’I am what you will become...’
Those words echoed in my skull far longer than I wanted them to.
They didn’t make sense.
No, scratch that—they couldn’t make sense.
It was utter bullshit. Complete, unfiltered nonsense.
And yet... I wanted to believe them.
That was the dangerous part. I wanted it to be true. Not because I enjoyed the idea of some rotten corpse in my old body, but because deep down, a tiny voice inside me murmured—
But even if I entertained that thought, what if this was all some elaborate, sick joke played by Vorr’Kael? Maybe this guy was nothing more than a puppet—an illusion.
Yet that still wouldn’t explain why he had my body. My original body.
Not this Cassius shell.
I narrowed my eyes. "Hey... bastard. If you’re really supposed to be what I become, then why the hell are you wearing my old body? Why not the one I’m in right now? If you’re me, shouldn’t you look like me?"
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, the pressure around him vanished. That suffocating dread that had earlier choked the entire forest dissipated. He returned to that crouched position—hunched over, hands digging into the soil, eyes dim.
"The reason," he said quietly, "is simple."
He looked up, and that smile was back. "You’re Cassius."
Another fucking riddle. My temples throbbed. I bit the inside of my cheek and hissed, "For fuck’s sake. Care to actually explain what that means? Or are you just here to dump cryptic horseshit and vanish into mist like some third-rate villain?"
He exhaled. Long. Tired. Heavy.
"I know you’re frustrated. And you have every right to be. But there are things you’re not meant to know... not yet. This isn’t some trial or test. This is me... trying to give you time." He lowered his head. "You’ll understand eventually."
I stared at him, fists clenched, words dancing at the tip of my tongue—each one a curse I wanted to hurl at this rotten freak. But I stopped myself.
If he was really my future... cursing him now would just be cursing myself.
So I inhaled through gritted teeth and asked with forced calm, "Then at least tell me why you’re here. What’s the point of all this? Why now?"
He looked up and nodded slowly. "I came to give you a warning. A very specific one."
Then he spoke the name.
"I want you to stay away from Sophia."
Every muscle in my body tensed.
My head tilted slightly to the side, disbelief clawing up my throat like bile. "...What?"
"I heard what you said!" I snapped, fury bubbling to the surface. "First, you come to me with this whole ’I’m your future self’ circus act, and now you’re telling me to stay away from Sophia? What the fuck is your deal, you rotten bastard?!"
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. He just exhaled again, like someone resigned to watching a train wreck he couldn’t stop.
"It doesn’t matter if you believe me. You will see. Just... stay away from her, Arawn. That’s all I’m asking."
I clenched my fists, my voice shaking with rage. "SHE’S NOT EVEN HERE! SHE’S NOT FROM THIS WORLD! How the fuck do you expect me to—?!"
His expression twisted. For the first time, he looked... annoyed.
"What the fuck do you think the rifts are for?!"
My lips parted, but the words didn’t come out.
He took a step forward, voice hardening. "You think the rifts were just random? Just some magical mishap by Vorr’Kael so he could vomit monsters across Cronica?"
"...Weren’t they?" I asked, guarded.
He stared into me. "Those rifts are dimensional tears, Arawn. Not just portals for monsters. They’re bridges. Tunnels. Wounds. And they’re bleeding across every world they connect to. Vorr’Kael might’ve triggered it—but he’s not the only one who will use them."
"...Use them for what?"
"To come here. To conquer. To clash. To collide."
I blinked. "You’re saying..."
He nodded grimly. "Yes. They don’t just link realms. They connect people. Worlds. Those rifts are bringing together countless worlds, people, races and they won’t get along."
I felt the blood drain from my face.
He looked skyward, the wind brushing through his decaying hair.
"This is the beginning, Arawn. The prelude. Soon, Cronica won’t just be fighting off Spawns... they’ll be fighting off everything. This is the lead-up to something far worse."
I stepped back. "What are you saying?"
"This is the start of the Fourth Great War."
I returned to the wall overlooking the forest, my boots crunching faintly against the stone as I leaned over the railing.
At the far edge of the trees—barely visible through the gaps between the leaves—I could still make out the faint, hazy distortion where the rift had once lingered. The place where... he had stood.
My so-called future self.
Now, the rift—the swirling purplish-black gash in reality—was beginning to warp. It shimmered, shimmered... then with a quiet but powerful WHOOSH, it collapsed into nothing.
Future Arawn... vanished.
I stood there for a while, unmoving.
Should I be relieved?
Should I feel... anything?
Truth was, I didn’t know. On one hand, I was bitter—furious even. His riddles, his half-truths, his cryptic warnings about Sophia and Incarnations and wars too massive for my current mind to fathom.
But on the other hand...
He had warned me. And I couldn’t shake the weight of his words.
Even if they were lies... they still left scars.
Yet I couldn’t fully believe him. Not just because of what he said, but because of what he was.
That body. That face. That twisted, half-rotten flesh—it was mine. My original body. My original self. The part of me I had left behind the moment I became Cassius Lancaster.
And if I was being honest... that version of me?
He wasn’t trustworthy.
In fact, that body still held every secret I had buried under years of survival, cruelty, and blood. Every twisted part of my past. Every unspeakable thing I did in the name of living one more day.
Things I could never let Mia know.
If she did—if she ever discovered even a fraction of the truth—I knew exactly what would happen.
She wouldn’t look at me as a brother anymore.
She’d look at me like a stranger.
Someone to be feared.
I sighed, long and low, gazing up at the morning sky as it began to lighten with threads of rose and gold.
"...What am I even living for?"
That was the last thing he’d asked me. The final question before I left that forest.
"What’s your goal in life?"
You’d think I’d have an answer to that by now.
But truth be told—I never really had a goal.
Not one I could be proud of.
When I was born, I was just a kid. Just... normal. Not gifted. Not brilliant. Not some prodigy. I was below average in everything—academics, sports, even socializing.
But I tried. I genuinely tried.
I did my best to blend in, to earn praise, to be helpful. I wasn’t looking to be the best—I just wanted to make my family proud.
That was my only dream. My only reason to live.
Until I turned eight.
That’s when everything changed.
That’s when my father sold me.
Sold me like an unwanted object to some back-alley gangsters.
The moment those chains wrapped around my wrists and ankles, the only thing left inside me was a simple desire:
I wanted to get out of that hellhole. I wanted to claw my way back home.
To return and hear someone—anyone—say, "You’re home. We’re sorry."
And you know what I found when I finally got out?
They were living happily. Without a care in the world. Like I’d never even existed. Like they hadn’t sold their son and brother off like trash.
No missing person report. No search. Nothing.
That’s when the last piece of my soul crumbled.
I didn’t return to the hellhole.
From then on, I lived how I wanted. I survived. I killed. I maimed. I manipulated. I honed every survival instinct into an artform.
Killing became... comfort.
I never felt guilt. Not even a twitch of hesitation.
The first time I slit a man’s throat and watched his eyes go cold, I didn’t flinch. His blood was warm. It soaked my hands like water. He gasped, gargled, fell limp.
As if I’d just stepped on a bug.
But then she entered my life.
She wasn’t some savior. She wasn’t even gentle. But she understood.
She looked at me and saw not a monster, but something useful. Something to sharpen.
And that’s what she did.
She honed me. She broke me down and rebuilt me into something... terrifying.
The one who stood between her and any threat.
She gave me a new reason to live. Not for love, not for family, not for kindness—
And in doing so, she unlocked something I didn’t even realize was buried inside me.
The ability to kill without restraint.
To fight like a beast. To be merciless. Efficient. Inhuman.
She replaced Mia, in a way. For a while, at least.
But she also turned me into something else entirely.
A title born from blood and shadow.
"The Sin of the Underworld."
That’s what they called me.
A name spoken in hushed tones across city slums and criminal dens.
The man who didn’t hesitate.
The one who made corpses disappear.
The butcher with a smile.
And now... here I was.
In a world not my own, wearing a face not my own, being warned by a corpse that used to be me—
To stay away from the one person who defined what I’d become.
My past and my future were pulling me in opposite directions.
And I was still standing here on a fucking wall, with no idea which path I should take.