CHAPTER 13
The island did not wait for Orion to breathe.
The moment he stepped past the shoreline where the woman had stood, the world shifted—quietly, violently, like a continent-sized beast rolling beneath its own skin. The ground pulsed once, and the air thickened as if he had stepped through an unseen membrane. His boots sank an inch into black soil that writhed like living ink, soaking around his ankles before solidifying again.
The island had accepted him.
Or trapped him.
He kept walking.
The wind carried a faint metallic note—old blood, old memories, old storms crushed into silence. The ocean behind him churned but did not follow. It was as if the waves themselves refused to cross the invisible boundary he had passed through.
The deeper he went, the louder everything became.
The earth breathed.
The sky murmured.
The trees whispered.
Black bamboo rose around him in tall spears, their hollow bodies knocking against each other with a rhythm that seemed deliberate. Every chime echoed in his bones. He didn't need instincts to tell him—the forest was alive in a way forests should never be.
His head throbbed again.
It was the same pain he felt whenever the woman appeared.
But she was nowhere now. Only the forest of black bamboo stretching endlessly in every direction. And somewhere, in its center, the presence that the woman said he was meant to meet.
He exhaled slowly and moved deeper.
Each step stirred the fog swirling around the ground. It clung to him, thick and cold, slipping beneath his coat and brushing his skin like hands reaching from below the earth. Memories flickered inside his mind as the haze touched him—memories not entirely his.
A battlefield of upside-down mountains.
A river flowing backward.
A silhouette standing among collapsing stars.
His body stiffened. He tried to push the visions away, but the fog tightened, feeding him echoes of another life. A life that felt far too close to his own.
Then the island shifted again.
He felt it—not through his senses, but through something deeper. Like reality itself took a breath, preparing to reveal something.
The bamboo parted.
A clearing opened before him, circular, perfect, unnatural. The fog swirled inward as if bowing toward the center.
And someone stood there.
Orion stopped walking.
At first he thought it was a stranger. A figure draped in long, dark garments, hair tied loosely behind his head. A sword rested on his back—black, ancient, humming softly with a resonance nearly identical to the blade Orion carried.
But then the figure lifted his head.
And Orion froze.
The man's face was familiar.
Too familiar.
As if carved from the very same mirror Orion carried within his memory.
The same jawline.
The same gray eyes.
The same quiet, ruthless calm.
Older.
Colder.
But undeniably him.
The fog rippled.
The figure smiled—slowly, tiredly, like someone who had been awake for centuries.
"Good," he said. "You came earlier than I expected."
Orion's fingers slid toward his sword, not out of fear but instinct.
"Who are you?"
The man tilted his head, amused.
"You already know."
The bamboo trembled behind him. The entire island seemed to lean closer, listening.
Orion didn't blink. "Are you… my past self?"
"No," the man replied calmly. "I am the version of you who walked this island before time remembered your name."
Silence.
Even the wind paused.
The man continued.
"I erased my existence from the Black Shores records. Every trace. Every echo. Even the gods cannot find me anymore."
Orion felt his pulse slow. The Black Shores—the ancient archive said to hold all recorded history of the world—could not be altered by anyone below a Primordial.
But this man had erased himself from it.
"Why?" Orion asked.
The man stepped closer, fog curling around him like a loyal pet.
"Because you needed to walk forward without carrying my sins."
The air thickened. The forest leaned in. His words weren't dramatic.
They were heavy enough to bend space.
The man stopped an arm's length away and reached out, placing a hand against Orion's chest.
Orion felt something click inside him—like a lock recognizing its key.
"My time ends here," the man whispered. "Yours begins."
The forest roared.
The ground shook.
Reality folded inward.
The man's body dissolved into stardust, collapsing into Orion like water crashing into a vessel. Power surged through his veins. His heartbeat staggered, then thundered, breaking past the limits of mortality.
His vision blurred.
Wings—twelve—sprang behind him in a silent explosion of eclipse light.
Space bent around him.
Time slowed to a crawl.
Light and darkness spun like twin storms at his back.
The island screamed as it felt a myth awakening.
Orion dropped to one knee, gritting his teeth as his body transformed—bones stretching, shadow-glass skin forming, galaxies flickering beneath his flesh.
The Eclipse Paragon Beast inside him roared.
His Space Eye opened—stars swirling.
His Time Eye ignited—timelines unfurling.
His aura twisted the clearing into a sphere where past and future overlapped.
When the transformation settled, Orion rose slowly, exhaling a breath that bent the bamboo around him.
Stage 1.
He wasn't dreaming. He wasn't hallucinating.
He had awakened his Mythical Creature—formally and completely.
And the memories of his past self flowed through him like a new heartbeat.
He stared at his own hands, wrapped in stars and eclipse wisps.
His voice was calm, but the forest trembled when he spoke.
"…I see."
Everything made sense now.
Why the island called him.
Why the woman warned him.
Why the ocean held its breath.
He was no longer walking into a mystery.
He was walking into a past he had forgotten—and a future only he could reach.
The island quieted.
The bamboo bowed.
And Orion walked forward, his twelve wings spreading behind him, darkening the fog with cosmic shadow.
The war of gods had begun.