It has been… years.
A decade, perhaps. Maybe more.
I stopped counting precisely when I realized the act itself no longer mattered. Time behaves differently when it cannot kill you. Immortality does not make moments meaningless—but it does make them blur. Wizards from Nexo Knights were never meant to age like mortals, and with everything else layered atop that gift, the passage of years has become something I observe rather than experience.
Change still happens. I simply do not erode with it.
Shintaro was inevitable.
I had watched it for some time through distant scrying—its mountain halls, its isolation, the weight of secrets pressed deep beneath stone older than recorded history. Places like Shintaro always attract power. Not the loud, obvious kind, but the kind that waits. The kind that accumulates forgotten oaths, buried tyrannies, sealed relics.
The kind I specialize in extracting.
Entering the city required no effort. A gentle shift of form, a soft bend of perception, and guards looked past me without truly seeing. Hypnotic suggestion smoothed any lingering friction. Illusion layered over illusion until even I had to pause and recall what my true shape was supposed to be.
The descent into the dungeons was… almost disappointing.
Traps littered the corridors—pressure plates, collapsing ceilings, magical wards keyed to bloodlines long extinct. Elegant, once. Deadly, once. Now they felt like relics of a cruder understanding of magic. I walked through them with measured steps, dismantling some unconsciously, bypassing others without even realizing I had done so.
I did not use forbidden spells.
I did not need to.
Instead, I treated the dungeon as a classroom.
Each mechanism was an opportunity to test my evolving understanding of Ninjago's magic—how intent anchors effect, how belief stabilizes reality, how deception woven subtly is stronger than force applied loudly. I reshaped wards without breaking them. Redirected curses into harmless loops. Persuaded stone to forget it was meant to fall.
Stone listens, if spoken to correctly.
By the time I reached the tomb, I was almost relaxed.
The chamber was vast and silent, its air heavy with age and resignation. At its center rested the Skull of Hazza D'ur.
It did not need introduction.
The skull rose slowly as I approached, lifted by its own will, ancient magic flaring just enough to test me. It searched—probing for weakness, for domination, for fear. It found none that it could use.
I did not reach for it.
I simply stood.
Recognition rippled through the artifact like a shudder. The skull drifted closer, orbiting my head once, then twice, studying me in the same way I studied it. Whatever criteria it had once used to judge worth, I surpassed them without effort.
I felt the bond lock into place.
Not domination. Not submission.
Acceptance.
Power flowed—not explosively, but with a deep, resonant gravity. The Skull of Hazza D'ur aligned itself to me, its magic folding seamlessly into my own lattice. Knowledge accompanied it: whispers of old wars, tyrants who mistook cruelty for strength, spells that required not incantation but authority.
Another crown.
Another tool.
I allowed myself a thin smile.
The moment the bond stabilized, I opened a portal—precise, quiet, untraceable. Space folded obediently, and the tomb vanished behind me as I stepped back into my hidden base.
The orbs were waiting.
Three silent witnesses floating in their eternal triangle. They pulsed faintly as I entered, reacting to the new presence now layered into my essence. The Skull hovered briefly, as if assessing them, then settled into orbit above the dais, content.
I did not absorb their power yet.
Not today.
But I could feel the difference. The weight of the skull changed the way magic flowed through me, adding structure, authority, inevitability. Where before I influenced, now I commanded. Where before I waited for magic to respond, now it anticipated.
I have become something Shintaro was meant to fear.
Something the First Spinjitzu Master never planned for.
Something the Overlord would hate… if he ever realizes what I am becoming.
I took a moment then—rare, deliberate—to simply stand in silence. To feel the layers of time, stolen power, adapted magic, and accumulated artifacts settle into a coherent whole.
I am no longer hiding because I am weak.
I am hiding because the world is not ready.
And when I step out again, it will not be to steal quietly, or watch patiently, or influence subtly.
It will be to reshape what comes next.
But not yet.
Not until the balance finally breaks on its own.