The sound of impact never changed.
Metal crumpled. Glass split. The slow, dragging whine of rubber tearing against asphalt before silence smothered it all. Silence, and her body.
Azraem's work was clean this time. A hole through the chest, squarely through spine and lung, wide enough to see the ruined meat of her ribs. Flesh peeled back like pages, bone showing pale against the dark red. It wasn't her heart—never was. He always left that untouched, as if to mock the idea she had one left to wound.
Evodil stepped off the road, boots crunching in the snow. The car sat the way it always did, nose buried into the tree, blood painted in the same streaks across bent metal. Her body half-hung through the window, arm dangling limp, hair stuck to the glass with frozen clots.
The sight didn't catch him anymore. Not the first time, not the tenth. It wouldn't be the last.
He exhaled into the scarf drawn high over his face, the wool dark and rough, smelling faintly of cedar from the closet he almost never opened. His room had never been a room to him, not a bed for sleep, not a sanctuary. More like a closet for versions of himself, waiting to be pulled out. Maybe this one had been waiting longer than the rest.
The hair—longer now, unkept—he'd tied back into a rough tail. No dye. White stripped away, leaving the natural black of his brothers. A tether, however faint, to what they were before. The cape with fur collar was gone, left behind with the suit. Too loud. Too much theater.
The suit had always lied. The god in control, the untouchable monster. But there was no monster here—only a man standing in the snow, wondering how many times he'd have to watch the same body rot in the same wreck.
God of chaos? Maybe. He never controlled anything. God of shadows? He bent them well enough, but they bent him just as often. What kind of shadow reached into the marrow of souls, tugged them free like threads?
He didn't know. He was nothing dressed up as something, and now he was the only one who realized it. Not savior, not destroyer. Just a mistake caught turning in place, again and again.
Even reality had grown tired of him.
He turned from the wreck with a quiet tsk, hands buried deep in his coat pockets, boots crunching against the snow. He didn't bother to look back. What was the point? In some worlds, she meant something to him. In others, he meant something to her. But here—here she was just another corpse cooling under a gray sky. Caroline. Jasper. Noah. James. The list went on, long enough to fill a graveyard and still leave room for more. They could be buried a thousand times over, but none of them would ever rest. Not while it—whatever wore the mask of fate—kept pulling the strings.
The wind picked up, dragging at the hem of his cloak, snapping the scarf loose against his neck. He'd taken the cloak from a shade city once—a gift, a relic, a theft, he couldn't remember anymore. That city was gone now, or it would be soon enough. Another experiment. Another ruin left in his name.
Jasper never lasted long. No matter the loop, no matter the story, Evodil was always the one who killed him. Quick deaths. Cheap ones. Sometimes with purpose, sometimes without. James always fought back. He never made it easy, even when the ending was already written. Every fight left Evodil limping, dragging himself toward the next one—toward Noah.
Noah never fought. He just stood there, waiting. Arms open. A brother too soft to see the knife coming.
It always ended the same. A week, a day, an hour of peace before the storm. The last supper. The Manor filled with laughter, games, warmth that almost felt real. Humans and gods tangled together, pretending the end wouldn't come. Pretending they could still save each other.
And through it all, he'd sit in silence. The only one who could hear the voice clawing through his skull. The only one cursed enough to know what waited at the end of the page.
He stepped off the road, boots—Noah's boots, he remembered now—flattening the snow with each stride. His breath misted the air.
"I'm not a hero," he muttered. "Not a savior. Not even a god."
The words came out rough, quiet, almost lost to the wind.
"I just… am."
He stopped. Looked down at his hands, gloved, steady.
"A mistake," he said. "That's all."
A mistake even reality didn't want to remember.
He slowed his pace. Each step felt heavier, as if the sight of that damn car drained what little strength he still had. He wanted to destroy it—rip it apart, scatter the metal and glass into the snow until nothing of it remained. His tendrils itched beneath his skin, begging to lash out, to reduce it to red shards and silence. But he didn't move. Couldn't.
The snow under his boots crunched, soft and dry, the sound echoing faintly in the hollow stillness of the woods. The road ahead stretched clean and pale, untouched as always. It was the same every time. The same trees dusted in white. The same lifeless calm. A scene that once might've been beautiful—now just another repetition of the same mistake.
He didn't see peace in it. Only patterns. Only loops. Behind him, the car still smoked, and he could feel its presence like a weight pressing against the back of his skull.
The army should be forming by now, he thought. Same as always.
A group of mortals fighting for a cause that never mattered, struggling against shadows that would swallow them whole in a week's time.
And I? He tilted his head slightly, breath fogging the air. Am I still me? Or just another one wearing the name?
He thought of the others—of the versions of himself that had already done this a hundred times before.
Maybe the Evodil of this loop had already cut off Jasper's arm, watched the boy bleed into the dirt without remorse. Maybe he'd already gone to war with James, broken bones for sport before watching the man fall again and again into that crater. Or maybe—just maybe—he'd done nothing at all.
Sat back in his chair. Waited. Let the world end on its own this time.
It was almost tempting.
He walked through the forest path, boots breaking the thin crust of snow that formed over the night. Each step sounded too loud in the silence. Too real. It almost drowned out the faint echoes that crept into his head—almost.
He could hear Jasper first, the boy's voice sharp, bitter. "Coward. You're just gonna let it happen again?" The kind of accusation that came with a half-grin, the kind that stung because it was true.
Then James. He could almost feel the man's fist slamming into his jaw, the heat of that volcanic temper. "You had every chance to tell us. Every damn time—and you didn't."
And Noah… he wouldn't yell. He never did. He'd just look at him, tired and gentle, the same faint smile that made Evodil want to tear his own throat out. "I understand, brother. But understanding doesn't mean forgiving."
Evodil huffed, dragging a hand down his face. "Coward, huh? Yeah. I've heard that one before," he muttered. "Guess it still fits." His breath hung in the air, fading into the cold. "At least I'm consistent."
He cursed under his breath, words spilling half-formed and raw. "Should've burned the whole thing down. Should've let it all rot with me."
They'd all be right anyway. This wasn't what he was supposed to do—not any version of him. But what was the alternative? Fight a being that could erase time itself? Pretend there was even a chance at victory when every loop ended the same way?
He wasn't invincible. None of them were. Gods, heroes, whatever they thought they were—bullshit. Just mortals with too much power and not enough reason. Black holes. Warhammers. Bows that poisoned souls. All those weapons, all that fury—and still they fell.
He clenched his fists, breath shaking. "You can't kill something that already owns you," he said quietly. "You can't kill him."
Azraem. The name itself felt wrong in his mouth, like it carried teeth.
He kept walking anyway.
He kept walking. Step after step, like his body had decided it didn't need him anymore. The world blurred at the edges—white snow, black trees, the dull gray sky pressing down on him. For a moment he thought he might've wandered past Menystria altogether, that he was just drifting through another false reality built to mock him. But no—he recognized this place.
The trees thinned ahead, and the world opened into a vast clearing. A field of snow so wide it could've swallowed a city whole. It wasn't real snow, not really—he knew that much. It was one of Noah's experiments, an illusion of frost woven from whatever unholy mix of science and sorcery that man toyed with. The kind of trick that was meant to be beautiful but never quite right. Too still. Too even.
The right side was all white, a perfect dead sheet of it. To the left, the forest still stretched for miles, uneven and alive. The difference made his skin crawl. He remembered Caroline finding this place once, calling it "peaceful." He almost laughed at that thought—peaceful wasn't a word that belonged anywhere near this world.
He didn't think about it much. Didn't have the strength to. He just took another step forward—and the air changed.
The trees vanished. The snow beneath his boots rippled once, then hardened to marble. When he blinked, he was standing inside something else entirely.
A courtyard. White stone. Silent air that carried no wind. The archway beside him led into a massive hall that stretched beyond what his eyes could trace. At its center stood a long table—fifty-two chairs, each carved with delicate runes, arranged like judges waiting for a verdict.
And at the head of it all was a throne. Larger than the rest, its high back crowned with a carved star. The headboard bore an inscription, ancient symbols that somehow made sense to him despite his own confusion: The Fallen.
He stared. The name stirred something inside him he didn't want to touch.
A figure stood beside the throne. Cloaked in white, hood drawn low, hands folded neatly in front of them. Their back was turned, yet he could feel their awareness crawling over him like sunlight through glass. They were humming—soft, tuneless, distant. Something he should've known but couldn't place.
The sound made him feel calm. Too calm.
He hated it.
Before he could speak, the figure's voice reached him. It wasn't loud, but it carried clean through the air, as though the walls themselves were listening.
"Joker," the figure said, the title dragging a chill up his spine. "If your resolve is wavering, do not take a step."
A pause. The hum returned for half a breath.
"However," the voice continued, "if you're ready to do things the right way… go on."
Evodil didn't move. His hand twitched toward the blade that wasn't there.
Evodil opened his mouth to speak—to demand where he was, who the robed stranger was—but the words never left. The white courtyard blinked out of existence, as if someone had snapped their fingers and folded reality over itself.
The cold hit him first.
He stood once more on the snow-covered road, the Gates of Menystria looming before him. The veil of artificial frost Noah had woven was gone, melting away into the air as if he had dispelled it himself. But he hadn't. He hadn't even been close enough to touch it.
He dragged a slow hand up to his forehead, rubbing between the base of his horns with his palm. The black spikes curved upward now—sharper, meaner than the white ones that had once curled back in gentler arcs. He exhaled through gritted teeth, breath clouding the air.
"What the hell is going on…" he muttered under his breath. His voice was hoarse, low, like the words themselves were scraping through him.
The world around him was quiet—too quiet.
He stood there for a long moment, just breathing, trying to piece together the threads that refused to stay still in his head. He was aware now. More than before. The only one left who remembered anything at all, apparently—like the world had decided to keep him conscious just to mock him.
He thought of the last loop. The last story Azraem forced them through. It hadn't followed the same pattern. The world had started glitching. Time stuttered in places where it shouldn't. Faces flickered, events repeated twice, memories overlapped. And now—now there was that place. That white palace that wasn't supposed to exist.
This was the second time he'd seen it. But this time, there was someone else waiting. Someone who spoke to him. Someone who knew.
He narrowed his eyes, hand lowering slowly from his face.
The first time, when that place appeared, it was just him. Him and two humans—Iris and Dolorus. People who claimed to be from thirty years into the future. People who had called him The Joker.
That meant there was a future.
That meant Azraem didn't have total control.
That meant time could still slip through his fingers.
Evodil's shoulders shook once—then again, until it turned into laughter. Raw, hollow, but real. It built and built until it clawed its way out of his throat, echoing off the snow and the stone gates ahead.
If Azraem didn't control everything, then there was still a crack in the cage. And a crack was all he ever needed.
He took a single step forward.
And this time, he didn't hesitate.