Silence fell like a verdict.
Not the fragile quiet that follows battle when survivors gasp and wounds cry out—but something heavier. Final. The kind of stillness that presses against the ears until even breathing feels intrusive.
The mountaintop lay strewn with bodies.
Black Iron soldiers littered the stone in broken lines and twisted heaps, armor dented, weapons half-buried where they had fallen. Shadows clung to them unnaturally, stretching longer than the dying night should allow, pooling beneath limbs and helmets like stains that refused to fade.
The darkness had not left.
It waited.
Tomora moved through it.
He did not rush. He did not stalk. He flowed—his body a shifting silhouette, edges dissolving and reforming with every step. Where his feet touched the ground, shadow followed, rippling outward as if the mountain itself remembered him.
One soldier still breathed.
Barely.
His fingers twitched near a fallen spear, breath bubbling weakly through a cracked visor. His eyes widened when the darkness loomed over him, when a shape detached itself from the fog and became a man.
Tomora did not speak.
A shadow rose behind him, curved and precise, and folded inward.
The soldier was gone.
No cry. No struggle. Just absence, swallowed whole, the space he occupied collapsing into darkness before smoothing itself flat—as if he had never existed at all.
Tomora continued.
Another.
And another.
Each movement was clean, deliberate. No anger burned on his face. No grief twisted his features now. Whatever storm had erupted earlier had settled into something colder—something controlled.
Mercy did not exist here.
The last Black Iron soldier stood frozen at the battlefield's edge, eyes darting wildly, sword slipping from numb fingers. He backed away step by step until there was nowhere left to go.
The sea roared faintly far below.
Tomora stopped a few paces away.
For a heartbeat, the darkness around him hesitated—then surged.
Shadows surged forward like a tide, engulfing the man completely. His outline vanished, dragged downward as if pulled beneath invisible waves.
When the darkness receded, nothing remained.
Not even blood.
The fog thinned.
The mountain exhaled.
Tomora stood alone amid empty stone and lingering shadow, his form flickering as if struggling to remain solid. Darkness peeled away from him in slow spirals, dissolving into the air, returning to wherever it had come from.
He took one step—
—and vanished.
Tala stood frozen near the ridge, fingers clenched so tightly they ached.
Her eyes were wide, unfocused, reflecting the battlefield she no longer recognized. The place where screams had filled the air moments ago now felt unreal—like a dream she hadn't woken from yet.
Yora lay slumped against the rock beside her, chest rising faintly, face pale. Jer was sprawled a few paces away, unmoving but breathing, her life hanging on by threads Tala was afraid to touch.
She swallowed.
Her throat burned.
There were no words for what she had just seen.
Behind her, the shadows stirred one last time.
Ishimo stood where the darkness thinned, posture relaxed, hands tucked casually into his coat pockets. His gaze swept the empty battlefield, then lifted toward the horizon where night began to surrender to morning.
He nodded once.
Not in triumph.
Not in regret.
Then space folded around him.
He was gone.
Dawn crept in quietly.
The sun rose without ceremony, pale light spilling over jagged peaks and broken stone, softening edges the night had sharpened. Shadows shrank, retreating reluctantly, leaving behind a world that looked almost peaceful—too peaceful for what had happened here.
At the highest point of the mountain, Tomora stood alone.
The darkness no longer clung to him. His clothes were torn, stained, but still. The wind tugged gently at his hair, cool and salt-scented, carrying the sound of waves far below.
Before him stretched the sea.
Endless.
Calm.
A vast mirror of pale blue and silver, untouched by war, unmarked by blood. The horizon glowed softly, sunlight brushing the water like a promise the world did not deserve.
Tomora stared at it.
His shoulders sagged—not from exhaustion, but from weight. The kind that settled deep into the bones, heavier than armor, heavier than power.
In his hand, he held a single flower.
Its petals were delicate, pale and unassuming, slightly crushed from being carried through chaos. He turned it slowly between his fingers, thumb brushing over the soft curve of each petal.
Patricia's favorite.
The memory hit him without warning—her laugh, sharp and warm; the way she teased him when he grew too serious; how she always stopped to admire small, beautiful things even when the world demanded speed.
His grip tightened.
Then loosened.
The sea shimmered below, indifferent and breathtaking all at once.
Tomora exhaled, the breath trembling as it left him.
"How," he murmured, voice barely more than a whisper, carried away by the wind, "can a place this beautiful…"
The flower trembled slightly in his hand.
"…be so cruel?"
He closed his eyes.
The wind answered him with silence.
The camera pulled back—past Tomora, past the cliff's edge, past the vast, unbroken sea—revealing a world bathed in morning light, serene and untouched, hiding the shadows it had allowed to exist beneath its surface.