Pandora - Heart Oz
The first time he summoned her fully, he learned the cost. He felt the cold creep of the Abyss into his own heart, the whispers of the dead slithering behind his own thoughts. The more he used her power, the less human he became. He was a door, and each battle left it a little more ajar.
He smiled. Not the fake, charming grin of a duke’s son. But a real, fragile, defiant smile.
Oz Vessalius knew the rhythm of the clock better than his own heartbeat. Growing up in the austere mansion of the Vessalius dukedom, the grand clock in the main hall was his only confidant. Tick. Tock. Each swing of the pendulum was a promise—that time was linear, that cause preceded effect, that a boy could grow, change, and eventually earn his father’s approval. pandora heart oz
And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, Couldn’t put Humpty together again. But a boy with no name, a doll with no heart, Found the shell in the dark, and he mended the part. He wound up the key, he set the gears right, And gave the egg a new soul, a beautiful, terrible light.
The chime was a discordant scream of metal, a sound that vibrated in his bones. The air split open, not with fire, but with a thousand red roses—thorns, petals, and all—exploding from the gilded seams of reality. From the rift, crimson hands, long and spindly as a spider’s legs, reached out and seized him. The nobles screamed. His father did not. His father only watched, a strange, terrible relief in his eyes. The first time he summoned her fully, he learned the cost
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.
“I’ve found you,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion. “My lost contractor.” He was a door, and each battle left it a little more ajar
“You poor, stupid children,” it gurgled. “You think you’re searching for the past? You’re walking straight into the Tragedy of Sablier . The one who turns the gears… is the one who was never meant to be.”
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.
The last thing Oz saw before the Abyss swallowed him was Gilbert’s horrified face, reaching for him, and Ada’s tear-streaked cheeks. Then, there was only the click of a pocket watch and a fall into an eternity of black. The Abyss was not a place. It was the absence of one. A crushing, silent pressure where thought was agony and memory was a poison. Oz floated in a sea of broken chains, the whispers of the dead coiling around his ears. He lost count of the hours, the days, the years. He was nothing. A discarded doll in a forgotten attic.
