A hush settled over Orahm as twilight bled into a violet dusk. Crystalline domes glittered like half‑buried constellations, the city's glass arteries humming with the faint resonance awakened by Shin Soma's presence. The party had made camp at the outskirts of the Celestial Sundial, but no one found rest in the thinning desert air.
The day's traps had taxed both mind and muscle. Now, gathered around a modest brazier filled with lunar tinder, the five companions ate in silence, each lost in thoughts they dared not voice. Time felt oddly fluid inside the city. Sun dipped too slowly, moon rose too soon. Even the constellations seemed to lean closer, curious about the mortals traversing this forgotten ground.
Shin poked at the brazier's coals, the orb balanced on his knee. Though he masked fatigue behind a steady expression, sharp eyes in the group noticed faint tremors in his hand. Laverna, seated beside him, rested her palm over his, stilling the motion. He offered a smile that spoke gratitude and exhaustion at once.
"We should sleep in shifts," Zera said, glancing toward the dark arches. "I do not trust this peace."
Maika agreed. "The air feels… charged." She glanced skyward, where one of Orahm's translucent domes acted as a lens, redoubling the moon's glow back onto their camp.
Tessara remained apart from the circle, kneeling at the fringe of the Sundial's lower terrace. Her blindfolded eyes seemed fixed on a distant star that the others could not see. She hummed low, half‑formed syllables. Shin caught the cadence—an old hymn used by caretakers of the Kagetsu no Men.
"Rest," he said quietly to them all. "Tomorrow we push deeper."
He did not say what each of them sensed: that the city's heart waited ahead, but only the worthy would be permitted passage.
Night deepened. Wind slithered through streets, carrying the faint scent of glass warmed by the day's sun. Zera took first watch, pacing the perimeter with Clarent unsheathed but resting on her shoulder.
Inside the tent, Shin drifted into an uneasy doze beside Laverna. Maika lay near the entrance, staff at arm's reach. Tessara meditated cross‑legged on a slab of moonstone. Above them, a single lantern glowed softly, flickering like a heartbeat.
At the stroke of some unseen hour, the lantern's flame elongated, stretching thin threads of light across the tent. The threads crawled along canvas, touching sleeping eyelids, slipping beneath dreamscapes.
Outside, Zera halted mid‑stride. Her vision blurred. Clarent's blade refracted dim moons into a kaleidoscope of colors. She blinked, and the courtyard around her melted like sand under rain.
Laverna found herself on her knees in a corridor she knew too well—the servants' wing of the Lichtenstein Manor. The stones were not desert-chilled but damp with morning frost that never left the underground quarters. The air reeked of mildew, dog fur, and the coppery scent of old blood.
Her wrists ached as cold iron bit into her skin. The manacles—familiar, hateful—linked her hands with short, brutal efficiency. Panic twisted in her chest. She tried to summon her jamadhars, but her limbs felt like wax. Weak. Starved. Like she had been on the day Thomas Lichtenstein ordered her to scrub the manor stairs with torn hands while his dogs watched, growling.
A heavy door creaked open.
"Still filthy," said a voice coated in disdain. Thomas himself, tall and gaunt with a cane made from a fox's femur, stood in the archway. Behind him, his wife Magdalene appeared, her gloved hand pressing a perfumed cloth to her nose. "Even the stench of bleach can't mask the beast in her."
Ronald, the eldest son, smirked from behind his mother. Charles and Gavin flanked him like shadows, sneering down at her. But it was Abigail—the youngest—who stepped forward, dressed in white, her hands clasped behind her back, her voice sickly sweet.
"She won't learn until she remembers what it means to beg," Abigail said. "Let's begin another trial. I improved the formula."
Laverna's legs trembled. Her body remembered the metal chair, the wires, the glass needles, the questions that never had right answers. Her arms bore phantom heat from where acids once burned. The girl who'd wanted to die in that lab still screamed in the back of her mind.
"You have no worth except as a vessel," Thomas spat. "A tool that regenerates. That is your gift, and your curse."
Laverna trembled. Abigail drew closer, reaching out with a scalpel shaped like a quill. "Let's carve the fox out and see what's underneath."
A pulse of heat flared at Laverna's abdomen.
The Crest.
A shimmer lit the chains. Her jamadhars ignited in her hands, blades of foxfire breaking through the illusion.
"I am not your pet," she whispered, rising slowly. "Not your experiment. Not your slave."
The Lichtensteins stepped back, suddenly unsure. Abigail's mask cracked. Thomas raised his cane—but it caught against Yoshimatsu's blade, appearing in midair with a crimson flare.
Shin stepped through a breach of light. "Laverna," he said, voice unwavering. "This is ash. Walk through the fire."
Laverna turned her back on the Lichtensteins. The manor began to collapse behind her, glass cracking in every direction as the laboratory dissolved into starlight.
She stepped into the breach beside Shin.
The corridor vanished, swallowed by the dream's end.
Clarent shook in Zera's grip. The courtyard she had patrolled was gone. Instead, the grand bailey of her homeland's keep stood ablaze. Banners of her father's house lay trampled. Corpses of knights and kin littered cracked flagstones.
She staggered forward, heart pounding. A child screamed. She turned and saw her younger self—an echo—dragged by renegade knights clad in red and gold colors. But it wasn't them that made her stomach drop.
In the center of the chaos, her father knelt before a tall knight in blackened plate armor, a blood-drenched cape fluttering behind her. A familiar sigil on the knight's chest was smeared beyond recognition, but Zera knew the way she stood, the way she moved.
The Caliburnus—her family's sacred blade—gleamed in the knight's grip.
"No," Zera breathed. "Not her."
The knight raised the sword without a word. Her father lifted his head, defiant to the end. The blade came down. The light in his eyes died.
"Traitor!" Zera screamed, charging. Clarent blazed in her hands.
But her blade passed through smoke. The knight didn't look at her. Didn't need to. Her presence was an open wound Zera couldn't close.
The younger Zera was thrown to the ground. The traitor turned and vanished into flame.
A hand clasped her shoulder. Shin stood beside her, solemn and unwavering. "This is guilt crafted into chains."
"I know her," Zera whispered. "I know her name. But I can't say it."
Shin guided her blade to the ground. "You honor your father by living. By forging new oaths."
Clarent flared brighter, its runes shifting. Flames receded. The phantom keep crumbled. The child-echo looked up and nodded, fading into petals of light. The keep faded. Zera inhaled clean desert air and stepped through Shin's breach.
Within the Sundial terrace, Tessara's meditations fractured. She stood suddenly in a stone cloister lined with obsidian pillars. Stark candles burned, their wax black, flames violet. Nuns of the Ebon Veil processed silently, faces hidden. She wore the same habit, hands folded over a book of forbidden hymns. The Mother Superior approached, masked in silver.
"You vowed silence," the Mother's voice echoed, dissonant. "You broke it to see visions. Now pay penance. Blindness is your curse, child. To seek meaning in those hallucinations is heresy. You defy the veil itself."
A ceremonial blade appeared. Tessara was ordered to bleed out her tongue. Her blindfold pulsed with inner moonlight. Terror drummed at the base of her skull. She felt again the weight of isolation, the pain of unsung songs. The shame drilled into her from youth bloomed once more—visions weren't gifts, they said. They were temptations.
"No," she whispered. Her voice echoed, breaking the vow. The nuns turned, shocked. Shadows stretched toward her.
With slow, deliberate hands, Tessara reached into her robe and withdrew the Kagetsu no Men. The porcelain mask shimmered as it met the candlelight, its delicate fox motif glowing with lunar sheen. She lifted it to her face and placed it over her blindfold.
The cloister trembled.
"You dare invoke that cursed relic?" the Mother Superior thundered, retreating a step. "That mask bears the moon's heresy!"
Tessara stood tall, voice no longer trembling. "My blindness is not a curse. My visions are not sin. They are the moon's blessing—and you are the ones who refused to see."
The mask flared, casting radiant silver across the obsidian halls. Shadows recoiled. The nuns faltered. The ceremonial blade clattered to the floor. Tessara raised her staff. "I do not walk in darkness. I sing for those still trapped in it."
Silver threads cut through gloom. Shin appeared, palm outstretched. "Your voice saved us. Your hymns guide us. They are not sin."
She stepped forward, moonlight flooding the cloister. The obsidian pillars cracked. The Ebon Veil's silence shattered. Tessara took Shin's hand, and together they passed through the breach as the cloister dissolved into starlight.
Maika found herself in the Loyalists' mountain fortress, but it was no longer the memory of a bastion—it was a ruin drenched in shadow. Screams echoed through smoke‑choked corridors. Blood slicked the once-proud banners. She ran barefoot, armor gone, breath ragged. Her kunais were missing.
"Where is my gear—where is my—?" she gasped. Her equipment was gone, but her fingers still twitched with the muscle memory of throwing a blade.
A door exploded off its hinges. Renegade Hi Okami stormed through the hallway. Maika turned a corner, only to see Loyalist defenders being cut down, one by one. They cried her name, reaching out as they fell. Her legs refused to move.
She stumbled into the throne room. General Goro, her father, lay slumped against the great chair. Blood soaked through his robes. Three Renegades held him upright, swords ready.
But there was a fourth.
Katsuro.
Her older brother stood at the foot of the throne, blade red with their father's blood.
"It had to be done," he said, voice calm, face unreadable. "Father clung to the old ways. The Hi Okami must evolve."
"You murdered him," Maika whispered, shaking.
Katsuro turned to her. "He made his choice. Now make yours. Swear loyalty, or be discarded like the rest."
Maika's kunai appeared in her hand—but she couldn't lift it. Her knees buckled. A Renegade seized her from behind. She struggled, screamed, but the dream crushed her lungs. The executioner raised his blade.
"No," she rasped. "Please, I'm still here—let me fight—"
The blade began to fall.
But Yoshimatsu caught it midair, red lightning shattering the mirage's rhythm. Shin stepped through a cleft in reality, his presence slicing the scene apart.
"Grief is love with nowhere to go," he said softly, meeting her eyes. "Let it go forward."
Maika gasped, breath returning like a sudden tide. Her kunai pulsed in her hand. Fire flared along her spine. She reached inward, summoning her solar flame. Her kunai ignited like miniature stars.
She threw one—then another. Each struck a Renegade through the heart. The final was for Katsuro. He watched it approach, eyes empty, before dissolving into light.
Maika ran to her father's side, only to watch him give her a soft, approving nod before he faded into sunlit particles. Tears streaked her face.
Then she stood, back straight, heart steady.
She stepped through the breach beside Shin, leaving the burning fortress behind.
One by one, Shin gathered them within a chamber of mirrored walls at the heart of the Celestial Sundial. They stood together, shaken but unbroken. Shin sheathed Yoshimatsu.
"You pulled us back," Zera said. "But who pulled you?"
He smiled faintly. "I trusted you would follow."
The mirrors around them rippled.
A final presence entered—not seen but felt. A shift in the air, a sound like fabric rustling in a windless room. The flames dimmed slightly. A silhouette formed in the mirror's reflection—no features visible, only the impression of a figure watching from beyond the veil.
"Who?" Tessara whispered.
No name was given.
A voice, clear and melodic yet distant as an echo in water, answered. "The Mirage tests the heart. I wished to see if the Light‑Born and his allies could face shadows without losing themselves."
Laverna stepped forward, tension still sharp in her stance. "You guided us?"
"I disrupted the last veil," the voice admitted. "Your resolve impressed me."
Shin's eyes narrowed. On the mirrored surface, a faint shimmer traced a symbol—an incomplete glyph. He studied it in silence.
"Why help us?" he asked.
"Because your dawnfire stirs the city," the voice replied. "And prophecy watches closely."
The chamber's floor began to glow. The mirrors softened into translucent windows revealing Orahm's sleeping streets below. Silver motes drifted upward like dust shaken loose from forgotten heavens.
"You stand on the threshold of Orahm's heart, young Fox-heir," the voice said. "Whether you cross it with me is yours to choose."
Shin nodded once, resolute. The glyph shimmered brighter.
And then, the presence faded like mist.
With their fears faced and a newfound ally revealed, the companions felt chains of memory loosen. Trust in unseen forces had guided them through illusions. Now they walked forward, ready to claim whatever truths the city still safeguarded.
Outside, dawn began its slow climb, spilling gold over crystal towers. Somewhere in the waking city, gears shifted in long‑slumbering mechanisms, sensing the Light‑Born's steady approach.