We’re absorbing their energy. Becoming something more than we were.
I can feel the godlike power settling into us, making us stronger, faster, more capable than we’ve ever been. More powerful than our brothers. More powerful than Father.
More powerful than anything.
And Remus controls it all.
I should be furious. This is everything I’ve ever wanted—the power to fix things, to impose order, to actually accomplish something meaningful—and it’s in the hands of the least responsible person who’s ever existed.
But I can also feel something else through our shared body. His thoughts, clearer now than they’ve ever been. His emotions.
He’s thinking of her. Of course he is.
I love you. You’ve made my pointless existence worth living.
He meant it when he said it to her. I can feel the truth of it burning through him brighter than the Devourer energy.
The last creature explodes, and we’re alone in space, glowing like a newborn star.
And then I feel it. The shift in his attention.
He’s turned inward. Toward me.
No. Not toward me.
Toward the neural pathways that connect us.
I can feel him seeing them now, mapped out in perfect clarity. Every synapse that makes meme. Every connection point between his consciousness and mine.
And I understand, with sudden cold certainty, what he’s about to do.
He’s going to cut me out.
The power surges. I feel the first incision like a knife through my thoughts.
Clean. Precise. Surgical.
He’s gotten better at this than I ever gave him credit for. Of course he has. Destruction is his nature, and he’s finally gained the power to destroy at the most fundamental level.
The second cut severs something deeper. I feel part of myself beginning to drift, untethered.
I should fight. Should rage against this violation, this murder.
But what’s the point?
I’ve always known this day would come. Known that eventually, his hatred of me would outweigh whatever practical need he had for my strategic thinking. And now he has the power to finally do what we’ve both wanted for millennia.
We’ve been at war since the moment of our creation. This is just the final battle.
The third cut. The fourth.
I’m slipping now. Fading. Parts of me that were solid and certain are becoming ephemeral, ghostlike.
This is what dying feels like, I realize. Not for the body—that will live on without me—but for consciousness itself.
I should be terrified. Furious.
Instead, I just feel... tired.
