Vescrutia: Legacy

Far beyond the reach of maps and mercy, there lies a splinter of land—an island with no name, known only to the void and to her. It sits deep in the vortex of Vescrutia’s own Point Nemo, a dead center of nowhere, where even the winds forget their names. Here, wrapped in a shroud of sea fog and silence, Nagase returned.

Bloodied. Bruised. Broken.

She stepped onto the blackened shores of her island lair, carved long ago from obsidian and grief. Every wave that crashed against the cliffside sang the dirge of her regrets. Her steps were unsteady, not from her wounds, but from the weight of memory.

Nagase wept.

Not from pain. That had dulled into something colder. She wept for the truth she had unearthed in fire, fury, and flame.

"What am I doing?" she asked the salt-soaked air, her voice fractured by sobs and staggering breath.

The fight with her father had torn the veil away. She had seen him bare his true face—the one he reserved for enemies he meant to erase. It wasn’t rage. It was curse-born fire. Beastlike. Ancient. Something older than man or kin.

And yet, beneath her tears...she laughed. A bitter, hollow sound carried by the wind like a dying hymn.

Because it hadn’t been for nothing.

He was real.


The myth. The shadow. Her brother, lost to time and dream. She had felt it—seen it, even—in the heat of battle. A flicker, a memory, a presence. And though she lost little Azazel in the chaos, perhaps...perhaps it had to be.

"Azazel's fineeee,” she whispered non chalantly. “... I’m sure it had to happen.

She spoke to herself—or to the ghosts of the island, if they still listened. Muttering truths and half-lies into the fog. To a stranger, she may have looked unhinged. Deranged. Perhaps she was.

But conviction still clung to her, ragged but unyielding.

"You gotta trust the process, old man," she murmured, raising her eyes to the cracked skies above. “Azazel...he’ll thank me. When this is over... I saw it."

Somewhere, deep within the island's black soil, something stirred.

She sat at the edge of the jagged cliff, where the ocean’s roar gnawed at the stone like hungry teeth. Her cloak clung to her like wet ash, torn by blade and spell alike. But beneath it, her body began to mend—not with medicine, but with a quiet, inborn defiance.

Veins that shimmered with iridescent hues pulsed softly. Wounds closed slowly, like petals shying away from morning light. It was always this way. Her body remembered how to rebuild itself. Time, after all, was pliable to her. But lately, even her healing felt distracted. As though her own gift, her birthright, was preoccupied.

She stared into the water, not seeing her reflection—only the faces of time as they unraveled around her. Past, future, parallel, forgotten. Threads of what-was and what-could-be spilled out before her in kaleidoscopic procession.

And yet—there were gaps.


Blind spots.

They’d been appearing long before the fight with Zeik' her father. Faint at first, no more than a flicker or blur, but growing. Persisting. Deepening. Places in the timestream where there should have been motion, memory, clarity—now only static and shimmer. Unseeable.

She’d tried to ignore them.

Tried to tell herself they were echoes from a distant future still undecided. But she knew better. She’d always known. Deep down, she had begun to suspect the truth: that these voids were not naturally occurring.

They were designed.

And who better to design them than someone like him?

Zeik.

The cursed flame. That wrathful face. The one who taught her to split open the world’s timelines and drink from them without drowning. Who walked hand-in-hand with her through the rivers of possibility when she was still small and unsure.

She had suspected him long before they fought. The blemishes pulsed with a presence too familiar to be denied. And now—after what she saw in the fire—after seeing that face—

She no longer doubted.

“I saw it,” she whispered to the sea, to the ghosts, to herself. “It was him.”

Her healing slowed as the certainty grew. It wasn’t pain that tightened in her chest—it was the realization.

He was hiding sonething from her.

The horizon stretched like a wound—long, open, bleeding gold and crimson into the sea. The sun kissed the water in retreat, turning everything it touched into fireglass. The waves lapped gently at the shore, whispering lullabies in the language of tides and time.

Nagase stood alone on the desolate island, a fleck of forgotten land hidden deep in Vescrutia’s own Point Nemo. Here, no voice could reach her. No echo returned. Only the sea, the wind, and her thoughts.

She walked along the water’s edge, bare feet skimming the tide. The wounds across her back and ribs had closed, threads of light knitting them shut. Her movements were slow, but not weak. Every step was deliberate, a silent dance to coax truth from memory.

She turned her palm up, curling her fingers to beckon the waves like a stage partner. They responded in kind, spinning around her ankles in playful spirals. She twirled once, twice, letting her limbs speak the questions her voice could not.

And always—always—there was that face.

The cursed flame. His eyes—her father’s eyes—but twisted in anger. Cold. Cruel. But more than anything, hidden.

She halted her dance and stared out at the open sea.

“Why?” she breathed. “Why would you hide it from me?”

Her thoughts drifted back. Childhood was not a cruel place. It was soft. Bright. A home warmed by incense and swordsteel, where training was tempered with laughter. Her father had been proud. Encouraging. Stern, yes—but never unkind. They walked the threads of time together, her hand in his, as he showed her how to listen for the music beneath the moments.

And then… something changed.

It was subtle at first. A look that lingered too long. A silence that didn’t belong in a lesson. She remembered one day vividly—she asked a question about a timeline that ended in fire, about a version of herself she couldn’t understand. His eyes had narrowed. Hardened.

“Don’t ask about that again.”

She had shrunk from the frost in his voice. He’d never spoken to her that way. After that, the warmth in him began to flicker, replaced with an intensity that bordered on obsession. He demanded more. Corrected harshly. And every time she questioned, every time she tried to understand, he met her with that same cold stare.

The same one she saw now behind the cursed flame.

She knelt at the shore, letting her fingers trail the water’s surface. The sea was warm, alive. Each ripple carried her pulse back to her. Even here, isolated, the world still responded.

A gull cried overhead. Distant, lonely.

She stood and spun again—slower now, weaving motion into thought.

And then she frowned.

There were blemishes in time.

Tiny flaws—places she could no longer see clearly. They hadn’t always been there. She noticed them first weeks ago, little smudges in an otherwise pristine tapestry. They made no sense. Her sight had always been sharp, pristine, absolute. These gaps weren’t caused by her.

They were intentional.

Placed.

Shielded.

And they were all tied to him.

Her breath caught. She stopped dancing.

A gust swept over the water, and with it came a flicker of light—no, not light—presence.

She turned sharply.

There, standing at the edge of the rocks, where the sea met the cliffs, was a woman. Her body glowed with prismatic light, shifting and radiant, like oil over glass. Long strands of luminous hair caught the fading sun. Her eyes—bright, commanding, full of untold resolve—pierced straight through her.

Nagase staggered back a step.

Those eyes. That look.

It was familiar.

Too familiar.

Like her father’s… not just in shape, but in purpose. That same quiet burden. That same unyielding fire.

“Who…?” she whispered.

But the woman said nothing.

She only watched.

And in her silence, Nagase felt something uncoil within her—like a door unlocking in a distant part of her soul.

The prismatic stranger did not move.

She stood at the cliff’s edge, bathed in the last light of the dying sun, her form shimmering like a half-forgotten dream. The sea hushed beneath her presence, as if holding its breath.

Nagase stepped forward, waves curling around her ankles. Her voice cracked.

“Who are you?”

No answer.

“Are you a memory? A ghost? A guardian?”

Still, nothing.

She reached out with her mind, weaving her thoughts like threads toward the woman—an old technique her father had taught her to sense intent, emotion, even hidden truths.

But there was no echo. No pulse. No thread to grasp.

Just silence.

“You hear me. I know you do.” Her voice hardened. “Say something.”

The woman only stared, her expression unreadable. Not vacant, not dead—but blank, composed. Like a mask worn to shield something unbearable.

It was the same stare.

That same quiet denial.

Nagase’s fists curled. “You are like him.”

The admission scalded her tongue.

“I can’t read you. I can’t feel you. You’ve shielded everything.” Her voice rose with the tide. “Why? Why are you here if you won’t speak?! What do you want from me?!” The stranger blinked once. The light around her shifted—a ripple of colors like emotion trying to surface, only to retreat. Nagase staggered back a step, breath hitching. “Why do you look at me like that… like you *know* me?”

Still no answer.

Only the stare.

That unbearable stillness.

Something inside her cracked. She stepped forward again, defiant, desperate.

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t be another question I can’t answer.”

But the wind rose, carrying the scent of salt and sunfire, and the woman’s form began to dim—like glass losing its reflection. One moment she was there, whole and radiant. The next, she was gone. Nagase stood alone once more, facing the sea. Her knees buckled. She dropped to the sand, trembling—not from fear, but from the weight of recognition.

The door that had unlocked in her soul? It hadn't opened.

It had closed.
And something on the other side was watching.

Nagase dropped to her knees.

The sand clung to her like ash as the last rays of sunlight gave way to dusk. Her shoulders shook, quiet at first, then violently, as sobs tore their way out of her. She buried her face in her hands and wept—not just for the woman, or her father, or the riddles left behind—but for everything. For the warmth that was lost. For the questions that only grew. For the version of herself she was told not to ask about.

For the silence.

The kind of silence that consumes.

She stayed there, rocking gently, until the sobs dried into something brittle. Something sharp. Something *hot.*

Her fingers dug into the sand.

Her breath slowed.

And when she looked up again, her eyes burned.

Rage bloomed in her chest—silent, focused, pure.

She stood, trembling. No longer broken. *Bcoming something else.

“Don’t you walk away from me,” she snarled to the empty air. “Don’t you dare treat me like some FUCKING JOKE!”

A heat flared across her back—searing. Her eyes widened as a rune, long dormant, awakened between her shoulder blades. Its lines spiraled out, ancient and alive, glowing with ethereal fire. The wind caught her hair as she threw her arms wide.

“GET! BACK! HERE!!”

She thrust her hand forward—and ripped.

Space buckled like cloth. Time cracked like glass.

She yanked with a force born of desperation, fury, and blood-right, dragging the prismatic woman through the seams of reality. Wherever she had fled—across distance, across timelines—it didn’t matter. She was pulled back. With a burst of bending light and cascading color, the woman reappeared where she had stood before—exactly as she had been. Poised. Unshaken. Her expression unchanged.

Not surprised.

As if she'd expected this.

Nagase didn’t hesitate.

She launched forward, fist leading, cloak of sea mist trailing her like a storm. The woman moved to meet her, radiant hands rising in counterpoint.

Their bodies collided like comet and sun.

The ground cracked beneath them.

The sea recoiled.

Nagase spun low, sweeping her leg toward the woman’s ankles, but the stranger vanished mid-motion, reappearing above her and driving a bladed edge of light toward her shoulder. Nagase twisted, deflecting with a burst of telekinetic force, then retaliated with a wave of runic power that exploded outward, turning sand into glass.

The woman flew back but landed lightly, as if gravity were a choice.

Their eyes locked—fury meeting purpose.

Nagase’s voice was a storm.

“Who? Are you?”

Nagase lunged again, her motions fluid, unpredictable—like waves breaking and reforming with each breath. She struck high with her elbow, then spun low, channeling raw kinetic energy through her heel. The prismatic woman danced back, catching the light with every step. With a flick of her wrist, she sent a crescent blade of pure prism-light slicing through the air.

Nagase ducked beneath it, felt the heat sheer past her scalp.

The woman followed—blurring forward, both hands glowing with spectral light. Her strikes came in flurries, elegant, arcing—each blow trailing glittering streaks of color that cut like razors. One grazed Nagase’s arm, sending a spike of radiant pain lancing through her nerves.

Nagase grit her teeth and pressed forward. She parried, rolled under a thrust, then countered with a downward smash of runic energy that cratered the ground. But the woman flowed around the blast like water refracted through a prism, reforming behind Nagase and driving a palm of focused light into her back.

Nagase hit the sand hard. Her breath left her in a sharp gasp.

She was fast. Too fast.

But so was Nagase.

She slapped her palm to the earth. A ripple of energy pulsed out like sonar—summoning.

The air darkened, thickened.

From the rupture in space, something huge stepped through.

A Nocturnal Servant.

Massive, sinewed, its body a fusion of midnight muscle and runic armor, glowing from within like a furnace. Its eyes were silver eclipses. It charged forward with a guttural roar, fists pounding like falling moons.

The prismatic woman’s expression changed—just slightly. A flash of calculation.

The Servant slammed into her. She raised a barrier of refracted light, but the impact cracked it. Shards of brilliance exploded outward, and the force sent her flying, skipping across the shallows like a stone. Before she could recover, Nagase was on her—delivering a brutal series of strikes, each one reinforced by ghostlight threads from the Servant's shadow.

The stranger staggered, and for the first time, seemed winded.

Nagase’s eyes flared with purpose.

“Answer me!"

But the woman… smiled.

Not out of cruelty. Out of inevitability.

And then she ignited.

From her chest outward, flames erupted—not red, not orange, but prismatic. Light fractured through them, each lick of fire splitting into thousands of tiny colors, with a deep, core-black ember burning at the heart.

Nagase:"Hellfire?"

Nagase felt it before it even touched her—a twisting sensation in her gut, like the ground had shifted beneath her soul. The flames flicked outward, grazing her cheek—

—and suddenly, she was elsewhere.

She was young, sitting on her father’s lap, watching starlight bend over the temple lake.

Then she was older—fighting in the ruins of some forgotten war, standing over a version of herself she’d never lived.

Then—

She was dying. She was killing. She was laughing beside a woman with her own face.

A thousand versions of herself, flooding her mind at once. Past, future, false. Her body seized. Her breath came in shattered fragments. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

The prismatic stranger walked forward through the flickering haze of illusion, hellfire burning gently across her palms. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Terrible.

“I don’t want to kill you, Nagase. Just unmake you.”

Nagase’s knees buckled. Her eyes fluttered—she saw herself in mirrors of memory, in broken loops, in lives she never lived and never should.

But deep—deep beneath the storm—a thread of clarity screamed.

She was still here.

The Servant snarled, lashing out with a roar that cracked the burning mirage.

Nagase clung to that sound.

To her name.

To now.

And as the fire licked closer, she gritted her teeth, forced her mind to steady and began to fight her way back.

Nagase staggered, eyes wide, mind tearing at the seams.
She could feel her grip on reality began challenged, torn from her grasp. The Fire wasn’t hot in the way fire should be. It was beautiful—crystalline, refracted, spiraling through her thoughts like light through shattered glass. Her memories danced out of order: childhood scenes she never lived, victories she never earned, farewells she never gave. The flame burrowed into her perception, not her flesh. Her sense of self bled from a thousand wounds.

She dropped to one knee, sobbing without shame. "What is this madness." However through gritted teeth and bitter rage. She fought. Fought not by lashing out blindly, but by focusing. Grounding. She turned inward. Breath. Pulse. Identity.

“This flame…” she whispered aloud, voice breaking through the fractures in her mind, “…is this hellfire?.”

This fire seduced with light and then sliced through thought with a surgeon’s precision. It was a prism cutting through time, not just mind.

“What kind of being wields this…?”

The rune on her back pulsed again and she found herself free from the ensnared reality. She gasped. The sensation of the rune was foreign—but undeniable. It shimmered like a living thing beneath her skin, ancient and alive. Her eyes darted to her shoulder, knowing she shouldn’t be able feel that rune at all, let alone use it.

“A Boundless rune,” she said aloud, shuddering. “When?!.”

The prismatic stranger stood in silence, her body gleaming like the surface of an oil-slick lake, watching. Always watching. Only speaking when Nagase was drowning But Nagase stood tall again.

She raised a hand, palm glowing with summoner’s light, and called. A towering servant erupted from a rift—muscle wrapped in midnight, eyes like moons beneath the sea. Its fists clenched, responding to her pain, her defiance.

“Go.”

It lunged at the stranger.

While Nagase hurled waves of psychic pressure at the prismatic being , each one guided like a painter’s stroke. Yet sill, the stranger answered everything. It bent light around Nagase’s summons, striking at the chinks in their forms. Dispelling them with a mastery that shouldnt have been possible. The stranger danced through telekinetic onslaughts as though she’d practiced the steps a thousand times. With every counter, she exposed more of Nagase’s weaknesses—not cruelly, but thoroughly. Like a master testing a student. Or a future warning the past.

Nagase was exhausted. Humiliated. She hovered mid-air, mind raw, body trembling—not from injury, but from the assault of memory fragments and flickers of impossible futures still gnawing at her psyche. Her servants were scattered, dismissed or broken and through it all the battlefield shimmered with Hellfire. Refracting light and showing nagase each method she hadnt tried, that was doomed to failure. Her future caught in the crystalline glow of the strangers flames ever dancing along the horizon in unnatural hues—like stained glass set abaze, like memory ignited.

Nagase steadied herself with a telekinetic push, floating back onto the cracked earth. Her eyes locked on the stranger, who stood perfectly composed, a spectral figure wrapped in fractured light. Always silent. Always precise.

“What and Who…are you you?” Nagase said, her voice low, nearly drowned by the wind.

No reply.

She lifted her hand, shaking slightly, not to strike—but to reach.

“You know me....aware of my actions before I cast it…but my mind is clear. Youre not reading my mind. So i dont get it.. "

The stranger tilted her head.

Then, slowly, with eerie grace, she raised her hands to her face.

Her fingers touched the crystalline helm. The cracked corner where Nagase’s final strike had struck true. The light dimmed slightly as the mask began to recede—not peel, but dissolve, as though it had only ever been woven light and memory.

Beneath it…

Her face.

Older. Wiser. Cold—but not cruel. Scarred in places Nagase had never touched. Eyes rimmed with colorless fire, yet filled with the same defiance she saw in herself.

She was Nagase.

“I didn’t come to kill you,” the older Nagase finally said—her voice a deeper echo of the younger’s. “I came to test you.”

I didn’t come to kill you,” the older Nagase finally said—her voice a deeper echo of the younger’s. “I came to test you.”


Nagase’s breath caught in her throat.

“I—” she started, but couldn’t finish. “You’re me?”

“Not exactly,” the prism woman replied, stepping forward. “A possibility…impossible rare; but, a chance nonetheless.

Nagase scoffed “Riddles?! But—why not just talk to me?”

“You don’t listen when you're comfortable. You only listen when you're broken open.”

The younger Nagase looked down at her trembling hands. Felt the ache in her chest—the flame’s echo still crackling at the edge of her mind.

“And the hellfire?” she asked


The older nagase eyes twitched. A tinge of anger bleeding into her tone. “Unworthy.”


Nagase stepped back, horror and awe mixing like oil in water.

“How?! How can YOU say that?!”

The older Nagase’s eyes flickered—just for a second. Pain, not from the battle, but from memory.

“I say it,” she murmured, stepping closer, “because I know what it is.”

Nagase tensed, the flames at the edge of her mind crackling louder.

“It’s not just fire, Nagase. It’s not even just Naten. It’s a being. An ancient entity, older than either of our worlds. It was bound to our father when he was a child—something he never told anyone. Something only two people in any universe know.”

She raised two fingers.

“Him. And me.”

Nagase’s breath hitched. “What do you mean… bound?”

“The Cursed Flame isn’t just rage, it feeds on it. It coils around the soul, whispers into your blood. Every time Father lost control, every time he exploded in anger—it wasn’t just him. It was the entity, feasting. Trying to hijack who he was.”

“But—Father never—”

“He fought it. Most versions of him do. In most timelines, Zeik holds it at bay.” Her voice softened, reverent. “He masters it.”

“But I—I’m not—”

“You were born with it, Nagase.” The older version pointed at her. “It passed to you. Subtly. Like an ember buried in your soul. And because no one knew, it fed in secret—on your dreams, your fury, your fears. That’s why you’ve always felt… fractured. That’s why the chaos inside you never made sense.”

Nagase’s knees nearly buckled.

“You’re saying… I have hellfire?”

“...I'm saying youre in danger. Im saying you are the danger. I’m saying you inherited something monstrous. And you’ve been carrying it alone your whole life.” She held out her hand. “I know. Because I remember what it was like before…

Nagase blinked, fire flickering behind her eyes. “You sealed it?!”

“Dont sound so sad about it. With Zeik’s help, I locked it away. Most of it. Sealed the Cursed Flame inside a version of my own hellfire and buried it deep. It kept the entity from devouring you… but at a cost.”

Her fingers trembled faintly.

“A cost?”

“You lost your flame. But I kept my mind. My soul. And I kept the world safe from what I could have become.”

Nagase stared at her own hands—still shaking. “And if I… awaken my flame?”

The older Nagase’s expression darkened, her voice like distant thunder.

“Then you’ll awaken it.You’ll unseal the Cursed Flame. It will flood your veins. Rewrite you. You’ll stop being Nagase. You’ll become its vessel. A Tyrant Scourge across the multiverse.”

She stepped back, gaze grave.

“The Spark of War.”

Silence hung between them, pierced only by the low crackle of the fading crystalline fires across the battlefield.

“And that,” the older Nagase whispered, “is why I came. Not to destroy you. Not to test your strength.”

She looked her younger self in the eyes—mirrors of defiance, pain, and infinite possibility.

“I came to see if you could *choose differently.* Before it’s too late.”

Nagase: "Help me?! Just a moment ago you were ignoring me and sought to abandon me without so much as a whisper."

She halted—her voice edged, yet soft. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was questioning.

Nagase: "Come to think of it… how did I bring you back here?"

The woman in the broken mask flinched, ever so slightly. Her crystalline flames dimmed, folding inward like guilt drawing its breath. She rushed Nagase—hurried her forward, as if the question itself was poison.

Prisma: "...I'm not perfect! I don’t know what actually helps and what… just makes things worse."

Nagase gave a sharp laugh. Not cruel—just tired.

Nagase: "Are you kidding me? You don’t know how to talk to yourself?"

Prisma stopped moving. Her shoulders stiffened beneath her cracked armor.

Prisma: "Nagase… we aren't the same person and truly...i hope we arent the same at all.

Nagase’s tone shifted, from playful to bitter. She cut her off with venom.

Nagase: "YOU’RE wearing my face. You have the same father and the same birthmark—how are we not the same?"

The words hung there. Prisma’s arms trembled. Something inside her, some truth, was buckling under weight.

Prisma: "Nagase… we may share a name, face, father, brother… mother, likes and dislikes... but just as much as we share in likeness, we have in contrast."

Nagase rose to her feet and exploded in frustration.

Nagase: "Riddles! Parables! You’ve spent too much time around him!"

That word—him—stabbed deep.

Prisma winced. Her lip quivered as a single tear snuck down the left side of her face. She turned her cheek, trying to hide it behind her mask's broken half.

Nagase, suddenly quieter, pleaded.

Nagase: "Say it straight. Say it simple. Stop the poetry… please."

Prisma looked up, her eyes glassy "will that make it understandable?

Nagase: "I think… I’ll give a damn what you’re saying, if nothing else."*

Silence.

Then—Prisma breathed in, deeply. Her shoulders rose, and the flames around her shimmered in silent dread.

Prisma: "You're the reason we lose the war."

Nagase blinked.

Nagase: "Lost?! Impossible. I don’t lose anything. Not my keys. Nit my wits and certainly-not a war."

Prisma looked downward. She didn’t argue.

Prisma: "...You’re the reason there isn’t a future—at least, where I’m from."

Nagase scoffed.

Nagase: "Rubbish. Even if you could convince me i wasnt strong enough, yoy'd never get me to believe father would fall. As if. Father would let the Horsemen have their way. I’m not a fan of his approach, but the guy gets results. Somehow… he’ll win. Honestly... I’m starting to wonder if you’re really me. Because you sound weak as—"

Prisma: "The Herald of Famine kills Father and becomes the Horseman of—"

Nagase: "Famine?! What a load—"

But Prisma didn’t let her finish. She turned her shoulder, pulling down the torn remains of her cloak.

There, seared into her flesh, glowed a binding sigil—etched in the language of the Four. The mark of Famine and on her other arm bore a sigil she didnt recognize.

Nagase staggered.

She didn’t speak at first.

Her pupils shook. Her knees gave slightly, hands curling into her own arms like she was shielding herself from a thought that had no right to exist.

Her voice cracked when it finally came.

Nagase: "No…"

The flickering lights of Prisma’s flames reflected in her eyes like the pieces of a broken mirror.

Nagase: "That can’t be. That… that’s not…"

But the weight of it all was already sinking her.

She was the herald.

She killed Zeik.

Her hands trembled—fingers curling in disbelief, then rage, then something far colder.

Prisma looked at her—not with judgment, but sorrow. Like someone who had watched it happen too many times.

Prisma: "You don’t want to now… but you will."

And Nagase screamed. Not from her mouth—but from the soul. The kind of scream that doesn’t shatter glass, but hearts.

Nagase:“I…can kill him? That’s impossible! YOU killed him. YOU became a Horseman…not me.”

The prismatic warrior stood with that unnatural stillness again, like light trapped in glass—eyes dimmed of their earlier shimmer, now half-lidded, absent of any trembling water or regret.

Prisma: “…Yes, it was me and now you accept pur differences...”

Nagase: “Why?!”

A moment. No sound but the quiet flick of wind around their feet, as if even the world held its breath.

Prisma: “Because… I was obsessed with proving him wrong. Obsessed with power. But more importantly… I was possessed by his curse. I wanted nothing more than for him to finally see me as the weapon id become.

Nagase’s hands curled into fists. Her jaw clenched, muscles twitching just under the skin. The words shouldn’t have made sense, but they did—too well. She could feel their truth, like a pressure building behind her eyes.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t blink. Her gaze burned across the space between them, but Prisma didn’t flinch. Her voice didn’t shake. She spoke not like a monster—but like someone who had made a choice so long ago, she couldn’t even tell when she first started down that path.

Nagase felt her own voice crack from the weight in her throat.

Nagase: “Why… Why did you kill him.”

She hated this woman. This glass reflection of what could be. Her knuckles ached. Her legs begged to lunge. Something in her needed to fight Prisma, even knowing she couldn’t win—just to break that calm. Just to make her feel the pain she’d caused.

And yet… she listened.

Her next words weren’t shouted. They came out small, but sharp. Like splinters.

Nagase: “Why did you take him from this world.”

That silence again. But it was different now. Prisma looked at her—not as an enemy—but as herself. And maybe that was worse.

Prisma: “Because I thought… I'd be free.”

She stepped forward once, slowly.

Prisma: “But it wasn’t freedom I won. It was silence.”

Nagase’s mind reeled, and in it, fractured memories began stitching together: Zeik watching her spar from the shadows and clapping only once, but meaning it fully. Zeik standing in front of a Wyrm’s mouth with no armor, just that smile. Zeik, even at his lowest, calling her “kiddo” like he saw no monster in her.

Always… smiling. Always believing.

He never punished her for what she might become. He never tried to stop her from becoming strong. He insisted on her being invincible

Yet....shw was certain. He knew.

He always knew.

And he never turned away.

Nagase staggered back half a step. Not from fear. But from the weight of her own heartbeat.

She looked at Prisma not with hatred now—but with a new kind of dread.

Because she wasn’t just staring at someone who had murdered her father.

She was staring at the version of herself that would.

Nagase: “Bullshit.”

The word cracked like lightning between them—sharp, dismissive, real. Nagase’s voice steadied, grounded not in disbelief, but conviction.

Nagase:“I know myself. Even as a Horseman... we can’t kill him. Neither the forest nor Vescrutia would allow such a thing. And Mother…?”

Her jaw tightened, eyes narrowing.

Nagase:“She’d halt the movement of the entire universe to keep Father’s heart beating.”

It wasn't denial. It was clarity. The kind that strikes in the belly like a sudden truth. Nagase didn’t believe Prisma because something deeper told her this was all a lie—not of fact, but of framing.

Zeik wasn’t defeated.

He chose to fall.

And now the gears turned in Nagase’s head—terrible, beautiful gears. Her breath caught in her chest, not from fear… but revelation.

Nagase:“He let you do it… didn’t he?”

The silence that followed was deafening. Prisma’s gaze faltered for the first time. Her lips parted slightly—no denial, no confirmation. Just a long stare.

Then Nagase stepped forward, voice cold and clear.

Nagase:“Where are the other Horsemen?”

A question sharp as a blade. Prisma’s expression twitched—just slightly. And then…

Her eyes lit up.

Not with power, but something softer—fragile.

Hope.

She smiled, faint and tragic, as though remembering something beautiful amid the ruin.

Prisma:"...I am all thats left.”

The air fell still. Like time itself was pausing out of respect. Nagase didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. The weight of that answer hit deeper than any sword strike. Her fists trembled, but not from rage. From awe. From dread. From something she didn’t yet have the language to explain.

Nagase:“And what of your world?”

Her voice was quieter now—not soft, but tempered. Sharpened by grief, shaped by dawning realization. She already knew the answer. But she needed to hear it.

Prisma: “…It’s gone.”

Just two words. But they landed like the collaspe of a star.

Gone.
Not fallen.
Not broken.
Gone.

Prisma didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. Her answer wasn't mournful. It was resigned. The kind of response that only comes from someone who has already buried hope with their own hands.

Nagase stared at her, the silence between them suddenly screaming.

How many times had Prisma called Zeik “father” in that clipped, distant tone?

How many years had she been living after everything she knew had been reduced to ash?

A flicker of rage churned in Nagase’s chest—not at Prisma, but at the quiet cruelty of it all. That in some future yet to come, she would raise her hand against him.

And he’d let her...disllusioned, refusing to kill his own kin?

Maybe even wanted her to.

But for what?

For this?

A broken girl from a broken timeline, wielding her guilt like a blade?

Nagase’s fingers curled. Her aura thinned to a cold whisper around her limbs, dancing between flame and frost.

She took a step forward—not to strike.

To understand.

Nagase:“Why are you here, Prisma?”

Her eyes burned—not with anger, but with something far more dangerous.

Intent.

Prisma:“I want a second chance. I wanna see where I went wrong. Now that the cursed flame doesn’t live inside me, I see the world so differently.”

Her voice wasn’t desperate—it was hollow. Worn thin. Like she'd said this too many times in too many echoes of this same nightmare.

“I’ve seen your father… several times in the last few years.”

Nagase: “Stay away from him.”

The command was cold and immediate, no room for breath between words. Her aura flared, unfiltered, like molten glass—gorgeous, dangerous, and brittle in the center.

Prisma:“…Funny. You’d never stood up for him with such conviction—*until you killed him.*”

The words didn’t land like an insult.

They landed like truth.

Nagase: “YOU...You did that!”

She snarled it, heat bursting off her skin in arcs. Her heel carved a crater where she stood. Rage, sudden and righteous, filled the space between them like poison gas.

Prisma:
“This isn’t the first time I’ve had this conversation with part of myself.”

That broke the tension in a different way—more terrifying than any threat.
Nagase blinked—tight, sharp. Her body stayed rigid, but something in her faltered.

*What did she mean by that?

A long silence. Prisma didn’t fill it with bravado. She simply looked at Nagase with that same dull ache behind her eyes—tired of warning herself across timelines.

Prisma quietly:
“It’s always the same. You get angry. Act like you care. And… when Famine comes, you accept her offer. And they… kill him too.”

Nagase’s eyes widened slightly. Just slightly. But she said nothing.

Because deep down, the accusation felt too possible.

Nagase through gritted teeth:
“WHY. ARE. YOU. HERE?
A second chance?! You’re a fucking Horseman. You’re delusional if you believe you’re fighting for some worthy cause.”

Her hands were trembling now—not with fear, but with something uglier.

Doubt.

Prisma softly, almost ashamed:
“…I just want to find a version of myself to believe in.”

And there it was. No grand plan. No salvation arc. Just a war criminal with nothing left, chasing ghosts of better versions of herself through the threads of fate.