The corridors of Raezthera's capital stretched endlessly before them, carved from ice that never melted and stone that never weathered. Yunrei and Kurojin walked in silence, their footsteps echoing off crystalline walls that reflected their forms in fractured, prismatic light.
Neither spoke for several minutes.
The weight of their conversation with Tsuyari hung between them like a physical presence, heavy and suffocating. Both Trueborns had lived for centuries, had witnessed countless deceptions and manipulations, had seen through lies that would fool lesser beings.
But this time, something felt different.
Wrong.
Kurojin was the first to break the silence.
"He was telling the truth."
His voice carried no emotion, just the flat certainty of someone who had spent millennia distinguishing fact from fiction.
Yunrei nodded slowly.
"That's what concerns me."
They passed beneath an archway of living ice, its surface pulsing with soft blue light that responded to their presence. The light dimmed as they moved deeper into Yunrei's domain, as if even the very essence of the place sensed their troubled thoughts.
"People don't simply vanish," Kurojin continued.
"Not from Vilaris. Not without leaving traces."
"And yet they do."
Yunrei stopped walking and turned to face his companion. His green eyes held depths that seemed to contain entire lifetimes of accumulated knowledge.
"First the boy. Now these... gaps."
"Gaps?"
"In our understanding. In our memories." Yunrei's jaw tightened. "When I try to trace back the events leading to the attack, there are moments that feel... hollow. As if something has been removed."
Kurojin's black eyes narrowed.
"Removed by whom?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
Yunrei resumed walking, his pace slower now, more contemplative. They were approaching the heart of his domain, where the temporal energies were strongest and his connection to the flow of time was absolute.
"Tsuyari claims ignorance. And my power tells me he speaks truly. But truth can be shaped, just like time. It can be edited, refined, made to serve purposes its original form never intended."
"You suspect manipulation at a level beyond normal deception."
"I suspect," Yunrei said carefully, "that we may be dealing with something far more dangerous than simple lies."
They reached the entrance to Yunrei's private chambers, a massive door of crystallized time that showed glimpses of past and future in its translucent depths. Kurojin paused at the threshold.
"Will you be conducting a deeper investigation?"
Yunrei's hand rested on the door's surface, and for a moment, the crystal showed a brief flash of events yet to come. Or perhaps events that had already happened, in some other timeline.
"Yes. But not in the way you might expect."
"Then I'll leave you to your work."
Kurojin turned to go, then stopped.
"Yunrei."
"Yes?"
"If you discover that one of us has been compromised..."
"You'll be the first to know."
Kurojin nodded and disappeared into the shadows between one moment and the next, leaving Yunrei alone with his growing certainty that nothing about this situation was what it seemed.
Deep within Dravon's volcanic heart, where the air shimmered with heat and the ground cracked with contained power, an arena had been carved from living obsidian.
It was not a place of sport or entertainment.
It was a forge for weapons of flesh and bone.
The crowd that surrounded the circular pit was unlike any found elsewhere in Vilaris. These were not spectators come to watch displays of skill or artistry. They were predators, drawn by the scent of violence and the promise of witnessing something break.
Or be broken.
In the center of the arena, two figures circled each other with deadly grace.
The first was a mountain of muscle and scar tissue, a Tier 4 warrior whose skin had been hardened by years of exposure to essence fire. His movements were those of someone who had never known defeat, never experienced doubt. Power radiated from him like heat from a forge.
The second figure was smaller. Leaner.
Deadlier.
Shion Enther moved like liquid shadow, his silver-blue hair catching the light from the lava channels that ringed the arena. His teal eyes held no emotion, no recognition of the cheering crowd or the massive opponent before him.
They held only purpose.
The larger warrior lunged forward, his fists trailing streams of molten essence. The attack would have pulverized stone, would have reduced most fighters to ash and memory.
Shion wasn't there when it arrived.
He had moved between one heartbeat and the next, flowing around the strike like water around a stone. His own counterattack came from an impossible angle, precise and surgical and absolutely final.
The crowd fell silent.
The mountain of muscle toppled, his eyes vacant, his essence flow severed at three critical points. Not dead – Tsuyari had forbidden unnecessary killing – but broken in ways that would take months to heal.
If they could be healed at all.
Shion straightened slowly, his breathing steady despite the violence he had just unleashed. His movements were controlled, economical, stripped of all unnecessary flourish.
Mechanical.
Around the arena, the crowd began to disperse. There had been no drama in this fight, no back-and-forth struggle to provide entertainment. Just clinical, efficient destruction delivered by someone who had forgotten how to feel satisfaction in victory.
Or anything else.
As the spectators filed out, murmuring among themselves about the cold precision they had witnessed, Shion remained in the center of the arena. He stood perfectly still, his eyes focused on something only he could see.
Or something he was trying not to see.
The training chambers beneath the arena were a maze of corridors carved directly from the volcanic rock. Each room served a different purpose – weapons training, essence manipulation, psychological conditioning, pain tolerance.
Shion had mastered them all.
He walked through the labyrinth now with the confidence of someone who knew every passage, every trap, every secret these depths contained. His footsteps echoed off the stone walls, but he paid them no attention. His mind was focused inward, reviewing the fight he had just won and cataloging the techniques he had used.
Target acquisition: optimal. Strike placement: precise. Essence expenditure: minimal. Overall efficiency: 94.7%.
The clinical analysis came automatically, a habit drilled into him through years of relentless training. Every action was measured, every result quantified, every weakness identified for elimination.
He had not always thought this way.
Had he?
The question flickered through his mind and was immediately suppressed. Speculation about the past was inefficient, a waste of mental resources that could be better applied to future improvement. Tsuyari had taught him that. Had taught him many things.
Important things.
Shion reached his personal chambers and stepped inside. The room was sparse, functional. A bed, a desk, weapon racks along the walls. No decorations, no personal mementos, no photographs or keepsakes from a life that might have existed before.
Because there had been no life before.
Had there?
Again, the question. Again, the immediate suppression.
Shion moved to the weapon racks and selected a curved blade, its edge gleaming with essence-forged sharpness. He began the ritual of maintenance, checking the balance, testing the weight, ensuring every component was perfect.
As he was perfect.
As Tsuyari had made him perfect.
The thought brought a warmth to his chest, a rare moment of something that might have been called satisfaction. Lord Tsuyari had found him when he was weak, had seen potential where others saw only failure, had offered him power and purpose when he had nothing.
Nothing?
But surely he had possessed something before. Family? Friends? A name that meant more than just an identifier?
Shion's hands stilled on the blade.
For a moment – just a moment – he felt a strange sense of loss. As if something important had been taken from him, something whose absence left a hollow space in his chest.
Then the feeling passed, buried beneath layers of conditioning and mental discipline.
Weakness. Tsuyari had warned him about such moments. The mind's tendency to cling to obsolete patterns, to mourn things that had never truly mattered.
Shion resumed his weapon maintenance, his movements precise and unwavering.
He was perfect. He served a perfect master. Nothing else was relevant.
Nothing else existed.
The blade was flawless now, its edge sharp enough to cut through essence itself if properly applied. Shion held it up to the light, admiring the way the volcanic glow played across its surface.
Beautiful. Functional. Deadly.
Like him.
He was about to return the weapon to its rack when something flickered at the edge of his vision.
A face.
For just an instant, he saw someone looking back at him from the blade's reflection. Not his own face, but that of another young man. Someone with white hair and ice-blue eyes, someone whose expression held warmth and concern and...
Recognition.
Shion's hand trembled.
The face in the reflection seemed to be speaking, lips moving to form words he couldn't hear. Words that felt important, urgent, like a message from somewhere far away.
Or somewhen far away.
"Shion..."
The voice was barely a whisper, but it cut through the silence of his chambers like a blade through silk. It carried with it the weight of memory, of friendship, of bonds that had once meant everything.
Once?
When had there been a once?
Shion stared at the blade, searching for the face again. But the reflection showed only his own features now – silver-blue hair, teal eyes, the carefully neutral expression he had worn for so long it had become natural.
No. Not natural. Trained.
The realization struck him like a physical blow.
He had been trained to wear this face. Trained to think these thoughts. Trained to forget...
Forget what?
The question burned in his mind, demanding an answer he didn't possess. Or perhaps an answer he had possessed once, before it was taken from him.
Before he gave it away.
Shion set the blade down with shaking hands. His breath came in short, sharp gasps as something deep inside him began to crack. The perfect mental discipline that had defined him for years was developing fissures, hairline fractures that let in glimpses of something else.
Someone else.
Who had he been before?
What had he lost?
And why did that face in the blade seem so familiar, so important, so...
Beloved?
The word came from nowhere and everywhere at once, carrying with it a flood of emotion that he hadn't felt in years. Warmth. Affection. The kind of deep, unshakeable bond that existed between people who had chosen each other as family.
Family.
He had family. Friends. People who cared about him, who missed him, who were probably looking for him even now.
Shion collapsed into the chair by his desk, his perfect composure finally cracking.
What had Tsuyari done to him?
What had he allowed Tsuyari to do to him?
The questions multiplied, each one bringing with it a fresh wave of horror and understanding. He had been remade, reshaped, turned into something that served another's will without question or hesitation.
A weapon.
A tool.
A puppet.
But puppets could have their strings cut.
And for the first time in years, Shion Enther began to remember what it felt like to want something for himself.
The moment of clarity didn't last.
It couldn't. The conditioning was too strong, too deeply embedded in his psyche. Within minutes, the cracks in his mental discipline began to seal themselves, the forbidden questions fading back into the shadows where they belonged.
Where Tsuyari had put them.
Shion stood up slowly, his breathing returning to normal. The trembling in his hands stopped. The expression of neutral competence settled back over his features like a familiar mask.
But something had changed.
Something small, almost imperceptible, but real.
A seed.
He returned to his weapon maintenance with mechanical precision, checking and rechecking every blade, every edge, every point. To any observer, he would have appeared exactly as he had before – the perfect servant, the ideal weapon, the loyal disciple.
But in the deepest part of his mind, in a place even Tsuyari's conditioning couldn't quite reach, a single image remained.
White hair. Ice-blue eyes. A friend's face filled with concern.
Itsuki.
The name came to him like a whisper from another life, and though he couldn't remember where he had heard it or what it meant, he held onto it with desperate determination.
Shion finished his work and prepared for sleep, unaware that miles away, in a crystalline chamber where time itself bent to its master's will, Yunrei was watching the flow of moments and seeing gaps where memories should be.
Unaware that the game was about to change.
Unaware that the puppet's strings, no matter how strong, could still be cut.
If someone cared enough to try.