Heart Oz | Pandora

His father’s hatred was not irrational. It was the horror of looking at your son and seeing a monster’s lullaby. Gilbert’s undying loyalty was not just friendship. It was the penance of a soul who had once served the man who committed this sin.

And the boy who was never born would finally learn the truth: some chains are not meant to be broken. They are meant to be carried—together.

Their first real test was a town plagued by a Chimera—a broken Chain devouring the minds of the living. Alice, golden scythe flashing, tore through its illusory world. But as the monster died, it laughed. pandora heart oz

And standing over him, a rain-soaked, bewildered boy with a golden eye and a shaking hand, was Gilbert. Older. Warier. A gun in his hand and a chain-smoked grief clinging to him like a shroud.

The ceremony was a gilded cage of nobility and forced smiles. His father, Duke Vessalius, watched him with eyes that held not pride, but a weary verdict, as if Oz was a document he’d long since stamped Insufficient . Oz, ever the performer, masked his loneliness with a charming grin. He had his loyal servant, Gilbert, at his side and the bubbly Ada a few steps away. For a fleeting moment, the illusion of happiness felt real. His father’s hatred was not irrational

Oz read the words, and the clock in his chest finally stopped.

He wasn’t a boy. He was a doll. A perfect, living automaton crafted by the original Jack Vessalius—the hero who sealed the Abyss a century ago. Jack, desperate and grieving, had not been able to save the girl he loved, the first Alice. So he had done the unthinkable. He had wound back the gears of time, broken the original Alice into pieces, and used her soul as a core to create a new child—Oz. A perfect, immortal vessel. A living key to the Abyss. It was the penance of a soul who

He tumbled onto cold, rain-slicked cobblestones in a foreign city—a twisted, gothic reflection of his own world. The sky was a perpetual twilight, and the air tasted of ozone and regret. This was the true world, the one hidden beneath the pretty lies of the four great Dukedoms.