"You split yourself now," the old man said. "A second shadow wielding your blade. I do not remember the God of Freedom needing echoes to stand."
Jalen paused long enough for the white sky to settle.
"I haven't worn that name in years," he said. "The world buried me, and one of the few people I cared for decided I deserved the grave. And the others…"
He exhaled. "If they're alive, they're beyond my reach."
The old man's eyes narrowed, and the air at the roots of the tree tightened around Jalen's ribs.
"Your battle with the God of the Underworld left you standing," the old man said. "But hollow. A victory carved out of bone and loss."
Jalen braced as the tree behind the old man thrummed, its light spilling through his silhouette like molten threads.
"I have watched you since the moment you fell into this world," he went on, voice deepening, "from frightened boy to the man who broke fates that weren't meant to bend."
The old man leaned forward. His aura slipped free — slow, inevitable — and the not-water beneath them rippled as though the entire place bowed.
"And yet, you let yourself fade. Three years guttered out like a candle in a storm. You hid. You lived small. You tried to be anything but what you are."
His gaze hardened.
"A home. A child's quiet life. Love."
He didn't say them cruelly — he said them like sins.
"But you were called for greater. The God of Freedom does not vanish into seclusion and pretend it is peace."
The pressure rolled over Jalen's shoulders, heavy, ancient, disapproving.
Jalen's jaw clenched. He let his own aura rise — weaker, dimmer than what it once was — but still sharp enough to crack the stillness around them.
The air snapped between them like two storms testing each other.
"Don't speak to me of what I should've been," Jalen said quietly.
"You didn't bleed for me."
The world under his feet vibrated.
"You didn't see what I saw. You didn't feel what I felt."
His aura rose in a slow, furious pulse.
"The fear. The rage. The hope… and the moment it died with her."
His throat tightened, but he didn't look away.
"When Rhea fell, something in me fell with her. And when I woke on that shore with her body in my arms—"
His jaw clenched hard enough to tremble.
"—I killed what was left of the god in me."
The Anima Nexus shuddered as his aura thickened.
The black water quivered.
The sky thinned into fractures.
The tree behind the old man answered him.
Its branches rattled like bones waking from a long sleep.
BOOM.
A pulse.
BOOM.
Another.
BOOM.
The entire realm was beating in time with his rage.
Jalen stepped forward, voice breaking from quiet restraint into raw fury:
"I went west to protect Mira and my child."
His aura flared higher.
"I planned to circle back to Everlock."
The sky hissed.
"I planned to confront him."
His fingers curled, the power trembling through them.
"And when I finally knock some damn sense into him—"
The tree's heartbeat thundered with his own.
"—I'll find the others."
He pointed at the old man, aura snapping like a live wire.
"So don't you dare lecture me."
His chest heaved.
His voice deepened.
"Not you. Not here. Not after everything."
And then, with all the wrath of a god who had buried himself and was now dragging his power back up from the grave:
"I am done being spoken to like a child, you pompous old bastard."
The Anima Nexus reeled under the weight of his rising divinity.
Jalen's final words still trembled in the air when the old man suddenly — impossibly — smiled.
A small, satisfied thing.
He exhaled once, and his aura vanished.
Not faded. Dropped.
Like a mountain stepping aside.
"Good."
The word struck harder than any pressure he'd unleashed before.
The Anima Nexus responded instantly.
The white sky flared into color.
The black water brightened, rippling with molten gold.
And the tree behind him shook itself awake, leaves igniting in quiet light.
Jalen felt warmth race up his arms, over his shoulders —
He was glowing, the light coming from within his skin, from somewhere deeper than bone.
He staggered a half-step.
"What—?"
The old man lifted a hand.
"It has begun anew."
The words rang deeper than speech, threaded into the world itself.
"You have known what must be done," he said gently now, as if chastising a child whose tantrum had proven a point.
"But you lacked the conviction until this breath."
The tree's branches leaned toward Jalen like listeners.
"Now," the old man continued,
"I give you what you came here for. A gift of knowledge."
His eyes, dim moments ago, burned like coals relit.
"Kullen cannot be faced alone."
The colors around them shivered.
"If you confront him by yourself, you will fail—and the cost will be ruinous."
Jalen's glow flickered. "Fail…?"
"Find the others first," the old man said.
"The pieces of your broken pantheon. Your brothers. Your sisters. The ones who survived."
Jalen swallowed, pulse thundering.
The old man's voice softened — dangerous in its certainty.
"You have wondered why you felt drawn west. Why did your steps insist on a path you did not choose?"
He leaned closer.
"Your soul remembers what you have forgotten."
The light of the realm pulsed once, twice, in slow inevitability.
"And when you reach the far west… you will see who waits for you."
Jalen turned to leave, but the world refused to move around him.
Not a wall.
Not a prison.
Just stillness, absolute and unyielding.
The old man exhaled softly.
"You cannot go."
Jalen's aura flared in frustration.
"You said I'm needed—"
"And you are," the old man interrupted, voice steady as stone."But not like this. The God of Freedom cannot walk the world half-awake."
The tree behind him pulsed once.
A blooming thrum.
BOOM.
Leaves trembled.
BOOM.
The branches stretched.
BOOM.
The entire canopy leaned toward Jalen.
Color spilled down its trunk, flowing like rivers of memory.
Jalen stared up as the bark peeled just enough to reveal a shimmering set of footholds — not carved, not physical — opportunities.
Choices he had once made.
Choices he had run from.
The old man lifted his hand; the tree responded.
"Climb."
Jalen blinked.
"…Climb?"
The old man nodded.
"This is your Soul Tree. Your Anima. Every branch, every knot, every scar—these are the pieces of you. What you became. What you abandoned. What still lives."
The windless sky brightened, showering the trunk in impossible light.
"You buried your divinity the day Rhea died."
The old man's voice carried no anger now — only sorrow.
"But it did not die. It hid in the roots. It waited."
The tree's branches opened like arms.
"And now it calls you home."
A breath caught in Jalen's throat. He stepped forward, hand trembling as he placed it on the trunk.
Warm.
Alive.
Familiar.
The moment he touched it, the world changed.
The bark pulsed beneath his palm, lighting up in streaks of white-gold. The branches above rearranged themselves, forming a spiraling ascent toward a crown glowing like a small sun.
His soul.
His past.
His godhood.
All layered through the tree's height.
Jalen swallowed hard. "What happens when I reach the top?"
The old man's expression softened with something like pride.
"Then you will remember who you were."
And then, quieter:
"And who you must become again. What Freedom truly means."
Jalen took a breath.
And began to climb.
The first branch met his hand like a pulse.
Not images. Not scenes.
Feelings.
Fear. Wonder. A blade drawn in desperation. A laugh half-remembered.
The weight of choices.
The sting of loss.
A throne he never asked for.
A freedom he once carried like a banner.
Vague, blurry, and shifting.
He climbed.
Middle branches trembled with heavier memories:
Chains he had broken.A friend's betrayal.A war muted by ash.A love dissolving into darkness.Power he once wielded without thinking.
He climbed.
Higher still:
Cold water. A scream pulled from his chest.
The Underworld's shadow is pressing in, Rhea's final breath.
A shore.
A body in his arms.
A godhood buried under grief.
He climbed.
Until the crown broke open above him, bathing him in gold.
He didn't remember everything.
But he remembered himself.
Whole enough.
Awake enough.
Ready enough.
The Soul Tree released him.