Summary: After years as Anaxagoras’ most promising student, you return to his lab for the final time, only to find him preparing the ultimate sacrifice — himself — to prove his soul theory and challenge the divine. As he entrusts his legacy to you, you are left to witness his irreversible transformation and the devastating cost of truth. There is no salvation. Only silence, and ash.
Warnings: Major Character Death, Emotional Distress, Themes of Self-Destruction, Grief, Experimental Body Horror (Light), References to Divine/Religious Defiance, Nihilism, Unhealthy Mentor Dynamics, No Happy Ending.
A/N: He didn't wanna come home so you guys shall suffer with me. 🥰💖 (Wow, this is my second Anaxa fic lmao.)
You were his favorite.
Not because you obeyed — none of his students did, not really — but because you dared to defy him intelligently. You stood at the threshold of the forbidden, and instead of retreating like the rest, you asked "Why?" with the same feverish hunger that once defined him.
That is what he loved.
And that is what doomed you.
“You’re late,” Anaxa mutters, not looking up from the gleaming shard of soulsteel he’s etching runes into, his voice clipped with habitual irritation — or maybe veiled relief. The candlelight flickers wildly around him, refracted in the dozens of golden instruments strewn across the lab, like a cruel mockery of stars.
You close the iron door behind you. “You said not to come back.”
“I also said truth doesn’t obey warnings.”
He finally glances at you, and for a moment, you see it — a phantom of sorrow fluttering behind his eyes, before he drowns it again in icy brilliance. One eye veiled, the other blazing with a soulfire that doesn’t belong to him.
You cross the room, past warped bones and cracked automata, until you're standing by the operating slab.
The scent is coppery. Something died here. Again.
“Who was it this time?” you ask, softly.
“A friend,” he says, with no inflection.
The pause after is deafening.
Weeks ago, you had begged him to stop — not for morality, not for the Grove, not even for the gods he mocked — but for him. Because you’d seen the way his hands trembled after every experiment now. Not from fear. From anticipation. From obsession.
You asked if it was worth it. If knowledge was worth this.
He only smiled.
That cruel, trembling, childish smile.
“I’ll be gone after tonight,” he says now, as though he’s declaring the weather.
You look up sharply. “Gone?”
“To become the theory. The final experiment. My soul will break the chains the gods wrapped around truth. My body will forge the Coreflames. I’ll prove it. All of it.”
Your stomach turns. “You’re killing yourself.”
Anaxa blinks slowly, then chuckles. “What is death but transformation? Isn’t that what I taught you?”
“You taught me how to think. Not how to throw myself into the pyre.”
“Then think. Logically. Who else can do this?”
You flinch. Because you’ve already asked yourself that.
And your silence answers him.
He walks to you — slowly, uncharacteristically gentle — and places something in your hand.
His journal. The black one. The one with the experiment logs no one else was ever allowed to see.
“I’ve written everything. My soul equation, the Titan core theories. Even the blood process.”
You shake your head, backing away, tears welling up. “I never wanted your legacy—”
“You wanted the truth,” he snaps, louder than before. “You wanted to climb higher than the gods. This is the price. You know it. Don’t turn back now.”
You whisper, “Why not let me do it, then?”
He laughs — bitter and brief. “Because I won’t let you die. Even if I’ve already destroyed everything else I love.”
You kiss him.
Not out of romance. Not desire. Just desperation.
Just to stop him from finishing the incantation he’s begun to whisper.
But he kisses you back, and in that fleeting moment, it feels like you're two children again — alone under a scorched sky, building wings from junk and daring to dream of flight.
Then he pulls away.
And you realize it’s goodbye.
The moment you scream, the ritual has already begun.
Light pours from his chest — a violent bloom of white-gold, burning the world down to its essence. His body is writhing, disintegrating into a lattice of sigils and flame, his soul tearing apart as the seed within him germinates.
You reach for him.
Too late.
The last thing you see is his eye, wide open and weeping — not tears, but raw truth.
And then it’s over.
No one comes.
There is no miracle. No rescue.
Just silence.
And ash.
He was right. The data is perfect.
Your hands tremble as you read the last page of his journal.
“To my final student: You are the last experiment. Show them we were right.”
