The morning ashfall was soft, almost gentle, settling like snow on the broken temple stones. Yet every fleck seemed to whisper when it touched Ahri's skin, as though even the dust carried memory. She rose before the others, her lantern held steady, its flame dimmed to a low pulse. Across the camp, Jin stood motionless, and beside him, the shadow he had conjured lingered like a second figure.
She stepped closer, quiet, cautious. "Jin."
He did not turn, though his voice reached her. "You saw it. You heard it. My shadow is not only mine anymore."
The shadow shifted, as if acknowledging her, its shape echoing Jin but taller, thinner, its edges sharper than any outline of flesh. Its whisper bled into the air, overlapping Jin's speech with dissonant harmony: We are not whole. We are fragments. And fragments crave a pact.
Ahri's breath trembled. "A pact… with me?"
The shadow leaned, elongating toward her lantern, its tendrils quivering at the light. Jin grimaced, placing himself between it and her. "Don't," he warned. His voice shook with an urgency she hadn't heard before. "You don't understand the hunger it carries. It remembers what I've forgotten. If you bind with it, it will not let go."
But the shadow's voice pressed in, deep and patient, vibrating in her ribs: Not hunger. Continuity. What was broken seeks the seam. Without seam, there is only unraveling.
Mino stirred awake in the background, watching with sharp eyes but choosing silence. Aya mumbled in her dreams, murmuring something about doors without hinges.
Ahri tightened her grip on her lantern. She remembered the wailing spirits from before, how their mourning had softened when she lowered her flame. She remembered the weight of Baek Hyun-tae's words: Every weave begins with fire.
Her voice was calm, almost resigned. "Then if this is the seam, I must decide whether to stitch it or let it fray."
Jin's hand reached for her arm, desperation plain. "If you make a pact with what is already broken, Ahri… you may never find your way back to yourself."
But Ahri, gazing at both Jin and his shadow, felt the inevitability of threads converging. "And if I don't, perhaps none of us will."
The pact was not yet spoken, but its presence hummed in the air, waiting.