Darkness.
Nox's body crashed into the fractured ground of a decaying world — no sky, no stars, just a bleeding horizon teeming with distorted shadows.
This place…was not meant to exist.
The Forgotten Timeline — the one erased to make room for Kalo.
Every breath felt like drowning in sand. His form flickered, pieces of him glitching in and out like corrupted memory.
He forced himself up.
A chorus of voices slithered through the air:
"You should never have been."
"A mistake."
"A shadow that stole someone's life."
Nox grinned weakly. "Yeah? Tell me something I don't know."
A hand touched his shoulder.
He flinched—then froze.
A figure stood beside him.Hooded. Faceless. But familiar.A heartbeat that matched his own.
Another Nox.
Except… older. Scarred.Eyes full of endings.
"You're late," the elder self said."They already tried to erase us."
"…Us?" Nox whispered.
The elder Nox gestured at the twisted horizon — where countless silhouettes emerged.
Hundreds.Thousands.
All of them… him.Different versions from timelines swallowed by fate.
"Every time Kalo's life was chosen…"The elder explained quietly,"…another Nox died."
A monstrous tremor rippled through the realm — the Voidblood Empress tearing worlds apart to erase the remaining Noxes.
The elder grabbed his arm.
"You must return to Kalo.""You are not his shadow. He is your replacement."
The revelation hit like a blade through the chest.
"I was the original…?"
A nod.
"You were meant to be the chosen soul of the Astrarium. Kalo exists because they feared you. Because you wouldn't follow their fate."
The younger Nox's vision blurred — rage and grief twisting together.
"So they swapped us," he whispered. "Rewrote the world so he'd be the hero."
The elder's expression softened — tragic pride.
"But he's fighting for you now. Because he knows the truth."
Above them, the sky cracked.The Empress' laughter thundered through the void.
"Go," the elder urged. "Live. Take back what was stolen."
Nox took one last look at the forgotten versions of himself — each slowly fading.
And he swore:
"I won't let us die."
The Astrarium's dark counterpart ignited in his chest — a black star reborn.
He ran forward, tearing open the seams of existence, sprinting back toward the world that should have been his.
Toward Kalo.
Toward the life denied to him.