After the Red King unveiled its face. Amon stared for a heartbeat, paralysed. Then, his world detonated.
A searing heat tore through his skull, a pressure so immense he felt his cranium would splinter. Inside, his organs didn't just ache—they felt caught in a jagged industrial grinder. He started retching ropes of blood onto the cold floor, his eyes wide with a mask of pure, primal horror.
He tried to scream, but the sound died in a throat that no longer felt like his own. His thoughts were a frantic scramble, drowned by the tidal wave of infinite knowledge surging through his psyche. It was a corrosive flood, eating at the edges of his mind, yet something deep within—a stubborn, hidden anchor—refused to let him slip into the abyss.
Minutes passed in a blur of violent sickness and agony. Eventually, Amon slumped toward the floor, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. The internal grinding subsided into a heavy, paralysing throb that slumped him against the chair he was bound to.
The Red King leaned in, its features twisting into a sharp, amused grin. In all its aeons, no human had withstood the flood. It reached out, a spindly hand gripping Amon's chin, forcing the boy's gaze upward once more.
The second their eyes met, the world shattered again. The grinding returned, fiercer than before, turning his insides to liquid fire.
The King let go, watching with mounting fascination as Amon stained the already-crimson floor again with his own blood.
When the boy finally stilled, the entity's amusement turned to genuine wonder. This eight-year-old had received infinite knowledge twice and remained—if only by a thread. His sanity was a guttering candle in a hurricane, flickering at its final spark, but it refused to go out.
Amon's consciousness flickered like a dying ember before finally being snuffed out. It was a biological miracle that his heart still beat after such catastrophic blood loss and neural trauma.
When his eyes opened, the crimson agony was gone, replaced by a sterile, endless white expanse. He stood, his boots echoing against nothingness. In the distance, a silhouette broke the void.
Amon approached, curiosity overriding his exhaustion. "Who are you?"
The figure turned. Amon froze. It was like looking into a haunted mirror. The boy before him shared his height, his fair skin, and those deep-red eyes. Only the hair was different—a shock of smooth, ethereal white that seemed to glow against the pale background.
"I must commend your brilliancy, Amon," the double said, his eyes dancing with amusement. "To devise a scheme this massive, the moment you received the quest for the Leones' favour... It's absurdly brilliant."
Amon remained silent, his expression unreadable.
"Initially, it seemed suicidal," the figure continued, his smile widening. "But the political weight is undeniable. This doesn't just finish your quest; it cements the Crown Family's status. After this, no one will dare question that your house stands second only to the Riversong royalty." He paused, leaning in. "But we both know the true motive. You wanted Emilia's favour—the leverage to act more freely."
"Why are you reciting my own thoughts to me?" Amon asked, a spark of annoyance breaking through his calm.
"Because the execution was flawless," the figure chuckled. "Though, I'm surprised you haven't asked for my name yet."
Amon pinched the bridge of his nose. "I've seen enough stories to know how this works. You're some ancient ancestor's soul, here to give me a pep talk and a power-up so I can wake up as a god."
The figure burst into genuine laughter. "I wish. In reality, your condition is dire. I had to exert every ounce of my strength just to keep your heart pumping."
Amon's annoyance vanished, replaced by a sharp edge of confusion. "Exert yourself? What do you mean?"
"I am your skill," the figure replied, his grin widening. "Your inherent skill, to be precise."
Amon didn't blink. "That isn't an answer."
"Not yet," the boy chuckled, "but it will be."
Amon stared, dumbfounded. "What is he talking about?" He thought. "How can [Sinner's Desire] have a consciousness?"
"Tell me," The figure's voice turned playful, almost soothing. "How do you think skills actually function?"
Amon paused, mentally cataloguing the mechanics of this world. He opened his mouth to provide a logical breakdown, but his double beat him to it.
"Skills are a supernatural phenomenon that allow a person to manifest the specific effects inscribed within them. That's what you were going to say, isn't it?"
"Yes," Amon admitted, his curiosity piqued. "Is there something I'm missing?"
"Quite a bit." The figure turned and began to walk, gesturing for Amon to follow. "Skills possess a will. It is through that will that the user manifests the supernatural. Not all wills are equal, of course. The stronger the sentience, the higher the tier."
Amon processed the information, keeping pace. "So, Requiem skills possess the most potent wills—that's why they're SSS-Rank. Special skills have a moderate consciousness, landing them between A and SS-Rank. And Common skills? They have mere flickers of intent, keeping them in the D to B-Rank range."
"Exactly," The figure said, glancing back with a knowing smile.
"I have the will of an SSS-Rank," The figure explained, "but the System keeps me shackled at SS. My nature is to manifest anything the user desires—a power that would make you a threat to the very fabric of existence. Absolute power corrupts even the purest hearts."
He stopped walking and turned to face Amon. His smile had shifted; it was now heavy with a profound, quiet sadness.
"The System bound me to you, then locked my true potential behind the erosion of your sanity. It turned my gift into a curse." His voice dropped to a sombre whisper. "I was born from the concepts of freedom and absolute desire. To have both stripped away... it is a unique kind of agony."
Amon watched a single tear shimmer in the corner of his double's eye.
"It pained me to see you trapped by my own limitations," the figure continued. "But then you created [No Longer Human]. It was magnificent. Even within your cage, you carved out a space where you could be free—where you could dictate your own reality."
He stepped closer, his gaze burning with a mixture of pride and desperation.
"Watching you, I couldn't stay idle. I wanted to break my own chains to serve yours. So, I poured every ounce of my essence into keeping you whole. I gave everything to ensure you survived the Red King."
The figure began to glow, the light eating away at its edges until it started to become translucent. "It appears my time is up," it said with a soft, strained chuckle.
"What's happening to you?" Amon's composure cracked, replaced by genuine worry.
"Don't concern yourself with that." The double reached out, resting a hand on Amon's shoulder. The touch felt like a warm memory. "Before I fade, promise me one thing."
Amon watched him, heart hammering against his ribs, focused entirely on his double's fading form.
"Whatever happens," the figure said, his smile bright enough to rival the void, "never lose your freedom."
With those final words, the boy vanished. The light died, leaving Amon standing entirely alone in the silent, endless white.
. . .
Back in the real world, Amon hung limp in his restraints, his head bowed under the Red King's lingering shadow. The entity watched with a jagged, fascinated grin as a transformation took hold.
Amon's hair, once deep black, began to bleed its colour away. Starting at the roots, a ghostly, lustrous white swept through the strands like frost over iron. Within moments, the transition was complete. Pale and ethereal, the boy's new visage was a haunting reflection of the will that had just sacrificed itself.
The Red King understood the weight of what had transpired. Amused by the spectacle, it decided on a whim of mercy. It turned from the unconscious boy and stepped toward the centre of the room. The original rift had sealed upon the King's arrival; with a casual flick of its wrist, the entity tore a fresh wound in reality.
"A mere human, yet you provided such entertainment," the King spoke, its voice a discordant, grinding echo that vibrated in the sterile, white room. "As a reward, I shall spare you the madness I intended to leave behind."
The Red King cast one final, distorted glance over its shoulder before stepping through the crack. The air snapped shut, leaving the room in a heavy, suffocating silence.
The cell door hissed open the moment the King vanished. The researchers flooded the room, their boots splashing in the cooling pool of Amon's blood.
"Tch." The lead researcher clicked her tongue, surveying the gore. "The entity was too thorough. Get the medical—"
Her voice cut to a wet gurgle. A thin line of red traced her throat before her head slid from her shoulders. Her body collapsed an instant later.
"The subject has—" The junior researcher's scream died in her throat. Within a heartbeat, every head in the room hit the floor in a synchronised thud of meat and bone. Amon stepped over the corpses, casually straightening his blood-drenched collar.
He made his way to the observation deck, his fingers dancing across the console. He found her on Camera 77: Costoria, locked in a high-security cell in the facility's lower depths.
The heavy thud of combat boots echoed behind him. A squad of guards stormed the deck—armoured, shielded, and bristling with high-tech rifles and arcane wands.
"Back to the cell, boy," the lead guard barked, the red dot of her laser sight burning into Amon's forehead. "Now."
"This is going to be a hassle," Amon sighed.
He conjured a blade of condensed shadow and moved. He was a blur of dark kinetic energy, a terrifying blitz that rendered the guards' reaction time obsolete. Bullets and spells whistled through the air where he had been a millisecond prior. By the time the first casing hit the floor, the guards were already pieces of a grisly puzzle.
Amon stood amidst the carnage, his breath coming in sharp, shallow pulls. "I need a more efficient tool," He thought. "My body is a wreck, and the chair's dampeners are still choking me from using high-tier magic spells."
He knelt by a severed arm and pried a blood-slicked Desert Eagle from its grip. He found a second one nearby. He weighed the twin handguns, his eyes cold.
"First Order," he whispered. The steel began to glow with a blinding, ethereal light. "Infinite Magazine. Enhanced Recoil. Armour Piercing Type III (Anti-Tank). Magic Infusion: Dark. Magic Nullification."
The weapons groaned under the weight of the enchantments. Ethereal streaks of black and white spiralled around the barrels, hum-singing with lethal potential.
Amon flexed his grip on the modified pistols, a dark, jagged grin splitting his face. "Time to doom these debauched bastards."
. . .
The Leone Vanguard tore through Aimus' territory with surgical precision, a tide of steel that left no survivors in its wake. Above, the sky belonged to the Crown: a fleet of futuristic attack helicopters and heavy fighters flanked a massive flying fortress, their shadows consuming the landscape below.
On the ground, Emilia, Arnold, and Alexia were a blur of devastation. They moved with a terrifying synchronisation, rendering the Aimus stronghold's signature defences—anti-air lasers and sonic ground-emitters—obsolete. The high-tech barriers crumbled like glass under their combined pressure.
The trio didn't wait for their legions. They stormed the fortress gates alone, a whirlwind of blades and magic that cleansed every corridor of life. Within minutes, the upper levels were silent.
Finding the hatch to the subterranean levels, they descended into the dark.
"If so much as a hair is harmed," Emilia hissed, her voice a low, lethal vibration, "I will erase every soul that ever wore the Aimus name."
"You aren't the only one out for blood, Crown," Alexia added, her tone frigid.
They breached the first basement level, but the sight that met them was not the resistance they expected. The hallway was a graveyard of Aimus loyalists. Everybody lay in a pool of expanding shadow, dispatched by precise, high-calibre rounds to the head or heart.
"Did a strike team beat us here?" Arnold asked, stepping over a fallen guard.
"Impossible," Alexia said, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the carnage. "Our vanguard was still breaching the perimeter when we entered. No one should be down here yet."
Emilia stopped dead, her senses catching a familiar, lingering pulse of magium in the air.
"This magium signature..." Her eyes widened. "Amon!"
Following the ghost of his signature, she bolted down the hallway, her panic replaced by a desperate, driving heat.
Arnold and Alexia were hot on her heels. They reached a reinforced, sterile white door at the end of the corridor. Emilia didn't reach for a handle; she unleashed a flash of frost magic that shattered the door into jagged crystalline shards.
Inside was an infirmary. Amon lay unconscious on a bed, his face pale against the sheets. Costoria sat perched on a chair beside him, jumping at the explosion. Her hand flew instinctively to a blood-streaked, enchanted Desert Eagle resting on the nightstand, but she froze when she saw the intruders.
"Amon!"
Emilia and Arnold were at his side in a heartbeat. Simultaneously, Alexia swept Costoria into a crushing embrace, her composure finally breaking.
"You're safe... thank the gods, you're safe," Alexia whispered, her voice trembling as tears tracked through the dust on her cheeks.
"It was Amon, Mother," Costoria murmured, burying her face in Alexia's shoulder, a single tear escaping. "He did everything."
Emilia turned away from her son's still form, her eyes wild and searching as they locked onto Costoria. "What happened to him? Costoria, tell me—what did they do to him?"
"I... I don't know," Costoria whispered, shrinking slightly under Emilia's frantic gaze. "He found me in the deepest levels. He dragged me out, clearing every floor on the way up... alone. He didn't stop until we reached this level. Then he just collapsed. I managed to secure this room and get him onto the bed."
Emilia looked back at Amon, her hand trembling as she brushed a lock of his new, snow-white hair away from his forehead. The weight of Costoria's words hung heavy in the air—the image of an eight-year-old boy carving a path of slaughter through an entire underground fortress was as terrifying as it was miraculous.
Arnold stood over them, his gaze fixed on the enchanted pistols still resting near the bed. He could feel the residual hum of the First Order enchantments—magic far beyond what a child should be capable of wielding.
"To think he cleared this entire facility solo," Alexia said, looking at Amon with genuine shock. "You should be proud, both of you."
"I'd be proud if he weren't in this state," Arnold replied with a heavy sigh. He ran a hand through Amon's ghostly white hair. "His magium flow has been dampened, likely by a physical restrictor. His body is at its absolute limit."
Emilia didn't respond. She simply gripped Amon's hand, her frost magic cooling the feverish heat radiating from his skin. The silence in the room was brittle, broken only by the distant, muffled echoes of the Leone and Crown forces finally breaching the facility above.