The nebulous training chamber stretched endlessly, a void of stars and shifting currents of color. Mythara stood bare-chested on the weightless ground, his body a map of glowing fractures. Cracks spread along his arms, chest, and ribs, each line glowing faintly like molten glass. They pulsed with the rhythm of his heart — his shedding advancing, whether he willed it or not.

Opposite him, the simulacrum hovered. Its face was blank, lifeless stone, its body a mirror of his own frame, still and waiting. Its voice cut the silence, mechanical and calm:

"How many deaths do you wish to stop at?"

Mythara flexed his fists, breath steaming through clenched teeth. His eyes burned rose-gold in the starlight.

"Your first and last."

The simulacrum surged forward, and the fight began.

No words followed, only fists. Their knuckles collided, and the sound cracked like thunder through the starry void. Shockwaves rippled out, distorting the chamber's fabric, tearing invisible seams in the cosmos. The impact alone could have shredded human bone to powder, yet on Mythara's skin, it was barely a vibration. He frowned.

They traded flurries. The Sim's jabs mirrored Cefketa's old patterns — clean pivots, direct lines — but to Mythara's eyes, they looked off. Slower, stiffer, just a hair behind perfection. A shoulder turned too late. A step carried a fraction too far. Against Cefketa days ago, those same patterns had been seamless. Here, in the Sim's hands, they were flawed.

Mythara ducked a hook, weaving inside and snapping his elbow up into the Sim's jaw. He felt the resistance of stone-skin fracture under the blow, but the Sim countered immediately, twisting with a knee toward Mythara's ribs. Mythara caught it, redirected the force, and spun the Sim through the nebula floor, slamming it hard enough to scatter shards of starlight.

The Sim rolled with the impact and came back with a straight punch. Mythara leaned just outside its reach, so close the fist grazed his jawline, and drove a palm-heel into its chest. The strike folded the Sim backward, momentum carrying it away in a rag-doll tumble.

Every motion was familiar — Cefketa's motions. But here, imperfect. A puppet with loose strings. Mythara's eyes narrowed.

You are not him.

He surged forward, breath hot, his speed climbing as though momentum itself bent to his will. His feet skidded across the star-lit ground, each step accelerating him faster than physics should allow. The Sim raised its guard, but Mythara was already inside it. A jab slipped through its defense. A hook landed before it could reset its stance. A shoulder-check drove it stumbling.

The fight turned savage and surgical at once. Mythara strung blows together — a kick snapping across its thigh, a backfist hammering its temple, a sweep that clipped its legs out from under it. The Sim scrambled upright but was immediately stuffed by another charge, Mythara chaining strikes with a predator's precision.

The Sim, desperate, pulled a weapon into being. A scythe shimmered in its hands, black edge dragging streaks of void behind it.

Mythara only scoffed. He didn't call for his own. He lunged bare-handed, slipping under the first slash, feeling the air peel past his shoulder. He caught the shaft mid-swing, twisted it aside, and crashed a headbutt into Sim's face. Fragments of its false skin cracked away as he followed with a knee to its gut. The scythe spun from its grip, clattering across the nebula ground.

He didn't let up. Fists blurred, counters stuffed, every swing dismantled before the Sim could find rhythm. It stumbled again, arms crossed desperately to block a barrage of hooks and elbows. Mythara shoved through its guard and sent it sprawling across the ground.

The Sim convulsed, and then—

It erupted.

Wings ripped free from its back, jagged and wide. Horns curled upward from its skull. Its pale stone face rippled and broke apart, reshaping into Cefketa's — a cold, merciless smirk etched across it.

The nebula shook under the weight of its rebirth.

Mythara froze for half a heartbeat, his chest heaving, eyes locked on the figure. The face. The horns. The wings.

This wasn't Cefketa. But it looked enough like him to make his breath catch.

The renewed assault drove Mythara back. This time, the simulacrum didn't come at him bare-handed. Two black daggers formed in its fists, their edges pulsing faintly with stolen echoes of Cefketa's killing grace. It moved differently now — sharper, faster, its cuts weaving through the void in measured arcs.

The first slash whistled across Mythara's cheek, close enough to burn with heat. The second hammered his guard, and the third carved across his ribs, sparks hissing from the contact. He stumbled, barely catching a wing-driven kick that hurled him across the nebula floor.

At first, the rhythm felt suffocating. Every swing of the daggers forced him to defend; each step pushed him back. His arms lit with cracks where the blades met his guard, glowing fissures crawling further down his flesh.

But then — his breathing steadied. His eyes narrowed.

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You are not him.

The Sim's pattern mimicked Cefketa's old dagger work — crisp, efficient — but Mythara saw it: the flaws his father had once carried. A habit of overextending the left-hand feint. A fraction too much reliance on rear-foot pivots. Subtle gaps are buried in the imitation.

He adjusted. He stopped meeting every slash with brute force and instead slipped through them, shoulder-rolling past the first dagger, catching the second on his forearm and twisting Sim's wrist away. He punished the opening with a sharp knee into its gut, followed by a hook across its temple.

The Sim pressed harder, daggers blurring into ribbons of black. Mythara wove through them, teeth bared, parrying with forearms and elbows, countering with jabs and knees. He fought not as the copy, but as himself, stripping the flaws bare.

For a few desperate minutes, the fight tilted back toward him. He drove the Sim stumbling with a spinning backfist. He ducked under a slash and hurled it overhead with a throw. He chained a brutal series of punches into its ribs, shouting with each strike.

But then the Sim changed again.

Its wings stretched wider, horns flaring brighter. The daggers pulsed, and with them came a raw surge of speed and power. Its footwork refined, its slashes snapped with lethal precision. The flaws Mythara had been exploiting closed like a wound, replaced with overwhelming strength.

The gap returned — wider than ever.

A cross-cut slammed his guard aside. A wing strike rattled his skull. A spinning dagger carved across his chest, knocking him backward, cracks screaming open along his scales. He staggered, barely upright, his breath ragged.

His eyes dropped to his arms. The fractured layer of his shedding was crumbling away, scales flaking into dust. Beneath, new ones gleamed faintly white with a golden sheen. Power throbbed beneath them, but it was caged, suffocated by what hadn't broken free yet.

Snarling, Mythara dug his claws into his chest. The cracks split wider, shattering like glass. Pain erupted — white-hot, unbearable — and then burst into light.

The nebula was flooded with gold radiance.

The Sim lunged, daggers poised to cleave him open, but the blades struck nothing but hair.

Mythara was already gone, standing at its side, his new scales shimmering like living fire, his claws flexed, his breath steady.

He looked down at his hand. Claws — white scales edged in gold, gleaming against the void. This feeling, this power that surged through him… it didn't feel like Cefketa's overwhelming presence or Nina's imperious authority. There were hints of Dragon there, yes — the weight, the hunger — but braided with something else. Something sharper. Something freer.

The Sim swung again, full force, daggers carving through the void. Mythara didn't even flinch. The blades raked across his chest and skidded harmlessly against the new scales. Not even a tremor.

The battlefield slowed. Mythara's vision sharpened to unbearable clarity. Every movement of the simulacrum fractured into layers, threads of force holding its body together — strands of imitation woven from stolen memory. Where before he had seen an enemy, now he saw seams. Weak points. Places where it was only pretending to be Cefketa.

His lips parted, the first words of the fight spilling into the starlit chamber.

"I don't suppose you can just give up, right? Because I don't feel like I can lose… to anyone, right now."

The simulacrum's eyes glowed, its voice flat:

"Affirmative."

Mythara sighed. His back split with light, and wings erupted — white feathers edged in gold, not elegant or divine but jagged, ragged, suited for battle. His silhouette was neither angel nor dragon, but something that defied both.

He moved. Not in strikes, but in slices along the threads. Every swipe of his claws cut more than flesh — it severed the scaffolding that bound the Sim together. He darted inside its guard, one talon scissoring across its shoulder, cutting the tension that gave its dagger form strength. A second swipe across the ribs, and its balance faltered, wings glitching in stutters of light. Another rake across the chest unraveled its rhythm, its motions slower, more desperate.

He wasn't fighting it anymore. He was dismantling it. One strand at a time.

At last, he stood behind it, the Sim staggering, its body fraying at the edges like parchment burning from within. Mythara raised his clawed hand, hesitated — then drove it through the simulacrum's core.

Light erupted.

The Sim froze. Its daggers shattered into motes. Slowly, it straightened, its lifeless stone face shifting into the faintest echo of Cefketa's. Then, with what dignity a construct could muster, it bowed its head to him.

Mythara exhaled, chest heavy. "Thank you… for your service."

The simulacrum dissolved into radiant threads, all of them streaming into him, searing his body and mind with the weight of borrowed experience. His vision swam with flashes of combat styles, memories of strikes, the accumulated instincts of Cefketa's blade work. He staggered, smirked, then clenched his claws. He could feel it all — every move, every counter, every rhythm.

The smirk faded. He stared down at his hands, the white-and-gold scales glimmering faintly, alien and beautiful. Power, yes. But beneath it, a single question burned hotter than ever.

********

The confinement cell.

The ocean pressed endlessly beyond the transparent walls, its weight a constant reminder of how deeply he was buried. Dim light bent through the water, painting the chamber in distorted waves of shadow.

The Wanderer leaned in the corner, still as a grave marker. Only the faint shimmer of Vaylora curling off him betrayed that he was alive at all. His hood hid most of his face, but his eyes gleamed like coals under it, watching. Waiting.

Mythara stood. The silence scraped against him. Slowly, he tore his shirt over his head and let it fall. The light caught his new body — scales white as bone, veined with molten gold, cracks that once bled now burning steady as living fire. His claws flexed. His chest heaved, but not from exhaustion; from the weight of the question he couldn't shake.

The air thickened. His back split open in a burst of radiance. Wings tore outward — ragged feathers edged in gold, wild and uneven, more weapon than ornament. Shadows scattered across every wall as the light filled the cell. He stood there fully revealed, no mask left, neither angel nor dragon but something between, something else entirely.

His voice cut the pressure like a blade.

"What am I… really?"

The Wanderer stirred. Slowly, he lifted his head. The hood slid back just enough to expose his mouth, curled into something between a smile and a snarl. His eyes widened, not in reverence, but in feverish hunger.

The silence broke on his voice, low, trembling with a thrill too sharp to be sane.

"Perfection."

The word cracked like glass. His shoulders trembled with the weight of it.

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