The next day was a relatively free day...well for me as Tukson is sleeping. It couldn't be helped, her Nocturnal nature is quite energetic at night but lethargic in the day. We spent last night chatting for a few hours before I got tired and returned to my room and slept.
I do wonder how she would cope with going to class by the day. I chuckled at the thought and sat up, I now needed to address the strange conditions Tukson saw me in some days ago. She said my eyes turned red which is not my semblance but felt more like something so familiar that it was a fundamental part of my being.
I stood and moved to the small mirror hanging on my wall—a cracked thing Mrs. Xiong had salvaged from somewhere, but functional enough. My reflection stared back: dark eyes, pale skin, a face that sometimes felt like it belonged to someone else. Someone from one of those seven lives I couldn't fully remember.
"Show me," I whispered to my reflection, trying to call up that feeling from the training session. The weight of dust settling. The finality of choices. The knowledge that the next strike would end everything.
Nothing happened.
I focused harder, reaching for that crimson-and-shadow aura that pulsed beneath my skin. It responded immediately, flickering to life around my hands—red threaded with darkness, the visual manifestation of whatever I was carrying from those previous existences.
But my eyes remained normal. Dark. Human.
Maybe it required something more specific. A trigger. I closed my eyes and deliberately pulled at those fragmented memories, the ones that made my chest tight and my hands remember the weight of a knife that wasn't wooden.
A golden corridor. Dust everywhere, glittering in shafts of light.
"I am–."
I could hear a faint voice in my head getting louder...it was.
"The Demon—."
I stood frozen, the voice echoing in my head with increasing clarity. My own voice, but not. Colder. More certain. Carrying the weight of something absolute and terrible.
"—that comes when people call its name."
My eyes snapped open, and in the mirror, I saw them—glowing red. Not the warm crimson of my aura, but something sharper. Predatory. The color of determination pushed beyond its breaking point, of a soul that had chosen to become something other than human.
The reflection smiled, and I wasn't the one moving my face.
"There you are," I—they?—we?—whispered.
The temperature in the room dropped. My breath misted in the air. The crimson-and-shadow aura that had been flickering gently around my hands exploded outward, filling the small space with oppressive energy. But now the shadow wasn't just threaded through the red—it was consuming it, turning the whole thing into something darker.
I could feel it. The memory crystallizing with painful clarity.
Nineteen. Twenty. That's the number of times you've died and come back. Every time, I was there. Every time, you called my name.
No. Not a memory. A presence. Something that had always been with me, sleeping in the gaps between lives.
"Chara," I said out loud, my voice steadier than I felt. "My name is Chara."
Yes, the presence agreed, and I felt it settle deeper into my bones. But which Chara? The child who fell into the Underground? The one who was loved and called someone's sibling? The one who made a choice at the end of everything? Or the one who appears when someone has truly given up on mercy?
The red eyes in the mirror stared back at me with an intelligence that was both mine and not mine. Like looking at a version of myself that had walked further down a path I couldn't fully remember taking.
"I don't want to be that," I whispered. "Whatever you are. Whatever I was."
Want is irrelevant. I am what remains when everything else is stripped away. I am the consequence of determination without direction. Of power without purpose. The presence shifted, and I felt my hand move without my conscious input—reaching toward the wooden knife I'd left on the desk. My fingers wrapped around it with familiar, terrible precision.
But you're right to fear me. The last time I was fully awake, I killed everything. Everyone. Even the ones who loved me.
The memory hit like a physical blow. A woman with kind eyes and a warm home. The smell of butterscotch pie. The weight of a real knife—not wooden, but cold steel—rising and falling. The dust that used to be someone who had called me "my child."
"No," I gasped, stumbling back from the mirror. The knife clattered to the floor. "No, I didn't—I wouldn't—"
You did. We did. Because someone had to see what would happen. Someone had to push the world to its absolute limit and then beyond it. Someone had to be willing to kill the concept of mercy itself.
My legs gave out and I collapsed to my knees, both hands pressed against my head as if I could physically hold back the flood of returning memories. But they kept coming—faster now, sharper.
A skeleton in a blue jacket, grinning even as he died for the hundredth time. A fish woman in armor, her determination shattering in my hands. A flower that begged for mercy it would never receive. A child's laughter as the world crumbled into numbers and then into nothing.
And through it all, that same voice. My voice. Our voice.
"Let's move on to the next."
"Stop," I choked out. "Please, just—stop—"
I knelt on the floor, gasping for air that felt too thin, too cold. The red glow in my eyes flickered, and for a moment I could feel that presence—that other Chara—considering my plea.
You asked to see, the voice said, softer now but no less disturbing. You wanted to understand why your eyes turn red. This is why. I am why. I am the part of you that remembers what you've been trying to forget across seven different worlds.
"Seven worlds," I repeated, the words hollow. "Seven times I've... what? Killed everyone? Destroyed everything?"
Not every time. The presence felt almost thoughtful. Sometimes you were loved. Sometimes you loved back. Sometimes you even tried to save people instead of ending them. But the capacity for that other thing—the willingness to see what happens when you take everything to its absolute conclusion—that never went away. It just... waited.
My breathing was starting to even out, the panic receding into something more manageable. The cold in the room was fading too, my aura settling back into its usual crimson-and-shadow state rather than that consuming darkness.
"Why now?" I asked quietly. "Why are you surfacing here, in this world?"
Because you called my name, the presence replied. And because this world resonates with your soul in a way the others didn't. Remnant understands determination. It has Aura—the manifestation of the soul itself. It has people who fight and die and keep fighting anyway. It's familiar territory.
I slowly pushed myself back to my feet, avoiding looking at the mirror. "And what happens if I let you take control? If I become... that again?"
The presence was silent for a long moment, and I could feel it considering the question with unsettling seriousness.
Then you would be very, very effective at killing Grimm, it said finally. And probably everything else too. I don't discriminate. When I'm fully awake, when determination becomes the only thing that matters, the world becomes a series of obstacles to overcome. Of numbers to increase. Of barriers to eliminate.
"That's not what I want," I said firmly. "I have—I have people here. Mrs. Xiong. Tukson. A home. A chance to actually be something other than a weapon."
I know. The presence sounded almost... wistful? That's why I'm talking instead of taking. You're different this time. Stronger, maybe. Or just more aware of what you're carrying. Most versions of us don't remember the other lives until it's too late.
"So what do I do?" I looked at my hands, watching the aura pulse gently around them. "How do I keep you from—from taking over when I don't want you to?"
You don't, the presence said bluntly. I'm not separate from you, Chara. I'm not some demon possessing you or a split personality. I'm just the part of you that's willing to go further than anyone else. To do what needs to be done without hesitation or regret. You can suppress me, ignore me, pretend I don't exist—but when you really need that edge, that absolute conviction, I'll be there.
"That's not reassuring."
It's not meant to be. It's meant to be honest. The presence shifted, and I felt my perspective change slightly. When your eyes turn red, it means you're tapping into that fundamental part of yourself. That determination that's carried you through seven deaths and seven new lives. Tukson saw it during your training because you were remembering what it felt like to fight with lethal intent. To move with the knowledge that every strike counts.
I picked up the wooden knife from where it had fallen, turning it over in my hands. It felt heavier now, weighted with the memory of what a real blade could do.
"Can I use it without losing myself?" I asked. "Can I access that strength, that skill, without becoming a monster?"
The presence laughed—a sound that was entirely too familiar because it was my laugh, just with different inflection.
That's the question, isn't it? That's what makes this life interesting. You're not trying to destroy everything or save everything. You're just trying to... live. To be part of something. To protect people without becoming the thing they need protection from.
"Yes," I said quietly. "Exactly that."
Then we'll find out together, the presence said, and I felt it receding back into whatever corner of my soul it occupied. But remember—I'm always here. In every fight, every choice, every moment where you have to decide between mercy and efficiency. You can't separate yourself from what you are, Chara. You can only choose what to do with it.
The red glow faded from my eyes, returning them to their normal dark color. The oppressive cold lifted completely, leaving just the ordinary warmth of a morning in Vale. I looked at my reflection again—just me now, pale and exhausted but recognizably human.
"Great," I muttered. "So I'm carrying around a genocide-capable alternate personality that's also somehow just... me."
Essentially, yes, a faint whisper confirmed before falling silent completely.
I sat heavily on the edge of my bed, the wooden knife still in my hand. The room felt too quiet now, too normal after what had just happened. My hands were shaking slightly—not from fear, but from the weight of sudden, terrible clarity.
Seven lives and in at least one of them, I had systematically destroyed everything and everyone who stood in my path. Not out of malice or hatred, but out of something arguably worse: curiosity. The need to see what would happen if determination was pushed to its absolute extreme.
"The demon that comes when people call its name," I repeated softly, tasting the words. They felt true in a way that made my stomach turn.
But the presence—that other Chara—had been right about one thing. I wasn't trying to destroy this world or obsessively save it. I just wanted to... exist. To help Mrs. Xiong with the bakery. To train with Tukson. To maybe attend Signal Academy and learn to be a Huntsman without becoming a monster in the process.
The question was whether that was even possible for someone like me.