Ethan watched everything unfold with a heavy heart, unable to look away even though every instinct told him to.

He had changed so much of history, altered paths, sped things up in ways even he could no longer fully measure. Still, he never imagined that Shadowstrike would meet his end like this, not in battle, not by fate, but by the hand of his own leader.

A grim thought surfaced, cold and unwelcome.

In his original timeline, had Shadowstrike also died by Blackfin's hand? Maybe this was not something new at all. Maybe Ethan had only forced the moment to arrive sooner than it was meant to.

The realization sent a chill through him, sweat breaking out along his spine.

'What about the other me, the one from that timeline?'

Was he still living like a kicked dog, clinging to scraps, barely surviving? And Lyla? Amber? Rainie. What about everyone standing beside him now?

Their lives would all be different, wouldn't they?

The thought twisted painfully inside his chest as memories surged up without mercy, sharp and vivid.

That rusted shack on the rooftop, barely large enough to stretch his arms. Endless hours logged into Ethereal, grinding mindlessly, mining and gathering for scraps of coin, just enough to barter for food and medicine. The searing pain that arrived before every storm, phantom agony gnawing at a leg that no longer existed. Lyla had never been part of his life. He never would have met Amber. Rainie Chen had been nothing more than a stranger passing somewhere in the world. Victor and Williams would have died on some forgotten mercenary job, names never remembered.

Victor would never marry Celia. The Silverwood family would have been erased completely, and Lyla's fate would have been uncertain at best, married off, cast aside, or worse. Amber… would she have been chosen as someone's Vessel, forced into Alaric's harem as a concubine? With her stubborn spirit, would she have endured it, or would she have ended her life afterward? Rainie would likely have lived an ordinary, quiet life, falling in love, marrying, having children.

It struck him then how every good thing he had now only existed because he had been reborn, because he had torn apart the original script and rewritten it by force.

But the thought of losing all of it, of being dragged back into that other existence, a life reduced to logging into Ethereal and then staring at the corrugated metal ceiling of that shack, was something his mind violently rejected.

The pain became physical, a crushing pressure in his chest that made it hard to breathe.

Then, without warning, it vanished.

The ache, the tightness, the suffocating weight, all gone in an instant. Darkness swam across his vision, swallowing everything.

When his eyes adjusted, a cold realization settled over him.

He was no longer in the room, he was inside his own Mindscape.

'This isn't right. What happened here?'

Luna. Beastie. Gale. Oblivion. Aqua.

His inner world, once endlessly bright despite the absence of any sun, now lay in ruins. The landscape was bleak and broken. The four directional isles were shattered, their edges crumbling as they slowly sank into the vast waters of his Source Energy.

"Yaya…!" The name slipped out before he could stop himself.

He clenched his jaw. Yaya wasn't here. She was still on Ascension Isle.

He called again, reaching out to the small spirits that should have answered him instantly, but there was only silence. Turning slowly, he looked toward the center of his Mindscape.

The Tree of Life.

Once, its canopy had overflowed with emerald vitality, branches heavy with living energy. Now it stood as a withered husk, its limbs dry and brittle, as though it might collapse into dust at any moment.

"Kekeke… Don't bother calling. If she were here, do you really think I could have come out?"

The voice sent ice through Ethan's veins.

It was familiar in the worst possible way.

He turned.

A figure floated behind him, suspended unnaturally in the air. The reason the voice felt so wrong was because it was his own.

The man had no legs below the knees. His clothing was torn and ragged, an echo of a life long past. His face was identical to Ethan's, yet hollowed out by suffering and resentment. Sunken eyes glared from sharp cheekbones, lips cracked and colorless, arms and fingers thin like talons.

Looking at him was like staring directly into the embodiment of his past misery.

"You…" Ethan said at last, his voice unsteady. "Who are you?"

"Who am I? Kekeke… I'm Ethan. And who are you?"

The figure's laughter scraped against the air, dry and broken.

"You're Ethan. You're Ethan. You're Ethan."

Ethan repeated the words under his breath, each one landing heavier than the last, until they became a hollow chant echoing in his mind. A treacherous question followed, quiet but poisonous.

'Then who am I?'

He could not bring himself to deny it.

Deep down, in a place beyond logic or pride, he knew it was true. This was Ethan. The real Ethan. The one who had endured everything. The man he had been before the rebirth, before the second chance.

The suffocating atmosphere of the Mindscape, paired with the sight of his own ruined past self, crushed down on him with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

"You're living the good life now," the specter hissed, bitterness dripping from every word. "Did you ever think about me? Everything you have today, I paid for it with three years buried in the dark mines, digging Titanite until my hands bled. That wealth should have been mine."

He sneered, floating higher. "And who do you think earned you the title of Druid God? Without the experience I ground out day after day, you'd be nothing."

Each accusation slammed into Ethan's mind like a curse, invisible blows that rattled his thoughts and dulled his awareness. His sharp gaze grew unfocused, his resolve thinning as if it were being slowly siphoned away.

The legless Ethan noticed immediately.

That familiar expression crept onto his face, the same look Ethan remembered too well, a mix of cunning, shameless desire, and cold calculation. Drifting closer, he continued his taunts, savoring every second.

Just as he reached out, he leaned close, his voice sinking into a foul whisper.

"This is what you owe me. It's time to pay it back. Your friends, your fortune, your women… I'll take very good care of them. Lyla. Amber. Rainie. Tsk tsk—Ghk!"

A hand shot out without hesitation, fingers locking around the specter's throat with terrifying force.

CRACK.

The figure's eyes widened in disbelief as his body shattered, exploding into a cloud of dark, greasy mist before another sound could escape him.

"You…"

The mist recoiled, streaming away before gathering again at a distance, reforming into the same pitiful shape. "You shouldn't have said their names."

The voice that answered him was no longer shaken or uncertain.

It was calm. Solid. Unyielding.

Ethan's dark hair stirred as if caught in a sudden wind, his clothes rippling despite the stillness of the Mindscape. Power rolled off him in silent waves.

"Impossible!" the past-self shrieked, his form flickering, turning faint and translucent. "Your will was fading. I felt it slipping away!"

"I said," Ethan replied, his voice low and edged with danger, "you don't get to speak their names."

He stepped forward, and the space itself seemed to bend beneath his presence. "You're right about one thing. I do owe you. And if it came down to it, I'd give everything back. I don't care."

His eyes hardened. "But that slimy, greedy tone in your voice, the way you even thought about reaching into their lives, touching them, using them… for that, you can go to hell."

As his final words echoed, Ethan's form expanded, swelling until he towered over the realm itself. A colossal hand, glowing with tightly restrained power, descended from above, aiming to crush the specter completely.

"No! This can't be happening!" his past screamed, panic finally breaking through. His body surged in size as well, instinctively responding, a murky grey hand forming to meet Ethan's strike.

"This isn't your Mindscape! This is the Heart-Devil Realm! So what if you broke free? You'll still die here! It'll just take a little more effort!"

BOOM.

The collision shook everything.

The grey, lifeless world shattered under the impact, its monotony ripped apart as violent crimson flooded the realm, staining the space with the raw force of their clash.

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