Deviant: No Longer Human

"…As long as you're beneath someone, you're subject to their whims," Yanyan said softly, repeating the truth she read in the girl's eyes.

Wang Xiao smiled.

"Yes. Like you are to mine."

Yanyan glared at him. "That's not the same thing!"

"It is," he replied dryly.

"…It's not!" she snapped, pouting. "So what? What if I want to be subjected to your whims? Huh? Come bully me then!"

He sighed. Then without warning, smack! struck her rear lightly with his palm.

She yelped, eyes wide. "Ah!"

But his voice was calm.

"I didn't mean you, I meant everyone."

He looked back toward the girl in the distance.

Everyone beneath him, gods, mortals, enemies, lovers, were subjected to the same reality.

It was never personal.

Athene, for all her righteous anger, didn't understand that yet.

She blamed the world.

But she hadn't seen the truth yet.

It was power.

Always power.

The only true whip in this world.

Yanyan sighed, folding her arms with a pout. "Boring..."

She looked away.

"…I don't even like this place anymore."

Wang Xiao didn't reply.

But his gaze didn't soften.

Because he knew....

Power is like breath.

You claim you don't care for it, until someone takes it away.

And when they do, you remember why you craved it in the first place.

They didn't bother visiting the others.

Wang Xiao only checked briefly on Naomi, she was doing fine, no surprises there.

Elyria was more interesting.

Now a little princess in a minor desert kingdom, pampered and proud. Yet in his world, she had already become the North American Guardian, the very woman he pulled out of the Time Loop of Maliketh.

Wang Xiao didn't tell Yanyan, but he wasn't here just to reminisce.

He was here for a reason.

To find Aegis, and the Transcendent who came from beyond the veil and killed him once.

Yes, Killed.

But death meant little when you were a Transcendent, a being spread across time, consciousness echoing in multiple realities simultaneously.

In their nature, they were less like people and more like principles. Concepts wrapped in form.

Wang Xiao hadn't traveled back in time. He had always existed here.

Just as dark matter existed since the beginning…

So had he.

He was not rewinding history.

He was peeling its layers.

And now he sought answers.

The first Yuriko.

The one who began the cycle of a thousand reincarnations.

What had she seen?

What had she feared?

Why did her 999th self rebel?

Yuriko wasn't the true problem, if it ever came to it, he could overwrite her will. Aegis too could be eliminated without disrupting the timeline.

He'd done worse.

But the other Transcendent, the one he was about to meet…

That one was different.

It wasn't something he could destroy.

Not yet.

The last two he shattered in the Netherworld were not truly killed, merely destabilized, their structures altered until their forms collapsed.

They could rebuild themselves in time. As could he.

Transcendents don't die.

They reshape.

So now, Wang Xiao waited.

To strike a deal.

To negotiate before the Enforcer of reality could intervene. Before it could weaponize the past as a shield and hold this being hostage in the present.

Could the Enforcer also travel back? Hide its tracks? Interfere here?

He didn't know.

But the Enforcer's rules were absolute:

It could punish no one but him.

It could stop him, wound him, But never others.

So if he chose to make a deal with another Transcendent, there was nothing the Enforcer could do about it.

Unless it acted first.

That was the gamble.

And so, he waited.

Ten years passed.

No sign of Aegis.

No ripple, no descent.

It seems he hadn't fallen into the Graveyard of Gods yet.

But Wang Xiao knew the portal existed, had always existed.

Buried here since the beginning of time.

And he had already found it.

Now all he had to do...

Was wait for the past to catch up with the future.

Everything was a gamble.

A colossal bet across timelines and worlds, and Wang Xiao was its only player.

If Aegis, a Transcendent, could truly be killed… then the one who killed him must possess something.

A method.

A truth.

A way to kill the unkillable.

Wang Xiao wasn't here to battle.

He was here to negotiate.

To obtain that way.

To one day use it, not against Aegis, but against the Enforcer.

His thoughts spiraled like a quiet storm when suddenly...

"Ouch!"

He blinked.

In the middle of the open grassland, beneath a quiet sky, a figure had bumped into him, forceful, annoyed, familiar.

A young woman, nearly grown, her white hair tousled by wind, eyes sharp as daggers.

Aurora.

She looked up at him with pure, righteous fury.

"Can't you step out of my way?"

Her voice cracked with restrained frustration. Her hands clenched, the pebbles around her trembled and rose, lifted by aether she barely controlled.

She now came up to his shoulder.

Taller, and stronger.

Still a brat.

For years now, he'd annoyed her. Popped in and out of her path like a haunting shadow. Always watching, never answering.

Now, here he was, again.

Right beside a place he shouldn't be.

A monument stood nearby, tall, weathered, cold. The Memorial of Death. Said to mark a forbidden portal that led to the grave of gods. No one who entered had ever returned.

Even among myth-touched tribes, this place was known as a one-way door to oblivion.

Wang Xiao narrowed his eyes.

She had bumped into him here?

Of all places?

"What are you doing here?" he asked, voice suspicious.

Her tribe was settled nearly a hundred miles east. A peaceful clan of forest-healers and nature-priests, rarely ever straying far from their sacred grounds.

What was she doing near the dead man's portal?

Aurora's face twitched, a flicker of guilt before she barked back.

"Nothing to do with you! Stay away from me or I'll tell the others, mages like you fetch a high price!"

She spun around and bolted, vanishing into the green like a deer caught mid-theft.

Wang Xiao blinked once.

"High price, huh?" he murmured, rubbing his chin. "She wanted to sell me?"

He didn't know whether to laugh or sigh.

But now… he was interested.

He turned back toward the stone arch, ancient and silent. Beneath its base, dark energy hummed faintly, resonating with something only he could sense.

This was it.

The portal to the Graveyard of Gods.

It had existed here since the beginning of time. Hidden in plain sight.

Dormant, waiting.

But now came the troubling part.

Only one tribe existed anywhere near it, Aurora's.

And they only traveled once a year to the faraway King's Festival. That window was precise, predictable.

So…

Where was Aegis?

If the timeline was correct, he should've appeared here by now, fallen through the portal, drawn by fate, or guided by whatever force had once killed Wang Xiao in the distant future.

But there was no ripple.

No disturbance.

No sign of him.

Had the Enforcer intervened already?

Or worse... Was Aegis never meant to fall?

Wang Xiao's eyes narrowed.

For a moment, he doubted the plan.

Then he looked in the direction Aurora fled, that wild storm of a girl who'd one day become a goddess.

He smiled.

"Interesting… could it be..."

Wang Xiao whispered, his gaze distant, locked onto the shifting winds of fate.

He didn't move.

For three full days and nights, he stood in that same spot near the grassy field, just beside the death monument, like a statue carved by obsession itself.

And from a distance, she watched.

Every few hours, Aurora peeked from the trees.

And every time their eyes met, she disappeared like a startled fox.

By the fourth day, her pride cracked.

She marched toward him, visibly frustrated, chin raised, silver hair fluttering.

"I have some work for you!" she snapped, her voice louder than necessary.

Wang Xiao tilted his head lazily. "Oh?"

He looked her over with that same casual boredom that always made her grit her teeth.

"What work?"

Aurora puffed her cheeks. "You just stand here like a ghost. If you're not going to leave, at least be useful."

She hesitated.

Then extended her hand.

Fair, soft, the kind of skin untouched by hardship, despite her mouth saying otherwise.

Resting in her small palm were a few uneven coins of old gold.

"Will you do it… or not?" she said, trying to sound stern.

She avoided eye contact.

He didn't answer.

Instead, his eyes on her adorable fingers.

"You're offering me money?"