The moon hung high over the Underward, casting long, pale beams of light through the heavy wooden shutters of Kenshin’s chambers.
The sixteen-year-old sat on the edge of his plush bed, staring blankly at the smooth stone floor.
The emotional exhaustion of the day pressed down on him like a physical weight.
The reunion with his mother and sisters had shattered the cold, unfeeling shell he had spent a decade building in that subterranean vault.
I will never die while hiding or fearing anyone.
His own vow echoed in his mind, anchoring his fractured sanity.
He knew the truth now.
Zenjiro had not thrown him to the torturer out of malice, but to force his biology to mutate, ensuring his survival against a tyrannical King.
But Kenshin knew he had not survived the dungeon through alchemy alone.
He stood up and walked over to the washbasin in the corner of the room.
He splashed cold water over his face, washing away the dried tear tracks.
He gripped the edges of the wooden basin, his knuckles turning white as he stared at his reflection in the tall bronze mirror.
His dark-green eyes stared back at him.
But he was not looking at himself.
He was looking deeper.
“Oi, Shadow,” Kenshin muttered, his raspy voice breaking the absolute silence of the room.
He remembered the moment his chains shattered in the dungeon.
He remembered the blinding, feral rage that had overtaken him right before he tore a chunk of flesh from Null’s neck.
And, most vividly, he remembered the deep, ancient voice that had commanded him.
Be brave…
be strong…
be a man, if you want revenge.
“It was you, right?” Kenshin said to the mirror, his jaw tightening.
“The time when I was beating Null… you spoke to me. I know it was you who said that.”
The room remained perfectly quiet.
The only sound was the distant wind howling against the high towers of the sanctuary.
“Do not play games with me,” Kenshin growled, his raw, unrefined aura flaring slightly, causing the flame of a nearby candle to flicker violently.
“I know you are in there. I know you are the reason my wounds close. Come out. Give me some kind of sign, you idio—”
THUMP.
A sudden, crushing kinetic impact struck Kenshin directly from the inside of his own skull.
It was not a physical blow, but a massive, overwhelming wave of dark magical pressure that violently hijacked his nervous system.
The breath was instantly knocked from his lungs.
The physical world around him vanished.
The stone walls of his chamber, the bronze mirror, the wooden washbasin—they all melted away into a blinding, agonizing flash of absolute white.
Kenshin gasped, stumbling backward.
When his bare feet hit the ground, it was not the smooth wood of his bedroom floor.
It was something hard, jagged, and wet.
Kenshin opened his eyes.
He was no longer in the sanctuary.
He was standing in a dimension of absolute, primordial horror.
The sky above him was a swirling, apocalyptic canvas of blood-red clouds and dark, suffocating weather.
There was no sun, only thick, jagged streaks of dark purple lightning tearing across the heavens.
Surrounding him, stretching out as far as the eye could see, were oceans of thick, crimson gore.
But it was the ground beneath his feet that made his stomach heave.
He was standing on a wasteland composed entirely of skulls.
There were millions of them—humanoid skulls, monstrous, jagged craniums, and massive, horned draconic skulls that dwarfed carriages.
An icy chill of dread washed down Kenshin’s spine, raising the hairs on his arms.
The heavy, necrotic miasma in the air was so dense it felt like breathing water.
Before him rose a massive, towering staircase, constructed entirely from the bleached, fused skulls of ancient creatures.
At the top of the macabre staircase sat a throne of dark iron and bone.
And upon that throne, sat the Entity.
It did not possess a human body.
It appeared as a thick, physical manifestation of suffocating dark aura.
Its form was wrapped in shifting, pitch-black smoke that radiated a terrifying, god-like authority.
From beneath a shroud of living shadow, its eyes locked onto Kenshin.
They were solid pools of dark purple, lacking any irises or pupils—just twin voids of ancient, merciless intelligence.
Behind the throne, floating far in the distance beneath the apocalyptic red sky, loomed a colossal, dark purple-black castle.
It was so massive it defied gravity, its jagged spires piercing the storm clouds.
Kenshin’s legs trembled violently.
The sheer magical pressure radiating from the figure on the throne was exponentially heavier than Brados, Zenjiro, or Null.
This was an apex predator of the cosmos.
Resting casually in the Shadow’s grip was a massive, terrifying greatsword.
The weapon was wrapped in black, gaseous smoke and crackling with dark-purple lightning.
The dark purple lines etched into the blade pulsed with necrotic energy, promising absolute, irreversible death to anything it touched.
The Shadow leaned forward, resting its chin on its knuckles.
“Calling me an idiot, when your own self is so pathetically weak,” the Shadow spoke.
The voice was deep, echoing not just in the air, but directly inside Kenshin’s very soul.
The sound alone carried a concussive force that made Kenshin fall to his knees, his hands clutching his chest as he struggled to breathe.
“How shameful,” the Shadow sneered, its purple eyes glowing with dark amusement.
Kenshin’s teeth chattered.
He tried to speak, he tried to summon his courage, but his vocal cords were completely paralyzed.
The raw, instinctual fear radiating from his Gladeon biology commanded him to bow, to submit, to run.
The Shadow slowly raised the massive, smoke-wrapped greatsword, pointing the jagged tip directly down at the kneeling teenager.
“Make sure the next time you demand to meet me,” the Shadow rumbled, the dark purple lightning flaring violently across the sky, “that you have turned a little strong, kid.”
SNAP.
The blood-red dimension violently imploded.
Kenshin was forcefully ejected from the mental realm, slammed back into his physical body in the upper towers of the sanctuary.
His nervous system short-circuited, searing with white-hot, agonizing pain.
Kenshin threw his head back, his dark-green eyes rolling into the back of his skull, and unleashed a raw, blood-curdling scream of pure, absolute agony.
The scream rattled the heavy oak door of his chamber and echoed far down the polished stone corridors.
Kenshin’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed heavily onto the wooden floor, his body seizing violently before falling entirely limp.
-Break-
“Kenshin!”
The heavy oak door was violently kicked open.
Four sanctuary guards rushed into the room, their weapons drawn, expecting an assassin.
They found the sixteen-year-old boy lying face-down on the floor, completely unconscious, a small trail of blood leaking from his nose.
Before the guards could even kneel to check his pulse, a blur of midnight-blue hair shot past them.
“Out of the way!” Asami demanded.
She dropped to her knees beside Kenshin, her icy blue eyes wide with alarm.
She carefully turned him over.
There were no physical wounds, no assassins hiding in the shadows, but Kenshin’s skin was deathly pale, and his body was entirely cold to the touch.
“What happened?!” Asami yelled at the guards, pressing her fingers against Kenshin’s neck to find his racing pulse.
“We do not know, Lady Asami!” the lead guard stammered, clearly terrified.
“We were stationed at the end of the hall. He just screamed as if he were being butchered, and when we breached the room, he was already on the floor. He does not seem to even be in his senses!”
Asami’s jaw tightened.
She could feel a strange, lingering, dark miasma clinging to Kenshin’s skin—a magical pressure that made her own Plandacorus aura recoil in warning.
“Pick him up,” Asami ordered urgently.
“Take him to our most secure, highest-tier healing chamber immediately! Hurry!”
The guards did not hesitate.
Two of the largest men gently lifted Kenshin’s limp body and rushed out of the room, hurrying down the corridor.
Asami followed closely behind, but as they reached the grand staircase, she froze.
Standing near the bottom of the stairs were Asuka, Ren, and Akari.
Asuka’s hands began to shake violently as she saw the guards carrying her unconscious son.
The beautiful woman’s face drained of color, fresh tears instantly springing to her pure dark-green eyes.
“Ritsu!” Asuka cried out, rushing forward, only to be gently held back by Ren, who was equally terrified.
“What happened to him?!” Ren demanded, her strict, protective nature returning in full force as she glared at Asami.
“He was fine just hours ago!”
“We do not know,” Asami replied, her tone strained.
“He simply collapsed.”
Just then, heavy, rhythmic footsteps approached from the lower levels.
Master Brados, accompanied by a pale but recovering Horuto, walked swiftly toward the group.
Brados’s dark eyes locked onto Kenshin’s pale face, and then widened slightly as he sensed the residual, terrifying dark aura clinging to the boy’s body.
“Master,” Horuto said, his olive-green eyes narrowing in concern.
“That aura…”
“Yes,” Brados murmured, his voice heavy with a grim realization.
“The boy has finally looked into the abyss. And the abyss looked back.”