[INTERIOR – DOLLIA’S HOME – NIGHT]
The storm curls outside Dollia’s home, low thunder pulsing against the windows like something hungry begging to be let in.
Inside, candles burn low.
Every one of them bends toward ‘The Sphinx’ Drake Nygma, as if even flame cannot resist devouring divinity.
He kneels in the centre of the room — shirtless, shivering, the world around him warping subtly with every ragged breath. The air thickens, reality bending at the edges.
The transition between man and myth cuts jagged lines across his silhouette.
He is Drake.He is Sphinx.He is becoming.
Dollia enters quietly. A dark hood. A faint glimmer of gold thread. Eyes swollen not with fear — but fatigue earned through a thousand nights spent keeping a god from shattering himself against his own reflection.
She kneels across from him.
His eyes lift. Not human. Not stable. A storm trying to remember the shape of calm.
DOLLIA: (soft, but cracking at the edges)“You’re caught between echoes again.”
His breath hitches — a growl folded into a sigh.
She reaches out. Not to touch, but to anchor. Her hand hovers near his cheek, close enough to remind him that she exists beyond lightning, beyond prophecy, beyond rage.
DOLLIA:“Drake… look at me. Not the throne. Not the wound in the sky. Me.”
A long moment fractures after her words.
He focuses on her voice. Barely.
DOLLIA: “You keep trying to abandon yourself. To bury the boy inside the god. But I remember him. I remember both of you.”
Her voice grows stronger — mournful, reverent.
DOLLIA:“You are not a god instead of a man. You are a god because you survived as one.”
A tremor runs through him. His fingertips crackle with gold.
DOLLIA: (whispering, a prayer and a confession) “Let me speak to the part of you that trembles. Let me speak to the part of you that kneels. Let me speak to the boy the world tried to cut from you.”
She leans in, forehead nearly touching his.
DOLLIA: “You are becoming something vast. Something merciless. But it is earned. You did not steal divinity — it rose because the world kept taking and taking and taking until you had to rise above the ruins.”
Her voice breaks, emotionally raw.
DOLLIA:“But even now… in the shadow of a PPV where empires die… I still see Drake. And I love Drake. And I mourn him. Because the world will never allow him to stand in that ring.”
The candles sizzle.
The storm quiets… listening.
She cups the back of his neck gently.
DOLLIA: “But you— The Sphinx— You are the god the world deserves.”
He inhales sharply, and something ancient stirs behind his ribs.
THE TRANSFORMATION BEGINS
Gold threads race along his spine, stitching something mythic beneath the skin. His eyes shift — soft brown retracting into molten gold, the colour of judgement, of pyres, of kings long dead whose spirits scream through him.
He rises slowly — taller, heavier, terrifying.
The Sphinx stands in Dollia’s home.
And the room bows to him.
Dollia steps back, lowering her head. Not in worship.
In recognition.
DOLLIA (voice hardening into prophecy) “Saiko Sasori is not like the others. And that’s why beating him will matter.”
She walks in a slow circle around her brother-god.
DOLLIA “He is not a clown. He is not a coward. His curse has teeth… and he carries it with pride.”
Flames gutter as she speaks.
DOLLIA “He is the exception. And exceptional men force gods to show what divinity truly looks like.”
She stops behind him, placing a hand between his shoulder blades — right above the glow.
DOLLIA “And that, brother… is why you cannot walk into Empire's End as a man.”
Her voice drops to a shaky tremor.
DOLLIA “You must walk in as the living instrument of divine consequence.”
The candles flare in response.
The Sphinx lifts his head, eyes blazing, expression carved from the bones of fallen empires.
When he speaks, the air vibrates.
His voice isn’t entirely human. Perhaps it never was.
SPHINX: “Saiko Sasori.”
The storm outside answers with a distant crack.
SPHINX: “You say the world needs to remember that gods can bleed.”
He tilts his head, expression unreadable.
SPHINX: “Good. Let them watch.”
A slow inhale — a hiss of fire pulled through a mortal throat.
SPHINX: “You carry a curse. I carry a history. You’ve walked with demons. I have devoured them.”
He takes a step toward the unseen camera.
The shadows bend away as if his presence burns.
SPHINX: “You bleed because you must. I bleed because I choose.”
His jaw tightens.
A small gold crack glows along his cheek.
SPHINX: “And when I do?It is not weakness— It is summons.”
Lightning splits the sky behind him.
SPHINX: “Empire’s End is not your rebellion.”
He raises his hand — fingers trailing gold fire.
SPHINX: “It is your end. The end of your empire. Of AAPW’s empire.”
The glow inside his chest flares violently.
SPHINX: “Because I do not want the world to learn that gods can bleed—”
A pause.
A razor of silence.
*SPHINX: “I want the world to learn what happens when a god decides to stop.”
Everything goes black.
A single ember of gold remains.
Then—
FADE OUT.
[FLASHBACK – YEARS AGO]
It is raining.
Not the clean kind — the violent kind.
The kind that sounds like knuckles on windows, demanding entry.
Inside, the lamps flicker. One goes out entirely.
Dollia is 14. Drake is 17.
He has not yet become The Sphinx.
But the cracks have begun.
Dollia pads down the hallway in socks, holding a dying flashlight.
Her mother and father are arguing downstairs — muffled, sharp, dangerous.
It is the usual soundtrack of the Trypp home.
But tonight…
Tonight there is another sound.
A small one.
A broken one.
A whimper.
DOLLIA (SOFT, NERVOUS): “…Drake?”
No answer.
Only that tiny, trembling noise again.
She follows it to his bedroom door — the one he slammed hours ago.
The one with claw marks down the frame he never explained.
She pushes it open.
[INTERIOR – DRAKE’S ROOM – NIGHT]
His room looks like a storm chewed it up and spit it out.
Sheets on the floor.Broken lamp.The wall cracked where he punched it three days earlier.Sketches shredded.Books torn.Shadows moving as if breathing.
And in the middle of the floor —
A boy sits curled into himself.
Not 17.
Far younger. Too young.Maybe 7.Maybe 8.
Small.Tiny.Barefoot.Rocking gently.Arms wrapped around his knees.Cheeks wet with tears he doesn’t understand.
Dollia freezes in the doorway.
Her breath catches.
Because this isn’t Drake.Not the Drake she knew.Not the angry, sharp, too-old-for-his-own-skin brother.This is someone else.Someone earlier.Someone broken before he ever learned the word.
AGE-REGRESSED DRAKE (SMALL, LOST): “…Dollie?”
The voice is a blade to her ribs.
High.Soft.Terrified.Childlike.
She kneels immediately, dropping the flashlight, hands trembling.
DOLLIA (WHISPERING):“I’m here. I’m right here. Drake, what—what happened?”
He looks up at her.Eyes wide, golden at the edges — not glowing, not yet, but hinting at something coming.He blinks slowly, confused by her age.Her height.Something doesn’t match his memory.
His lower lip trembles.
AGE-REGRESSED DRAKE:“Are they… done yelling?”
Dollia swallows hard.
DOLLIA:“…No. But they can’t hurt you. I won’t let them.”
She doesn’t know what else to say.She doesn’t understand what’s happening — not yet.
Regression. Trauma fracturing time.Divinity pushing through cracks in the psyche.
All she knows is:He is small.He is scared.He needs her.
He reaches for her hand.Not like a teenager would.Not like the Drake who shoved her away when emotions got too close.But like a child.Fingers curled.Searching for safety that may not exist.
AGE-REGRESSED DRAKE:“Dollie… why am I little?”
Her breath stutters.She forces a smile — shaky, but real.
DOLLIA:“Because… because sometimes our minds run back to where it was quieter. Where the hurt couldn’t reach.”
He blinks.Processing.He doesn’t fully understand —But he accepts the tone.
He crawls toward her, slow, tentative, and she gathers him into her lap, cradling him despite being too small, too young to carry this kind of pain.
His head rests under her chin.His breath shakes.His next words are a whisper full of fractures:
AGE-REGRESSED DRAKE:“Dollie… why do the toys break?”
She squeezes him tight.
DOLLIA (VOICE BREAKING): “They break because the world hits too hard, Drake. But we can fix some of them. And hold the pieces of the ones we can’t.”
He sniffles softly.Nods.He believes her.Because children believe their sisters can fix anything.
Dollia rocks him gently as the storm outside cracks the sky.She hums—an instinct she doesn’t know she has yet.A lullaby that will one day calm a god.A lullaby she will repeat again and again.Through the years.Through battles.Through divine awakenings.Through resets of mind and memory.Tonight, she holds the little boy.
One day, she will hold the god.But this—This was the first time she learned:The Sphinx was not born from power.He was born from pain.From fracture.From a child asking why everything breaks.
And Dollia?
Dollia realized something she never forgot:
DOLLIA (VOICEOVER): “I met the god the first time he shattered into a child. And I swore that night: If the world would not protect him… I would.”
[INTERIOR – TRYPP HOME – NIGHT]
The house smells like whiskey and rain.The lights strobe with electrical instability —
Too many arguments.Too many slammed doors.Too many nights that should have been quiet.
Dollia is 14 years old.
She stands at the kitchen counter, holding a cracked mug, small hands trembling as her father shouts across the room at no one and everyone at once.
He turns.Eyes bloodshot.Rage mechanical.Predictable.And lethal.He steps toward her.
Dollia flinches — her expression flickering with past hurts.
Out of habit.Out of history.Out of knowing.
And that’s when Drake appears.He steps between them.No hesitation.No calculation.
Just a body that is already learning what it means to be an altar.He’s taller now.Older.Sharpened by sleepless nights and storms he can’t outrun.His voice is steady, uncompromising.
DRAKE (AGE 17) :“Don’t touch her.”
Their father freezes.
A stillness like the moment before a gunshot.Then—
The man laughs.It’s a brittle, vicious sound.
FATHER: “Oh? Now you think you’re a man?”
The argument escalates fast.The house has heard it before.
The walls hold the echoes like scars.Dollia clutches Drake’s hoodie.
DOLLIA (WHISPERING): “Please don’t. Please don’t fight him.”
But Drake’s jaw is clenched.His shoulders squared.This time is different.This time he does not shake.
Her father reaches into the drawer.
Dollia’s breath breaks.
The blade flashes once in the dim kitchen light.A cheap kitchen knife —
Old, dull, but dangerous in the wrong hands.
FATHER:“You wanna be the hero? Then bleed like one”
He lunges.
Dollia screams—
But Drake—Drake doesn’t move.
He steps fully in front of her, shielding her with his entire body.The knife hits his side.
A sickening sound.Metal meeting flesh.
Or—Should meet flesh.
But instead—CRACK.
The sound is too sharp, too wrong.
Dollia gasps.
Her father staggers back.
Drake looks down.The knife has shattered against his ribs.Not bent.Not dulled.Broken.Fragments glittering on the linoleum.
His shirt torn —but beneath it?
Untouched skin. Smooth. Unpierced.As if the blade struck stone.
The room holds its breath.
DRAKE soft, terrified, disbelieving :“…I’m not bleeding.”
DOLLIA voice trembling: “You—you’re not hurt.”
She touches his side, expecting warmth, blood, anything human.
There is none.
Dollia's father stares in horror.
Not anger.Not confusion.Fear.Real fear.
FATHER (STAMMERING):“What— what the hell— what are you?”
Drake doesn’t answer.Because he doesn’t know.
He just stares at the broken knife, chest rising and falling too fast, eyes flickering at the edges with that strange, early molten colour he doesn’t understand yet.
Dollia swallows hard, steps beside him, and grabs his hand.
For the first time.She is the one shielding him.
DOLLIA: “He’s not yours to break.”
Dollia’s father backs up slowly —
As if he’s looking at an animal he cannot classify.
A threat too ancient to provoke.He leaves the kitchen.
Silence floods the room.
DRAKE (SHAKING):“Dollie… I… I should be bleeding. I should…”
He trails off.Because something else is happening:
A faint golden crackle beneath his skin.Like light trapped in veins.Like the first embers of a god trying to claw its way out.Drake clutches his own shirt.
DRAKE (WHISPERING, HORRIFIED):“What’s wrong with me?”
Dollia lifts his face with trembling hands.
DOLLIA (SOFT BUT CERTAIN): “Nothing is wrong with you.”
She presses her forehead to his.
DOLLIA: “Something is awakening.”
A breath.A moment.
The quiet before empires fall.Her voice cracks gently.
DOLLIA: “And I think… you’re not meant to be destroyed as easily as the rest of us.”
He exhales — ragged, terrified, disbelieving.
She pulls him into the kind of hug meant for children and gods alike.
DOLLIA (FINAL WHISPER): “One day, you won’t flinch from what you are. But tonight… you’re just my brother.And I’m not letting go.”
Drake nods weakly, holding her back.Behind them, on the floor, the shattered blade glints like a fallen omen.A foreshadowing of the god he will become.
A warning to the world that once tried to break him.
A promise:
Drake Nygma cannot be cut.Only awakened from eternal slumber.
[INTERIOR – SOUTH END BAR – NIGHT]
It’s the kind of bar that smells like spilled beer, old sweat, and futures that never happened.
Dollia shouldn’t be here.Not at 18.
Not alone.Certainly not with the man who followed her in —
A regular, the kind who memorises the sound of a girl’s footsteps.
She tries to avoid eye contact.She keeps her hood up.
She texts Drake:
“Come get me.”
He doesn’t answer.Her stomach twists.
The man approaches anyway.Hand on her wrist.Too tight.
A smile too familiar.
MAN: “Hey, sweetheart. Didn’t hear you say no.”
DOLLIA: “I didn’t say anything. Let go.”
He squeezes harder.Leans in.Breath sour.
MAN: “How about you try again—”
A hand clamps down on his shoulder from behind.
The man startles.
Dollia exhales sharply.Because Drake is here.But not the brother she remembers.Not the soft-eyed boy who used to read mythology on the floor of his room.
Not the teenager whose ribs broke knives.
This Drake is different.
There is a tremor under his skin, like electricity trapped beneath bone.
His jaw flexes.
His eyes — not fully gold, not yet — have a rim of molten colour.
The man laughs nervously.
MAN: “What, you her boyfriend?”
DRAKE (CALM, GLACIAL): “No.”
A beat.
DRAKE (LOWER):“I’m her consequence.”
The man scoffs —tries to shove Drake back.
And that’s when the second divine symptom arrives.
Drake doesn’t budge.Not an inch.The shove lands uselessly, like trying to move a mountain.Drake’s feet stay planted, solid, unshakeable.But the air behind him ripples.
Invisibly.Violently.
Like gravity is adjusting itself around him.
The man stumbles backward — not from Drake’s strength, but from something unseen repelling the harm.
His eyes widened.
MAN: “H-How—?”
Drake takes one slow step forward.
DRAKE: “You don’t get to put your hands on her.”
The man tries again — this time swinging.
A hook to the jaw.It should hurt.It should bruise.It should stagger him.
Instead—CRACK.
Not Drake’s bones.
The man’s wrist bends wrong. Hyperextends. Snaps. He screams.
Drake doesn’t even flinch.A faint shimmer bursts under Drake’s skin —Small gold fissures like veins of light.They pulse once, like a heartbeat not his own.
Dollia covers her mouth with her hand
DOLLIA: “Drake… your eyes—”
He turns to her.They glow — not fully, not bright, but undeniably other.Ancient.Fierce.Alive with old justice.Human morality braided with divine wrath.
The man on the floor whimpers, crawling backward.
MAN: “Wh-What are you?”
Drake steps toward him.Slow.Measured.A warrior choosing whether mercy is deserved.His voice is soft — the softness of a scalpel, not a pillow.
DRAKE: “I’m what happens when you touch what isn’t yours.”
Dollia reaches for him.Her hand grabs his sleeve.
Warm.Human.For now.
DOLLIA (WHISPERING): “Drake… that’s enough. Let him crawl away.”
For a second, Drake doesn’t move.
His chest rises and falls slowly — as if he’s deciding whether to obey the laws of men or the instincts of something older.
The molten light beneath his skin flickers.Then—He kneels.Not to the man.To Dollia.
His forehead drops to her shoulder.
Shaking.
DRAKE (BREATHING HARD): “It was happening again… I felt it… I felt something pushing back when he touched me. Like… like my body doesn’t let people hurt me anymore. Like it decides for me.”
Dollia cups his jaw.
DOLLIA: “It’s not your body, Drake.”
A pause.
A truth she’s been fearing since the night the knife shattered.
DOLLIA: “It’s the thing growing inside you.”
His pupils dilate.His breath catches.
DRAKE: “So I’m losing control.”
She shakes her head, forehead against his.
DOLLIA: “No. You’re gaining something. Something that answers harm with judgement.”
Her hand moves to his chest.
Where a faint golden glow pulses once.
DOLLIA: “You’re not becoming a monster, Drake. You’re becoming truth.”
Drake stares at her —19 years old.Shaking.Terrified.And yet Impossibly powerful.
DRAKE (BROKEN, HOARSE): “Then what am I turning into?”
Her voice drops to a soft, mournful prophecy.
DOLLIA: “A god with a reason to judge.”
[INTERIOR – SOUTH END BAR – BACK ROOM – NIGHT]
The bar is empty now.
Drake sits slumped on a crate, breathing hard, hands trembling like a man coming down from a divine fever. His knuckles glow faintly gold — pulsing, fading, flaring.
Dollia stands by the broken table where the man fell.
Blood droplets.Splintered wood.
A cracked shot glass.
And behind them, on the floor, the abuser lies unconscious, breathing shallowly. His wrist is mangled, arm twisted at an unnatural angle.
Dollia allows herself to stare at the scene with a cold, steady terror.
Not afraid of Drake.
Fear of what humans do to things they don’t understand.
Drake finally speaks, voice faint:
DRAKE: “…I didn’t mean to. I didn’t… I didn’t even push.”
DOLLIA:“I know.”
She kneels beside the unconscious man.Checks breathing.He’ll live — barely.
Her hands shake.But her voice doesn’t.
DOLLIA (LOW, CONTROLLED): “No one sees this.”
Drake lifts his head slowly.
DRAKE: “Dollie… the cameras—”
She’s already moving.
Swift.Silent.Efficient in a way no teenager should be.
She unplugs the bar’s old security system.
Rips the hard drive out.
Dollia Throws it into a bucket of melted ice.
DRAKE (WHISPERING): “You shouldn’t have to do this.”
She turns to him — eyes blazing with protective fury.
DOLLIA: “You shouldn’t be a target.”
She grabs a mop.
A rag.Bleach.
Drake tries to stand.
DRAKE: “Let me help—”
DOLLIA (SHARP): “No.”
He freezes.
She kneels over the bloodstains, scrubbing fiercely, tears streaking down her cheeks but silence is locked in her throat.
She scrubs until her hands go red.Until the floor smells of harsh chemicals.Until the scene of his impossible survival is erased.
Her breathing is ragged.
DOLLIA (BROKEN, SOFT): “They can’t know what you are. They can’t know what’s inside you. They’d dissect you… cage you… worship you… destroy you.”
He sits still.
Eyes hollowing at the edges.
DRAKE: “So I’m a monster.”
She spins.
DOLLIA: “No. You’re what happens when the world breaks a child and he refuses to die.”
Her voice drops to a whisper.
DOLLIA: “I’m not covering up a monster. I’m covering up a miracle.”
Drake lowers his head, trembling.
[LATER THAT NIGHT – DOLLIA’S ROOM]
Dollia opens her bedroom door, exhausted, still wearing the clothes from the bar.
Her hands shake as she reaches up to remove her coat—
But something is on her bed.
A folded piece of paper.
Her heart races, her breath freezing.
She didn’t write it.
Drake didn’t come upstairs.
She picks it up carefully.
The handwriting looks like Drake’s… but not exactly.
Too smooth.Too ancient.
As if someone used his hand to write with knowledge he shouldn’t have.
She unfolds it.
Dollia, He protects you because you are the anchor. The heart he was given. The heart I was not. When men strike you, I rise. When fear touches you, I stir. When you cry, I burn the sky inside his ribs. I was born on the night they broke him. You were born on the night you held him. That is why I defend you. You are the only thing that makes the storm choose where to land.
—The One Beneath His Skin
Dollia collapses on the edge of her bed.
She reads it again.And again.
Each sentence is colder.Heavier.
Truer.
Her lips part.
A small, terrified whisper:
DOLLIA: “…How long have you been inside him?”
The air shifts.
A faint gold flicker dances across her bedroom wall — shimmering, pulsing, like a heartbeat that isn’t hers.
DOLLIA (QUIETLY, RESOLVED): “If I’m the anchor… Then you’re the storm I’ll learn to hold.”
The gold flicker flares once — as if acknowledging her.
As if bowing.
Dollia stands in the darkened doorway of the Hidden Home, a storm curling around her like a cloak. Her voice is soft — too soft — the way a blade is soft before it cuts.
DOLLIA (WHISPERED INTO THE VOID): “Three days, Saiko Sasori. Three days until Empire's End.Pray to whatever gods you still believe in… because mine wakes hungry.”