The forest was not like the ones Ahri remembered from her childhood. Its trees rose tall, smooth, and glimmering as though their bark were glass polished by centuries of hands. Beneath their pale glow, no wind stirred. No bird sang. The silence was so complete it made the crunch of their boots on the path feel almost profane.
Aya's lantern swung at her hip, its flame restless. It should have been steady, yet instead it guttered with each step, as though struggling against an unseen breath. The light clung to them in a narrow circle, and Ahri noticed how the dark beyond it did not recede but pressed harder, alive with weight and texture.
"Keep it raised," Jin muttered, his hand on his weapon. His shadow followed close—too close. Ahri caught it leaning forward as though listening, its head tilted in unnatural mimicry.
Aya lifted the lantern, and the flame flared weakly, dividing the black into trembling partitions. For an instant, Ahri thought she saw figures within the trees—not moving, not watching, but simply there, like echoes pressed into the world.
"Do you feel that?" Aya whispered.
Ahri nodded. She felt it in her chest, like a second heartbeat that wasn't her own. The lantern's light wasn't just illumination; it was resonance. It divided the dark, yes, but it also revealed that the dark was not empty.
They made camp by a shallow stream that gleamed faintly under the glass-bark trees. Aya set the lantern down on a stone, and its glow rippled outward in thin concentric rings.
"Careful," Jin said, narrowing his eyes. "That flame… it's drawing them."
"Them?" Aya asked.
Jin did not reply. His gaze was fixed beyond the light's edge, into the dense black that pushed back like a tide. Ahri knew better than to press. Jin spoke rarely now, and when he did, his words carried the weight of something he was unwilling—or unable—to explain.
Ahri crouched near the lantern. The flame flickered violently as if recognizing her presence. She extended her hand, palm still marked by the dream's burn. The lantern flared in response, its flame splitting into twin tongues, swaying in opposite directions.
Aya gasped. "Why did it do that?"
Ahri traced the air above it, feeling the tug of threads unseen. "It isn't one flame anymore," she murmured. "It's a mirror. Divided."
She closed her eyes and listened. The Loom remained silent — but faintly, beneath the hush of water and the stillness of the trees, a whisper brushed against her thoughts. Not words exactly, but impressions: sorrow, fracture, hunger.
Her eyes flew open. The lantern had not just divided the dark. It had divided something within her as well.
That night, Ahri dreamed again. This time, she stood in a hall of mirrors, each reflecting a different version of herself. Some bore scars she did not have. Others carried weapons she had never touched. And in the center of the hall burned a single lantern—but its flame flickered between gold and black, each pulse reshaping the reflections.
She stepped closer, and the mirrors trembled. One reflection—scarred across the cheek, eyes colder than her own—leaned forward.
"The dark does not divide," it whispered, its lips moving in time with hers. "It consumes. The lantern is not a gift. It is a bargain."
The glass cracked. Shards scattered at her feet.
When she awoke, Aya was kneeling beside her, panic in her eyes. "The flame—look!"
Ahri turned. The lantern's flame had split entirely into two separate fires, one golden, one black, dancing side by side yet never touching. The shadows they cast contradicted each other, overlapping and canceling in strange, shifting patterns.
Jin rose, sword already drawn, his own shadow flickering with agitation. "We've crossed into something we don't understand," he said. "That lantern's not showing us the way. It's choosing one."
Ahri stared at the divided light, her marked palm burning again.
"No," she whispered, almost to herself. "It isn't choosing. It's asking us to."