Part Two:

It was subtle at first, but he began noticing each time he returned he possessed a vessel younger than the last. Not only that, regardless for how long he lived throughout each life his regression into a new vessel grew shorter with each incarnation. He knows not why, after all his first reincarnation he appeared in a vessel relative to his time as Ozma, but that status quo ended just as soon as it was established. Over the years he grew paranoid, theorizing the cause to Salem, that she conjured some sort of curse with her final strike all those years ago. A loophole to erase him from the face of Remnant, meant to continuously torment him with the fear of his fleeting immortality. 

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So, I have dived a little into Oz, but I want to continue into the cycle itself. As I have explained it is more of a shared experience, not so much a hive mind but instead an ongoing equation with factors adding onto a variable. Maybe the person in question does not realize this, that though they join Oz they don’t become them. It is not the other way around as we were led to believe in the show. 

So, first off, we have Oz reincarnating into a body quite similar to his first body, including akin features and characteristics (gender, size, hair color, and age); that was the start of the cycle.

That was his second reincarnation and his only full life that we know of with him being with the Grim version of Salem, he is referred to a False God Oz. Next, we have him going through multiple lives, each one subtly different. One as an old man with no future, another as a middle-aged man with a family, more as a young adult with promising talent, and now a youth that is naive of the world. I’ll go into each of his incarnations, including the ones I haven’t already stated but for now I want to point out how the cycle is seemingly counting down to zero, a subject I’ll address specially in Oz time as Ozpin. 

In my rewrite I plan to have the Hermit to be the next Oz after his confrontation with Salem, now a broken old man at the end of his days, he was washed over by the fears and worries False God Oz had of Salem. Like his name states he hid and secluded himself from the world until his last breathes. It did not help that during this time the world of Remnant was still healing from the disappearance of its Gods and commander-in-chiefs. That is if Salem decided not to trash and raise her civilization and leave without interacting with anyone in her sorrow/anger. Maybe an ancient fable depicting how Salem left her kingdom after the mysterious destruction of her castle and family, branching into versions where she was the cause, where a great evil caused the chaos, or that humanity itself polluted them.

Fables aside I stated this all because I wanted to focus on the mindset of the Hermit. This was the first sign of an Oz being controlled by their past lives memories instead of believing them to be an extension of theirs. He himself choose to wallow in self pity and suicide since he was an old man who suddenly got blasted with all these memories and no idea want to do with them, 

At first in my revision I wanted Old Hermit Oz to be like that Wizard of creation you see in other novels that sparked everything. Since we never have Oz state if he wasn’t acting as a sage during his lifetimes, and we know he gave the Four Maidens their powers when he was still powerful and at an old age. I was just going to segment that the Wizard and Hermit are the same version of Oz. But now in review that idea doesn’t add up since its cannon that those two identities are in fact separate. Just looking at the animation from the show, if you look at the body structures of the two when they are shown, they show minimal differences in old age. Though after the Hermit, it was for sure the era of Wizard Oz, the Sage of Remnant. 

See when this old man (who would be the Wizard) became aware of the truth of the world and the mistakes of his past life, he lamented how he could do nothing, already at the end of his life and wallowing in all he has lost in his four lifetimes (he included his own since he was already near his end) he was distraught. Still he decided that it was his responsibility to do something via the accord he made with the gods. This version of Oz was less weak mentally so to speak, he had his own set of principles and personality similar to how False God Oz had his one before becoming an Oz, only Old Wizard Oz was humbler, wiser, and more experienced. Probably his suffering and acceptance of death as a Hermit helped with cementing his demeanor. 

So, the sage began traveling across the remnants of the world he once knew, in fact it was his phrasing that gave birth to the name of the World of Remnant. A term that caught on from locals listening on as the old sage would repetivitively announce and mutter while attempting feats imaginable only by the gods of old wherever he went. It was this Old Wizard Oz that gave birth to supernatural abilities, whenever he meets a youth or bloodline with promising magic potential, he would use massive amounts of his magic to awaken the abilities the gods locked away. Of course, being a mere mortal himself he was only able to create semblances of what was once there. Hence the name as he would curse out, “semblances of true magic”. It helps and plays out because I’m sure that in the world of Remnant there are more than just a handful of talented and special individuals like the Seasonal Maidens. 

This is also a great time to do a quick mention of power levels. I’ll be doing a lot of references in this rewrite but just recognize that this Old Wizard Oz was extremely powerful or at least he was viewed as such, after all he had the powers that of a Demi-god (since he had the same power and abilities of False God Oz). It’s a thing I want to clarify though that Oz was even more powerful in his first two lives for that was when he was in young bodies at their primes. If I had to compare to other sources of media, if he was in the series: Seven Deadly Sins or Nanatsu no Taizai, he would be like at 300,000 or 400,000. This man could could conqueror entire castles full of other magicians as a hero and easily destroyed an enormous castle in between clashes with Salem. So powerful he was able to awaken traits that gods locked away and create numerous myths while in a decaying old body he kept alive for years after his transgression with magic strengthening his body.