Chapter 31
The storm peeled apart like a wounded sky, revealing a narrow passage carved into the canyon wall. It wasn't there moments earlier. The stone bent inward, shifting as if awakened by Orion's presence. It did not open for anyone else—it opened because of him.
The island had recognized the mark buried in his blood.
That faint echo of the one who came before him—his own forgotten past—beat like a second heart, ancient and heavy.
Orion stepped forward.
The fog around his arms thickened, turning deep crimson with streaks of shadow. His mythical creature form stirred instinctively. Even half-sleeping, its immense presence pressed against the world like a rising tide.
As he entered the passage, the walls glowed with thin white lines, pulsing softly like veins carrying old memories. The temperature changed with every step, dropping into a cold that wasn't physical. It felt like stepping into a realm that time itself abandoned.
Soon he reached a vast chamber carved from black stone. At the center floated a fractured crystalline sphere, leaking white fog from each crack.
A voice echoed from the sphere.
"For a thousand years… I waited."
Orion froze.
It wasn't a stranger's voice.
It was his own—older, calmer, heavy with ages of regret.
A silhouette formed above the sphere. A shadow shaped exactly like him, but marked by countless battles and cosmic scars.
"You finally came," the past self said. "You carry my mark, but you are not me. Good. That means the world has changed enough."
Orion's breath tightened. "Why summon me?"
"To give you what I could not carry any longer."
The chamber trembled. Cracks spread wider across the sphere. The fog burst outward, spiraling like a tidal wave around Orion.
The past self raised a hand.
"My last will—
my last memory—
my last burden."
He pressed his palm forward.
"Take them."
The fog slammed into Orion's chest. Images flooded him at once—battles against beings older than stars, the sealing of the island, the erasure of his own existence, the shaping of the Path of Forgotten Years, and the moment he chose to wait for the one who would become him next.
The merge struck like a celestial collision.
Orion staggered as the fog cocooned him, then violently shattered outward.
His power surged.
His body tightened with new weight. His domains sharpened like awakened blades. His mythical creature form roared in the depths of his soul, blazing with crimson fog and cosmic hunger.
Stage 1—fully stabilized.
Across from him, the past self smiled faintly as his form dissolved like dust in starlight.
"Good to meet you again, my future self. I trust you with what I could not finish. The island's records are yours now. But you will not find me in any of them… because I erased myself for this moment."
His final whisper drifted through the chamber:
"Live the life I could not."
He vanished completely.
The crystalline sphere shattered into drifting lights. The chamber around Orion transformed into an immense archive—floating slabs of stone, glowing runes, swirling memory mirrors, and fragments of the island's oldest secrets drifting like constellations.
Orion stood alone in the center.
But for the first time…
He carried the weight of two lives—
and the strength to change both.