The ruin crouched on the wasteland like a broken knuckle, its walls of black glass leaning inward as if guarding a secret too fragile to breathe. Akihiro skidded to a halt at its heart, chest heaving, eyes locked on the shard that hung in the air—an amber tear of light, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The beasts were already closing.
They came out of the fracture-lines in the earth—slung shadows with glinting claws, bodies half-formed and hungry. Their eyes were polished hollows. Their teeth were edges of mirror.
Akihiro planted his feet.
Power shuddered through him, wild and hot, the seal Cai Lin had placed on him barely corralling the storm. He thrust his palm forward; a rush of energy ripped the first beast in half, scattering it like black sand. A second pounced—he ducked under it, pivoted, struck. His control lagged behind his speed; every blow landed like a thunderclap, every miss cracked another panel of the ruin.
"Too much—" He ground his teeth, forcing his breathing to match the rhythm he'd learned in the cave. "Hold together."
More shadows poured in.
Pain flared behind his sternum. A small, luminous figure unfurled above his shoulder—a child made of his own light, the Nascent Spirit that mirrored his soul. It lifted its tiny hand as he lifted his; together they launched a white-hot arc that seared a path through the pack. The ruin boomed. Splinters of glass-light rained.
Then the child faltered.
A hairline fracture streaked across its chest—thin as a cobweb, bright as a star-scratch. Akihiro felt it like a blade drawn across his ribs. The crack spread. The Spirit-child's face pinched in silent pain. He staggered, breath lurching; his vision doubled; the storm inside him unbound.
"Stop— stop—!"
He dropped to one knee. The beasts tasted weakness and surged. His core lurched, bucked, tore. He felt the shape of himself begin to come apart—body from soul, breath from bone.
The shard pulsed.
Akihiro…
The voice was soft and aching and older than his memory. Warmth threaded through the ruin's cold. He turned his head toward the light, eyes burning.
"Mother?"
Within the shard, a woman's silhouette shimmered—dark hair like spilled ink, eyes violet and gentle even as they flickered. Muwan Tsukihara. A ghost pressed against the glass between worlds.
Your spirit cannot endure alone, her voice said, not to his ears but inside his breaking core. Let me in. I can hold you together.
He shook his head, teeth clenched against another tearing surge. "If you enter— you'll fade."
Better to live within you than die apart, she whispered. Better to be your strength than your shadow. My son—let me in.
The Nascent Child cracked again. A line of light leapt across Akihiro's vision; blood touched his tongue like iron.
He closed his eyes. "Come."
The shard shattered without sound.
Light rushed him—warm, tidal, absolute. It slipped through his skin and into his core, pooling around the fissures, threading the breaks with silk-fire. He felt her hands—no, her will—catch the Nascent Child before it fell apart, press its jagged halves together, bind it with a halo of violet-gold. The child blinked, steadied, breathed. So did he.
The storm quieted.
His ribs stopped wrenching against his breath; his pulse found a shape. He lifted his head as the last of the beasts hesitated, sensing the sudden stillness in their prey. A single gesture scattered them into smoke.
Silence settled in the ruin's chest.
There, his mother murmured from within him, and he realized the sound now lived in the marrow of his thoughts. Now you are safe. I am here. You will not be alone again.
He pressed his palm to his sternum. Heat bloomed there, steady and gentle—her presence anchoring his core, the child-spirit curled against her like a candle cupped in two hands.
"Mother… how?"
I am a fragment only—a soul caught in a shard. But within you, I can be more. I can guide. I can warn.
Her warmth dimmed, not with weakness but with gravity.
Listen carefully, Akihiro. Our clan did not fall by accident. The Tsukihara, the Kagetora… we were betrayed. Turned against by whispers woven into law. By a will that watches from above.
The air thickened. The ruin's reflective surfaces rippled as if her words disturbed the skin of the world.
"By who?" His voice was rasp and thread.
She hesitated—just long enough for the hairs along his arms to rise.
The Shadow Saint, she said, and the name entered him like a cold nail.
Goosebumps raced over his skin. His Nascent Child shivered against the glow, then clutched tighter. The ruin's walls creaked; a hairline of blackness veined a panel of glass and vanished.
He comes from the Deep World—an upper realm where the laws are whole and terrible. He turned clan against clan. He orchestrated the massacres. He has watched you since you drew your first breath.
Akihiro tasted the metallic edge of fear beneath his tongue. He forced his mouth to form the syllables, as if saying them would teach him not to flinch.
"…The Shadow Saint."
The ruin answered with a tremor. Light guttered. A draft threaded the corridor smelling of ash and old thunder.
Footsteps whispered at the threshold.
Cai Lin stepped from the doorway, cloak trailing a seam of star-dark. Her face was wan but composed, a queen sleeved in exhaustion and iron. Violet-gold eyes flicked from him to the quiet glow in his chest, then to the quivering reflections along the wall.
"You would've died," she said softly, the admonition edged with something like relief. "If not for her."
He managed a breath that was almost a laugh. "I know."
Her gaze lingered on him—a longer linger on his sternum, where the light pulsed. Something quick and human moved behind her eyes—jealousy's shadow, curiosity's burn—then settled into the inscrutable calm of a ruler.
"Can you stand?"
He rose. The Nascent Child rose with him, a small star tucked into the curve of his aura. He bowed his head, not to Cai Lin, not to the ruin, but to the warmth inside him.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Always, his mother said, and the word wrapped him like a shawl against the cold.
They turned to leave.
The ruin breathed.
Every shard-facing in the hall turned at once—as if each pane were a head and each head now watched them. The temperature dropped; their breaths silvered. Cai Lin went very still. The light behind her irises narrowed to a ring.
"…He knows," she murmured, not looking at him, not looking away.
A sound came then, thin and perfect as the first crack in ice.
A chuckle.
Not loud. Not cruel. The kind of laugh a patient man gives to a chessboard when the last piece slides into place exactly as he predicted.
"So," said a voice that did not echo because it did not need to. Smooth, faintly amused, close and far at once. "The boy of balance has finally learned the first true name."
Every reflection wore no face, and yet Akihiro felt every one of them smile.
"Run," Cai Lin said, very calmly.
Akihiro did not move. He could not. The voice had weight; it pressed on his bones and on the tiny star inside him until he thought both might crack again. Then his mother's warmth swelled—a countercurrent, a hand between him and the cold.
Breathe, she said. You are not alone.
He inhaled. The weight lessened—not gone, never gone—but enough. He and Cai Lin backed out of the ruin with their eyes on the glass.
The voice did not speak again.
Outside, the wasteland stretched, silent and scorched, the fractured sky taut as a drum. Akihiro pressed his hand to his chest and felt the pulse in his palm answer the pulse beneath.
Lost no longer.
Found, at last.