Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 132: Ch130. The war that was (2) - Harbinger

Chapter 132: Ch130. The war that was (2) - Harbinger

The wind howled, carrying with it a voice that was neither loud nor soft, yet it drowned out everything else.

"I knew you’d come to me."

Miles knew that voice. A deep, resonant timbre, although it sounded slightly different in that distant past – mechanical, yet layered with something ancient, something that hummed with the weight of forged steel and crackling electricity.

The god of war and technology.

The Master of Luna Sea.

Realization struck him like a hammer, sending a pulse through his very soul as the Hatter turned, the endless tea party stretching behind him, the White Rabbit frozen in silent terror.

Before them, standing upon the warped space that just opened between Wonderland and somewhere else, was a figure shrouded in metallic shadows. Gears whirred within its form, its plated limbs etched with cryptic symbols that pulsed with a glow too alien for Wonderland.

The god of War, Technology, and Progress.

The Hatter tilted his head, the mirth never quite leaving his eyes. "I came to ask for the power you promised me in dreams of war." He said, his voice curling like smoke in the cold air.

The Master did not answer right away. Instead, it lifted a hand, a gauntleted appendage made of moving parts that did not belong to any craft of Wonderland. Its fingers curled, and from the ether of reality itself, something began to take shape.

A weapon.

The Hatter-Miles’ breath caught in his throat.

It was a scythe.

It was the same black scythe that Miles knew, with that aura that seemed to swallow the very light around it. Its sleek, midnight shaft tapered into a sharp spike at the base, and the blade arched gracefully, with its edge razor-sharp and forged with a dark metallic sheen that caught glimmers of eerie, spectral light, and intricate carvings decorated the blade, resembling wings unfurling toward its deadly point.

And at the heart of it, as if to prove Miles right, there was a crystalline gem, glowing with an icy-blue hue.

It was a weapon that should not exist.

"A gift," the Master said, his voice cold as iron. "Or a curse. That is for you to decide."

The Hatter stared at the weapon, his usual grin frozen in place. A flicker of something crossed his face. Curiosity, madness, something deep and unhinged.

He reached out, his fingers trembling slightly as they closed around the scythe’s hilt. And the moment he touched it, a pulse erupted through his body.

His vision blurred. Heat and frost clashed in his veins. The weight of something vast and unfathomable filled his mind, pressing against the fragile walls of his sanity. He heard whispers – soft, insidious – voices of things that should have been long dead and forgotten.

That scythe was no ordinary weapon.

"This," the Master continued, watching him closely, "was conquered from another. A god not of war, but of endings. It is Death’s own scythe, claimed in battle and reforged in my fire and blood."

The Hatter let out a breathless chuckle as his grip on the scythe tightened.

"Stolen from Death? My, my... What a scandalous affair." His voice trembled between delight and reverence.

"I... I don’t remember that..." The Hatter-Miles stammered, taking a step back, unable to look away from the memory.

The god of war merely inclined his head.

"It is not meant for mortal hands, and yet... Here you stand." His eyes bore into the Hatter. "Tell me... How will you wield the scythe, Harbinger of The End?"

The question was unnecessary.

The answer had already been decided the moment the Hatter’s fingers wrapped around the weapon’s hilt.

The moment he had assumed the aspect of the scythe’s bearer. The moment he had become the Harbinger of The End.

A laugh, wild and unhinged, bubbled out of him. It surged through his veins, not just amusement but something else. Pure, raw, true madness, joy, and a devotion so fierce that it threatened to consume him like the fires of the Queen’s war.

It flared inside him, stoked by the scythe’s presence, by the whispers curling around his ears, by the sheer wrongness of what was now in his possession.

Alice.

Alice...

Alice...

His queen, his purpose, his guiding star.

He had always served her with unwavering determination, but now, something deeper took root. Something older.

Something monstrous.

"I DON’T REMEMBER THAT!" The Hatter-Miles shrieked, but the Hatter’s laughter cracked the sky.

He felt it stirring within him, rising like a tide, his mind fracturing, expanding, filling with sights and sensations beyond mortal comprehension. The Hatter threw his head back as a wave of overwhelming power crashed over him. His very being twisted, molded into something more, something beyond the limits of Wonderland’s laws.

And then, he felt it.

As he adapted to the scythe’s monstrous powers, something felt like settling over his face, weightless and yet suffocating.

A mask.

And the Hatter-Miles knew that mask.

[Ender’s Mask].

It was not granted to him by some unnatural force. It was born from his own aspect as the Harbinger.

The world around him bent in ways it never had before. The air itself seemed to fold and unravel, reality struggling to contain him. He reached up, his gloved fingers brushing against something cold and smooth over his face. The shape of a grinning visage, seamless, yet cracking at the edges, as if the illusion of his former self had finally splintered.

He gasped, taking in the sheer wrongness of his own existence.

He was the Hatter. And yet...

He was the Harbinger and the Ender, too.

Even his clothes changed because of his own change. From the vibrant and chaotic, mismatched colors to a darker, somber tone. Almost as if his own clothes had become imbued with some of its power.

Some of the Harbinger’s power.

His eyes gleamed beneath the mask, golden and bottomless. His smile – the stitched smile carved on the [Ender’s Mask]’s lips widened, and when he turned his gaze back to the god of war, he saw, for the first time, a flicker of something behind the god’s unmoving form.

Amusement, approval.

"This war," the god said, "will be unlike any that has come before it. And you, Harbinger, will stand at its center."

The title slithered into the Hatter’s mind like a brand. Harbinger. He shuddered at the way it fit him, at how his new self embraced it like an old friend.

He spun the scythe in his grip, its weight perfect, as if it had been waiting for him all along.

The blade gleamed, whispering in his ear.

Savior.

Savior...

Wonderland’s savior...

Alice’s savior...

He exhaled slowly, his mind a whirling storm of chaos and clarity.

"I suppose..." He mused. "It would be terribly rude to decline."

And so, it was decided.

The past had already been written, but here and now, the Hatter-Miles stood within it, watching history shape itself around the Mad Hatter’s choice. The first true step into the madness of war. The moment that bound him to the inevitable, to a path lined with shattered dreams and broken souls.

The memory pulsed once more, growing fainter, as if it was slipping away. As if it had given him all it could. Miles blinked, and the world cracked apart.

The tea party, the White Rabbit, the looming banners of war, all of it vanished like ink washing away in the rain.

And the Hatter-Miles was left standing in the Spire once more, with Alice watching him, her expression unreadable.

"No." He staggered, breathless, the weight of the past still pressing against his chest. His fingers twitched, phantom sensations of the scythe lingering in his grip. "No, no, no, NO! This isn’t real! NOTHING OF IT IS REAL!"

And yet, it was.

The [Harbinger’s Scythe], the [Ender’s Mask].

A forgotten past, now unearthed.

Slowly, Alice tilted her head, her eyes shining like the moon reflected in a broken mirror.

"It is not over, yet."

And the world shuddered again.