The wind cut through his coat like it didn't care he was there.
Elias Mori, a pale man with messy blonde hair, dark blue eyes whose light has been snuffed out and a figure that showed he no longer cared about himself, stood motionless before the two gravestones, a lone figure in a cemetery half-forgotten by the world. A businessman no longer wrapped in the sheen of silk or the weight of tailored power, just a man in a charcoal overcoat two sizes too large, hunched against the wind, soaked to the bone.
The first stone read:
Hana Mori
Beloved Wife.
Fierce Heart and Gentle Hands.
1989–2021
The second, smaller one:
Emi Mori
The Brightest Star.
2015–2022
He knelt, mechanical and slow, as if his bones had learned grief too well. The umbrella he held dropped beside him, forgotten. Rain pattered against his back, his hair, his face yet he didn't move to wipe it away.
"I know… I haven't been here in a while," he whispered, voice hoarse from silence. "I've… been trying to stay busy. You know how I am."
He reached out, fingers trembling, and brushed a leaf from Emi's name. The granite was cold.
"I sold the summer house. The one in Okinawa," he continued, smiling bitterly. "You used to say it was too much. 'It looks like a villain's lair,' you said. You were right."
The smile fell. His throat closed.
"I can't remember what Emi's voice sounded like anymore," he choked. "Isn't that fucked up? Her voice. My baby's laugh. It's just… gone."
The wind offered no comfort. The graves remained silent, patient, like they'd been waiting centuries.
"I've been reading this book lately," he said, placing a worn paperback between the stones. "The Wandering Star. It's fantasy, magic, monsters, the end of the world. A hero named Caelum Ardent. He's everything I'm not."
He let out a short, bitter laugh that ended in a cough. "The guy throws himself into hell for people who hate him. He saves cities with nothing but blood and conviction. He's kind. Even when the world takes everything from him, he stays kind."
Elias looked down at his hands, calloused, pale, fingers twitching as if remembering the weight of contracts, pens, blood.
"You always said I could be good. That I still had a heart under the ambition," he murmured. "But I built empires on broken backs. I sold time I should've given to you. To her."
His voice dropped to a whisper talking to himself.
"I was signing a contract when the hospital called. She was crashing. And I… I said, 'Tell them to hold off. I'm in a meeting.'" His nails dug into his palm. "A fucking meeting."
The pain welled up like it always did, sharp, black, bottomless.
"I've donated half my fortune. I've shut down five factories. I've dismantled the shell companies. I thought, if I undid enough damage, maybe I'd… feel atoned. Maybe I'd earn a second of peace. But I still wake up at 3 a.m. with tears on my face and no idea how they got there."
He touched Hana's name. His forehead rested gently against the stone.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please… forgive me."
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. The rain didn't stop, and neither did the silence.
When he finally rose, his legs felt numb. His chest throbbed with a hollow ache he couldn't name. But his hand moved automatically to the book lying between the stones.
The Wandering Star.
He returned to his apartment with it, no, not a home. Just a place filled with furniture he no longer used, windows he rarely opened, and an office untouched since the day he lost his two brightest stars.
He poured a drink he couldn't taste. Sat in a leather chair that had once held power.
He opened to the next chapter, fingers trembling.
Caelum's last companion was dying. The hero held her close, bloodied and breaking, whispering a promise he knew he couldn't keep. I'll carry your name. I'll carry all of you.
Elias's throat tightened.
"I couldn't even carry a phone call," he muttered.
The words blurred. His vision blurred. The glass slipped from his hand and shattered, but he didn't move. The pain in his chest wasn't a metaphor anymore. It seized him, sudden and cruel.
He tried to breathe.
The world went dim.
Darkness overtook him.
.
.
.
Silence.
Then something wet against his cheek. Not the marble floor nor leather, but damp, living soil, soft with moss and cold like a snowflake landing on skin. The air was different, rich with the scent of loam, tinged with something metallic and sweet, like rain on copper.
Elias jolted upright, gasping like a man pulled from drowning.
He was on his side in a forest clearing. Tall, alien trees twisted overhead, their bark laced with silver veins that pulsed faintly beneath twin moons. A faint hum came from them, not mechanical, but natural, like a lullaby sung by roots.
Twin moons.
His breath hitched, stuck somewhere between disbelief and panic.
This wasn't his apartment. This wasn't Earth. He twisted, looking wildly around. His hand went to his chest where the pain had started, but it wasn't the same chest.
Slimmer. Lighter. His clothes were gone, replaced by dark, unfamiliar robes, a bit too loose on his frame. The fabric was coarse and smelled faintly of ash and herbs.
"What… what the hell…" he rasped.
His voice wasn't right. Slightly higher, softer.
He stumbled to his feet, nearly falling as his legs gave out beneath him. The moss squelched under his bare feet, cool and damp, as tiny bioluminescent spores puffed up with each step. The sound of rushing water, gentle, steady, beckoned from beyond the trees.
He lurched toward it, instinct screaming for reflection, for proof.
A lake shimmered just beyond the trees, dark as glass, its surface disturbed only by the occasional ripple of something beneath. The smell of water was sharp and clean, with a faint mineral edge that stung his nose.
He fell to his knees at the shore, breath ragged, and looked.
He expected his own grief-worn face.
What stared back was not Elias Mori.
Younger. Perhaps a high school student. Raven black hair, disheveled. Pale porcelain skin. Narrow face. Deep brown eyes which held a storm behind them, wide with raw confusion and terror. Lips parted like a man about to scream but not sure if he's allowed too.
He touched his face. The reflection did the same.
"No. No, no, no…"
His voice cracked.
He slapped the water, again and again, hoping it would change, but the face came back. Unchanging.
"Who is this?!" he shouted.
His voice echoed off the still lake, but nothing answered. Not the forest. Not the moons.
Then it came.
The pain.
Not physical. Deeper. A cracking from within, memories he didn't own seeping into his bones.
A child sitting alone beneath a red crystal tree, trying to mold his essence into magic and failing.
A classroom of others casting brilliant, elemental magic while he stared at empty palms.
A mother's voice, tired and sad: "It's okay, Eiden. You weren't meant to shine like them."
Eiden.
The name slammed into him like a blow to the chest.
Not said. Known. As if it had always been his.
But it wasn't.
It wasn't.
"I'm Elias," he whispered. "I had a wife. Hana. I had a daughter. Emi. I-"
Their faces flared behind his eyes, fragile, beautiful, real.
Then blurred, warped. Drowned in memories not his.
His mind became a battlefield.
A funeral.
A duel.
Emi's laughter.
A room of jeering students.
Hana's hand in his.
His parents crying.
A hospital beep.
His sister laughing.
He clutched his head, screaming as the flood overwhelmed him.
"STOP!"
But it didn't. The memories tore through him, tangled, screaming over one another, two lives demanding ownership of the same soul.
He fell to the ground, body writhing. His fingers dug into the soil. His teeth ground against the pain. Tears streamed freely now, unbidden, from someone he could no longer name.
Elias.
Eiden.
Elias.
Eiden.
Which one was he?
He couldn't tell anymore.
"I don't… know who I am…"
His voice was small now.
Shattered.
The rain had stopped, but his body still trembled like it hadn't.
The lake was silent.
The moons bore witness.
And the man in the reflection wept for a world he had lost, and a world didn't want him.