There was no time left.
The Tear was already consuming the sky. The wind sang with pressure, and gravity trembled like a wire pulled taut. The island fragment was shuddering beneath their feet, smaller with each passing hour. But Klaus… he sat perfectly still.
Space defined where he was.
Change defined what he was.
Time defined when he was.
He had reached the threshold. His spirit was realigning—twisting inward like a Möbius strip, coiling around a new metaphysical axis.
Spiritual transformation comes first.
The body is merely an echo.
First, change the source of the echo.
And so he rewrote the shape of his spirit.
The Faceless was once a mask. A surface.
Now, it became a template. A foundation.
A vessel for becoming.
He abandoned the form of the Abomination—not just its flesh, but the idea of it.
That identity shattered like a mirror, its shards swallowed by the blank.
The Faceless was not merely a title. It was an equation.
Faceless = ∅ = ∞.
Zero equaled infinity. Nothingness that could become anything. That was the key.
Then came the second part.
Now the body must follow.
The process was not graceful.
The change was violent.
Bone exploded outward in jagged shards, spinning like orbiting debris. Blood vaporized into hissing clouds. Muscles unraveled like cables under tension, twisting and writhing in spirals. It wasn't simple shape-shifting—it was reconstruction. Cellular warfare. Biology and soul crashing into each other at every level.
He screamed—but not from his mouths.
His spirit screamed.
Miseria recoiled. Hemera flinched. Even Lich took a step back as the energy warped the world around him. Like a black hole being born midair.
Klaus's form was tearing itself apart and stitching itself back together at once.
He was writing a new equation of self, but his body kept trying to solve for the old variables. There was no compatibility. This was not transformation.
This was defiance of every natural law.
But Klaus endured.
He clenched onto logic. Onto meaning.
Change begins with error.
Mutation is error.
Evolution is error.
Adaptation is error repeated until it becomes truth.
He forced his blood to reweave into hemoglobin chains. He crushed his muscle mass into lean, flexible tissue. His bone density recalibrated, hollowing where needed, compressing where necessary. The spiritual lattice guided every reconstruction.
He was not copying his old body—no. That was gone. Dead.
This was something new. A synthesis.
He would be man again. But not the same man.
He was Oldest Dream, born again through will, not womb.
The wind stopped.
The noise faded.
The energy settled.
What stood now was no longer a beast.
A tall, slender young man stood on the cracked stone, black ichor steaming off his bare shoulders.
His skin was dark—inky black, like void made solid—shifting with soft inner movement, as if it drank light.
His hair fell over his face in messy, shoulder-length strands, stark white, bleached like starlight.
And his eyes—his eyes burned with a quiet, endless purple glow. Amethyst galaxies, swirling with slow, cosmic thought. Not eyes made to see, but to comprehend.
There was elegance in his posture, but danger in his stillness. He looked sculpted—like a god from obsidian and moonlight. Six feet of lean, quiet precision. Not built for brute strength—but for the kind of violence that needed no noise.
Hemera stared, lips parted slightly.
Miseria blinked. Once.
Lich just muttered, "Well. That's… dramatic."
Klaus exhaled for the first time.
He flexed his fingers.
"Cellular alignment stable… nervous system synchronized… hormonal feedback loops recalibrated... well."
He grinned, wiping blood from his jaw.
"That hurt like a bastard."
Then he tilted his head, glancing at his reflection in a broken fragment of glass caught in the ground. He looked… like her.
The resemblance to his mother was undeniable. Somehow, it made sense. She had always been the anchor to his humanity.
"Nadia," he whispered, almost surprised. "Huh. Guess I did inherit more from you than madness."
The faintest smile twitched on his face.
Klaus raised his gaze toward the sky, narrowing his amethyst eyes. Far above, divine flames licked the heavens, painting them in hue of white. And beneath those impossible fires, distant but resolute, stood the Ebony Tower—silent, monolithic, and waiting.
"Four days of travel, give or take," he murmured.
Then, he looked down.
The fragment of the island beneath his feet was already beginning to crack, the darkness of the void gnawing at its edges like a starving beast. A few more hours, and it would be gone—devoured whole by the abyss.
Not that it mattered.
He'd be long gone by then.
"Wit is better than might, for man will prevail through cunning."
He chuckled at the quote, shaking his head in dry amusement, then turned toward the trio of spirits hovering nearby.
"Well… time to leave this shithole."
Miseria let out a weary sigh, drifting to his side like smoke coalescing. Her voice held a rare softness, almost content.
"Finally. Solid ground was missed."
Lich cocked his bony head, sockets gleaming with a flicker of confusion.
"You're a wraith. You don't have a body. What do you care about ground?"
Miseria stared at him in dead silence.
Klaus bit down a laugh, quickly averting his gaze. He could practically feel the storm behind that blank veil.
Miseria remained motionless, Were they mocking her? The self-proclaimed cunning one and the so-called wise skeleton?
If the veil hadn't been hiding her expression, Klaus and Lich would've spontaneously combusted under the heat of her glare.
With a flicker of ethereal mist, Miseria vanished—retreating to the safety of his soul sea, clearly done with both of them.
Lich, unfazed, followed suit and disappeared as if he'd never been there at all, leaving only Klaus and Hemera behind.
Not that it mattered. Even within the soul sea, he could still hear them bicker. The sarcasm and criticism echoed in his mind like a chorus of tired scholars in a haunted library.
Turning to Hemera, Klaus grinned and ran his fingers through her blazing feathers.
"Alright, darling. Time to get out of here."
The phoenix's eyes gleamed, her form glowing brighter as she straightened proudly.
"Yes, Master. Let's go!"
She raised one wing in a mock salute, posture straight like a soldier awaiting orders.
Klaus managed to hold back for a heartbeat or two—then laughed and wrapped her in a tight hug.
"How adorable. My baby girl. My purest, brightest little star. If I ever have a daughter… I hope she's just like you."
Hemera stood rigid, trying her best to look composed. But inside, she was dying. Compliments were a dangerous thing when you were thirteen years old—especially when Klaus was the one giving them. Thanks to him, she and the others had grown… changed. They understood so much now.
And embarrassment? That was definitely one of those things.
With a beat of her wings, they took off. Klaus settled on her back, his long coat flaring in the wind as they rose higher and higher. Hemera's form had grown over time—she was easily the size of a helicopter now, maybe more. As an Awakened Terror, her power and presence were undeniable.
The world beneath shrank as they soared toward the Ebony Tower.
Then, a familiar voice echoed in his mind—cool, dry, curious.
"What do you think the Tear really is?"
Klaus didn't answer right away. His gaze drifted back to the horizon, where the divine flames danced above.
"I don't know," he said quietly. "When it comes to the Dream Realm… there's no such thing as a logical explanation."
Lich floated in Klaus's soul sea, surrounded by the shimmering infinity of a cosmic ocean. It was a beautiful prison, if such a thing existed—vast, endless, and eerily alive with spiritual currents. Stars swirled within nebulae like thoughts within the mind, and he drifted, a lone skeleton amid constellations of power. Klaus's soul was unlike anything else.
Soul. Shadow. Mind. Blood. Bone. Flesh. Spirit.
Each part formed the foundation of existence. The body, composed of flesh, blood, and bone, was a fragile vessel. Without a soul, it was nothing more than a doll. The soul breathed life into it, connected to the shadow—bridge between life and death. The mind gave it thought, color, and memory. But the spirit... that was something else entirely.
Many believed the soul and spirit to be one and the same. Lich knew better.
The spirit transcended all. It was essence, identity, the eternal spark that refused to fade. While the soul could be corrupted, the mind fractured, the body torn apart, the spirit endured. It was the self. The Will. The divine.
And Klaus… Klaus was the first mortal Lich had seen hold dominion over spirits.
After all, Klaus had created them—Lich, Miseria, Loki, Hemera—creatures of spirit, born not of Spell or divine ritual, but of Klaus's own design. Where the Spell had aided Mordret in crafting his reflections, and Sunny in forging his living shadows, Klaus had been alone. No crutch. No guiding hand. Only ritual, knowledge, and the sheer, obsessive will to create.
Gods created life. That domain is exclusive to them. And yet, here he was—a boy, an anomaly—birthing spirit from nothing.
Lich shuddered at the implications. If the spirit was above all other aspects—flesh, blood, shadow, mind, soul—then Klaus was treading ground meant only for the divine.
He thought back to the gods. Each one ruled over aspects of being.
The Shadow God commanded the passage from life to death. The Heart God controlled the soul. The Beast God—blood. Perhaps a long-forgotten deity ruled the mind. But who ruled the spirit?
Lich now suspected the answer.
Klaus.
Perhaps not yet. But one day.
What frightened Lich most wasn't what Klaus had done. It was what he might do. The question itched at the back of his hollow skull:
If Klaus ever became Supreme… could he destroy even spirit?
Not just kill, not corrupt, but erase.
It was a horrifying thought. The annihilation of self. Of identity. Of the eternal. Worse than death. A complete removal from existence—as if one had never been.
He shuddered again. His bones rattled softly in the starlit waters of Klaus's soul.
Klaus's path was not written. He was an anomaly—a Voidwalker—shaping his own domain with each step forward. Unlike others, his domain couldn't be predicted. Sunless's would be his soul sea. Nephis, the Nephilim, would embody humanity. Those of Heart God's lineage might master memory, emotion, or the soul.
But Klaus? Klaus remained a blank slate.
A storm waiting to be named.
Lich could feel it—the twisted, abominable void deep inside him. Others mistook it for illness. They called it autism, an affliction. But Lich knew better.
Klaus's true nature was monstrous. He was cold, wicked, unfeeling—an echo of the Void itself. A pureblood Voidspawn, with the origins same as Gods and Void Beings but at the same time completely different from them.
And yet…
Nadia had breathed humanity into him.
Without her, Klaus would have become something unspeakable. Not the smug, sarcastic clown that cracked jokes at inappropriate times—but a thing that couldn't be reasoned with. Something monstrous enough to make even gods weep.
Even now, his every action pulsed with purpose. Ambition. A desire to stand above all. His spirit creatures were not simply companions—they were keys. Instruments to confront the most terrifying of beings: the gods. Or their heirs.
Lich's skull tilted as he considered Klaus's bloodline.
The first Master of War God's realm was his grandfather. His mother had been the first Sleeper to gain a True Name. His father—Sovereign, First Saint, and Heir of the Weaver. His sister, Nephis, was a Nephilim, the Halfbreed, touched by the Sun God.
And Klaus… Klaus was born from the Void.
A purebred child of nothingness.
Lich trembled. For all his knowledge, for all his insight, he could not imagine anyone defeating Klaus. Even now, as an Awakened, Klaus wielded terrifying power. And if he reached his peak… if he ever became a Divine Titan—
What then?
Could he defeat the Forgotten?
The Dream God?
A god of nightmares, now broken and chained to the Void.
Could an Everchanging God of Space-Time face the Sleeping One?
Could Klaus, in all his monstrosity, win?
Lich stared at the swirling cosmos around him. For a moment, he felt small. Not as a scholar. Not as a creature of knowledge. But as something very mortal.
And for the first time in a long, long time…
He was afraid.