The mountain no longer felt like a place.
It felt like a grave.
Smoke clung low to the ground, thick and bitter, crawling over shattered stone and broken bodies. The night air rang with the aftermath of violence—metal cooling, distant cries fading into hoarse silence, the wet sound of blood dripping from blades that no longer moved.
Jer lay facedown near the ridge, one arm twisted wrong beneath her. Blood seeped through the torn fabric at his side, dark against the pale rock, pooling slowly as if the mountain itself were drinking him in.
Not far away, Yora struggled to stay upright. Her back pressed against a jagged stone, chest heaving, fingers trembling as she tried—failed—to summon strength that wasn't there anymore. Every breath rattled, sharp and shallow, her eyes unfocused as the world spun.
And at the center of it all stood Tomora.
Alone.
His clothes were torn, soaked through with blood that wasn't all his. Cuts mapped his arms and face, some shallow, some deep enough to sting with every movement. His hands hung at his sides, fingers flexing uselessly, slick with sweat and red.
He inhaled.
The air burned.
He exhaled.
It did nothing.
The battlefield pressed in around him—Black Iron soldiers regrouping at a distance, shields raised, weapons angled carefully now. They no longer rushed him. They circled, cautious, waiting for the opening that always came when someone was tired enough.
Tomora's knees trembled.
Not from fear.
From holding everything in.
His chest felt too tight, as if something inside him was trying to tear its way out. His heart slammed violently against his ribs, each beat echoing louder than the clash of steel ever had.
He lowered his head.
The ground beneath his boots was darkened with blood—Patricia's blood among it.
Something inside him cracked.
Not loudly.
Not all at once.
It was the quiet, final sound of something breaking beyond repair.
His breath hitched.
Then stopped.
His eyes snapped open.
They were no longer brown.
They were not even eyes anymore—just endless black, depthless and consuming, like holes torn straight through reality.
The world dissolved.
There was no ground.
No sky.
No wind.
Tomora stood suspended in a vast, ancient emptiness where darkness wasn't absence—it was presence. It moved, breathed, waited. Shadows stretched infinitely in every direction, folding into one another like living things.
A figure emerged from the void.
Tall.
Still.
Wrapped in layers of shifting shadow that clung to his form like armor made of night itself.
Mournveil.
His gaze was sharp, merciless, and impossibly old.
Beside him stood another presence—quieter, calmer. Dave didn't radiate power the way Mournveil did, but the weight of him was undeniable, like gravity disguised as silence.
They didn't approach.
They didn't need to.
Their voices came from everywhere at once, pressing into Tomora's chest, into his bones.
The time has come.
No command.
No question.
Just truth.
Something deep within Tomora responded—something that had always been there, buried beneath fear, restraint, hope. It unfurled now, stretching, awakening, recognizing itself.
The void shuddered.
And the world snapped back into place.
Darkness exploded outward.
Not like fire.
Not like lightning.
It poured from Tomora's body in thick, rolling smoke, swallowing the air around him as if the night itself had chosen him as its core. Shadows twisted and writhed, clinging to his limbs, sliding over his skin like eager hands.
The ground beneath his feet fractured—not from force, but from pressure, as if reality itself struggled to contain what stood upon it.
A Black Iron soldier loosed an arrow.
It never reached him.
Tomora vanished.
Not leaping.
Not dodging.
One moment he stood still, the next he was gone—space folding as he reappeared behind the archer in a blur of black motion.
A shadowed fist drove forward.
The man didn't scream.
The darkness wrapped around him, crushing sound, light, breath—pulling him inward until there was nothing left but silence.
Tomora was already gone.
He streaked across the battlefield like a living absence, movement so fast it left afterimages of shadow in its wake. Blades swung where he had been. Spears struck nothing. Arrows passed through empty air.
Where he moved, soldiers fell.
Shadows erupted from his hands, coiling like serpents around limbs and throats, lifting bodies into the air before dragging them screaming into pools of darkness that swallowed them whole.
The air grew cold.
Whispers bled into the night—not words, not language, but intent. Hunger. Judgment.
Black Iron formations broke.
Men stumbled backward, terror tearing through discipline as comrades vanished without sound, without warning.
At the edge of the chaos, Ishimo stood perfectly still.
The wind tugged at his coat, but he didn't look away. His eyes gleamed, reflecting the storm unfolding before him. A grin spread slowly across his face, sharp and delighted.
A low laugh escaped him, echoing strangely in the dark.
"Ohhh," he murmured, voice carrying easily through the screams. "This is better than I imagined."
Another soldier charged Tomora head-on, roaring, shield raised.
Tomora didn't even turn fully.
A tendril of shadow snapped out, piercing the ground beneath the man's feet, erupting upward and binding him mid-stride. Darkness crawled over his armor, seeping through cracks, pulling him under as his shout dissolved into nothing.
Ishimo's grin widened.
"The dark awakening," he said softly. "The storm has truly begun."
At the center of it all, Tomora stood still once more.
The battlefield trembled around him.
His chest rose and fell steadily now—no panic, no strain. The darkness clung to him like a cloak, responding to his slightest thought, his slightest emotion.
He lowered his gaze.
At the ground.
At the blood.
At the space where Patricia had fallen.
For a single heartbeat, the shadows around him stilled.
Then they pulsed.
Deeper.
Colder.
The Black Iron soldiers hesitated, fear freezing them in place.
Too late.
The night surged forward again, swallowing the battlefield whole.
And this time, it did not retreat.