The ridge vanished beneath a tidal wave of shadow.
It wasn't darkness — darkness is an absence — but a living, crushing mass that folded the air inward, bending sound, bending light, bending hope. The sky‑beast's roar split the heavens, and the tear above it cracked open wider, spilling black fire and shimmering dust that fell like dying stars.
Lauri stood his ground.
Not because he felt brave.
Not because he understood what he had awakened.
But because his legs refused to take a single step backward from the thing that had tried to claim his soul.
Yanmei threw themselves between him and the descending shadow, sword raised, though the blade shook in their hand. Their qi flickered dangerously — unstable, frayed — like a candle in a hurricane.
"Lauri—move!" Yanmei barked.
But Lauri didn't move.
He couldn't.
The thread pulsed inside him with a rhythm like a heartbeat that wasn't his, yet somehow was. The warmth Mei brought into the world — fragile but unyielding — still lingered inside him, pushing back the cold that had threatened to swallow him earlier.
The sky-beast lunged.
Time slowed.
The tendrils of living shadow curled, each one wreathed in silver‑black qi that ate the very light around it. They descended toward the ridge like an executioner's blade.
Yanmei clenched their jaw and braced for impact.
Mei lifted her hand, breath sharp, ready to tear open a counter‑rift.
But Lauri—
Lauri lifted his hand first.
He didn't know why.
He didn't know how.
He didn't even know if it was real.
He simply felt the thread inside him twist and coil, responding to the oncoming doom like a chord tightening before it snaps.
The shadow struck.
The world detonated.
A blast of jade‑white light erupted from Lauri's outstretched palm — violent, blinding, primal, like the first moment the northern sun rises after endless polar night.
It hit the shadow tendril dead center.
The impossible happened.
The tendril recoiled.
Not much. Not far.
But enough.
The sky‑beast roared in disbelief — a deep, rasping bellow that cracked the surface of the ridge beneath them and sent shockwaves rippling across the valley below.
Yanmei stared at Lauri, astonished.
"Did you—just—temper qi?"
"I— I don't know," Lauri gasped. "I just—did it."
Yanmei's shock twisted into something sharper.
Fear.
Awe.
Recognition.
"Only cultivators with forged spiritual channels can project qi. And you don't even have—"
The sky-beast cut them off with another roar.
"YOU DARE DEFY AN ANCIENT BINDING?"
Its enormous body pushed harder through the tear, fracturing the sky. Slabs of cloud shattered like glass. Lightning forked upward instead of down, striking the wound where the creature forced its entry.
Mei stepped fully onto the ridge now, floating slightly above its uneven surface. Her hair blew behind her like black silk caught in a celestial gale. She raised her jade bookmark — the small, humble object glowing like a shard of starlight.
"Lauri," she said softly, intensely.
"You mustn't use the tempering force raw. You're not ready. Your soul could crack."
"I don't have a choice!" he shouted.
"The choice," she answered, "is what makes you human. Don't lose that."
Another tendril lashed at Lauri.
Yanmei slashed upward, their sword drawing a crescent of frost through the air. The crescent collided with the tendril and exploded, freezing part of it into brittle shards.
The beast howled.
Its rage vibrated through the thread inside Lauri.
His vision blurred.
His knees buckled.
"No—no—NO," he growled, forcing himself upright.
Yanmei yelled: "Anchor! NOW!"
Mei's voice was softer, trembling: "Lauri… look at me."
He did.
The world narrowed to her eyes — deep, trembling, filled with fear not for herself, but for him. Her hand hovered just inches from his own, as if she feared touching him might snap the fragile qi‑balance he'd awakened.
"You're still you," she whispered.
"Even when fate tries to change you.
Remember that."
The ridge shook violently as the beast roared again, far more enraged than before.
"RETURN WHAT WAS TAKEN FROM US!"
"What was taken?" Lauri demanded hoarsely. "What do you think I stole?"
The beast's gaze burned through him.
"YOU.
YOUR SOUL.
YOUR LINEAGE.
YOUR DEBT."
He staggered.
His breath froze in his chest.
Lineage.
Mei's face tightened. Yanmei inhaled sharply.
The beast pressed its vast head nearer, its jaws dripping shadow.
"YOU WERE OURS BEFORE YOU WERE BORN."
Lauri's blood turned to ice.
"What— what does that mean?"
The beast's voice deepened, like mountains cracking:
"THE ONE WHO HELD YOU
—THE ONE WHO FLED—
SEALED YOU FROM US."
Yanmei blanched.
Mei's fingers curled slightly, jade light flickering dangerously.
Lauri's heart pounded so violently it hurt.
"The one who held me? Who— my mother? My father?"
But the beast only growled.
"YOU ASK THE WRONG QUESTIONS, NORTHERN SOUL."
The tear roared behind it — twisting, folding, stretching — like a wound trying to heal and bleed simultaneously.
Yanmei steadied their sword. "Lauri. Focus on what is real. Yourself. Your breath. Your—"
The beast lunged.
Yanmei shouted.
Mei's eyes widened.
Lauri screamed.
The thread inside his chest flared—
wildly, uncontrollably—
not protecting him…
…but calling something.
Calling someone.
A third presence stirred.
Not from Mei.
Not from the beast.
From inside the tear.
Something old.
Something buried.
Something bound to Lauri's name.
A whisper crawled across the ridge, brushing against his ear like a frozen breath:
"…You should not have woken me…"
The shadow behind the beast shifted.
The tear twisted.
Mei's face drained of color.
Yanmei froze.
The sky-beast recoiled — for the first time — in fear.
The second darkness did not roar.
It did not thrash.
It did not descend like the sky‑beast.
It opened its eyes.
Two thin slits of pale, ancient luminescence appeared inside the tear — not glowing, not burning, but recognizing. They held no pupils, no iris, no humanity. They were the eyes of something that had survived long before sects, before cultivation, before worlds had rigid borders.
The sky‑beast twisted around, massive limbs scraping at the cracking sky. A low rumble rolled through its chest — not dominance, but submission.
Fear.
Yanmei's breath caught in their throat.
"Another… rift sovereign…"
"No," Mei whispered, trembling. "Worse. Much worse."
The shadow behind the beast shifted again, and the sky-beast recoiled as if slapped. Its claws dug into the fractured air, tearing deeper wounds into the fabric of reality.
"YOU… SHOULD NOT…"
the sky‑beast rasped, voice cracking like stone under tidal pressure,
"…INTERFERE."
The deeper darkness did not answer with a sound.
Instead, the tear bent around it — bowing inward — as if space itself deferred to its presence.
A figure emerged.
Not fully.
Not even halfway.
Just an outline.
A humanoid outline.
Tall.
Unmoving.
Wrapped in shreds of shadow that coiled like serpents around its limbs.
No face, only the suggestion of one beneath the void.
No form, only the weight of it — so immense it warped the ridge beneath Lauri's feet.
Yanmei collapsed to one knee.
Their qi shattered.
Mei staggered backward a single step — and that alone told Lauri more than any words ever could.
Whoever — whatever — this was, even she wasn't prepared for it.
The figure raised a single hand.
The sky-beast whimpered.
A rift-beast — a creature that could devour realms — whimpered.
Then the figure spoke:
"…Lauri."
A whisper.
A simple whisper.
But the world cracked with the force of it.
Lauri clutched his chest, collapsing to the ground as the thread inside him convulsed. It twisted frantically, like a living thing fleeing from a master it had once known.
"No—" Lauri gasped. "No, no, NO—!"
Mei darted to his side and grabbed his shoulders, her voice sharp with panic.
"Don't answer it!" she cried. "DON'T — even in your mind!"
But the whisper slid deeper.
Not into his thoughts.
Into his memory.
Into the part of him that remembered things he had never lived.
Snow on an unfamiliar mountain.
Hands that were not his holding him as an infant.
A lullaby sung in a language he didn't know, but understood.
Yanmei's voice cracked.
"Realm-Walker—can you stop it?"
Mei's jaw tightened.
"No. This… this is tied to his origin. It dwells beyond my path."
The shadowed figure stepped forward again — just a fraction — and the sky-beast flung itself aside, scrambling like a terrified animal to escape its presence.
The deeper darkness focused directly on Lauri.
"…You woke early."
Lauri shook his head violently.
"That's not true. I don't know you. I've never—"
The figure tilted its head.
Not human.
Not alien.
But intimately familiar, in a way that made his stomach twist.
"…Of course you do."
It raised its hand again.
Not to strike.
Not to claim.
But to greet.
A single thread — a tendril of pale light — emerged from the figure's palm, reaching toward Lauri like a lover's touch.
Yanmei screamed.
"LAURI, MOVE!"
Mei hurled a barrier of jade light between them, her voice cracking with force.
"DON'T TOUCH HIM!"
But the barrier melted like mist before the thread even reached it.
It slid closer.
Closer.
Lauri crawled backward on shaking limbs.
"Stop— please— STOP!"
The figure paused.
As if listening.
Then its voice, colder than vacuum, whispered:
"…Do you truly wish me to?"
"Yes!" Lauri gasped. "I want my life—I want my choices—I want—"
But the figure's tone deepened, cutting across his words:
"…Then choose."
The ground stilled.
The wind died.
Even the sky-beast froze, trembling.
The shadow pointed toward Lauri's chest — toward the thread he had just claimed as his own.
"You have awakened the thread prematurely."
A second gesture — toward Mei.
"She has pulled you from the debt."
A third — toward Yanmei.
"They have sheltered you from the call."
The figure's voice lowered further:
"…But the debt remains."
Lauri's breath broke.
"What debt?! What do I owe you?!"
The figure stepped forward, just enough to reveal the faintest trace of a face beneath the shadows — neither male nor female, neither young nor old.
Its eyes — pale, ancient, mournful — locked onto his.
And whispered:
"…Your existence."
Yanmei's heart stopped.
Mei's eyes widened with horror.
Lauri's world shattered.
The thread pulsed violently in his chest — not from pain, not from resonance, but from recognition.
Something deep inside him remembered.
Something he had never lived.
Something born long before Finland, before Mei, before this world.
The figure extended its hand again.
"Return to me, Lauri."
The ridge quaked under his feet.
The sky-beast cowered.
Mei lunged forward — desperate.
Yanmei shouted — voice cracking.
Lauri stared at the outstretched hand.
Frozen.
Terrified.
Torn,
the deeper shadow — the one even the sky‑beast feared — whispers the words that threaten to unravel his entire identity:
"…my son."