The man stood still.
Silver hair shifted softly in the wind, ageless and motionless. His coat hung like history itself—worn, sharp, unwrinkled, and silent. His round, silver-rimmed glasses dimmed the last dying sunbeam of the evening, their lenses obscuring glass eyes that didn't blink. Couldn't.
Behind those eyes, a thousand lifetimes whispered.
He stood atop the fractured cliffs of a fading continent, where the winds carried the scents of metal, old fire, and blood. Here, light bent strangely, and even silence dared not linger too long.
"I used to live in a world that smelled like rain after school," he began, his voice no more than a ghost against the wind. "Peaceful. Too peaceful. A world of naps under warm trees and books half-read. It bored me."
He smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"I was supposed to live a normal life. Just a kid. Everyone said it was fate. I never wanted to go. But I left anyway. Left everything. Thought I'd come back."
He lowered his head. "I never did."
The sky cracked with a slow, crimson pulse.
In the far distance, the clouds began to churn like boiling oil, and a black tower rose from the horizon, surrounded by wings, screams, and flames. Beneath it, banners of scarlet—stitched with a bleeding crown—rose like tongues licking the sky.
The man's eyes didn't flinch.
"The Blood Monarch." He whispered the name as one would speak an old lullaby turned into a war cry. "…Sister."
He could sense them too—other monsters from his own time, twisted now by time and agony. One advanced from the eastern ridges of cracked snow, wrapped in cathedral bones and dressed in the skin of saints.
"Sundawn," he muttered. "And The Demon Bishop…"
And to the south—metal clanks, laughter without mouths, and the scent of mercury.
The Silver Lab. Their footsteps were logical. Their goal: dissection.
He closed his eyes. "I should've died with them, in that old world."
A mirror unfolded beside him—silken and sudden, reflecting not light but a quiet, golden woman whose smile ached with familiarity.
Her voice was soft. "You have all the authority now… and the power. I kept my promise—I helped you get your memories back."
The man turned to her. His jaw trembled ever so slightly. The sky behind him was now violet with impending storms.
"At least…" she said, "I saved one."
Her expression changed, eyes softening like dew clinging to a blade of grass. "Now go. Go back and stop us—stop what we've become—before this becomes permanent."
The mirror shimmered. It cracked.
The woman didn't wait for his reply.
The mirror folded in upon itself, layer after layer, until it became an impossibly delicate origami butterfly, humming faintly with golden heat. It lifted into the sky and ascended, past the black sun and bleeding clouds.
Far above, something ancient watched it.
And when it passed the cloud line…
CRACK.
The sky shattered like glass. A soft scream echoed from beyond time. The War had begun.
This world… it had reached its climax. And it was ending.
---
Elsewhere... Before
In a world untouched, far beyond reach…
The butterfly slipped through the veil of time and into the Primordial Void, where it trembled and turned, twisting and folding, becoming again. It spiraled into matter, forming not a shape, but a presence. From that presence, a golden mirror bloomed into reality—ornate, ancient, aching with purpose.
Time passed. It waited and watched, pieces of itself hidden across ages, shards placed like seeds displaced by humans.
Until...
A voice. Soft. Female. Present.
"Is this one-way?"
The mirror pulsed. It remembered her mission.
And so, it began—again.