meant to be."
Their gazes locked. Something unspoken passed between them—something raw. Not trust. Not respect.
Recognition.
Of monsters that chose to stay men.
Yami crouched in front of Kael. Looked at the blood. The hairline fractures up Kael's neck. The eye that flickered with an occasional Lucius tic, then corrected itself like a muscle learning not to limp.
"You know what this means, right?" Yami asked, quiet now.
Kael blinked. Slow.
"I'm not a vessel."
Yami smirked.
"No, kid. You're a war crime in the shape of a man."
He stood, lit another cigarette off the dying ember of the first, and looked back at the chamber's ceiling—where the seal Lucius had cast still shimmered faintly.
"You erased a god," he muttered.
He didn't sound impressed.
He sounded worried.
---
The chamber groaned.
Not metaphorically.
Stone bent.
Metal seams cried out. The runic pillars Lucius had used to hold the spatial layers apart were failing. With him gone, the place was collapsing—not in rubble, but in definition. Corners no longer pointed in the same direction. Light didn't come from a source. Sound came before motion.
And Kael was still at the center.
He tried to stand.
The floor moved away from him.
Yami grabbed his collar before gravity could betray him again, yanked him up like a duffel bag full of bad decisions, and slung Kael's arm over his shoulder.
"Easy. You earned one limp."
Kael coughed wetly. His ribs rattled.
"I still feel him."
Yami didn't look at him. "You'll feel worse when the higher-ups find out."
"They won't."
"They will."
Kael's breath was shallow now. His pupils kept shifting, as if adjusting to a spectrum only he could see. His magic signature pulsed irregularly—spiking, vanishing, twisting into new forms with each step.
It wasn't stabilizing.
It was evolving.
Yami muttered, "They'll think you're him now."
Kael didn't answer.
Because they both knew.
He might be.
Behind them, the last of Lucius's sanctum folded in on itself. Reality swallowed the evidence like a guilt-ridden beast. No grand explosion. No spectacle.
Just absence.
As if Lucius Zogratis had never existed.
Yami shifted his grip as Kael began to sag again. "You need rest."
"No."
"You need a healer."
"No."
Yami looked sideways. "What the hell do you need then?"
Kael's voice came out like broken stone.
"…to decide what the Black Eagles were meant for."
Yami stared at him.
Then—smiled.
Sharp. Tired. Dangerous.
"Kid," he muttered, "you've got a long walk ahead."
---
Kael – First Person POV
I wasn't sure where we were going.
Somehow, it didn't matter.
Yami's grip on my shoulder felt like a rope tying me to something that could still make sense of the world. Every step I took was another echo in a reality that didn't want to hold together. The floors felt too soft. The walls, too thin. A distance away, the halls pulsed like a heartbeat that didn't match my own.
I could hear it.
The scratching.
Not from the walls.
Not from the floor.
From the back of my mind.
Lucius had left pieces. Fragments. Stitches in my brain that didn't belong but somehow were... familiar.
Like the taste of saltwater in the air after a storm. It didn't belong—but you'd grown used to it. You knew it.
I clenched my fists.
Yami didn't let go of my shoulder, but I felt his gaze cut to the side, like he knew something was coming.
"You're not the first to survive something like this," he muttered, his voice lighter than before. "But you might be the first who wants to keep living afterward."
I didn't respond.
I didn't have an answer for that.
The halls curved, and I was no longer sure if we were headed to the surface or somewhere deeper. No matter how much I focused, the light didn't reach the distance I expected. We were walking through shadow. Through the edge of something.
Finally, Yami stopped.
Kael barely registered it. He could hear the hum of magic—ancient. Disconnected. The very air felt like it was barely holding together.
Yami's voice dragged him back.
"Look," he said simply.
Ahead of them, a door stood ajar, carved from wood that had once been alive, now hollowed by time and wear. But the markings on it—
They didn't match anything Kael had ever seen.
They were an amalgamation of Lucius's sigils, with Kael's distorted presence marked over them. A patchwork. A scar on the architecture of the Black Eagles themselves.
"What the hell is that?" Kael rasped.
Yami exhaled through his nose, still casual, still cold. "Home. Or what's left of it."
---
Third Person POV
There was a time when the Black Eagles were about more than just firepower.
Before the Royals, before Lucius's manipulation, before all of it.
They were a family of knights.
Now, the walls whispered secrets they shouldn't know. They held the weight of too many decisions, too many sacrifices that shouldn't have happened.
But they were still here.
Still waiting.
Still a force.
Yami flicked the door open further.
"Get inside," he said quietly. "And get used to the new rules, kid."
---
Kael – First Person POV
The room was... alive.
Not in the way people are. Not in the way magic is. But in the way something built to endure could adapt and change as its purpose twisted.
At the center was a table. Large. And covered with books, maps, and scraps of paper marked in runes Kael could feel but not understand. Every wall was a web of unknown magic—defensive wards, traps, and sigils designed to hold reality steady.
But they weren't holding anything anymore.
The air tasted metallic.
A thick, almost sickly feeling bled through the cracks.
Yami had already dropped into a chair by the window, pulling out his second cigarette, not bothering to look at Kael.
"This place… It was meant to be a new beginning," he said, voice low, almost regretful. "But we were never allowed to begin anything. Not with Lucius at the helm."
Kael didn't move.
He only watched as the room shifted, as his presence pulled at the fabric of it. The air rippled in unnatural ways. The floor tilted. Something creaked, a door somewhere further in groaned.
But nothing stopped.
Nothing collapsed.
It was all still here.
Then, Kael's gaze fell to a blackened spot in the corner. Something small, forgotten in the shadow of the room.
A journal.
His hand reached out before he could stop it.
---
The journal felt wrong in my hands.
Not in the way Lucius's magic felt. That was a storm, a tearing sensation that twisted everything around it. This was... subtle. Like touching something old, something buried beneath the earth for far too long, its edges frayed by time, but still alive in its own way.
I opened the journal slowly, the pages fragile and thin, yellowing with age. The first entry was scratched in hurried strokes—desperate, like a man running out of time.
"The Black Eagles are not a squad. We are a weapon. We are the last line of defense for this Kingdom. Lucius must never know. We must prepare for the day the Wizard King falls—because he will."
I turned the page. More notes. More scribbled accounts of missions, of betrayals, of failures. And then—something else.
A name.
Kael.
The word jumped out from the page, carved into the paper like it was branded there. I ran my fingers over the letters. My name. But I hadn't been born yet. Hadn't even existed when this journal was written.
The next few pages were filled with accounts of strange magic—magic that didn't make sense. Magic tied to me in ways I didn't understand. Methods of manipulation. The extraction of something from the Black Eagles themselves.
I flicked through more pages. Names of people I didn't recognize. People who had come before me. Their failures. Their sacrifices. And one line that felt like it had been written just for me.
"Kael will break everything. He will be the one to end Lucius."
I slammed the journal shut.
The room shifted again.
The walls felt closer now. The air thicker. Every breath I took felt like I was inhaling something that wasn't meant for me. Something that had been buried, waiting.
The journal wasn't just a record.
It was a warning.
---
Yami Sukehiro – Third Person POV
Yami watched Kael from the corner of his eye. The kid was on edge now. He could feel it—the way his presence warped the room. Like reality itself was fighting him for control.
Not good.
Not good at all.
He took a long drag from his cigarette and sighed.
"So, you found it," Yami muttered, finally speaking up. "That journal's been sitting there since the last time they tried to get rid of Lucius. It's part of the old plan—one we never had a chance to follow."
Kael's hand clenched around the journal, his knuckles turning white. "What does it mean?" His voice was low, strained, like he was holding back a scream.
"It means you're more than just a test," Yami answered flatly. "It means the Black Eagles weren't just protecting the Kingdom. We were being prepped for a bigger war. One we were never supposed to survive."
Kael's breathing hitched. His head spun. There were too many pieces. Too many secrets tangled up in things that shouldn't even exist anymore.
Yami stood up slowly, dropping the cigarette to the floor and crushing it under his heel. "We're at the center of it all, kid. The Black Eagles weren't just meant to be a squad. We're the contingency plan for the end of the world."
---
Kael – First Person POV
The weight of it settled on me. The room seemed to bend again, the shadows deepening as the truth crashed into me, each word a blow. A countdown.
A weapon.
I had always known I was different. Not just because of my magic. Not just because I was… me.
But because I had been made to be this.
I wasn't just born to fight.
I was made to end it.
To end him.
Lucius.
The wizard king. The god. The ruin.
He had tried to turn me into a vessel. But I had reversed that.
And now, the Black Eagles weren't just a squad to me.
They were a tool. A weapon. A reality that had been set on a path, and there was no going back.
I couldn't undo it.
Not now.
---
Yami Sukehiro – Third Person POV
Yami's eyes narrowed as Kael's hands clenched the journal again. The kid wasn't ready to hear everything, but Yami could feel the storm building behind his eyes. He knew what was coming.
"Whatever you think you are, Kael," Yami said softly, "the Black Eagles aren't a family. Not anymore. They never were. We're just the last pieces left on the board. And the moment you realize that..."
He let the words hang in the air, knowing the kid would understand.
---
Kael – First Person POV
I wasn't just a tool.
But I had to become one.
For the Kingdom. For everyone who had ever stood in the way of Lucius's reign. For those who had been erased by his magic. For the Black Eagles, who had been nothing more than a lie.
A weapon forged to kill a god.
And that was exactly what I was going to do.
---
The lights began to flicker.
Not the soft, accidental dimming of poor enchantments.
This was intentional.
Like the room itself was being warned.
Or—summoned.
I felt it before the shadows moved. Before the pressure changed. Before the taste of copper hit the back of my throat.
Yami tensed. A slow, careful shift of his body—like an animal smelling blood before it's spilled.
The air shattered.
Not exploded. Shattered. Like glass under the weight of something impossible.
And then he was there.
Lucius.
But not the man they all revered. Not the polished smile. Not the benevolent mask. Not even the twisted king hiding behind white robes.
This was the thing beneath it all.
He didn't walk into the room. He peeled into it—unfolding like bone cracking through wet silk.
His smile was wrong.
His voice was worse.
"I've come to claim what's mine."
I couldn't speak.
My knees didn't buckle, but not because of strength. Because I refused.
He stepped closer, robes gliding across the ground without touching it. His eyes locked to mine, infinite and voided.
And in that instant, I knew.
This wasn't a trial.
This was a harvest.
Lucius didn't want to test me.
He wanted to overwrite me.
Like a parasite rewriting a host.
"You were born from my mistake," he whispered. "Now, you'll be reborn by my design."
He raised his hand.
Magic poured from his fingers in threads—liquid, screaming symbols, twisting in midair like dying prayers. They didn't burn.
They consumed.
The magic touched my skin.
I couldn't scream.
I could only remember.
---
Yami – Third Person POV
"Get back, kid!" Yami's voice cut the room like steel—but it was too late.
The spell struck.
Kael's body convulsed.
Not from pain.
From rewriting.
Like his nerves were being torn out and replaced with threads of Lucius's will.
And then—
Kael's mouth opened.
But it wasn't his voice that came out.
It was Lucius's.
---
TO BE CONTINUED
Mann right now, this going full AU, no of, and right now our mc is having existential crisis ffs, wait did I make a mistake making him eat the true name of lucius's fragment, won't the original that entered right now, manipulate him easily, ahhhhhhhh, fuck, I fucked up, shit shit
How is our broken Kael supposed to come out, mann yami is already big of a plot armour, am I supposed to make him even stronger, or should I create a different lore, mann I am stuck, guys please I need your help to get out of this, mann, do I really have to get plot armor into action? Do I have no other choice???
Guys, if you are reading this, please leave your thoughts, I ain't asking for power stone, I need your thoughts, I need your comments, this would give me more happiness than the powerstones, I won't tell no to powerstones tho...
And for the ones who feel the power is stolen, tell me how it is stolen, mann, none of the characters, except one, that I have read so far have the power that comes close to Kael's......