There was no ground beneath Tomora's feet—only blackness stretching outward in every direction, smooth and endless, like a frozen ocean without waves.
The sky above him moved.
Stars did not sit still here. They spiraled and folded into one another, constellations tearing themselves apart and reforming into unfamiliar shapes. Light bled like ink dropped into water, swirling slowly, deliberately, as if the heavens themselves were thinking.
Tomora stood alone.
Or so it seemed.
The air pressed against his skin with a weight that had nothing to do with gravity. His scars burned—not sharply, but with a deep, crawling heat, like something beneath them had opened an eye. His right eye throbbed in time with a pulse he couldn't hear, only feel.
He looked down.
The black plain reflected nothing. No shadow. No outline. It was as if the world beneath him refused to acknowledge his existence.
A step echoed.
Not behind him. Not ahead.
Everywhere.
The darkness rippled.
From the far distance—or perhaps from the space between heartbeats—a shape emerged. Shadows peeled back like curtains being drawn, revealing a figure tall enough to make the stars feel distant.
Mournveil walked forward without walking.
Darkness clung to him, not as smoke, not as flame, but as something alive—tendrils curling and recoiling along his limbs, whispering against one another in a language older than sound. His presence bent the air, pulling the light inward, swallowing it whole.
His eyes were the first thing Tomora noticed.
They were deep. Not empty—endless. As if every night Tomora had ever known had been gathered and compressed into two points of impossible depth. Within them flickered memory, age, patience… and something colder.
Something that remembered promises.
Tomora's body tensed on instinct. Water stirred at his fingertips, drawn from nothing, forming faint halos around his hands. Darkness answered it, seeping outward from his skin, cautious, alert.
Mournveil stopped a short distance away.
The silence between them thickened.
Then—
"You survived."
The words did not travel through the air. They arrived inside Tomora's chest, heavy enough to make his breath stutter.
"But you left with a debt unpaid."
The black plain beneath Tomora cracked.
Fine fractures spread outward from his feet, glowing faintly before sealing themselves shut again. His jaw tightened.
"What do you mean?" His voice sounded smaller here, thinner, like it didn't fully belong to him.
Mournveil's gaze did not waver.
"You walked away from the mountain," he said, "from blood and loss and awakening. You took power… and left something behind."
Images flashed.
A mirror shattering into light.
A body cooling in his arms.
Darkness answering his call for the first time—too eagerly.
Tomora swallowed. "I didn't leave anything."
Mournveil tilted his head slightly, as if studying a flawed piece of art.
"No," he said softly. "You missed something."
The sky twisted above them, stars collapsing inward, forming a slow, circling vortex.
"I entrusted it to another."
The word entrusted struck like a blade.
Tomora's breath caught. "Who?"
For the first time, Mournveil smiled.
It was not cruel. It was not kind.
It was knowing.
"A man who wears shadows like a second skin," Mournveil said. "A watcher. A guide. A liar when it suits him."
Tomora's thoughts snapped into place.
The hood.
The mirrors.
The smile that never reached the eyes.
"Ishimo?" The name tasted strange, heavier than it should have been. "The hooded figure?"
Mournveil's shadows shifted, curling tighter around his form. "Yes."
Tomora's mind raced. He saw Ishimo standing apart from the battle. Watching. Waiting. Enjoying.
"How old is he?" Tomora asked. The question came unbidden, sharp with unease.
Mournveil's eyes glinted.
"Older than the war you're walking toward," he replied. "Younger than the mistake he's trying to fix."
The black plain trembled.
"Ishimo holds the key," Mournveil continued, his voice lowering, deepening. "Not to power—you already drown in that—but to direction. To consequence."
Tomora clenched his fists. Water spiraled tighter now, vibrating, reacting to the tension threading through him. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
"Because you weren't listening then."
The words struck harder than any blow.
Mournveil stepped closer.
The distance between them collapsed unnaturally, space folding like cloth. Darkness pressed in on Tomora from all sides, not attacking, but testing—probing the edges of his resolve.
"You were grieving," Mournveil said. "Angry. Hungry. You wanted the world to bleed the way you had."
Tomora's scars flared white-hot.
"And now?" he demanded.
Mournveil studied him in silence. The shadows around him stilled, as if holding their breath.
"Now," he said, "you're dangerous in a different way."
The sky above them began to unravel. Stars dimmed, stretching into long streaks of light as if pulled by an unseen tide.
"You will need Ishimo," Mournveil said. "Not because he is trustworthy—but because he knows where the past is buried. And because it is already clawing its way back to the surface."
The darkness around Mournveil began to loosen, tendrils drifting away from his form like smoke caught in a slow current.
"Prepare yourself, Tomora."
The black plain cracked again—deeper this time. Through the fractures, Tomora glimpsed memories that weren't his: cities burning beneath unfamiliar skies, mirrors reflecting futures that should not exist, a hand reaching out from shadow toward something sealed long ago.
"The past is not done with you yet."
Mournveil's form unraveled completely, dissolving into ribbons of darkness that twisted upward, merging with the collapsing sky.
"Wait—" Tomora stepped forward.
The ground vanished.
—
Tomora jolted upright.
Air tore into his lungs, sharp and cold. His body jerked as if pulled from deep water, muscles screaming in protest. Sweat soaked his clothes, clung to his scar,around his eye.
The cave loomed around him—stone, snow, silence.
His heart hammered violently against his ribs.
For a long moment, he didn't move.
Then his hand drifted to his chest.
Darkness stirred beneath his skin, restless.
Somewhere far away, beyond mountains and mirrors and memory, Ishimo smiled.