Nico Vritra
"Cecilia!" Grey shouted, shaking the shoulders of the person I cared most about in this world—in any world. "I am here! We are here! Nico!"
Grey's head turning to call me snapped me out of my disbelief. This was really happening. Agrona had truly brought Cecilia back to life.
The impossible had become real, and I was now standing in the heart of Taegrin Caelum, watching the girl I had loved and lost draw breath again.
I rushed toward the altar, ignoring the High Sovereign who seemed to be contemplating the windows around us as if he had just finished a minor chore.
Cecilia was coughing, her new body struggling to adapt to the simple act of breathing. Grey was patting her back with firm, measured strength—trying to help, trying to anchor her to this world.
"Like that, Cecil," I said, my voice weak. A weakness that could cost me dearly here, in this fortress of the Vritra.
But I did not care about punishment from Agrona's Scythes right now. I did not care about the rules, the hierarchy, the endless performance of obedience that had defined my existence since I was reborn in this cursed continent. Cecilia was here. Cecilia was alive. Nothing else mattered.
"Breathe," I urged her, my hands hovering over her shoulders, afraid to touch, afraid to break the fragile miracle before me.
Cecilia's eyes—different eyes, but still undeniably hers—went wide. "Nico? Grey?" Her voice was raw, confused, trembling with the weight of a death she should not have survived. "Where are we? What? How? Why?"
"Not now, Cecil," I said, glancing back at Agrona, who was already exiting the room. I frowned.
He was done? Just like that? What had he meant before—that this had not gone as expected? A cold unease settled in my stomach, but I pushed it aside. Cecilia needed me. Nothing else mattered.
"Do not get distracted, Nico," Grey said, forcing my attention back to Cecilia. "Cecilia needs you now."
"R-right. Sorry." My voice sounded almost innocent.
When was the last time I had felt like this? Like myself? Like the boy from Earth who had loved a girl and lost her and spent every moment since wishing for a second chance?
I wanted to smile so badly. Cecilia was flesh and bones in front of me, alive and breathing and here. But my blood stopped me.
The Vritra blood that ran through my veins, that sang with Agrona's power, that had been forced into me when I was reborn—it would not let me feel joy. It would not let me feel anything but the cold, calculated awareness of a weapon waiting to be used.
Only Grey seemed unaffected by it. But then again, he was Grey. The Puppet King.
The sense of accomplishment was brief.
We heard it distinctly: the sound of a finger cracking. Then spikes of Bloodiron—the decay equivalent of earth magic—erupted from Cecilia's core, impaling her from within.
No! I screamed in my head, but outwardly, I could only make incomprehensible sounds. My mouth opened, but no words came. Only a raw, animal noise of pure horror.
Cecilia's blood sprayed across me and Grey as she screamed—a sound of agony so pure, so absolute, that it seemed to tear through the very fabric of the Awareroom.
"Grey! Grey! Help me!" I screamed, scrambling to Cecilia's side. My hands reached for the spikes, trying to pull them out, but they were rooted too deep. Too deep. Too everywhere. The Bloodiron had spread through her like roots through soil, intertwining with her new Basilisk body, becoming part of her.
Grey turned to where Agrona had been, but the High Sovereign was nowhere to be found.
"Grey! Help me!" I shouted again, desperation clawing at my throat. I tried to use my own Bloodiron to remove the spikes, but they were too entrenched. Too powerful. Too Vritra.
Grey conjured Soulfire on his hands—black flames that licked at Cecilia's wounds, trying to mend them, trying to undo what Agrona had done. But nothing seemed to work. The wounds would not close. The bleeding would not stop.
"Grey!" I shouted again, my voice cracking.
"Shut that fucking mouth for a second and let me think!" Grey shouted back, and there was a passion in his voice that I had not heard since Earth. Since before the tournament. Since before everything went wrong.
"Leave her." A cold feminine voice cut through the chaos. Sovereign Lavinia approached the dying Cecilia, her eyes fixed on the body of the Legacy.
I was frozen by fear, my limbs locked, my heart pounding. But Grey was not. He stood up, placing himself between the Sovereign and Cecilia.
"I said leave her, lesser," Sovereign Lavinia said, her voice dripping with contempt. "I will save her."
"You will not get near Cecilia," Grey said. Always the brave one. Always the protector. And me? I was just the hopeless one, cradling Cecilia's bleeding body, watching her life slip away.
The King's Force of Agrona's daughter washed over us, overpowering us both completely.
Asuras are too powerful, Grey, I thought bitterly. You can never get strong enough. Have you not learned that already?
But then Lavinia Vritra did something unexpected.
Purple energy coalesced in her hands—aether, the secret of the Dragons, the power that even the Vritra coveted. She bathed Cecilia in that purple light, and I felt the life of the woman I loved flicker back into existence, her heart beginning to beat again.
"Feed her Soulfire as long as she needs it, and she will live," Sovereign Lavinia said, then left, just like her father had done.
Grey did not acknowledge her. He immediately began healing Cecilia with Soulfire, and soon, I joined him, pouring everything I had into keeping her alive.
"Do not look at her," Grey said, noticing me glancing at Sovereign Lavinia, who had not yet left the room.
"She saved Cecilia, Grey." I kept my voice low, confused, desperate to understand. "She has never done anything other than beat us down, like the other Scythes. Why did she do it?"
"I do not care," Grey replied.
"Then what do you think about what just happened?" I asked through gritted teeth, my Soulfire still steady on Cecilia. "Agrona almost killed her!"
"Almost," Grey replied. "Vritra does not accept weakness. The High Sovereign was merely testing her."
"Are you even listening to yourself?!" I bellowed, the words tearing from my throat. "She is the Legacy! There is no need to test her like this! Agrona said this was unexpected. He tried to kill her—he just did not pay her enough mind to finish it in one movement!"
Cecilia remained stable beneath both our Soulfires. Her breathing was shallow, but steady.
"Are you listening?!" I shouted at Grey.
"I am." Grey's voice was flat, emotionless. "And what do you want to do? Rebel against Agrona? Do not be ridiculous."
"Listen to yourself, Grey." I was pleading now, my voice cracking. "Am I speaking to you, or to the Puppet King?"
Grey's eyes blazed with fury—a flash of the man he had been, the king who had killed the woman he loved to save her from a worse fate. But he did not stop his Soulfire; he did not stop healing Cecilia.
"Do not. Say. That. Title."
"...Yes. Sorry." I looked away, ashamed.
The Puppet King. The king who, after slaying the Legacy at the end of the Etharian King's Tournament of 2451 AD, had become the puppet of the nation of Trayden.
He had killed Cecilia to spare her a life of slavery—the same life he himself would have been forced to live. A king who belonged not to his nation, not to his people, not even to himself. A king who belonged to someone else, to Trayden.
And now, here in this new world, I could see the same chains wrapping around him. Different masters, same cage.
"Cecilia is stable," Grey said after a long silence. "We need to move her."
—
I was at Cecilia's bedside in one of the high chambers of Taegrin Caelum's upper spires. It was a room that felt like a gilded cage, a gilded cage of black gold, its black stone walls adorned with tapestries depicting Vritra's triumphs.
Agrona had not said a word since he tried to murder her. We had not even seen him. That meant he would not try again, right? The question gnawed at me, a rat trapped in the walls of my skull.
We had to do something about this. We needed to escape—my blood blocked that thought, strangling my desire to flee from the Vritra before it could fully form.
Instead, it made me want to stay. To serve. To submit. It was a siren's call, like the ancient myths of Earth, but worse. Far worse.
A siren's song you could not resist with wax in your ears and willpower. This was woven into my very veins, a compulsion I could not fight because fighting it only made it stronger.
Damn it! Damn it all!
Anger was the only emotion the Vritra Blood never choked. But anger destroyed logic, burned away thought, replaced reason with wrath. It made everyone under Agrona easier to control.
I could feel it smoldering in my chest, threatening to consume me, and I did not know if I had the strength to keep it contained.
"Nico?" Cecilia's voice was soft, tentative, and I turned to face her. Only now did I fully realize how different this Basilisk body of hers was from her original self.
Me and Grey had received forms similar to our Earthen ones when we were reincarnated—the same faces, the same builds, the same haunted eyes.
But Cecilia... Cecilia had been remade. Her black hair fell in waves across her pale shoulders. Her eyes, a dark grey that was almost red in some sparks, blinked up at me with confusion.
Four black horns curled from her temples and behind her ears, marking her as something other than human.
Agrona had told us that the amount of Vritra Blood in this body made her more Asura than lesser, but without making her dependent on mana to live. It made her like Cadell.
"How are you feeling?" I asked, keeping my voice gentle.
Cecilia paused, looking at her hands—pale, slender, alien. "What is this body?"
"Do not think about it now." I took her hand, and the warmth of her skin sent a jolt through me. After so long, after so much pain and loss and desperate hope, I finally had her again. "The only thing that matters is how you are feeling."
"I feel good," Cecilia said, raising her eyes to meet mine. Her gaze was steadier than I expected, calmer. "I have never felt so at peace."
In our former life, Cecilia had always struggled with Ki surges—sudden outbursts of the energy that permeated our bodies on Earth.
They caused her immense pain, and we had worked so hard to diminish them. They were caused by the Legacy within her, though I still did not know what the Legacy truly was. I had asked Agrona, but the High Sovereign always answered by saying I was too stupid to understand.
"What about the Legacy?" I asked.
Cecilia shook her head slowly, as if she, too, could not quite believe what she was about to say. "Gone."
"Gone?" I echoed, my chest tightening. "How is that possible?"
"I have no idea, Nico. I just... I just..." She stuttered, her fingers twitching in mine. "I felt something tear me. It tore me so powerfully, and then I woke up like this."
She touched her horns, panic flickering across her face. "What even is this, Nico? What happened to me? What happened to you?"
She paused, looking around the room—at the gothic arches, the dark stone, the flickering shadows.
Everything in Taegrin Caelum reminded me of the old Gothic architecture I had read about, the architecture of an Earth before the End Wars and before the Treaty of Perpetual Peace that had established Kings and Paragon Duels.
"Where is Grey?" she asked, noticing his absence.
"I don't know." He had not shown himself since we brought her here.
Speaking of the devil—I heard footsteps behind me. Cecilia's head turned toward the door, but her eyes widened not in recognition, but in worry.
I turned.
"The High Sovereign demands your presence," Scythe Seris Vritra said, her cold gaze fixed on me. "You and Grey are to depart for Dicathen."