The soldiers halt. Loose gravel and dust fall beneath their feet. Silence.
The black-robed figure stands before them. Still. Immobile. The cape drapes over his shoulders like a shadow frozen in time. His face is concealed, save for a thin, white smile—unmoving, impassive. With all the heavily armed soldiers, no one will move so much as an inch.
Something is amiss. Not amiss in the way war is amiss—but amiss like a flaw in a painting or a note in a silent vacuum. Amis like a shattered law of reality.
A few of the younger soldiers squirm uncomfortably. One tightens his grip on his weapon. Another whispers a prayer under his breath.
The air becomes colder.
The robed figure cockes his head, barely—just enough to make them aware that he's seen them, all of them. And yet, his gaze somehow is… individual. Personal.
Julie's jaw clenches. Her eyes refuse to blink.
Ivers raises one arm cautiously—do not react.
Felix breathes hard through his nose, knuckles clenched on his rifle. Lindsay maintains her gaze on the figure. Kraft seems paralyzed—thoughts fogged behind his silence.
And still, that smile lingers.
Without a murmur, without even a glance at anyone, Kuro begins to move.
His walk is steady, unhurried. Not nervous. Not aggressive. Just… curious.
Not one of the soldiers changes position.
Kuro doesn't look tense—almost the opposite. His body is relaxed, like a person examining a strange object with mild interest. The more he walks, the farther he leaves the rest of them behind—though not just physically.
As he gets closer to the figure—maybe within ten meters—one thing breaks.
When Kuro goes closer to the robed figure, the world breaks.
Not with sounds. Not with violence. Just… a displacement — subtle, impossible to notice unless you're him.
Reality stutters — like a skipped frame in a film reel. One blink, and the ground at his feet is nothing. The mountains vanish. The sky creases into blackness.
Darkness space.
Endless, two-dimensional, weightless. Airless, soundless, heatless — but not unfamiliar to him. Never nice, but never frightening either. As if this world existed with the world at every moment of time, only apparent when something fractures.
Kuro does not blink.
To his left, it towers.
A broken, mirrored copy of himself. He is, but broken beyond repair. The eyesocket is empty where the eyes once were — smooth cavities, white fog seeping gently from both. One curl of fog drifts out, uncoiling like smoke into the void; the other sucks inward, like a sluggish gravity toward the vacant skull.
Its left arm is gone — brutally so. Where its arm would be is a jagged white space, edged like torn paper seared at the edges. From where the socket once was, thin strands of white space twist and jump. Almost… alive. The body cracks too, like a dropped porcelain figurine glued back together with light instead of glue. But it doesn't bend.
It watches him — not with eyes, but with presence. As if it remembers him.
To his right, another form.
A black silhouette, tall and human in shape — but made up entirely of shadow. It mirrors every action of Kuro with perfect precision. If he breathes, it does. If he shifts his weight, it does. It's not behind. It doesn't jerk. It simply mirrors.
And while the broken Kuro is him distorted, this is him copied — detailless, emotionless, faceless. A shadow.
The two of them loom at either end of him — past and echo.
And in front… the vision begins.
Abruptly, a tear in the nothing. No warning.
Kraft.
He is alone. bleeding.
Not by an enemy's strike — but from within. His chest bursts open with force unseen, his ribs twisted outward like buckled metal. He clutches at his side, gasping with wide eyes, reaching out — to Kuro.
No scream. No words. Only the face locked in the moment between terror and understanding.
Then silence.
The black void snaps shut like a metal door. Gone. All of it.
The robed figure stands still, smiling, undisturbed.
Kuro's expression has not altered — but something behind his eyes has.
Less than seconds had transpired in the real world. No one noticed. No one could.
The only evidence of what happened is a subtle flicker of Kuro's fingers — a tension in the way he inhales.
The two sit like that for a while. Not standing apart—just sitting in the presence of the other. Then the figure tips his head again, turns his back to Kuro, and slowly walks away. With each step, his form melts away, swallowed up by the horizon or by nothing.
Gone.
The soldiers exhale—some of them visibly. The spell breaks.
Kuro turns and goes away. His face is still a mask, but his eyes are more weighted.
Julie watches him closely. Ivers does not ask. Lindsay notices the tiny spasm of Kuro's hand. Felix raises an eyebrow, sensing something without knowing what.
Kraft… is Kraft. Alive. Talk with Lindsay. Weak smile.
But just for a while—if the vision was true.
Then, Ivers speaks,
"Move out."
The soldiers obey, but something had changed in the air. Not just fear. It is as if reality has bent, slightly, and no one but Kuro felt it.
Lindsay glances once more over their shoulders. The road is empty.
They keep moving—to whatever that creature was.
To war.