Chapter 11
I ran the numbers again.
And again.
And again.
Every calculation ended the same way—
death.
The cliff was barren, silent, stripped of everything except wind and corpses. Empire soldiers lay twisted around me like broken marionettes. For half a breath, I almost pitied them.
Almost.
If not for the black-gold sigil etched into their armor.
My right hand—
I stared at the stump.
The flesh around the cut was rotting, blackening, the decay spreading like ink in water. Blood leaked in slow, sick pulses.
My funnel was thinning to threads.
Maybe I really was about to die.
The Omen stood several meters away, unmoving—its silhouette vaguely human, but wrong in the small ways that mattered. Wrong in the bend of its limbs, the angle of its head, the way its shape flickered as though it couldn't decide what it wanted to be.
It didn't advance.
It didn't attack.
It simply watched.
As if waiting.
As if expecting something.
Curiosity? No.
This thing didn't feel curiosity.
It was letting me squirm.
Letting me breathe.
Letting me understand that it had already won.
I forced my legs to move. They shook violently, but with enough stubbornness and pain, I managed to stand.
Barely.
Why was it hunting me?
Omens hunted the Marked—the ones the Fell Gods touched. But I wasn't marked. I would have known.
Wouldn't I?
A knot twisted in my stomach.
A flicker of doubt.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The Omen stepped forward. Slow. Careful. The way one approaches an injured predator—respectfully, but without fear.
Maybe it was waiting for me to use my trump card.
Maybe it recognized what I was.
A name holder.
How arrogant of it—
thinking it had cornered me completely—
A cold realization scraped through my bones.
Perhaps it had.
The Omen blurred.
Charged.
Too fast—my body didn't even try to react. Instinct lagged, useless and exhausted.
I lifted my head.
Looked it in the eye.
Unflinching.
A wall of wind snapped into existence—a violent gale slamming into the Omen mid-stride, hurling it backwards like a toy.
It skidded across the dirt.
I turned.
Snezna crouched against a fallen tree, half-dead, bleeding from too many wounds to count. Breath rattled in his chest, wet and broken. He must have slipped away when the Empire arrived.
"You fool," I muttered.
Save your strength.
Save your life.
The Omen rose again. Dust and bark fell from its form. Fury radiated from it like heat from a forge.
It tore the fallen tree free with one deformed arm and hurled it.
I ducked. Conjured a blade—the last fragile scrap of essence left in my funnel. The blade split the trunk cleanly, but the force still numbed my remaining hand.
Too strong. Far too strong.
I slipped into shadow, reappearing several paces away. My vision swayed. The world tilted.
Its wounds—the pitiful ones the Empire soldiers had managed to carve—were already closing.
I looked at myself.
No hand.
Barely any blood left.
Funnel thinning to nothing.
Snezna dying.
No way out.
I am going to die here.
And if I was—
"Then I'll drag you with me," I whispered.
"You fucking curse."
I reached inside myself.
The Omen froze.
Recognized the danger.
Charged—
a streak of black lightning—
But I was already too far gone.
I reached deeper.
Past flesh.
Past thought.
Past will.
Into the thin, trembling thread that bound me to this world—
my existence—
my true name.
And I tore.
---
My name—
My… name?
The world lurched.
Shapes dissolved.
Thoughts shattered.
*What is my—*
*What—*
*What's my true name?*
Why can't I remember?
*Why—why—why—*
A name slammed into my mind like a foreign object.
Sharp. Misplaced. *Wrong*.
**Carter.**
Who is—
What is—that?
The name felt like something pressed into my skull from outside. Like reading a word I'd never learned. Like hearing a sound that shouldn't exist.
*Carter.*
Was that—
Was I—
*No.*
Then another name surfaced.
Warm. Familiar. *Mine*.
**Varka.**
*Varka.*
Yes. That's—
Wait.
*Wait.*
Which one is—
Which—
*Which—*
My breath broke.
My vision collapsed—tunnel, pinhole, nothing.
**Carter.**
The name again—insistent, clawing—
**Varka.**
This one felt right. Felt *earned*. Felt like home.
But—
*But I wasn't Varka before.*
*Was I?*
The thought arrived like a blade through fog.
*I was someone else. I was—*
**Carter.**
*No. That's not me. That's—*
**Varka.**
*Yes. I'm Varka. I've always been—*
**Carter.**
*Stop. Stop. STOP—*
Both names screamed through me simultaneously—overlapping, colliding, neither one fitting, both trying to claim the same space inside my dissolving mind.
I tried to hold onto one.
Couldn't.
Tried to reject the other.
Couldn't.
*Which one came first?*
*Which one is real?*
*Which one was I born with?*
The questions circled—vultures over a corpse I couldn't identify as mine.
My heart beat—
*Whose* heart?
I breathed—
*Whose* lungs?
I thought—
*Whose* mind?
Darkness swallowed everything.
And inside that darkness—
Something whispered a name I couldn't place.
A third name.
Older than both.
Hidden beneath the other two like a scar beneath skin.
But I couldn't hear it.
Couldn't *hold* it.
It slipped away the moment I tried to grasp it—
And I was left with nothing.
No Carter.
No Varka.
Just—
*Absence.*
---
***My name is Carter.***
The thought hit me again—like dropping a stone into black water. The ripples spread, slow and cold.
*Who was I before?*
*Why wasn't I Carter before?*
*Why does the name feel like something I lost—*
*—or something that lost me?*
I tried to move.
Nothing obeyed.
I tried to see.
Only murk.
A flicker.
A sensation.
A single thread of memory.
*I was dreaming.*
Dreaming of Varka.
Varka—the man whose body I'd been inside.
Wearing him like a suit in this waking nightmare.
So why does the idea of being him feel distant now?
As if the body was never mine.
As if I'd been shoved inside it—forced into its marrow—like a parasite lodged in bone.
*Why can't I see?*
*Why can't I feel?*
The body I had occupied for so long—why did it suddenly feel foreign?
Hollow?
Unfamiliar?
*Wrong?*
*Varka broke his true name.*
A true name…
What is that?
Why break it?
What does it mean to shatter your own existence?
I had been able to hear him.
Feel him.
His thoughts.
His intentions.
His rage.
His will humming under my skin like a second heartbeat.
Now—
Nothing.
Only silence.
A cold vacuum where he used to be.
Then—
Vision slammed back into me like a tidal wave.
Not gradually.
Not mercifully.
A violent snap, like someone yanking the entire world sideways.
---
Varka—no.
Not Varka anymore.
A mass of black ink in the rough shape of a man tore through the clearing, lashing out at another shifting mass—this one grey, twitching, reforming madly. Limbs elongated, dissolved, collided.
Each strike shook the air—sound cracking before impact, splitting like glass.
Each clash sent ripples through the earth.
The forest around us was tearing apart—melting like wax beneath a sun too close.
I tried to breathe—
Realized I didn't know if I had lungs.
I tried to speak—
Realized I didn't know if I had a mouth.
My form was wrong.
Not human.
Not anything I recognized.
*No. No, this is wrong. I can feel him dissolving—feel US dissolving—*
I tried to pull back.
Couldn't.
There was no "back" anymore.
Whatever Varka did—
breaking his name, shattering that forbidden core—
had twisted him into this thing.
And somehow—
somehow—
it twisted me too.
I didn't know what I was.
I didn't know if I even had a shape.
I only knew this:
Varka had destroyed himself.
And in doing so, he had destroyed whatever I was supposed to be.
---
Something slid into my head—cold, slick, like fingers made of ice water pressing against the inside of my skull.
Not a thought.
Not a voice.
More like the feeling of someone standing too close behind me—
breathing against the back of my skull.
Varka's presence flickered beside it.
Thinner.
Distant.
Like he was underwater and I was hearing him through the surface.
His amusement brushed across my mind, faint and warped, as if stretched over a drum.
*…so this is… different…*
He didn't sound thrilled.
He didn't sound hysterical.
He sounded *wrong*.
Too smooth.
Too calm.
As if he'd forgotten where emotions were supposed to go.
The forest bent around him.
Branches drew back without wind.
Leaves curled inward.
Shadows gathered at his feet even where there should have been none.
The Omen hurled fire across the clearing—
bright, desperate.
It snuffed out midair.
Simply ceased to exist, as if the flames remembered something and chose not to burn.
Varka shifted.
I can't call it movement.
His body didn't step—
it *rearranged*, piece by piece, like a drawing being redrawn between blinks.
His arm uncoiled forward—too long, too smooth.
It slid through the Omen like a blade drawn through water.
Grey mass split.
The forest shuddered.
The world let out a sound—
not a scream,
not a crack—
a vibration I felt deep in my teeth, as if the ground was humming.
*The world bent around us.*
*I couldn't tell where Varka ended and I began.*
*His rage was my rage.*
*His power—*
*—was eating me alive.*
Varka tilted his head.
Too far.
The angle kept going past where a spine should bend.
Another sensation brushed into my mind.
Not language.
Not meaning.
Just pressure—
a cold fingertip pressing lightly against my thoughts.
It made my stomach twist.
It made my memories ripple out of order.
Varka flickered again—
closer to the Omen, then behind it, then above.
The space around him dented, bulged, then smoothed as if trying to accommodate something that didn't quite fit.
Each movement made him less recognizable.
His outline blurred—
edges softening, doubling, folding inward.
Pieces of him didn't match.
His shadow didn't land where it should.
His footsteps made no sound, but the trees shook.
The Omen retaliated with a tendril of grey, spiked and thrashing.
Varka didn't dodge.
He simply wasn't in the path anymore—
like reality skipped a frame and forgot to place him there.
The pressure in my skull pulsed again.
Hotter now.
Hungrier.
Relentless.
The forest around them tore apart—roots flung upward, trunks twisting.
I couldn't tell where Varka ended and the darkness around him began.
They moved together—
coiling, tightening—
a single shape wearing the memory of a man.
He raised an arm.
It dissolved into lines.
Into impressions.
And then the Omen's body was bisected.
Half of it evaporated.
The other half twitched on the burning ground.
The air felt thick.
Like syrup.
Like sound.
Varka straightened—
slow, smooth—
head lifting toward something only he could see.
The pressure behind my thoughts tightened.
My vision flickered.
For a heartbeat, I saw…
*Layers.*
Inside Varka's silhouette—
shapes.
Versions of himself stacked on top of each other, each one a fraction out of sync.
Like he was several people existing simultaneously, phasing in and out of the same space.
He readied to move again—
Then something small shifted in the corner of his perception.
Snezna.
Dragging himself across the cracked earth.
Bleeding, trembling, barely alive.
Everything around us stilled.
The pressure in my mind loosened.
Just slightly.
The shadows around Varka's form hesitated.
The world seemed to inhale.
His head turned toward Snezna.
Slow.
Careful.
Almost human.
*Almost.*
And that sliver of stillness—
that single pause—
was all the Omen needed.
---
I was struck—
no, *launched*—
hurled backward across the shattered cliffside.
Kilometers?
Meters?
I couldn't tell.
Distance became a smear, a single stretched ribbon of motion.
When I finally stopped skidding, a thought—sharp, almost human—cut through the haze.
*Foolish.*
*How foolish.*
It wasn't mine.
It wasn't Varka's.
It was… something in between.
Or something inside him.
He looked down at his hands.
Darkness pulsed beneath the skin—not flowing like blood, but *slithering*, pressing against the surface as if trying to break free.
The whispers returned.
No words.
Just pressure.
Meaning without language.
Intent without sound.
Varka resisted.
Barely.
His will was a fraying rope pulled from both ends.
*No… not yet.*
His thought, ragged.
*Not until that damned creature is ash.*
He rose.
Not walking—*rising*.
A column of living shadow unanchored from the ground.
The Omen stared up at him.
Waiting.
Coiling.
Its form sharpening into something more solid, more hateful.
Varka charged.
---
The battle devolved into madness.
A single swing of his arm carved a crescent of black force through the air, shattering trees as if they were brittle glass—trunks exploding into splinters.
The Omen replied with fire—white fire—flames so hot they devoured the sound around them.
The inferno died before touching him.
Snuffed out by the darkness clinging to his skin.
The Omen split—
one shape becoming two, becoming five—
each lashing at him from a different angle.
Varka vanished.
Reappeared behind one.
Drove a blade of shadow through its spine.
It dissolved like wet ash.
Another struck from above—
he caught it mid-strike, twisted its arm until it snapped, hurled the creature into its own duplicate.
The whispers surged.
Hot.
Hungry.
Relentless.
*Focus.*
Varka's voice, thin and frayed.
*Not yet. Not yet. NOT YET—*
A blade—
the Omen had crafted a blade—
the size of a house, forged from pure grey mass and hatred.
It screamed as it flew.
We didn't dodge.
Impact.
The world folded inward.
We were thrown back again—stone, dirt, sky all blurring into one.
*No…*
Varka's voice cracked.
*Not again.*
He rose.
Not guided by me.
I was only watching—
a passenger strapped inside something that was no longer a body.
Across the cliff, the Omen reformed, trembling, bracing.
Varka drifted upward.
High.
Higher.
Until his silhouette blotted out the moon.
Then—
Darkness.
Not mist.
Not smoke.
A curtain.
A dome.
A swallowing abyss.
He covered the entire sky.
The Omen clung to the ground, claws sinking into the earth, preparing.
Varka looked sideways—
toward a crumpled figure at the edge of the devastation.
Snezna.
Something in the corruption… hesitated.
A ripple of wrongness.
A fracture in the frenzy.
For a heartbeat—
just one—
what was left of Varka surfaced.
*I owe… at least this much, old friend.*
*My last act.*
He wrapped what little humanity he had left around Snezna like a shield.
Then he fell.
A meteor of darkness.
The land exploded.
Acres obliterated in an instant.
Rock turned to dust.
Trees evaporated.
The cliff shook like a dying animal.
When the smoke cleared, the Omen lay in tatters—only a fraction of it still clinging to shape.
It pulled itself upright, dripping, rearranging into a human silhouette.
Its eyes—dozens of them—fixed on Varka's thinning form.
He hovered.
Barely held together.
A shape made of unraveling threads.
He only had one strike left.
He lunged.
Too late.
A voice—
soft, familiar, poisonous—
cut through the ruin.
"Var—"
A cough.
A wet choke.
"Varka. Look. Toward me."
He did.
Blue, cold eyes met the hollow void where his eyes had been.
A blade pierced him—
not steel,
but *will*.
A crushing, foreign will
rammed into his core like a spear.
I recognized the man.
The voice.
The insignia.
The Imperial superior from before.
Royalty.
Strategist.
The one who never fought on the battlefield.
Because he had been waiting for this moment.
Varka collapsed—
not falling but *unmade*,
his form breaking apart as he was flung off the cliff.
Into darkness.
Into silence.
Into nothing.
---
Varka was falling.
Down.
Down.
*Down*—toward the churning black water far below.
*Never thought I'd live like this.*
His thought, not mine.
*Never thought I'd die like this.*
His life flashed before his eyes—
and through him, into me.
They always say that at the moment of death, a life plays itself out like a last, desperate story.
I'd never believed it.
But there it was.
The North.
The frozen hellscape he'd called home.
Its iron skies. Its endless night. Its brutal beauty.
And then—
*Fire.*
Flames eating snow.
Smoke painting the auroras black.
Home burning.
A memory not mine.
Still burning me.
*My home had a tradition.*
The thought slid into me like a shard of ice.
*Every winter solstice, a few chosen at random. Exile, though they never said the word.*
*We were their connection to the rest of the realm—so they claimed.*
Faces flashed by.
Brothers.
Sisters.
Family.
Every one of them fading into the blizzard as Varka walked away for the last time.
*Where did that boy go?*
*The one who wanted to be a hero?*
*When did he die?*
*Was it when I put on the robes of the exiled?*
*Was it when I saw the world for what it was?*
*Was it when I learned that "good" actions always come with a cost?*
His grief poured through me—raw, untended, full of old scars.
*People love to believe they're good.*
Water rushing up—
*But goodness is a luxury—one they cling to only while the world is gentle with them.*
Cold air screaming past—
*When life presses hard enough—when the price of doing the right thing becomes pain—most people fold.*
Impact in three seconds—
*Comfort masquerading as virtue.*
Two seconds—
*A man's morals aren't revealed when the river is calm.*
*They show when the storm hits—when holding onto your precious principles hurts more than letting them go.*
One second—
*Don't speak to me of goodness.*
*Don't pretend you're better.*
*You haven't been tested.*
*Not like I have.*
Then—bitterly, almost gently:
*I'm not a good person.*
*And neither are you.*
*We're survivors. Nothing more.*
*Not heroes.*
*Not legends.*
*Just creatures trying to live one more day in a world that demands too much.*
His thoughts grew faint as the water rushed up.
Then—
A shift.
His attention turned inward.
Toward *me*.
*Oh, but it doesn't matter, does it?*
His voice twisted sharp.
*You damned parasite.*
I recoiled.
*This isn't my fault.*
*I didn't choose this.*
*I didn't choose him.*
*Or the Omen.*
*Or any of this nightmare he called a life.*
But he couldn't hear me.
Or refused to.
*Don't think I haven't noticed you.*
*Don't think I don't know what you are.*
*You've marked me, haven't you? You beast.*
A tremor passed through him—through us.
*No wonder the Omen hunted me. No wonder I'm unraveling. I sacrificed my existence for power, and now you're here, chewing at the scraps.*
His anger hollowed into resignation.
*Are you satisfied? Your vessel is dying.*
His words thinned, drifting apart like smoke.
*Doesn't matter. Not anymore.*
A final whisper brushed through me, ragged and tired:
*It's you.*
*You're the beast.*
*Think about what you're doing.*
*This is madness.*
---
Then the water swallowed Varka whole.
A crash.
A silence.
A bloom of ink rippling outward—
And I was drowning inside it.
Inside him.
Inside the writhing, dissolving black.
*Back in the ink again.*
And this time, I knew I wouldn't wake up as Carter.
I wouldn't wake up as Varka.
I wouldn't wake up as anything at all.
---
**END CHAPTER 11**