When he opened his eyes, the world he remembered was already gone.
Nothing remained of the searing emotions rushing through his head, the oppressive heat of combat. Instead, he found himself in a place he had never been before.
He saw a great void in front of him that was neither dark nor light, as though the idea of colour itself had been taken away.
He didn't feel any ground beneath his feet, but he wasn't falling. It was an odd sensation, as if he had been reduced to something less than human—just a presence, a lingering notion drifting across the nothingness.
His heartbeat was absent. His breathing was silent. Even if his mind was intact, his emotions were eerily still.
It was a dream. At the very least, that was the most reasonable conclusion. Perhaps he had a lucid dream in which he recognised the strange characteristics of his surroundings.
Tatsuya hovered in the void, unanchored and unsure. But he did know this: This was a world without beginning nor end. A world in which even time appeared to have lost its meaning.
This place was unfamiliar, like entering a recently found chamber that didn't feel like home. It wasn't a cosy, inviting house; rather, it was a private area that only he knew about.
A place that belonged to him alone.
his voice was buried beneath layers of silence deeper than the ocean floor.
Still, something inside him pushed—an instinctual unrest. A tremor of the self that refused to dissolve into the nothingness.
He called out, not with his mouth, but with his mind.
"Is anyone there?"
No answer. Not even a whisper of imagination to comfort him.
"Where am I…?"
His voice dissolved even within his own thoughts.
All he could feel was the aching pressure of absence. Not like a wound, but more like a scar left behind after something had been scraped away. The scar of presence itself. The pain of being without "being."
"I…"
He thought back, struggling to reach through a haze that seemed to cling to his memories like cobwebs.
Yes.
There had been blood.
There had been screams.
There had been Micah—his eyes wide, his final words lost in the gurgle of blood.
Tatsuya clenched invisible fists.
His chest should have burned. His throat should have closed. But in this place, even grief had no place to land.
He was trapped in a void where emotion couldn't bloom—only fester. There was no air, yet he wasn't suffocating. No light, yet his vision didn't fade. It was the cruelest kind of limbo: one where he could remember everything, but feel nothing.
Tatsuya closed his nonexistent eyes, wishing for a dream, even a nightmare—anything to break the endless suffocation of this place.
But there was no change.
Just stillness.
Was this death?
Or was this something worse?
Perhaps… it wasn't a punishment. Perhaps this was the answer to a question he hadn't dared to ask.
"If I had never been given this second life… would anyone have ever known who I really was?"
Something stirred. As if the very world had leaned forward, curious.
Tatsuya felt the weight of his own question folding in on him, as though the answer were more dangerous than silence.
He remembered the life he left behind.
The whispers behind his back in the classroom. The laughter that stopped when he entered the room. The eyes that refused to meet his—not out of shyness, but because they saw him as less.
He remembered the desk with the scratches etched in. The ones they carved when the teachers weren't looking. The locker filled with crumpled insults and trash. The bruises on his ribs he never showed anyone—not even in gym class.
And worse than the bruises,
were the silences.
The mornings he stared at the ceiling, willing himself not to cry because he knew no one would hear it.
The nights he typed out messages he never sent—
"I don't want to wake up tomorrow."
"Please tell me I matter."
—but deleted them, because he didn't want to be pitied, just seen.
He remembered the cold metal railing of the school roof beneath his fingers.
The fleeting moment where he wondered not if he should jump—
—but if anyone would even notice if he did.
He had become a ghost long before he ever died.
No one noticed him until he came here, Paul, Ruza, Sora, Luna, Misuki. Even Loki's warmth curled by his side. They all came to know for who he was and never persecuted him.
These people…
They didn't know the broken boy who once stood alone in the rain, waiting for a reason to keep breathing.
They knew this version.
The one who fought. The one who bled. The one who tried.
The one still learning how to live—even if he stumbled every step of the way.
Maybe… maybe the old world never would have seen him.
Because maybe—he never gave it the chance.
He was too afraid they'd reject the real him.
But this world…
This world gave him the chance to be seen.
Something cracked.
He reached toward it—not with hands, but with will. And as he reached, he remembered Micah's voice again.
"You made me remember… that I don't have to choose."
And Paul's guided questions, "What unseen truth binds every warrior, no matter how strong?"
Loki's warmth curled by his side.
"Let's stop lying to ourselves… and stop lying to each other."
The light brightened. More cracks formed.
"I want you here, alive, with me."
That line that Ruza told him, when the pit of despair and pain became to difficult to climb out off, gave Tatsuya the realization that someone truly wants him to live. Not for obligation. Not for duty. But simply because she want him to be there.
That was the turning point. That is what made him stay.
part 2
The scream that erupted from his throat was raw, animalistic, desperate—like someone clawing their way back from drowning.
"—GHAAAHHHH!"
He coughed violently, air scraping through his throat as his body convulsed.
It felt like waking from a dream.
The kind where your limbs ache but you don't remember why, where the air is thick and dry in your lungs and the world tilts just a little too far to the left.
Something had happened but the memory of it was gone, like someone had cut out the middle of a reel of film and spliced the ends back together.
And then…
The pain.
Gods, the pain.
Every nerve felt like it had been shredded. His limbs were heavy, his joints swollen, his throat dry like sandpaper. His eyelids trembled with the effort of staying open.
The sky above him were still a beautiful , blue. The ground beneath was damp soil, tangled with roots and moss.
Wind rustled through leaves.
And the scent of blood was faint, but real.
He was back.
Reality greeted him not with a welcome—but with weight. And pain. And grief.
Tatsuya groaned, trying to push himself up on trembling arms.
His body protested with every movement.
But he moved anyway.
He rolled to his side, dirt clinging to his cheek, and he blinked.
Where—?
He was still in the forest.
Not far off, he saw scorched earth and shattered trees.
Slowly he stood up, his limbs num. Tatsuya judged the feeling as the same as he had when he first came to this world.
Thump..
Tatsuya heard a footstep.
Rukai!!
He turned his head—slowly, stiffly—like it didn't quite belong to him.
Tokagame was standing nearby. Frozen. Katana in hand. Staring at him like a prey caught in his predators trap.
Tatsuya frowned faintly.
Tokagame? What happened? He thought but couldn't convert the thoughts into words.
He looked around again. The trees were scorched. The ground was cracked. Black smears of blood clung to roots and bark. A smell lingered—something foul and bitter and wrong—but it wasn't strong enough to recognize.
He didn't remember doing this.
He didn't remember any of it.
The last clear thing he could recall was Micah falling.
And then—
"Nothing," he whispered, eyes narrowing. "There's nothing."
Like a blank page where his soul used to be.
"Rukai escaped," Tokagame finally muttered.
His voice was calm, strangely so, like he was reading a line he didn't believe.
"…You don't remember it?" he added after a moment, softer.
Tatsuya shook his head slowly. "I don't even know where he went. I—" He glanced down. His clothes were torn. His knuckles were bruised. His sword was… missing?
His eyes darted to his side.
Where was his sword?
Tokagame sheathed his own blade without a word.
Then he turned and began to walk.
"Wait!" Tatsuya called out, his voice hesitant and soft.
He wanted to call out to ask to search for his sword, but he stopped himself. He thought it to be selfish, searching for something insignificant while lives where still on the line.
The Demon of Wrath wasn't dead after all.
Seeing Tatsuya's hesitance Tokagame spoke in Tatsuya's place. "We need to gather everyone and get back to the swordsman corps…. Today was a failure…."
Tokagame eyes were distant, empty almost. Grief and disappointment where to only emotion filled within him.
Paul's katana wasn't the only thing Tatsuya noticed that was missing, "where's Kiome?"
He asked.
Tokagame didn't answered, he only clenched his jaw and walked away.
The two of them walked through the broken woods in silence, the moonlight slipping through the trees like pale fingers. The cold returned slowly, crawling up his spine. His hands wouldn't stop trembling.
Not from fear but from not knowing what he was supposed to feel.
The farther they walked, the heavier Tokagame's silence became.
The older man said nothing—but his shoulders were stiff. His steps were rigid. His jaw had locked into something unreadable.
part 3
The forest groaned under the weight of silence.
Not the peaceful kind of silence that accompanies falling snow or the hush that wraps around lovers in the dead of night.
This silence was sharp. Brittle. Like a glass statue on the verge of shattering.
Through that broken stillness, the rustle of cloth and breathless urgency slipped between the trees like smoke.
"Kiome…"
Chika's voice, though barely above a whisper, cleaved the silence like a sword drawn in moonlight.
The mauve-haired swordswoman darted through the underbrush, her boots crunching soil and fallen branches, her eyes scanning, scanning—
Until she saw it.
The body slumped near the base of a splintered tree. The bark was bloodied in long, dark streaks. Roots had been torn up. Branches hung in broken spirals above him, as if even the forest had recoiled in horror.
Kiome.
Her legs moved before her thoughts could catch up, instincts honed by both training and something far more intimate—love. She dropped to her knees beside him.
His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. His breathing shallow, the pale rise and fall of his chest stuttered as if his ribs no longer remembered how to hold life inside them.
"Kiome, hey. Look at me."
Her voice quivered. Not from fear, but from the deep, swelling ache of recognition. The ache of seeing someone precious laid bare and broken.
His body bore no mortal wounds, not slashes or piercings—no, these injuries were quieter, crueler. Deep bruises bloomed across his sides and arms, vivid reminders of where he'd been hurled against trees with the force of something inhuman. His right leg was twisted slightly, the ankle already swelling. He must've tried to stand.
Always so proud. Always so gentle. Always too stubborn for his own good.
"Why didn't you call for me…?"
Her fingers trembled as they hovered above his chest. Then, slowly, she removed one of her gloves.
With a breath, she pressed her palm flat against his torso, directly above his heart.
A faint shimmer followed.
Soft, rose-colored light bloomed around her hand, threads of warmth weaving into the shape of a blossom. Petal by petal, the light seeped into him, kissing away the pain. Not all of it—never all of it—but enough. Enough to bring breath back with less struggle. Enough to make his eyelids twitch.
The spell wasn't perfect. It never was when it came from her. Chika wasn't a master healer. But what she lacked in precision, she made up for in intention.
And love—deep, searing, unrelenting love—flowed stronger than any magic.
"Mmh…"
His lips parted. The smallest sound escaped.
She leaned in.
"Kiome?"
"Chika…" he breathed, voice raspy and raw. "…you came."
A sharp laugh broke out from her, laced with relief and grief all at once.
"Of course I came, you idiot! What kind of girlfriend do you think I am?"
He tried to smile, but the attempt collapsed into a grimace.
"Don't move," she scolded, already working on binding his ankle with a strip of cloth from her sleeve. Her braid fell over her shoulder, swaying gently. The loose strands of hair brushed his cheek, catching light like silk. "Seriously, don't. I'll carry you if I have to."
"You'll what—? Chika, you're like… barely sixty kilos…"
"And you're barely conscious." She shot him a glare, but her voice softened at the edges. "You don't get to argue right now."
He looked up at her—really looked, this time. At the soft strands hiding one of her golden eyes. At the way the floral patterns on her sleeve moved like dancing embers as she worked. At the faint trail of dirt smudging her cheek, beneath the edge of the fox mask resting atop her head.
That mask. The one she always wore slightly tilted. Its heart-marked cheeks had become something of a signature within the corps—people whispered that the 'Kitsune of Compassion' had never lost a comrade on the field. But the truth behind that rumor? It was hers and hers alone to bear.
She caught him staring.
"…What?"
"Nothing. You just… always look beautiful when you're angry."
Her hand paused in midair.
And then came the blush.
A real one, soft and slow, blooming across her face like a sunrise behind the mountains. She looked away, grumbling something incoherent under her breath.
"Don't flirt when you're on the verge of death, Kiome. You'll give me a heart attack."
He closed his eyes again, but this time… it wasn't from pain.
This time, it was trust.
"…Wasn't planning to die," he murmured. "Not when I knew you were waiting."
The silence returned.
But it wasn't brittle anymore.
It was warm now, like the hush between falling leaves and rising wind. A silence that didn't ache, but healed.
By the time Chika reached the edge of the village with him slung across her back, the sun had begun to set.
The orange glow caught the tips of her hair, making her look like a living flame wrapped in a kimono of wind and flowers. The kitsune mask glinted, slightly askew on her head.
He groaned softly as his foot shifted.
"Sorry," she whispered, adjusting his weight more securely. "We're almost there."
"…You always carry me when I fall."
"I always will."
She didn't say it like a promise. She said it like a vow already fulfilled again and again.
And in that fading light, the two of them—warriors forged in steel, wrapped in the scent of wildflowers and foxfire—disappeared beyond the trees, back toward the village, towards the others, toward the place where they were save.
Together.