The word hung in the air like a blade suspended above an execution block.
"…my son."
It didn't echo.
It didn't need to.
The ridge itself reacted — stone trembling, cracks crawling across its surface like frost racing over a windowpane. The very air bent around the deeper shadow's voice, compressing sound into a suffocating hush.
Yanmei staggered backward, their sword tip dragging a faint line through the broken earth.
"No," they whispered, voice raw. "That's impossible. Rift sovereigns do not… cannot… breed with mortals."
Mei froze in mid‑step, her jade light guttering in shock.
"Unless…" Her voice failed. "Unless the mortal wasn't fully mortal."
Lauri couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
His heartbeat felt like a fist pounding from inside a cage.
"No," he choked. "That's a trick. A lie. You're trying to—"
"Remember," the shadow murmured.
A tendril of pale light seeped toward him — slower this time, gentler, coiling through the air like a thread seeking its needle.
Lauri stumbled backward.
"I'm Finnish," he gasped. "I grew up in Vasa. I'm human. I'm normal."
The shadow tilted its undefined head.
"All truths begin with a lie you must outgrow."
Yanmei forced themselves between Lauri and the approaching thread, legs trembling, stance uneven.
"You will not take him," they snarled.
The figure didn't even turn.
Its gaze — if those hollow slits could be called eyes — remained entirely on Lauri.
"You cannot block blood."
Yanmei shoved their sword into the ground, channeling all remaining qi into the collapsing earth around them. Frost spiraled outward, encasing jagged stones in crystalline armor.
The air chilled until even breath turned brittle.
The shadow paused.
Not out of surprise.
But irritation.
A crackling sound rippled across its outline — like a glacier shifting beneath the surface of the ocean.
The sky-beast, still cowering at the edge of the tear, dared to speak.
"HE IS NOT YOURS TO CLAIM."
The shadow turned slightly, regarding the massive beast with contempt older than mountains.
"You were always a poor guardian."
The beast shrank further, folding its wings over its massive body.
Mei grabbed Lauri and pulled him behind her, her fingers cold despite the glow at her palms. Her eyes burned with a fear he had never seen in her — not even in the visions, not even in the chaos of the grove.
"Lauri," she whispered, "you must not listen to it."
"It called me its son!"
"That means nothing here."
"It means everything here," Yanmei hissed, barely standing.
The shadow's head turned back toward Lauri.
"It means you belong."
A whisper of power surged through the ridge.
Lauri's knees buckled.
The thread inside his chest convulsed violently — so painfully he nearly cried out.
For a heartbeat, he saw it:
A cradle of snow.
A hand of shadow lifting him.
A lullaby sung in the voice of cracking stone and falling night.
A presence watching over him — not warm, not gentle, but protective in its own monstrous way.
He collapsed.
Mei caught him, voice shaking.
"Lauri! Stay with me!"
Yanmei dragged themselves forward on one knee, blade trembling as they tried to lift it again.
"Walker…" Yanmei rasped. "Protect him. You can walk between realms — stop this!"
Mei closed her eyes.
"For a moment," she whispered, "I thought I could."
The shadow approached, steps soundless but carrying the gravity of entire winters.
"Come," it murmured, an echo rippling behind the word.
"Before the seal breaks completely. Before the debt consumes you."
Lauri tried to stand.
He couldn't.
His limbs felt hollow.
His breath came sharp and shallow.
His vision flickered between the ridge and that impossible cradle of snow.
"Stop—" he said weakly. "Please— stop."
Mei's hands glowed brighter, jade light flaring into a swirling barrier that wrapped around them like a shield.
But the shadow merely pressed one finger against the barrier.
Just one.
The shield cracked like thin ice.
Mei staggered backward, blood dripping from her lips.
Yanmei lunged forward with a roar.
"LEAVE HIM!"
Their sword struck the figure's arm.
The blade froze mid‑impact.
Then shattered.
The shards hung in the air — suspended — before vaporizing into mist.
Yanmei fell to both knees, qi bleeding out of them in waves.
"Yanmei!!" Lauri crawled toward them, but Mei pulled him back, her fingers trembling hard enough that he felt every shake.
"You can't touch that being," she whispered hoarsely.
"Nobody can."
The shadow lowered its head, and the air thinned until Lauri could barely breathe.
"You were never meant for their worlds."
The ridge cracked again.
Stone split beneath Lauri's hands.
The thread pulled.
The tear widened.
Mei tried one last time.
She stepped in front of Lauri, hair whipping around her like ink in a storm, jade light blazing.
"IF YOU TAKE HIM—" she shouted, voice cracking with power—
The shadow lifted a hand.
Mei froze mid‑sentence, breath stolen from her throat.
Her light flickered like a dying lantern.
The shadow's voice softened.
Not with kindness.
With inevitability.
"Child…
If you stand between him and what he is,
you will break."
Mei's knees nearly buckled.
The ridge dimmed.
The sky split.
And Lauri felt the ancient presence reach for him again—
its hand open, patient,
as if this had always been fate.
For a moment, no one moved.
The ridge hovered between collapse and stillness, suspended by the unbearable gravity of the choice Lauri had been cornered into. Shadow swallowed the sky, jade light flickered like dying embers, and even the three suns dimmed as though hiding from the truth being spoken.
The deeper shadow extended its hand again.
Not violently.
Not forcefully.
Almost gently.
"Come, Lauri."
His chest tightened.
His breath fractured.
The thread inside him trembled like a cornered animal.
Yanmei tried to rise again, but their arms buckled beneath them. Frost crawled along their collarbone where the shadow's presence had cracked their qi. They spat blood, voice raw:
"Do… not… touch… him…"
The figure didn't spare Yanmei even a glance.
It stepped closer, the tear behind it bending like cloth in a storm.
Mei clenched her fists, jade light flaring despite the trembling in her limbs.
"If you take one more step," she whispered, voice shaking with fury she barely controlled, "I will tear a hole between realms so deep even you will—"
The shadow lifted its head.
A hum passed through the ridge.
Mei's light collapsed.
She fell to one knee, gasping as though someone had ripped the breath from her lungs.
"Mei!" Lauri screamed.
Her fingers clawed at the ground, trembling violently. She forced out a single word:
"Lauri… run…"
But the shadow ignored her completely.
"Your existence is a promise," it murmured.
"One the mortal realm stole. One the heavens tried to bury."
The ground cracked wider around its feet.
The ridge groaned under the pressure.
Lauri forced himself upright.
He felt weak.
Half‑broken.
Terrified.
But something in him — something stubborn, Finnish, human — refused to kneel.
"Stop," he said, though his voice wavered. "Just… stop. If you want me to believe you're my father — then tell me what happened. Tell me what this debt is."
The shadow paused.
And for the first time, its hand lowered.
"…Very well."
The sky-beast shuddered, as though dreading the words that would follow.
"You were born under a fracture in the heavens," the shadow said.
"A moment when a mortal line crossed paths with something it should never have touched."
Yanmei gritted their teeth. "Heaven's Interstice… the forbidden moment…"
Mei's eyes widened in horror.
"Lauri… that can only mean—"
But the figure cut her off.
"You were carried away. Stolen. Hidden in a realm of snow."
Lauri's breath froze.
"Vasa," he whispered.
"The lakes… the winters…"
The shadow bowed its head slightly.
"Your mother hid you well."
A chill rippled through him so violently he nearly dropped to the ground.
His mother.
His ordinary, quiet, warm-hearted mother who hummed Kalevala verses while cooking coffee in the mornings.
"She never told me," he whispered.
"Of course she didn't," the shadow said.
"Mortals rarely understand what they cradle."
Mei tried to rise again — fury burning behind the pain in her eyes.
"You won't guilt him into going with you," she hissed. "You lost him long before he was even old enough to walk."
The shadow turned slightly toward her.
"I did not lose him. He was taken."
The air cracked like ice under a hammer.
"And the one who took him paid dearly."
Lauri froze.
"…What do you mean?"
The shadow's answer felt like a glacier settling over the ridge.
"Your mother is dead because she defied the debt."
Time stopped.
The wind died.
Yanmei's breath caught mid‑exhale.
Mei's eyes widened in grief.
Lauri staggered backward, hand to his chest.
"No. No, that's not— she died from— she—"
But the truth pulsed through the thread in his chest.
A truth buried under snow and memory.
She had grown weaker.
Slowly.
Without explanation.
He thought it was illness.
He thought it was grief.
He thought—
The shadow lowered its hand in something almost like a bow.
Not respectful.
Not apologetic.
Just honest.
"She defied me. She chose the mortal realm. She hid you. And the debt devoured her soul."
Lauri fell to his knees.
Memories shattered.
Reassembled.
Every quiet smile she forced.
Every tired morning.
Every cough she hid.
"I killed her," he whispered.
Mei crawled to his side, eyes burning with gentle, desperate denial.
"No," she whispered fiercely. "No, Lauri. You didn't. SHE chose to protect you. Against this thing. Against everything."
Yanmei forced themselves upright again, though their legs shook violently.
"Walker… protect him. If he listens to that monster another moment, his spirit will fracture."
But the shadow spoke one final sentence — a sentence that split Lauri's world open.
"I did not come to claim you."
Everyone froze.
Even the sky-beast lifted its head, confused.
The deeper shadow stepped back from him.
"I came to warn you."
Lauri blinked through tears. "Warn me…? About what?"
The shadow lifted its face fully now — revealing a hollow outline of a man carved from night itself.
"Something else hunts you."
A tremor ripped the ridge.
"Something that killed your mother…"
the figure whispered,
"…and now comes for you."
And the tear behind it — the one the shadow had emerged from — split open again…
Not from within.
But from something forcing its way in from outside.
The deeper shadow turned sharply — the first sudden movement it had made.
"RUN."
it ordered, voice dropping into a terrifying urgency.
Lauri stared, numb. "What— what is it?!"
The shadow's outline flickered.
Its eyes dimmed.
Its voice became cold enough to frost the air:
"…Your true enemy."
The tear bulged.
Something slammed into it.
Once.
Twice.
A third time—
A sound like a cracking universe boomed across the ridge.