It happened after he found the balance.
After days—maybe weeks—of resisting the pull, guiding fragments of his soul into harmony with the fragile body of the girl below, Michel had finally done it.
He hadn't cured her. He hadn't saved her.
But he had given her enough balance to survive.
By guiding her inner light downward, letting the soul feed the flesh with gentleness, he had stabilized her flickering existence. The storm within had calmed, for now.
And then… she slept.
Not the twitching, shallow rest of a sick infant.
But something deeper.
A surrender of soul.
A dream.
Michel felt it instantly.
A subtle shift in the current that flowed between them.
A release.
And as she exhaled—not in breath, but in spirit—part of him was pulled away.
He didn't resist.
Not this time.
<<<< o >>>>
The world around him was made of silence.
Not absence—substance.
A silence so complete, it felt like it had shape and gravity.
The light was colorless, or perhaps all colors diluted into grey.
The air was neither warm nor cold. There was no sun, no sky, only a diffuse glow that clung to everything like breath on a mirror.
Michel stepped forward.
He did not float here.
He walked, or something close to it.
Each step felt like moving through memory—slippery, but real enough.
"What is this…?" he whispered, though no sound came.
The ground beneath him was smooth. Not stone. Not soil. Not cloud.
He looked around and saw… nothing. Until he looked again—and saw her.
Hinata.
Not the girl from stories.
Not the imagined figure from his grandchildren's laughter.
This was her as she was now—a fragile infant, only months old.
Small. Soft. Curled up on a bed of mist that had taken the shape of grass.
She looked peaceful here.
Untouched by the fever that haunted her physical self.
Her breath rose and fell like a wave made of light.
Michel knelt beside her.
She didn't stir.
He reached out—instinctively—and paused just before his hand could brush her hair.
There was no need to touch her.
He felt her soul radiating outward. Pure. Dense. Already shimmering with the weight of a Grey Soul—too soon, too fast.
"So this is where your light hides..."
And then he felt something else.
Beyond the grey mist, in the far distance, colors moved.
Shifting shapes. Sounds without sound.
It was as if another world spilled into this one, dripping in fragments.
Dreams she didn't yet understand. Emotions without names.
And Hinata, even in her sleep, seemed aware of it.
She stirred.
Her eyes did not open.
But her tiny hand reached toward him, blindly, and touched the space where his knee might have been.
"She knows I'm here…"
Michel remained still, letting her fingers rest in nothingness.
A warmth bloomed in the center of this silent plane.
Not from her. From within him.
He closed his eyes—not because he had to, but because it felt right—and remembered.
Tatami.
Wood.
Laughter.
The snap of cloth on cloth, the scent of sweat and incense.
His dojo.
And when he opened his eyes… he didn't summon it, yet it was there. A response. A reflection. The world forming not from his will, but from the bond they now shared.
Only the outline.
Only the frame.
No walls. No roof. Just the memory of shape.
But it was there, as if summoned by remembering.
It was not dream. Not memory. It was something between—something born of soul, not mind.
And beside him, the infant soul of Hinata smiled in her sleep.
Not knowing that this place—the mist, the echo of a dojo—would become her first sanctuary.
<<<< o >>>>
Then… it ended.
The silence vanished like mist pulled by wind.
Michel's awareness snapped back into the plane he never truly left.
The weight returned—sudden, overwhelming, real.
His arms locked in place, his soul braced, the force between him and Hinata pressing inward again.
The light within her body still flickered.
The balance still teetered.
His presence still threatened to consume her if he ever faltered.
And yet… something was different.
Something in him—stronger.
Something in her—calmer.
"She reached for me," he thought.
"Even if she doesn't remember."
He adjusted his stance—spiritual or not—and let the silence within him rise again.
He was still holding the line.
But he was no longer holding it alone.