The group turned to see who had appeared. They saw Loki there. None of them knew who Loki was exactly. Only Aren had interacted with him all this ti, so he was the only one who knew him.
"Who are you?" Aiden asked and pulled his sword.
"? I am Loki, and a friend to Aren over there." He said and then took a few steps forward. "Honestly, calling it friend is a stretch. Aren hated genuinely. He thought I was the main force manipulating his destiny."
Lucy looked at Loki after he called his na. She froze.
Loki turned and looked at her. "Ahhh, you are an angel, a fallen one. That’s a nice sight to see," he said and then turned his eyes back to Aren.
"You seem to know what is happening," Aiden said.
Loki looked over his shoulder. "Indeed I do, but what is happening is not so simple one-step issue that I could explain to you."
"Aren is locked out of his own consciousness."
Loki’s voice was almost casual, like he was comnting on the weather. The grin that followed was worse.
"Or his consciousness is dead." He let that hang in the air for a mont. "Either way, what you’re looking at right now is no longer Aren. What you see standing there is sothing that predates existence itself."
Silence.
Then Aiden’s voice, sharp and raw. "What the hell are you saying?"
No one answered him. Lucy had already stopped listening.
Her eyes were fixed on Aren, on the thing wearing Aren’s face, and sothing cold and certain was settling into her chest, piece by piece, like the last tiles of a mosaic snapping into place. The shadow abilities. The summons. The way everything about him had always felt slightly too perfect, too fluid, too ancient for soone who had only just awakened.
She turned to Loki slowly.
"Could it be?" she asked.
He nodded. No smile this ti.
And just like that, it clicked.
She understood why the angels had been forced to study Shadow. As angels, they were forced to understand the story, forced to see what beca of a being that tried to destroy all of reality.
She never thought it was a real story, but now she was seeing it in real ti, and from a person that she would have never expected it to co from. She was seeing it from Aren, a power that she thought was never ant to be.
"Shadow," she whispered.
"Now she sees it." Loki tilted his head. "I find it strange, honestly. That no one thought about it sooner. About the na. About why the system called him that from the very beginning."
"Who the hell is Shadow?" Aiden demanded.
He looked between them, jaw tight, hands clenched. The only Shadow he knew was the na Aren had used when the trials first began, a title that had felt like a joke at the ti. A label. Nothing more.
"Why do you think the system gave him that na?" Loki asked.
Aiden opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Because," Loki said quietly, "it is his na. Aren’s soul, the soul you know, the person you’ve fought beside, is only a fragnt. A sliver of sothing far greater and far older." He paused. "I t that soul when it was still small. Still forming. I tried to force an awakening that would alter the course of his life, push him away from this path. Away from becoming Shadow." His expression shifted, sothing between amusent and regret. "Every push I made turned him further into this. Every shove, every redirection. I thought if I beca his patron, I could give him strength that didn’t rely on Shadow’s true form. Guide him toward sothing safer."
He glanced at Aren’s still figure.
"But it was already too far gone. That, and Aren is extraordinarily stubborn." The ghost of a smile. "The kid doesn’t listen. If he did, we wouldn’t be here."
Zero stepped forward.
She moved quietly, the way she always did, and ca to stand beside Loki. Her eyes didn’t leave Aren.
"I don’t know who you are," she said. "And I can tell there’s sothing off about you. But I’m asking you, no parables, no grand story." Her voice was steady, but the edge beneath it was razor-thin. "Where is he? Where is Aren right now? Is he still in there?"
Loki looked at her for a long mont.
Then the smile faded entirely.
"Honestly?" He exhaled. "I don’t know. His consciousness could be dead. That is the most likely outco. Shadow doesn’t share space. He tears through whatever was already there and takes what’s his." He turned back to Aren, his voice dropping. "What’s happening right now is Shadow pulling in shadow energy from across the universe. Reconnecting with his core. When that’s finished, he’ll spin a shadow web, a network stretching across every corner of existence."
The silence that followed was the kind that pressed against your lungs.
"We are already at war with the void," Loki continued. "Fighting Shadow on top of that, a Shadow with a proper connection to his core, with no boundaries left to contain him, would be sothing else entirely. The boundaries that were once in place..." He paused. "They’re gone now. The gods saw to that, even when I warned them."
He clicked his tongue. A sharp, bitter sound.
"They never listen. They assu everything will bend to their design." He shook his head slowly. "Fools."
No one spoke.
Loki’s gaze drifted back to the figure standing at the centre of the gathering dark, shadow energy curling around him like smoke with intention.
"Our only hope," he said quietly, "is that the kid is still alive sowhere inside. That so part of Aren is still in there, still holding on, and that he’s strong enough to push back." He paused. "That is the only way this stops, because if we tried to get close, the power of shadow within rip us to shreds"
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