For the first time in my life, I find myself afraid.
Not of death. Not of battle. Simply… afraid. I’m not even sure of what…
Confidence has always come easily to me—or so I have convinced everyone, perhaps even myself. Looking back, I wonder how much of it was ever genuine and how much was merely another mask. Another lie I wore well enough to believe.
My life has been a relentless pursuit of power and immortality. My lust for ambition and conquest… each promised to fill the emptiness within me, and each failed. I owe this world nothing, for it has never owed me anything in return.
And yet…
There are those I would burn the world to protect. My sister. Ravyn. Others who have somehow earned pieces of a heart I once believed long dead. For them, I would die without hesitation.
But even they cannot outweigh the burden of my existence.
To become a Jaegar is to surrender the life that came before. My memories, my history, my pain—all meant to be erased in the pursuit of something worthwhile, something I can be proud of. Unless I cheat.
Cheating has never troubled my conscience. If bending the rules secures what I desire, then so be it. Nature does not care for mortal ideas of fairness. Survival has never rewarded the honorable over the cunning.
Still… this gamble carries consequences. I do not fear paying the price myself. I fear what that price may become for those I leave behind.
Yet hesitation has never changed fate.
Ravnica is behind me. Arborea is beyond my reach. The agony of exile has carved itself so deeply into my soul that instinct alone remains. I no longer need to remember every wound. It is enough to know that suffering is always possible.
Boss man says Tactus can do it. Preserve the memories I choose to keep. My sister. Ravyn. Belias. My family. Even that ridiculous mimic, Chester. They are why I fight.
Cruelty has walked beside me for most of my life. At times I have embraced it, but only ever as a weapon to protect myself and those I call my own.
So cheat I shall. Instinct alone is not enough. I require more than survival.
I must have a why.
– Nova