The river lapped softly at the shore as Jimmy and Luna stood at its edge.
Behind them: the madness of the monkey Whisps, the trees torn apart, the final echo of a king's roar fading into jungle silence.
Before them: calm water stretching endlessly, glassy and silver in the late light. The river should've felt like safety—an escape route. But something about it felt… too quiet.
Jimmy looked out over the water and adjusted his blindfold slightly. He couldn't see, but he didn't need to. His instincts had already begun whispering. Too quiet. Too still. Too easy.
Luna's tail flicked, unsettled. "Should we… really cross here?"
Jimmy didn't answer immediately. He checked the bridge marker on his map. Still too far east, too deep in hostile territory.
He looked down at Luna, who was catching her breath, flanks rising and falling.
"We don't have a choice," he finally said. "The longer we stay, the more attention we draw. We cross fast."
Luna nodded slowly and stepped into the water. Jimmy climbed onto her back once more, feeling her muscles ripple under his grip.
"On three," he whispered.
She lowered her body, hooves sparking with energy. "Then we make it fast."
"One…"
"Two…"
"Three."
Luna blasted forward, summoning her Aqua Charge. A tunnel of rippling water pushed beneath her, propelling them forward like a torpedo across the mirror-like surface.
Spray lashed around them. The world narrowed into speed and breath.
But just as they reached the centre—the middle of the river, where the banks were no longer visible and the current was no longer flowing—
Luna slowed.
.................
The moment they hit mid-river, everything changed.
The water beneath them stilled—too still.
No sound of birds. No ripple of fish. Even the trees on the bank felt miles away, as if the world itself had paused to observe.
Luna slowed instinctively, hooves gliding over the surface. The glow from her mane flickered—soft, uncertain.
Jimmy gripped her neck tighter. His voice was low. "Why'd we stop?"
Luna didn't answer.
Neither did the river.
Instead, it exhaled.
A heavy, silver-grey mist rose from the water's surface, spiralling upward in slow, deliberate coils like smoke from a funeral pyre. Cold swept over them—not the bite of air, but the kind that gnawed on bone.
Jimmy's skin prickled. "This isn't natural fog," he muttered. "It's sensing us… adjusting."
Luna's voice echoed softly in his mind. "Something's forming. Centre of the river. I can feel its pull."
Her breath shortened. "I'm… losing charge," she whispered. "Water here… it won't obey. I can't pull energy from it. It's like it belongs to something else."
Then, without warning, the water ahead of them erupted.
WHOOOOMPH!
A vortex. A violent, vertical cyclone surged upward, spiraling into a skyward tower of water. Spray tore through the mist. Power howled within the column.
And inside its heart—a silhouette.
"Luna, back—" Jimmy started.
But she was already frozen, body trembling under his grip. Her breathing had changed.
Jimmy's unease deepened. He turned his face into the wind, listening past the roar, the silence, the pull in the air.
The river wasn't just still. It was held. Controlled.
Then he saw them—lotus blossoms.
Scattered across the surface of the river like drifting stars. Dozens of them—blue, violet, translucent white—but none moved with the current.
Unmoving. Timeless. Watching.
"Why aren't they moving?" Jimmy whispered.
Luna didn't answer.
She didn't know.
Suddenly, the mist flickered.
One moment it was there—thick and real—and then, for a heartbeat, it wasn't.
Then it was back again.
Like it was blinking.
Sensing. Testing.
Jimmy could feel something deep within the mist watching them.
A pressure settled over the river. Even time slowed.
Then—light burst from the cyclone's core.
Luna screamed.
Jimmy's heart thundered.
The cyclone exploded outward in a shockwave of mist and churning water. Both of them almost came near the 1/4 th of the river again.
And a figure descended.
..................
It wasn't a bird.
It was a Whisp.
A ghostly, elegant water-flying entity that hovered above the dying cyclone like a ruler above its drowned kingdom. Its body resembled a loon—but larger, older, wrong. Its feathers weren't just dark—they shimmered, shifting between deep ink-blue and liquid silver, like stars frozen on the surface of a black ocean. Veins of pale white pulsed underneath its wings—slow, steady, unnatural.
Its eyes?
Solid white voids.
Not blind. Not glowing. Just empty.
And yet… they saw everything.
Around its neck, five glowing rings floated. Not touching, not swinging—just there, like ripples in time locked mid-echo. They rotated slowly, quietly, without resistance—as if the world bent itself around them.
Luna crouched low, her legs shaking, hooves barely steady on the still water. Her breath came slow, her voice like a low growl:
"That's not natural. That's a...."
Jimmy's fingers instinctively tapped the side of his Data Sphere, calling up the Sphere's scan.
A flicker of blue light danced over the ghostly shape above the cyclone—its wings still outstretched like a shadow stitched to the mist.
The Data Sphere chimed once…Then stuttered.
—Scanning…—Whisp Detected…… …Error.
The screen blinked, then filled with static glyphs—runic spirals, broken code, a frozen loading sigil.
Jimmy frowned. "What?"
Then—only a single word pulsed in glowing letters:
Name: CERELUNEClassification: ———Type: ————Status: tittititit... only sound came.Aggression Level: tittititit... only sound came.Control Level: tittititit... only sound came.Origin: tittititit... only sound came.
Relic Signature: ✓
The rest of the screen glitched—sigils twisting in place, digital noise hissing faintly from the device. The Data Sphere whirred unnaturally, then dimmed as if afraid to speak.
Luna's growl echoed through the mist.
"It broke the scan," Jimmy muttered. "Even the Sphere can't read it…"
..........................
Jimmy's stomach twisted.
Relic-Class.
Not a common rank. Not even legendary.
Relic-Class Whisps didn't exist in the usual way.
They weren't born.
They weren't bred.
They weren't found in eggs, caught in capsules, or raised from sync.
They were remembered.
Born from deep places—abandoned temples, forgotten rivers, dead oceans. Some said they were the emotions of nature made flesh. Others called them echoes—fragments of old Whisps who refused to die properly.
Their body fades, but the memory lingers, and one day… the world responds.
The water remembers.
The sky remembers.
And the form returns—without a master. Without a will to obey.
No control. No pattern. Only instinct.
The five rings around Cerelune's neck didn't pulse like an ability.
Jimmy's breath trembled.
..............................................
Then—
A flicker.
Just ahead of Cerelune, in the swirling mist above the dead-still water, something manifested—half-formed, half-memory.
A shrine.
Not of stone or wood, but of woven silver roots and white coral, suspended mid-air. An altar afloat, etched with glowing lotus symbols that pulsed like distant stars. The water beneath it didn't ripple. The mist dared not touch it.
Then—blink.Gone.Like it had never been.
As if reality itself had rejected the memory.
Jimmy's voice was a hushed gasp. "Did you see—?"
"Yes," Luna whispered, still frozen. "But… it didn't want to be seen."
Cerelune was closer now.
Its wings hardly moved, but its form glided forward, slow and deliberate—like a spirit ignoring gravity. Its five halo-like rings rotated gently, casting rings of light across the water. The loon's pale, solid-white eyes bore into Jimmy's face. No malice. No warmth.
Only ancient awareness.
Jimmy swallowed hard. The air around them had changed. The river, which moments ago had frozen in psychic tension, began to twist.
Wind spiraled.
The mist was pulled into the air like threads on a spindle. Water spun upward into a thin cyclone—not violent, but ceremonial. A pillar rising in reverse, cradling the sky.
And still—Cerelune hovered, only feet away now, gazing at him as if to ask:
Will you reach for it?
Then—
A lotus flower floated toward him.One of the glowing, unmoving lotuses that had watched silently from the river's surface. Except this one moved. It glided straight across the water, untouched by current, like it had chosen him.
It paused just before his chest.
A single breath passed.
Jimmy, trembling, raised his hand. His fingers brushed the outermost petal—
And everything shattered.
Light flared silently.The cyclone dissolved into fine vapor.Cerelune faded into the air like a ripple too soft to echo.
The mist collapsed. The banks returned. The river flowed again.
Jimmy and Luna crashed to the far shore, soaked, wounded, hearts pounding.
They gasped. Luna's legs shook. Jimmy's blindfold stuck to his skin with blood and water.
"...It's over?" she rasped.
Jimmy looked back toward the river, hand still outstretched.
The lotus was gone.
Cerelune was gone.
Cerelune faded like a dream melting from memory.
Jimmy and Luna coughed, gasping. Wet. Wounded. Real.
They stumbled forward—and collapsed on the opposite riverbank.
.............................
Luna groaned. "ononnnn...It's over?"
Jimmy didn't answer at first.
His breath misted in the quiet. His heart still raced. And then—
A presence.
He looked up.
At the far edge of the river, where light bled gold into mist, a figure stood.
Cloaked in dark cerulean, hood pulled low over their face. Their robe moved with the wind like flowing ink. In one hand they held a slender, silver rod, etched with faint glyphs that shimmered like moonlight dancing on water.
They weren't threatening.
Just... waiting.
The figure's voice came—not loud, yet it cut through distance like a whisper carved into wind:
"You are the... no. Time will speak.Goodbye. Take care.And don't lose control over him."
Jimmy rose slowly, one hand on Luna's back.
"Who are you?" he called across.
But the figure didn't answer that.
Instead, they lifted their head slightly, voice soft—but heavy with meaning:
"Don't be lonely.Don't do everything alone.Find the real ones…The ones who remember you."
Jimmy flinched. Luna glanced toward him, confused—but quiet.
The figure's voice fell to a near murmur:
"And Cerelune… it is not an enemy.It is a mirror.A boundary between river and memory.Between instinct and fate."
The silver rod caught the setting sun as they raised it slightly.
"Walk further… and more will notice you.Not all will be kind."
Wind stirred through the trees behind them. The figure didn't move at first.
Then they turned, cloak brushing mist, footsteps silent.
Just before vanishing into the shadow of the woods, they said one last thing:
"When time shivers again…Remember what didn't happen."
And they were gone.
Like the shrine.
Like the mist.
Jimmy and Luna stood in stunned silence.Their heartbeats were loud now.Their breath visible.The world felt... real again.
Jimmy exhaled sharply, like waking from drowning.
He touched the riverbank. Wet. Cold. Earthy.
He whispered to himself, "It's moving again… the script's writing again."
Luna sat beside him, curling her legs beneath. Her mane flickered faintly.
Jimmy turned, eyes scanning the trees.
But the figure had truly vanished.
Only his own shadow remained.
Then, a voice echoed—not from outside, but within, soft and fading:
"Don't search for me.Don't hold your anguish.It will only burn you down.Goodbye…Win here—and in life, too.Find true friends.Let fate be with you."
Jimmy saw towards dripping sun, with his unseen sense.
Then he stood, slowly, and helped Luna to her feet.She was still damp, and trembling slightly.
He pulled out the last of the pkrill-fruit. They shared it wordlessly, biting quietly, healing with soft flickers of glow. Luna sparked a little warmth with her electricity. Jimmy let the water coil around his shoulders for warmth, hands hovering with a survival spell.
The sun was sinking fast. The river faded behind them like a secret.
The road ahead twisted into the shadowed woods, thick with danger.
Too far to reach shelter before nightfall.
"We'll camp here," Jimmy said finally, scanning a dry patch beneath a curved root.
Luna gave a soft grunt. "Safe for now?"
Jimmy knelt beside her, unpacking tools. "Nothing is safe anymore."
"But we'll be ready."
She nodded, curling closer as he set a warding ring of stones and water beads.
Above them, the stars blinked awake.
......................................
But deep within the fading light, beyond the river's edge and resting wind, something stirred—unknown, unseen, and waiting. A new danger. A deeper mystery. And Jimmy, whether he knew it or not, was already walking toward it.