Consciousness returned to Shion Enther like drowning in reverse—a violent emergence from darkness into something that barely qualified as light. His teal eyes snapped open to find himself lying on what felt like obsidian glass, perfectly smooth and cold against his cheek.
The space around him defied description. Not darkness, but an absence so complete it made his artist's mind recoil. The "ground" beneath him stretched infinitely in all directions, reflecting nothing because there was nothing to reflect. Above—if there was an above—hung a sky the color of forgotten dreams, neither black nor gray but something that existed in the spaces between colors.
"Finally awake, little dreamer?"
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, honey-sweet with an undertone that made his skin crawl. Shion pushed himself upright, his silver-blue hair falling across his vision as he searched for the source.
"I know you can see me." A soft laugh echoed through the dimensionless space. "Your gift shows you echoes of what was. I wonder what it reveals about what will be."
Then she materialized—not appearing so much as reality remembering she had always been there. Hyacline stood before him, if standing was the right word in a place without up or down. Her form was disturbingly perfect: pale skin like moonlight on snow, silver hair that moved without wind, eyes that held depths no mortal gaze should possess.
But it was the way she existed in multiples that made Shion's breath catch. Three of her, five, a dozen—each identical, each real, arranged in a circle around him like petals on a deadly flower.
"Welcome to your new home, Shion Enther." The Hyaclines spoke in unison, their voices creating harmonies that shouldn't have been possible. "I am Hyacline, First Among the Chosen, servant to the great Tsuyari. And you... you are going to become something wonderful."
Shion struggled to his feet, his legs shaking from more than just disorientation. "Where... where am I? How do you know my name?"
"Names are such fragile things," one of the duplicates said, stepping closer. "Like memories. Like faces. Like the bonds that tie us to weakness." Another Hyacline circled behind him. "We are in a training dimension, a pocket realm carved from the spaces between thoughts. Here, time moves as our master wills it. Here, you will learn to forget."
"I don't want to forget anything." The words came out stronger than Shion felt, but they rang with desperate conviction. "I want to go home. I want to see my friends."
All the Hyaclines smiled simultaneously, and the expression was beautiful and terrible. "Friends? Tell me, little dreamer, what did these friends do when you failed? When you fell before that flame-haired girl and lost your chance at glory?"
The question hit like a physical blow. Shion's mind flashed to that moment in the arena—Nayen Krayth's Anchorflame wrapping around him, the burning shame of defeat, the looks of pity from the crowd. His friends had tried to comfort him, but underneath their words...
"They pitied you," another Hyacline whispered, reading his expression. "They saw your weakness and felt sorry for you. Is that what you want? Pity from those who succeeded where you failed?"
"That's not—" Shion began, but the words felt heavy in his throat.
"Here, you will never know pity again." The Hyaclines began to move, not walking but flowing like liquid silver. "Here, you will become strong enough that others will fear to pity you. Strong enough to make those who once looked down on you tremble."
One of the duplicates raised her hand, and the dimensionless space around them shifted. Suddenly they stood in what looked like a twisted version of the Silverstone Dojo's training grounds—familiar enough to recognize, wrong enough to unsettle. The wooden floors were black glass, the practice dummies were made of shadow that writhed and whispered, and the walls showed not windows but glimpses of other dimensions where things that had never been human moved with deadly purpose.
"Your first lesson begins now," Hyacline announced, and all her duplicates vanished except one. "Show me your Spectral Refrain. Show me how you cling to the past."
Shion hesitated. His ability felt sluggish here, as if the strange dimension was trying to swallow his essence before it could manifest. When he finally managed to call forth an echo—a memory of his last successful technique from weeks ago—it appeared wan and ghostly, lacking the vivid detail his illusions usually possessed.
Hyacline watched with the clinical interest of a surgeon examining a diseased organ. "Pathetic. You're so focused on what was that you ignore what could be. Again."
For the next hour—or what felt like an hour in a place where time moved like thick honey—she forced him to manifest echo after echo. Each one grew weaker than the last, and each failure earned him a critique delivered in that honey-poison voice.
"Your stance is defensive. Are you planning to cower behind your memories forever?"
"The echo wavers because you doubt yourself. Self-doubt is a luxury you can no longer afford."
"Again. And this time, try not to disappoint me."
By the time she called a halt, Shion's vision was blurring with exhaustion. Sweat had soaked through his dark gray robes despite the strange, neutral temperature of the dimension. His hands shook as he tried to wipe his face.
"Adequate," Hyacline said, though her tone suggested it was anything but. "You have potential buried under layers of sentiment and weakness. We will excavate it."
"I'm not weak," Shion protested, though his voice came out as barely more than a whisper.
"No?" Three duplicates materialized around him again. "Then why are you here instead of at that precious dojo with your precious friends? Why did you fail when they succeeded? Why did you let that stranger lead you through a portal like a lost child following pretty lights?"
Each question was a blade between his ribs. The worst part was that he had no answers—or rather, the answers he had made him feel smaller with each passing moment.
"The weak always have excuses," another duplicate said. "The strong create results. Which would you rather be?"
Before he could answer, the training ground dissolved around them, returning to the infinite emptiness of before. Hyacline's duplicates merged back into a single figure, but somehow she seemed more present than before, as if his defeat had fed her power.
"Rest now," she said, and her voice carried a subtle compulsion that made his eyelids heavy. "When you wake, we will begin the real work. The work of unmaking what you were so you can become what you're meant to be."
As consciousness faded, Shion felt something else slipping away with it—something warm and golden that he couldn't quite name. A memory of laughter, perhaps, or the feeling of belonging somewhere. It drifted away like smoke, and he was too tired to catch it.
In the growing darkness of enforced sleep, he heard Hyacline's voice one last time, soft as a lullaby and twice as dangerous:
"Soon, little dreamer, you won't even remember why you wanted to hold onto such useless things. Soon, you'll understand that strength is all that matters. And strength... strength requires sacrifice."
In another dimension entirely, one that hummed with the power of absolute erasure, a figure knelt before a throne carved from crystallized void. Tsuyari, the Nullweaver, sat in perfect stillness, his silver eyes reflecting depths that had no bottom.
"The boy responds well to the conditioning," the kneeling figure reported. "Hyacline believes he can be fully converted within a lunar cycle."
"And his ability?" Tsuyari's voice was like winter given sound—beautiful, terrible, and utterly without mercy.
"Strong. Stronger than initial assessments suggested. His echoes show remarkable detail, and under stress, they begin to take on physical properties. With proper guidance, he could become a formidable asset."
Tsuyari was quiet for a long moment, contemplating futures that existed in probability rather than certainty. "The Naoya boy's disappearance will accelerate the timeline. The other factions are moving more quickly than anticipated."
"Shall I order Hyacline to increase the pace of conditioning?"
"No." Tsuyari's smile was like the first crack in a dam before the flood. "Let the process take its natural course. Rushed conditioning creates flawed weapons, and I have use for this one intact. Besides..."
He gestured, and the air before them shimmered with images—a white-haired boy trapped in dimensions unknown, his friends searching desperately in a world that suddenly felt less safe, masters and teachers exchanging worried glances over sealed letters and emergency protocols.
"The game is accelerating on its own. Soon, all the pieces will be in motion, and then..." His smile widened, showing teeth that seemed to absorb light. "Then we will see how committed the other players are to their precious principles when the real stakes become clear."
Meanwhile, in the pocket dimension, Shion dreamed fitfully of home. But already the dreams were changing, becoming less vivid, less personal. The faces of his friends grew indistinct around the edges, their voices becoming harder to distinguish from the whispers that filled the dimensional void around him.
In his sleeping mind, Itsuki's white hair faded to gray, then to silver, then to nothing at all. Kairo's amber eyes lost their warmth, becoming distant stars in a cold sky. Takumi's flames guttered and died, leaving only ash and the memory of heat.
And through it all, Hyacline's voice wove through his dreams like silk thread through willing flesh, soft and insistent and patient as entropy itself:
Let go. Let it all go. There is only strength. There is only purpose. There is only the will to become what you were always meant to be.
Forget them. Forget yourself. Forget everything but the desire to prove your worth.
Soon, little dreamer. Soon, you'll understand that love is just another word for weakness, and weakness is a luxury you can no longer afford.
By morning—if morning had any meaning in a place without sun—another small piece of Shion Enther would be gone forever, replaced by something sharper, colder, and infinitely more useful to the great work of erasure that Tsuyari had planned for the world.
But for now, he simply slept, and dreamed of faces that grew fainter with each passing hour, until even in sleep he could no longer remember why losing them should make him sad.