The ruined chamber breathed like a dying beast.
Every shattered wall, every exposed beam, every floating shard of debris trembled as Adrax descended through the torn sky. He did not fall—he lowered, as though the world itself bent to make room for him.
The air thickened instantly.
Not wind.Not pressure.Something older.
A second atmosphere pushed down on the ruins, cold as lunar stone and heavy enough to bow the metal girders still standing.
Null stood atop a fractured pillar that barely supported him.His left eye flickered between its natural color and a black spiral, each rotation pulsing with an alien rhythm—like a heart that belonged to someone else.
Hyung, down below, braced himself as the ground rippled beneath his feet, the stone turning fluid under the distortion.
He called upward, voice hard and controlled despite the chaos:
"Keep your mind here. If you slip for even a second, he'll take you."
Null tried to steady his breathing.
"I'm… trying."
But the second wave hit.
Not an attack.Not force.
A memory.
The world around him warped like melting paint as a foreign childhood forced itself into his consciousness:
A throne constructed from black metal, humming with runes he didn't recognize.A child standing alone before it—shoulders rigid, eyes empty.A towering figure stepping from the shadows.A hand reaching for the child's forehead, marking him with a symbol of authority and ownership.
Null inhaled sharply, nearly losing his balance.
Hyung shouted, already moving:
"Null!"
Null's fingers clawed into the pillar until cracks spiderwebbed beneath his grip. He forced the vision aside, voice shaking:
"No. This isn't me. This never happened to me."
Adrax's reply slid through the chamber like iron dust.
"It did. You simply were not permitted to remember. The mind given to you was… incomplete."
Another tendril of condensed void-energy shot toward Null, spiraling like a black comet.
Hyung launched upward instantly, intercepting the tendril mid-air with a punch that ripped the wind apart. The collision hurled him sideways through a thick wall. Stone burst outward in a cloud of dust.
He rolled, staggered back to his feet, and spit a line of blood onto the fractured floor.
"You don't get to rewrite his life. I won't let you."
Adrax ignored him, all attention locked on Null.
"He was meant to open the Gate. Crafted as a vessel, not a person. The body you inhabit… the mind you trust… are borrowed shapes."
Null's heartbeat hammered against his ribs.
The chamber dissolved around him again.
He was inside the memory—halfway, trapped between the present and a life that didn't belong to him.The child turned.
Not Null.A stranger.But bearing his eyes.
A reflection of a life he never lived.
Null's voice trembled:
"That's not me… that's not me… that's—"
The world snapped.
A surge of pressure shot down from the rift.
Hyung recognized the attack too late.
"NULL, MOVE—!"
The pressure hit like a falling universe.
Null's vision turned white.His breath vanished.His body seized.
No scream left his throat—just absence.
He toppled from the pillar, hitting the ground on his hands and knees.
Hyung tore across the broken stone and slid beside him, gripping his shoulders hard enough to bruise.
"Null—look at me. Stay here. Do not go into that void. Don't you disappear on me."
Null shook violently.
A second pulse struck him.Then a third.Each one carved deeper into the walls of his mind, pulling pieces of himself away.
Hyung tightened his hold, voice low but unbreakable.
"You are not a vessel. You are my brother. Remember that. Hold onto that."
For a brief second, Null's breathing steadied.
But then—
His left eye changed.
The flicker became a controlled spiral.Smooth.Purposeful.
Something stirred behind it.
Not Adrax.Not the false memory.
Something buried so deeply that even Null had never glimpsed it.
Null raised his head slowly.
Hyung felt the temperature drop around them.The air sharpened.The stone beneath their feet began to hum.
"Null…? What's happening?"
Null didn't respond.
A new aura bled from his body—dark, tightly coiled, born from a place untouched by Aizeno or Adrax.It wrapped around him like a rising storm.
Adrax paused mid-descent.
"So. It has awakened."
Hyung's fists clenched.
"What has awakened?"
Adrax's voice held irritation for the first time.
"The part I did not place. The part he created on his own."
Null rose to his feet.
His mind was still fracturing.But something within him had surfaced—a shard of identity strong enough to withstand Adrax's invasion.
Hyung saw it like a second skin forming around him, a shape of pure willpower.
This wasn't corruption.It wasn't possession.This was Null forging a piece of himself in real time.
Null's voice shook, but the words were his:
"You said I was a vessel. Then explain why something inside me refuses your mark."
Adrax extended a massive hand from the rift, shadows stretching across the ruined chamber like the spread of a vast wing.
"You are incomplete. The missing piece lies with the one who created you."
Hyung's breath froze.
A name rose unspoken in both their minds:
Aizeno.
Adrax continued:
"Your creator split your core. Half in your body. Half in your brother."
Hyung inhaled sharply, heart stopping for a beat.
Null's eyes widened as the truth clicked into place—the gaps in his memories,the flashes of something ancient,the sense of being unfinished.
The part that was missing…was inside Hyung.
Adrax lowered his colossal hand toward them.
"Come, Fragment. I will restore what you lost."
Null stared at the hand.
Hyung stepped in front of him instantly, stance locked and unwavering.
"You touch him, you go through me."
Adrax's gaze drifted toward Hyung.
"I told you once. You were built to break."
The entire chamber shuddered.
Shards levitated.
Dust swirled like a rising storm.
Null stepped up beside Hyung.
Side by side.
He balled his fists as the aura around him darkened, taking shape.
"I don't care what was taken from me," Null said, voice steadying."I don't care what I was meant to be."
His aura ignited, cracking the stone around his feet.
"I choose who I am now."
Adrax's hand descended.
Hyung raised his guard.
Null's aura exploded upward.
And the ruins shattered as the clash began.