Three weeks later...
The mirror showed a stranger's face.
Shion stared at his reflection in the polished obsidian wall of his cell—no, his quarters, as Hyacline insisted on calling them. The boy looking back at him had the same teal eyes, the same silver-blue hair, but everything else had changed in ways that went deeper than flesh.
His face had hardened, cheekbones more pronounced from the relentless training regimen. Muscle definition traced lines across his arms and chest that had never existed before. But it was his eyes that truly disturbed him—they held a coldness that reminded him uncomfortably of someone else's gaze.
Whose eyes? The thought drifted through his mind like smoke, there and gone before he could grasp it. These days, many thoughts felt that way—important, but somehow out of reach.
"Admiring the new you?" Hyacline's voice came from behind him, but he didn't turn. He'd learned to sense her presence without looking, one of many new instincts that had been carved into him through pain and repetition.
"I look different," he said, his voice carrying none of the uncertainty that once defined it. When had that happened? When had he stopped questioning everything?
"You look stronger." She moved to stand beside him, her reflection joining his in the obsidian surface. "Tell me, what do you see when you look at that face?"
Shion studied his reflection with the analytical detachment she'd taught him. "Someone who won't fail again."
"Good." Her smile was genuinely pleased, and he felt a flutter of satisfaction at her approval—a response that would have horrified the boy he'd been. "Today, you meet the others."
The arena materialized around them as they walked—another of the dimension's reality-bending properties that had stopped surprising him weeks ago. This one was different from the training grounds, larger and more elaborate, with tiered seating carved from what looked like crystallized shadow.
In the center stood four figures, and Shion felt his breath catch as he recognized what they were—or what they had been.
Converts.
They moved with the fluid precision of apex predators, each bearing the unmistakable signs of Tsuyari's reshaping. A girl with white hair that flowed like liquid mercury, her eyes the color of fresh snow and just as cold. A boy whose skin seemed to absorb light, making him appear as a walking shadow even in the arena's strange illumination. Twin brothers who stood in perfect synchronization, their movements mirror-images of each other with unsettling precision.
"Your new siblings," Hyacline announced. "Each taken from weakness, each reforged in strength. Each perfect in their dedication to our master's vision."
The white-haired girl stepped forward, and when she spoke, her voice held the musical quality of wind through broken glass. "I am Kira. I was once Kira Setsuya of the Northern Academies. I held foolish dreams of becoming a healer." Her smile was beautiful and utterly empty. "Now I bring the gift of final peace to those too weak to accept their fate."
The shadow-wreathed boy nodded to Shion with respectful acknowledgment. "Daven Koresh, formerly of the Eastern Sanctuaries. I believed in justice, in protecting the innocent." He laughed, a sound like wind through graveyards. "Now I understand that innocence is just another word for ignorance, and the only justice that matters is the strong claiming what the weak cannot keep."
The twins spoke in unison, their voices creating harmonies that made Shion's teeth ache. "We are Ren and Jin Mizushima. We were brothers who dreamed of fighting alongside heroes." Their synchronized smiles were knife-edged. "Now we know that heroes are just villains who haven't admitted their true nature yet."
Each introduction felt like a hammer blow, not because of what they said, but because of how familiar their words sounded. How reasonable. How right.
"Before you can join them properly," Hyacline said, "you must prove you've truly shed your former weakness. You must show us that Shion Enther—the failure, the dreamer, the disappointed child—is truly dead."
The arena floor shifted, creating a circular combat space surrounded by raised platforms where the converted disciples took their seats like judges at a trial. Across from Shion, reality rippled, and a figure stepped through the distortion.
His heart stopped.
It was Itsuki. Not a perfect replica, but close enough—the same white hair, the same ice-blue eyes, the same quiet confidence that had always made Shion feel simultaneously protected and inadequate. The simulacrum wore the robes of a Zenkai Dojo student and carried himself with that infuriating calm that suggested he could handle anything the world threw at him.
"This is a construct built from your memories," Hyacline explained, her voice carrying the clinical detachment of a surgeon describing a procedure. "It will fight with all the skill and power you remember your friend possessing. Defeat it, and prove you've moved beyond the weakness of attachment. Fail..." She shrugged elegantly. "Well, failure is no longer an option for you, is it?"
The fake Itsuki raised his hand, and Shion felt the familiar distortion in the air that meant Abstract Shift was being activated. For a moment, the sight triggered something deep in his chest—a warmth, a longing, a desperate desire to call out his friend's name.
Then the moment passed, smothered under layers of conditioning and cold purpose.
"He's not real," Shion murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. "He's just a memory. A weakness wearing a familiar face."
"Prove it," Hyacline commanded.
The construct moved exactly as Shion remembered Itsuki moving—cautious but decisive, analyzing before acting, always thinking three steps ahead. It was perfect in every detail except one: it lacked the essential warmth that had made Itsuki who he was.
That realization should have given Shion pause. Instead, it filled him with cold rage.
"You're not him," he snarled, calling forth his Spectral Refrain. But instead of the hesitant, wavering echoes he'd once produced, the illusions that materialized around the construct were sharp as razors and twice as cutting. "You're just pretending to be something precious. Something I lost because I was too weak to keep up."
The construct defended itself with admirable skill, using Abstract Shift to change the weight of Shion's attacks, making them miss their marks or dissipate harmlessly. But Shion had learned new techniques during his weeks of conditioning—ways to make his echoes more than simple illusions.
When the construct tried to dodge a sweeping phantom blade, Shion poured his essence into the echo until it gained substance. The spectral weapon caught the fake Itsuki across the chest, tearing through the robes and leaving a line of very real blood.
"Impressive," Daven called from his platform. "Your echoes have gained physicality. That's a Tier 4 technique."
Shion barely heard him. He was lost in the rhythm of combat, in the intoxicating feeling of power flowing through him without restraint or hesitation. Each successful strike against the construct felt like striking back at every moment of helplessness he'd ever experienced.
The construct fought valiantly, but it was hampered by fighting like the Itsuki that Shion remembered—defensive, protective, unwilling to cause unnecessary harm. Shion had no such limitations.
When he finally drove a solid echo-spear through the construct's heart, pinning it to the arena floor, he felt nothing but cold satisfaction.
"Well done," Hyacline purred, descending from her observation point. "How do you feel?"
Shion looked down at the dissolving form of his fake friend, watching the features blur and fade until nothing remained but empty air. He searched inside himself for grief, for regret, for any echo of the boy who had once treasured that friendship above all else.
Nothing.
"I feel..." he paused, considering. "Free."
The arena dissolved around them, replaced by a simple room with chairs arranged in a circle. The other converts took their seats with practiced ease, and Shion found himself guided to the remaining chair by Hyacline's gentle but implacable hands.
"Now," she said, settling into the center of the circle, "we discuss your final lesson. The one that will complete your transformation and prepare you for the great work ahead."
Kira leaned forward, her mercury hair catching light that seemed to come from nowhere. "Tell us about your friends, Shion. The real ones. What made them special to the boy you used to be?"
The question felt like a trap, but Shion couldn't identify the specific danger. "They were... companions. Training partners. We grew up together in Silverstone."
"Their names?" Daven prompted, his shadow-wrapped form somehow conveying attentive interest.
"Names." Shion frowned, reaching for memories that felt strangely distant. "There was... the one with white hair. And the fire user with the temper. And..." He trailed off, frustration building as faces refused to solidify in his mind. "Why can't I remember their names?"
"Because names are anchors," Jin explained, while Ren nodded in perfect synchronization. "Anchors to a version of yourself that no longer serves your purpose."
"But you still carry traces of attachment," Hyacline observed, studying him with clinical interest. "I can see it in your micro-expressions when you try to recall their faces. We'll need to address that before you're ready for field deployment."
"Field deployment?" The words sent a thrill through him—finally, a chance to test his new strength against worthy opponents.
"Oh yes." Hyacline's smile was predatory and beautiful. "Master Tsuyari has plans for you, dear one. Plans that will require you to face your former life directly. But first, we must ensure that when you see those familiar faces, you feel nothing but contempt for the weakness they represent."
She gestured, and the room around them shifted, walls becoming transparent to reveal swirling visions of a place Shion almost recognized. A dojo with wooden floors and practice dummies. Students in robes moving through forms that seemed familiar but somehow foolish in their restraint.
"Zenkai Dojo," Hyacline announced. "Where your former companions now train, believing themselves to be growing stronger while remaining shackled by sentiment and false morality. They search for you, you know. They worry about you. They even feel guilty about your capture, as if they could have prevented it."
The visions shifted, showing three figures that Shion felt he should recognize. A boy with amber eyes teleporting frantically around empty courtyards. Another with crimson hair burning practice dummies to ash in fits of frustrated rage. And...
His breath caught as the third figure came into focus. White hair, ice-blue eyes, a face marked by worry and determination in equal measure. Itsuki. The name came to him with startling clarity, along with a flood of associated memories—shared lunches, training sessions, quiet conversations under starlight.
For just a moment, the warmth returned to his chest. For just a moment, he remembered what it felt like to care about someone more than himself.
Then Hyacline's hand touched his shoulder, and the feeling died like a flame in vacuum.
"Weakness," she whispered, her voice carrying hypnotic certainty. "Attachment. The very chains that kept you from achieving your potential. Look at how they suffer, these friends of yours. Look at how their emotion cripples them, makes them waste energy on futile searches instead of growing stronger."
The visions shifted to show the white-haired boy—Itsuki, his mind supplied reluctantly—slumped over a desk covered in maps and reports, exhaustion written in every line of his body. The other two looked haggard, desperate, diminished by their concern for him.
"They're weaker without me," Shion observed, surprised by his own detachment. "Their grief makes them inefficient."
"Exactly." Hyacline's approval washed over him like warm honey. "And when you face them again—as you will, very soon—you'll have the opportunity to free them from that weakness permanently. Won't that be a kindness?"
Shion considered this, turning the idea over in his mind like a jeweler examining a precious stone. "They would be better off without the burden of caring. Without the illusion that attachment leads to strength."
"Now you're beginning to understand Master Tsuyari's true gift," Daven said, his voice carrying deep reverence. "He doesn't destroy—he liberates. He frees beings from the lies they tell themselves about love, hope, and connection."
Later, alone in his quarters, Shion stood once again before his obsidian reflection. But this time, when he looked at the stranger's face staring back at him, he felt only satisfaction.
The boy who had failed in the arena at Silverstone was gone. The weak dreamer who had sketched pictures of friends and worried about belonging was no more. In their place stood something pure, focused, and terrifyingly powerful.
His Spectral Refrain had evolved during the weeks of conditioning. Where once he could only create fleeting echoes of past events, now he could manifest solid constructs from his memories, turning nostalgia into weapons. More than that, he could feel the next evolution approaching—soon, he would be able to create echoes of events that had never happened, illusions so convincing they could rewrite reality itself.
All it had cost was everything he used to think made him human.
"Perfect," he murmured to his reflection, and the stranger in the mirror smiled back with cold satisfaction.
The dimensional walls of his quarters dissolved without warning, revealing the vast throne room where Tsuyari held court. The Nullweaver sat in perfect stillness, his silver eyes fixed on some point beyond the present moment.
"Approach," he commanded, and his voice carried the weight of absolute authority.
Shion moved forward without hesitation, his steps echoing in the crystalline vastness. When he reached the foot of the throne, he knelt without being told—another instinct that had been carved into him during his transformation.
"You have exceeded expectations," Tsuyari said, his tone carrying the faintest hint of approval. "Hyacline reports that your conditioning is complete ahead of schedule. Your power has grown considerably, and more importantly, your loyalty is absolute."
"I serve your vision, Master," Shion replied, the words feeling as natural as breathing.
"Good. Because the time has come for the first phase of our larger plan." Tsuyari leaned forward slightly, his silver eyes boring into Shion's soul. "Your former companions have proven... resourceful in their search for you. They've attracted attention from forces that would prefer to remain hidden. This creates opportunities."
The air before the throne shimmered, revealing images of familiar faces—but now Shion looked upon them with the analytical detachment of a predator studying prey.
"There is another among them who has been taken," Tsuyari continued. "The white-haired boy with the reality-shaping ability. Different factions move to claim him, which means the board is in motion. It's time to introduce chaos into their careful plans."
"What would you have me do, Master?" Shion asked, though part of him already knew the answer and thrilled at the prospect.
Tsuyari's smile was like the first crack appearing in a perfect gem. "Return to them. Let them find you. Let them believe they've rescued their lost friend. And when they trust you completely, when they've lowered every guard and opened every heart..."
The throne room filled with the sound of reality tearing, a symphony of destruction that made Shion's enhanced abilities sing in harmony.
"Show them the true face of strength. Show them what you've become. And in doing so, shatter every illusion they hold about friendship, loyalty, and love."
"It will be done, Master," Shion said, and meant it with every fiber of his transformed being.
As the throne room dissolved around him, returning him to the pocket dimension for final preparations, Shion felt something he hadn't experienced in weeks—anticipation tinged with genuine excitement.
Soon, he would see his former companions again. Soon, he would have the chance to free them from their weaknesses as he had been freed from his.
And if they resisted that gift, if they clung to their illusions of connection and meaning...
Well, then he would simply have to be more persuasive.
After all, love was just another word for weakness. And weakness, as he had learned so thoroughly, was a luxury that only the defeated could afford.
The boy who had once sketched pictures of his friends was gone forever. In his place stood something sharper, colder, and infinitely more dangerous—a weapon aimed at the heart of everything he had once held sacred.
And he had never felt more free.