May 1st, 2012, Hua Mountain, Morning.
The Sacred Hua Mountain loomed far east of the Chinese city of Xi'an like a jagged spine piercing the heavens, its peaks shrouded in mist that glowed faintly under the rising sun.
The morning light caught the veils of white vapor and set them ablaze with rose and gold, transforming the ancient range into a vision of impossible beauty.
A veil woven from the whispers of old gods and older wars, from battles that had shaped the supernatural history of China long before the first emperor raised his terracotta army. The mist moved with a life of its own, curling around the stone sentinels like the breath of sleeping dragons.
At the mountain's zenith stood the Hero Faction's pagoda, a tall building of vermilion lacquer and gilded eaves that caught the sunlight and threw it back in shards of crimson and gold. Its seven tiers rose like a challenge to the heavens, each crowned with snarling dragon finials whose open jaws seemed frozen mid-roar.
By day, it blended into the mountain's mythic aura, appearing almost natural, almost ancient, as though it had grown from the bedrock itself.
By night, it hummed with a predatory energy, shining in neon light that spilled from hidden windows, its shadow stretching like a claw over the valleys deep below, reaching for something just out of grasp.
But the true fortress lay within.
Past the pagoda's unassuming wooden doors—carved with scenes of celestial battles and heroic apotheoses—reality itself began to unravel.
Thanks to the effects of Georg's Dimension Lost, one of the most powerful Longinus Sacred Gears in existence, the space inside the pagoda stretched endlessly, a labyrinth of floating courtyards connected by bridges of light, tents and small houses clustered on platforms that drifted through an infinite void.
Training grounds hung suspended over abyssal depths, their floors of packed earth and stone defying gravity through means that no mortal architect could replicate.
The air thrummed with the dissonant echoes of clashing blades and crackling Sacred Gears, a constant symphony of violence that had become as natural as breathing to those who called this place home.
Ghostly cherry blossoms drifted upward, defying gravity, their petals trailing streams of pink light that faded before they could reach the unseen ceiling.
Here, myth and machine fused in strange and beautiful ways: neon-lit shrines housed holographic interfaces, classic Chinese war tables sat beside screens displaying real-time tactical data, and flickering projections of the greatest strategists' quotes—Sun Tzu, Zhuge Liang, Napoleon—drifted through the air like benevolent ghosts.
Racks of jian swords lined the walls beside crates of enchanted ammunition, and the scent of incense mingled with the scent of various Sacred Gears.
Cao Cao, leader of the Hero Faction—or perhaps its king, though he would never use that word aloud—strode through the pagoda's entrance, his boots making no sound on the bloodwood floor.
His attire was a careful contradiction: a black gakuran jacket buttoned over a hanfu robe embroidered with golden dragons, the uniform of a warlord blended with the robes of a scholar.
The combination should have clashed, should have looked like costumed pretension, but on Cao Cao it looked like destiny. His eyes, glacial blue and unblinking as arctic ice, scanned the horizonless training fields below, where recruits sparred beneath holographic titans projected from some hidden apparatus.
"Cao Cao!"
The voice boomed like a war drum, rattling the cherry blossoms from their upward drift. Heracles crashed down from a floating platform above, his landing cracking the floor beneath his hard leather shoes, sending spiderweb fractures racing across the polished wood.
Two meters of man and built like a siege engine given human form, Heracles wore a gakuran torn at the sleeves to accommodate his Herculean arms—literally Herculean, the fabric straining over muscles corded like steel cables under skin.
Greek pauldrons, etched with hydras, lions, and serpents, gleamed atop his shoulders, their bronze surfaces catching the neon light. His gray hair, wild as a storm cloud, framed a face split by a jagged grin that showed teeth sharpened to points through a combination of genetics and deliberate filing.
A pair of solid steel knuckledusters gleamed on his fists, each one bearing the marks of countless impacts.
"You're late, Cao Cao!" Heracles boomed, cracking his neck with a sound like rocks grinding together. "What were you even doing? I butchered a couple of monster packs while waiting for you. Even let one bite me!"
He thrust out a forearm marred by fresh fang marks, the wounds already scabbing over, the surrounding skin purple with bruising. "You know, to make it fun."
Cao Cao did not flinch. His expression remained serene, untroubled, as though Heracles' antics were merely the weather—unpredictable, occasionally violent, but ultimately beneath notice. "Your definition of 'fun' lacks nuance, Heracles."
"Nuance?" The giant snorted, a sound like a horse expelling phlegm. "You sound like that fox, Georg. Nuance doesn't crack skulls."
"No. But it wins wars." Cao Cao's gaze flicked to the training fields, where a recruit faltered against a holographic Minotaur, the beast's spectral horns driving the young man back step by step. "And it will win humanity's war against the supernatural. Give me a report."
Heracles snorted, annoyed by the request—annoyed by any request that required thought rather than action. "Georg is still tracking the Ouroboros' position." He paused, his brow furrowing. "What even is the reason for that, huh?"
"Our goals and Ophis' align," Cao Cao replied, his voice taking on the cadence of a lecture delivered many times before. "She wants to reclaim the Dimensional Gap from Great Red. To do that, she needs numbers—allies, armies, a force capable of challenging the True Dragon. We, humanity, want to drive the supernatural from Earth. If we kill Great Red, then no one will dare stand in humanity's way ever again."
His eyes glittered with a fanatic's certainty.
"Humankind will at last prevail over the unworthy oppressors who have for too long dictated their fates in ways they cannot even imagine. We, the Hero Faction, shall be the rebellion against these tyrants. We shall be the blade that severs the chains."
"Yes, whatever," Heracles groaned, already bored, his attention drifting back toward the training fields where a fresh monster had materialized.
Cao Cao shook his head and moved away, leaving the Greek hero's descendant to his own hobbies—which, inevitably, would involve violence and probably property damage.
He took a surveying stroll through the pagoda's endless corridors, past training rooms where recruits bled and cursed and grew stronger, past libraries where Georg pored over ancient texts and modern intelligence reports, past armories where weapons of every culture and era hung waiting for hands worthy to wield them.
The Hero Faction was his creation, his weapon, his legacy, and walking through it was like walking through the scaffolding of his own ambition.
Rounding a corner, he nearly collided with a short figure—Leonardo, one of the most prominent—and quietest—members of the Hero Faction. The young man's eyes were distant, fixed on something only he could see, his hands moving in patterns that seemed random but were anything but.
"Leonardo," Cao Cao said, pausing. "How is the training with your Sacred Gear progressing?"
Leonardo just nodded, never a man of many words. Instead, he raised his hand, and from the shadow at his feet, monsters began to emerge—twisted things of claw and fang and too many eyes, their forms shifting as they took shape, their snarls echoing in the corridor.
Annihilation Maker, one of the most terrifying Longinus in existence, capable of creating beasts limited only by the wielder's imagination.
"Keep using them as training partners for the others," Cao Cao instructed. "The recruits need to face real fear, not holograms."
Leonardo nodded again, and the monsters dissolved back into shadow.
Cao Cao turned away, retreating to his chambers—a palace within a war machine, a sanctuary carved from the chaos of ambition. Silk drapes cascaded over jade screens, each panel carved with scenes of imperial processions and heavenly ascensions.
Incense coiled around gilded thrones fit for a Son of Heaven, their cushions still plush, their arms still polished.
Here, the Hero Faction's hypocrisy festered like a wound left too long untreated: a warlord preaching equality while enthroned in splendor, his 'allies' relegated to barracks that, while comfortable, were not this. Strength, Cao Cao believed, was the only true nobility. And he was the strongest.
He knelt on brocade cushions, the silk cool beneath his knees, and closed his eyes. 'Indra's war against Shiva. Japan's chaos with the New Rogue Faction. The pieces move.'
A smile curved his lips, thin and satisfied. He could already see it: himself invading Japan, experimenting with Georg's theory on summoning Great Red using the Nine-Tailed Kitsune who ruled the Kansai region, bending the supernatural world to humanity's will through the application of sufficient force.
"A throne suits you... hero."
Cao Cao's eyes snapped open.
The voice was his own—yet warped, twisted, a serpent's hiss beneath silk. The True Longinus flared in his grip, summoned by instinct rather than conscious thought, its divine light pushing back the incense smoke. He spun, spear poised to kill, his body coiled like a spring ready to release.
'An intruder!?'
Behind a paper wall inside his room—a wall that should have been solid, should have been impenetrable—a figure stepped forward.
Cao Cao's mirror image smirked back at him, golden eyes glinting with malice that was ancient and knowing and wrong. Same face, same robes, but wrong—posture languid where Cao Cao's was rigid, smile venomous where Cao Cao's was controlled.
The air curdled around him, incense smoke recoiling as if repelled by his presence, crawling backward along the floor like something alive and terrified.
"Already on the defensive?" The shadow tilted its head, the gesture mocking, condescending, intimate. "But I am just... you. The part you buried. The truth you dress in pretty lies and comfortable delusions."
Shadow Cao Cao gestured to the opulent room, his golden eyes tracing over the gilded thrones, the jade screens, the silk drapes.
"Humanity's savior. Mankind's hero. Please." The word dripped with contempt. "You crave dominion. To be the figure they beg to rule them. To be a human god, worshipped and feared in equal measure. That is your dream, is it not? Not freedom for humanity—freedom for you."
Cao Cao's spear trembled, its tip a hair's breadth from the shadow's throat. "Silence," he demanded, and his voice cracked on the word.
"Or what? You will kill yourself?" The shadow laughed, cold and resonant, a sound that echoed off the jade screens and came back twisted.
"Face it, 'hero.' Your rebellion is a crown. Your virtue, a delusion. And I"—the shadow stepped closer, unfazed by the spear's divine edge, its chest pressing against the tip as though sanctity meant nothing—"am what you are."
The shadow stepped closer still, its golden eyes glinting like shards of tarnished sunlight, like coins placed on the eyes of the dead. The air grew thick, oppressive, the perfume of precious incense smoke coiling around Cao Cao's throat like a noose, tightening with each breath.
"Humanity will be free,' said Cao Cao," the shadow crooned, mimicking his voice with a serpent's malice, each word precise, each syllable a blade. "Yet you, Cao Cao, grovel for Indra's scraps. You beg for his approval, his resources, his blessing. How noble. How... heroic."
Cao Cao staggered back, the True Longinus trembling in his grip, its divine light flickering like a candle in a storm. "I obey no one—"
"Liar." The shadow's grin widened, and cracks spiderwebbed across the floor at its feet, spreading outward like frozen lightning. "You dance on his strings, little puppet. 'Kill Great Red' and then 'weaken the Hindu pantheon'—is that your dream? Or his?"
"Silence!" The spear flared, its holy light erupting in a desperate burst—but it guttered against the shadow's form, dying against that golden-eyed presence like waves breaking on black stone. Sweat beaded on Cao Cao's brow, running down his temples, stinging his eyes. His breaths came shallow and fast.
'This is not real. A trick. A—'
"Ah, denial." The shadow circled him, each step echoing like a funeral drum, like a countdown to something Cao Cao did not want to name. "Your oldest weapon, Cao Cao. Your most faithful companion. It has served you well, has it not? It has kept you sane. Kept you blind."
The shadow's voice dropped, became almost gentle, almost sympathetic—and that was worse, somehow, than the mockery.
"You preach humanity's ascension while hoarding power like a dragon guarding gold. You despise the supernatural... yet you crave to be them. A god. A king. A figure before whom all others kneel. That is not liberation, Cao Cao. That is succession."
Cao Cao's knuckles whitened around the spear's shaft, his grip so tight the muscles in his forearms stood out like cords. "I am nothing like them—"
"Aren't you?" The shadow's hand drifted to the gilded dragon on Cao Cao's robe, its touch searing the embroidery to ash, leaving blackened fabric and the smell of burnt silk.
"Your 'faction' grovels at your feet. Your chambers reek of imperial decadence. Even now, even now, you itch to crush that trembling recruit who dared question you yesterday. You remember him, don't you? The one with the shaking hands? The one who looked at you with fear instead of awe?"
"I—I act for humanity's sake!"
"For yours." The shadow's whisper split the air, cold as a blade slipped between ribs, as final as a judge's gavel. "You are no liberator. You are a thief. A fraud. A pretender stealing godhood beneath a banner of righteousness. And the worst part?"
It leaned in.
"You know it. You are not so delusional as to believe your own lies. It is simply... too hard for you to accept. The truth is a heavy burden, Cao Cao. Heavier than any crown. And you"—it pressed a finger to his chest, right over his heart—"are too weak to carry it."
The spear clattered to the floor. The sound was deafening in the silence that followed, a crash that echoed off the jade screens and came back as a hundred smaller crashes, each one a fracture in something Cao Cao had thought unbreakable.
His reflection glared back from the shadow's golden eyes—a boy playing conqueror, dwarfed by his own throne, drowning in his own ambition.
"What... are you?" The words came out strangled, barely a whisper.
"The truth you smothered. The rot beneath your splendor." The shadow pressed its finger deeper, and Cao Cao choked on the wrongness of it, the icy, familiar weight of his own hypocrisy pressing down on his chest, crushing his lungs.
"You fear me... because I am you. The self that hungers. The tyrant you will become. Admit it—if you did not believe my words, you would have used the True Longinus already. You would have struck me down without hesitation. But you listen. You listen, because some part of you, buried deep, knows that I speak only truth."
The room warped around them, paper walls bleeding ink-black, the jade screens cracking, the gilded thrones tarnishing. Cao Cao sank to his knees, his legs unable to hold him any longer, the shadow's laughter clawing at his skull, scraping against the inside of his thoughts like nails on a chalkboard.
He staggered back, his boots scuffing grooves into the wooden floor, but the distance between them did not grow. The shadow matched his retreat step for step, its presence expanding to fill the space he tried to create.
"No!" His voice cracked, raw as a fresh wound, as a confession torn from unwilling lips. "I am a hero! I will carve a world where humanity needs no gods, no monsters, nothing but their own strength!"
The shadow tilted its head, golden eyes reflecting the flickering light of the fallen True Longinus like twin funeral pyres.
"Strength?" It laughed, low and liquid, the sound of a blade twisting in bone, of hope turning to despair. "You mean this?" It gestured to the spear on the floor, its divine aura pulsing faintly, weakly, as though it, too, had been wounded by this confrontation. "A weapon forged by the God of the Bible himself. Gifted to mankind like a dog's collar, like a treat tossed to a begging pet. Tell me, hero. Does it choke you when you swing it? When you preach freedom... with a god's leash in your hands?"
Cao Cao's breath hitched. The spear's glow dimmed further, its light retreating as if ashamed, as if it recognized the truth in the shadow's words and could not bear to witness its wielder's face.
"I-It is a tool. A means to an end!"
"Liar." The shadow stepped into the spear's fading radiance, its form rippling like oil on water, like heat rising from sun-baked stone. "You cling to it because you are terrified. Without this—without this crumb that heaven tossed you—you are just a boy playing conqueror. A hypocrite who hates the supernatural... yet begs for its power, because deep down, in the place you do not visit, you know that you are nothing without it."
Its voice dropped to a whisper, cold as a grave, final as a verdict.
"You do not want humanity free. You want them yours. A new pantheon, perhaps made by humans—but with you as its tyrant god, enthroned above all others, worshipped and feared and obeyed."
Cao Cao's knees buckled. The spear slipped from his grip entirely, clanging against the bloodwood floor with a sound like a bell tolling for the dead. "N-No... I am not... I am not like them..."
The shadow crouched, bringing its face inches from his. The golden eyes filled his vision, drowning out the room, the pagoda, the world.
"But you are," it purred, tracing a finger along his jaw, its touch cold as a tomb, final as death. "You have always been. And when your 'era' dawns? When humanity rises and the supernatural falls? They will kneel to you... or they will burn. Just. Like. Them." The finger pressed deeper, and Cao Cao felt something crack inside him, something that had been holding him together for a very long time. "And you know I am speaking the truth. Because I. Am. You, Cao Cao."
Cao Cao's boot lashed out, striking nothing but air—the shadow had dissolved like smoke, a spectral mockery of flesh, reforming just beyond his reach.
"Shut your mouth, impostor! I am not you!" he snarled, his voice fraying at the edges, unraveling like a rope under too much weight. "I will never be you!"
The shadow's laughter erupted, a cascading choir of dissonant bells, of broken hymns sung by twisted choirs. Its form twisted, expanded, changed—light and dark colliding in a searing maelstrom that blistered the air and sent the incense smoke fleeing in terror.
The stench of burnt myrrh and rotting lilies filled the room, thick enough to choke on.
When the chaos cleared, the creature that emerged was a perverse seraph, a being of luminous, alabaster flesh stretched taut over a skeletal frame. Its surface crawled—a thousand tiny hands moving across it like maggots in holy oil, each one desperately grasping at something not there, something that perhaps did not even exist.
Their pallid digits knotted and unknotted in ceaseless, frantic motion, dripping a viscous gold that hissed where it struck the floor, burning through the wood like acid.
Its face was a mask—a baroque masterwork of hammered gold, etched with laurels and serpents inlaid with onyx, a stigma of opulence and arrogance carved in precious metal.
But the eyes behind it were voids, twin abysses that swallowed the light, their blackness seeping like ink into the mask's gilded veins, corrupting the gold from within.
A mockery of wings fanned behind it—not feathers, but fingers, each digit elongated and jointed, clawing at the air as if to strangle the heavens themselves.
And in its grasp—the Spear of Destiny.
A grotesque amalgamation: the jagged, pulsating crimson of Nyarlathotep's blasphemy, the same corruption used to seal Ophis's powers, fused with the True Longinus's gilded sanctity. The shaft wept blood that pooled into a halo at its feet, while its tip glowed with a light so pure it scorched the eyes to look upon—purity and corruption, holiness and damnation, bound together in a union that should have been impossible.
"Behold," the Shadow intoned, its voice a harmony of silk and static, of angelic choirs and demonic whispers. "I am Shadow—the True Self! I am the truth you carved into your bones, the destiny you shaped with your own hands."
It gestured to its own form, and the hands on its chest parted like a curtain, like a veil being lifted, to reveal a hollow cavity where a heart should have pulsed.
"A hero?" It laughed, and the sound cracked the jade screens. "No. You are this. A saint of rot. A god of hungry hands."
The spear trembled in its grip, its aura a discordant hymn of pain and ecstasy. Cao Cao staggered back, his own True Longinus dimming further in its presence, as if ashamed to meet its corrupted twin, as if recognizing a darker reflection of itself.
The Shadow glided forward, each step a dirge, slow and inevitable, the cadence of a funeral march. Its thousand hands rippled like pallid roots breaking through sacred soil, and the golden mask gleamed with divine malice and cosmic cruelty intertwined. The distance between them shrank with each heartbeat.
'No. No. No.'
The mantra fractured in Cao Cao's mind, each repetition weaker than the last, each one a lie he could no longer sustain. The shadow's gaze bored into him, those abyssal eyes reflecting not the man he was—but the hollow thing he was becoming.
A hero's crown, rusted into a tyrant's circlet. A liberator's banner, rotting on a conqueror's pole.
"Look at you," the shadow crooned, its voice a honeyed blade sliding between his ribs. "A savior who cannot save himself. A lion who cowers from his own shadow—literally."
The Spear of Destiny pulsed in its grip, its blood-red shaft weeping crimson tears that sizzled where they fell. "But fret not. I will wear your lies like a martyr's shroud. I will be the hero... the king... the god you ached to become." The golden mask cracked, and behind it, Cao Cao saw his own face smiling back. "Under the wise guidance of my Father."
Cao Cao's fingers twitched toward the True Longinus, its light now feeble as a guttering candle, as a star in its death throes. "B-Balance Brea—"
The Spear of Destiny struck.
It pierced his chest not with a scream of metal, but a whisper—a lover's kiss parting flesh and bone, a promise fulfilled. Cao Cao choked, his cry strangled into a wet gasp, his hands flying to the shaft embedded in his heart. The world narrowed to that point of contact, to the weapon's holy corruption searing through his veins like liquid heresy, like fire made flesh.
He collapsed, his knees cracking against the floor, his vision blurring as the shadow loomed over him—a twisted angel haloed by its own rot, crowned by its own corruption.
Life bled away from him. Not in a torrent, but a trickle—each heartbeat weaker than the last, a dying drum echoing his crumbling delusions, his shattered dreams, his stillborn destiny. The True Longinus slipped from his grasp entirely, its glow extinguished, its divine presence withdrawing as if to spare itself the sight of its wielder's end.
Above him, the shadow cradled his face with a hand made of squirming fingers, their touch cold as a tomb, gentle as a murderer.
"Shhh," it murmured, and the golden mask's veneer cracked further, revealing more of Cao Cao's own face beneath—younger, perhaps, or older, or simply truer.
"Rest now, little liar. Your story ends here... but mine?" The spear twisted, and Cao Cao's final breath escaped as a shudder, as a sigh, as the last note of a song no one would remember. "Mine is just beginning."
The darkness swallowed him whole. Not with a scream, but a sigh—the sound of a hero's legend dissolving into ash, of a dream dying before it could be born.
The shadow's form rippled, contracted, folded—and where the monstrous seraph had stood, a man now stood. The same face as Cao Cao, the same robes, the same bearing. But the eyes were no longer glacial blue. They burned with a sickly gold, like twin suns seen through smoke, like the last light of a world ending.
The black butterfly landed on the door's handle, its wings folding, waiting.
Shadow Cao Cao knelt. "Father," he said, and his voice carried reverence, devotion, the desperate love of a child seeking approval. "It is a great pleasure to be of help to you. For gifting me the Spear of Destiny, I am honored. I am grateful. To have such a wonderful Father..."
He trailed off, the words inadequate, incapable of containing the depth of his feeling.
"Be ready, Cao Cao." Nyarlathotep's deep voice resonated from the butterfly, from the shadows, from everywhere and nowhere. "You are my strongest weapon against Makoto."
Cao Cao's golden eyes flickered with admiration, with anticipation, with the hunger of a predator presented with worthy prey. "The Universe? Thank you for giving me such an honorable task, Father. I will not fail you."
"Follow your desires now, Cao Cao. The most twisted and deepest ones that were present in your former self's heart. Let them guide you. Let them consume you." The butterfly's wings beat once, twice, and then Nyarlathotep was gone, flown away to other schemes, other manipulations, other souls to twist.
The door burst open almost immediately. Georg stood in the doorway, his spectacles askew, his messy black hair even more disheveled than usual. A red wizard robe hung over his shoulders, its sleeves singed—probably from an experiment gone wrong, or perhaps right, by his standards. His eyes darted around the room, taking in the cracked floor, the shattered screens, the scent of burnt incense and something darker.
"Cao Cao!" Georg's voice was sharp with alarm. "What happened?"
Shadow Cao Cao smiled—a slow, spreading expression that did not reach his golden eyes.
"Nothing. I simply wanted to try something." He paused, letting the silence stretch, letting Georg's unease build. "Listen, Georg. When was the last time you met Ophis?"
Georg's brow furrowed, confused by the non sequitur. "It has already been almost a month. Why?"
"Oh." Cao Cao's smile widened, and for a moment, the room seemed to darken around him. "I have a fantastic idea, Georg."