On the thirtieth day, Shunjiro stood in front of the mirror in the guest room and looked at the person the Shadow Realm had made of him.
The clothes he wore were the same ones he had arrived in, though they felt different now. Malachi had cleaned and repaired them during Shunjiro’s stay, removing the blood, dirt, and damage that had clung to them after the chaos of the Coastal Kingdom. The fabric sat familiar against his skin, but the boy wearing it no longer felt like the same one who had woken beneath the black sun with no idea where to go. The Devil’s Luck Dagger rested at his side, sheathed against his hip where his hand could reach it without thinking, and over his shoulders fell the dark cloak Malachi had given him. It was heavier than his old clothes, warm enough to hold back the cold of the Shadow Realm and long enough to move behind him when he walked.
He adjusted the cloak once, then let his hand fall.
A full month.
It still felt strange to think about.
Thirty days ago, he had been lost, injured, and afraid to admit how helpless he felt. Now he could steady his spiritual energy through the dagger, shut his presence down at will, summon golden sand from his own power, and fight in a way that would have seemed impossible to him before. He still had more to learn than he could measure. Malachi had made sure he understood that. But Shunjiro was not the same boy who had entered this mansion.
The thought made his chest tighten, not with fear, but with something closer to anticipation.
He was going home.
Shunjiro took one last look around the room. The bed was made, the small table cleared, and the window still showed the same dead forest beyond the estate. Nothing in the Shadow Realm looked different because he was leaving. The black sky did not soften. The mansion did not creak in farewell. The world outside remained cold, quiet, and dangerous.
Still, the room felt meaningful now.
It had been the first place where he slept after surviving Tsubasa’s abandonment. It had been where he lay awake worrying about Itsuki, Tetsuo, Yoshinori, Ryuji, Aiko, and everyone else. It had been where he slowly began to believe that surviving was not enough. He had to return stronger.
Now he was stepping out.
He left the room and walked down the hall, his boots moving over the old floorboards with familiar ease. The mansion no longer felt like a maze. He knew which corridors led toward the library, which doors opened into rooms full of covered furniture, which turn would bring him close to the bath, and which path led toward the front stairs. He knew where the floor creaked near the third window and where the shadows collected beside the old portraits. He knew the smell of the kitchen, the quiet weight of the library, the distant metal scent of the forge, and the open cold of the training field.
He had not expected to miss any of it.
But as he descended the stairs and saw Malachi waiting near the entrance, Shunjiro realized that he would.
Malachi stood by the front doors with his massive sword strapped across his back and a travel pack over one shoulder. The pack looked almost ordinary against him, though Shunjiro knew better than to assume anything Malachi carried was simple. His coat was fastened for travel, his dreadlocks tied back, and his purple eyes moved over Shunjiro once as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“The cloak suits you better now,” Malachi said.
Shunjiro glanced down at it.
“You said that about the dagger too.”
“It is possible for two things to be true.”
“You are going to start saying that every time I improve, aren’t you?”
“Only when it annoys you.”
Shunjiro smiled despite himself.
The exchange was small, but that was what made it feel real. A month ago, Malachi had been a stranger who could have killed him before Shunjiro understood the first step of the fight. Now he was still terrifying, still blunt, still impossible to read at times, but he was also the man who corrected Shunjiro’s stance for hours, laughed until his shoulders shook at a miserable pile of sand, made banana splits with brownies and called them a Shadow Realm special, and sat by the fireplace while Shunjiro told him about Takeshi.
Teacher did not feel like enough.
But it was the word Shunjiro had.
Malachi’s gaze lingered on him for a moment longer than usual, then shifted toward the doors. His expression stayed calm, but something in the pause felt heavier than the silence that usually filled the mansion. Shunjiro noticed it because he had spent a month learning how to notice Malachi’s smallest reactions.
“You have everything?” Malachi asked.
Shunjiro touched the dagger at his side.
“Everything I came with and more.”
“Dramatic.”
“You are the one who lives in a mansion in the Shadow Realm.”
Malachi opened the front door.
“I live in a mansion. The realm is incidental.”
“That is definitely not true.”
“No,” Malachi said, stepping outside. “But it sounded dignified.”
Shunjiro followed him out.
Cold air met them immediately. The front of the mansion stretched behind them in dark stone and old glass, its towers and high windows standing against the black sky like something that had refused to collapse simply because the world around it had grown tired. The iron fence waited beyond the path, and past it, the dead forest gathered in thick silence.
Malachi did not lock the door.
Shunjiro noticed that too.
“You are just leaving it open?”
Malachi looked back at the mansion.
“Nothing that wants to harm me can enter easily, and nothing foolish enough to steal from me deserves the effort it would take to survive the mistake.”
“That makes sense in a very threatening way.”
“It is one of my better kinds of sense.”
They walked down the path toward the gate. Each step took Shunjiro farther from the place that had remade him. The training field was out of sight behind the mansion, but he could almost feel it there, marked by cuts in the dummies and scattered memories of golden sand spinning around his body. The forge sat quiet somewhere beyond the side path, filled with weapons Malachi had made and one dagger he had chosen to give away. The library waited behind walls of stone and dust, holding the histories that had made Radiance feel older and stranger than Shunjiro had ever imagined.
At the iron gate, Shunjiro stopped and looked back.
The mansion stood alone beneath the black sky.
For the first time since arriving, it did not look like a place he had been trapped. It looked like a place he had survived. A place where he had been trained. A place where someone had taken him in when the rest of the world was unreachable.
He did not thank Malachi yet.
The words felt too final, and this was not the end of their time together. Malachi was coming with him. The real goodbye had not arrived.
So Shunjiro looked at the mansion and gave it the only farewell he could manage for now.
“Goodbye,” he said quietly.
Malachi stood beside him and said nothing.
When Shunjiro glanced over, the older man was looking at the mansion too. His expression was calm, but his eyes carried something distant. For all his jokes about retirement and isolation, this place had been Malachi’s world for longer than Shunjiro could truly understand. Leaving it, even for a while, meant something. Shunjiro could feel that even if Malachi would never say it plainly.
After a moment, Malachi pushed the gate open.
The sound of metal moving through the silence felt louder than it should have.
They stepped beyond the fence.
The Shadow Realm closed around them at once.
The ground outside the estate was darker, rougher, less forgiving beneath Shunjiro’s boots. Dead trees rose in uneven rows, their branches twisted against the sky like hands that had forgotten what they were reaching for. Mist drifted between the trunks, slow and pale, and the air carried the same uneasy stillness Shunjiro remembered from his first day in the realm.
But he was not alone this time.
Malachi walked beside him with the easy confidence of a man who feared nothing in the dead forest. The massive sword across his back made him look like a wandering executioner from an old legend, and yet the pack over his shoulder gave the image a strange, almost ordinary quality. Shunjiro found that comforting in a way he did not want to admit.
“How long will it take?” Shunjiro asked.
“To reach Radiance?”
“Yes.”
“Likely two weeks.”
Shunjiro frowned.
“Two weeks?”
“Likely,” Malachi repeated.
“I knew it would take a while, but that is too long.”
“The distance does not shorten because you dislike it.”
“We can make it in a week.”
Malachi laughed, not loudly, but warmly enough that it cut through the gloom between the trees.
“You have trained for one month and now believe you can intimidate geography.”
“I am motivated.”
“Motivation does not flatten the Shadow Realm.”
“It might if I get good enough with sand.”
“Patience,” Malachi said, his tone gentler than the word usually sounded from him. “You are returning home. Do not turn the road there into another enemy before it has done anything to you.”
Shunjiro let out a breath.
He wanted to argue, but Malachi was right. The excitement in his chest made every delay feel unbearable. Two weeks sounded like a lifetime when his friends were waiting somewhere beyond the darkness. Itsuki was waiting. Tetsuo was waiting. Everyone who had survived the Coastal Kingdom, everyone he had been ripped away from without warning. He did not know what condition they were in. He did not know what they had been told. He did not know if they thought he was dead.
The thought made his hands tighten briefly.
Then he forced them to loosen.
He was going back.
That mattered more than the number of days.
They walked in silence for a while, passing between the first rows of trees. The mansion remained visible behind them at first, framed by the iron fence and the dead garden. Then the mist shifted, and the estate began to fade into the gray distance.
Shunjiro looked up at the black sun.
It still gave no warmth. No comfort. No sense of time. It had watched over every day of his training without changing once, and now that he was leaving, he felt a sudden ache for something as simple as real daylight.
“I cannot wait to feel sunlight again,” he said.
Malachi glanced at him.
“You will.”
“How do you stay here for so long without it?”
Malachi looked ahead into the forest.
For a moment, Shunjiro thought he might give a deeper answer. Something about punishment, memory, duty, or the kingdom in the painting. Something that explained why a man who could walk through the Shadow Realm without fear had chosen to remain buried inside it for so many years.
Instead, Malachi said, “You get used to it.”
Shunjiro watched him for a second.
“That is all?”
“That is most of it.”
“It sounds sad.”
“It is practical.”
“Those can be the same thing.”
Malachi’s mouth twitched faintly.
“Careful. You are starting to sound like the old books you make fun of.”
Shunjiro smiled, but his gaze returned to the sky.
He did not think he would ever get used to living without sunlight. Maybe someone could survive it. Maybe someone like Malachi could learn to accept the black sky, the cold air, and the endless silence. But Shunjiro was from Radiance. He had grown up beneath light, in a kingdom built where despair had once stood and lost. He wanted warmth on his face again. He wanted blue sky. He wanted the gold of Radiance Castle catching morning light.
He wanted to feel like the world was alive.
The mansion had almost disappeared behind them now.
Only the highest edges of its roof remained visible through the mist.
Shunjiro turned for one last look.
A month ago, he had reached that mansion because he had nowhere else to go.
Now he left it with a dagger at his side, a cloak on his shoulders, golden sand sleeping beneath his skin, and one of the strongest men in the world walking beside him as his teacher.
They walked for a long time without speaking.
The Shadow Realm did not make travel easy, even with Malachi at Shunjiro’s side. The dead forest seemed to stretch itself around them, its twisted trees leaning inward as though curious about the living things passing through. The ground shifted between black dirt, cracked stone, and roots that coiled above the surface like the bones of something too large to be buried. Mist drifted low around their legs, thin enough to walk through but thick enough to make every distant shape uncertain.
Shunjiro kept his hand near the Devil’s Luck Dagger as they moved.
A month ago, this place had nearly swallowed him.
Now, he walked through it with steadier breathing, sharper senses, and Malachi’s presence moving beside him like a wall no monster wanted to test.
The thought should have made him relax, but his mind was too full for that.
Radiance was ahead.
Far ahead, if Malachi’s estimate was right, but still ahead.
Shunjiro pictured the kingdom in pieces: sunlight on white stone, the noise of the market, the guild dorm, Kaito’s office, the Grand Library, the training grounds, the streets where he and his friends had walked before everything in the Coastal Kingdom tore them apart. He pictured Itsuki’s face first, then Yoshinori, Tetsuo, Ryuji, Aiko, and the others. He did not let himself imagine exactly how they would react when they saw him, because that made the distance feel crueler. It was enough to know that he was moving toward them.
But he would not return as the same person.
Shunjiro looked down at his hand as he walked. He remembered golden sand spilling from his palms for the first time, pathetic enough to make Malachi laugh until the field echoed, then rising by the end of the day into a cyclone around his body. He remembered turning his spiritual presence off until even Malachi could not sense him. He remembered the black aura along the dagger, the way his energy could finally move without collapsing into nothing, and the clean strikes he had started landing during sparring.
He still had a long way to go.
Malachi had said that often enough.
But Shunjiro could feel the difference inside himself, and that difference mattered.
When I get back, I can’t just be the kid everyone has to protect anymore.
The thought moved through him with quiet force.
He had been the leader of Illumina, but what had that meant before? He had cared about them. He had wanted to stand in front when danger came. He had wanted to be strong enough to guide them, but wanting and being were different things. Too many times, he had been dragged forward by instinct and hope while people around him carried the weight of experience he did not have.
That had to change.
He wanted to stand in front of his friends and deserve the position. Not because he shouted the loudest or cared the most, but because when everything broke apart, they could look to him and see someone capable of holding the path together.
A real leader.
Not an inexperienced kid with a title too big for him.
Shunjiro glanced at Malachi.
The older man walked ahead by half a step, purple eyes fixed on the forest, massive sword across his back, travel pack shifting slightly with each stride. He looked relaxed, but Shunjiro had trained with him long enough to understand that Malachi’s relaxed posture meant very little. His awareness was everywhere. Every branch, every patch of mist, every quiet space between distant sounds seemed to belong to him.
Malachi glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “You have been quiet for too long.”
Shunjiro blinked. “I thought quiet was good in the Shadow Realm.”
“Quiet footsteps are good. Quiet breathing is good. A quiet mind is better.” Malachi looked ahead again. “Yours is not quiet.”
Shunjiro frowned, though a small smile tried to form. “You can tell that just by walking next to me?”
“You are easy to read when you are thinking about people you care about.”
That made Shunjiro’s smile fade into something softer. He looked down at the dark ground beneath his boots, then toward the misty path ahead.
“I was thinking about Radiance,” he admitted.
“That is expected.”
“And Illumina.”
“That is also expected.”
Shunjiro looked ahead through the mist.
“I want to do better when I get back.”
Malachi’s eyes shifted toward him.
“As a fighter?”
“As a leader,” Shunjiro said. “Both, I guess, but mainly as a leader. I was called the leader of my guild, but I did not really know what I was doing. I still might not. But after training with you, I feel like I can at least start becoming someone they can rely on.”
Malachi was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “Good.”
Shunjiro glanced at him.
“That is it?”
“That is enough.”
“You always say that.”
“Because you always want more words than necessary.”
“I like encouragement.”
“I said good.”
“That was barely encouragement.”
“It was honest encouragement. Those are rare.”
Shunjiro shook his head, but the warmth in his chest remained. With Malachi, small praise had started to mean more than dramatic speeches. The man did not give words away carelessly, so when he offered even one, Shunjiro had learned to hold onto it.
They continued deeper into the forest.
The trees grew closer together as the path narrowed. Malachi adjusted their direction without hesitation, choosing openings that Shunjiro would not have noticed on his own. Sometimes they passed claw marks carved into trunks. Sometimes bones lay half-buried in the dirt, too old and cracked to identify. Once, something moved far off to their right, a low shape sliding behind the mist, but Malachi only turned his head slightly and the movement vanished.
Shunjiro felt his body tense.
Malachi kept walking.
“It left,” Malachi said.
“What was it?”
“Not worth naming.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It should be. Worth naming things are usually worse.”
They had gone far enough that the mansion was long gone behind them, swallowed by the trees and mist, when the air in front of them changed.
Shunjiro felt it before he saw it.
A pressure split open in the path ahead, not like spiritual energy gathering for an attack, but like the world itself had been cut at the seam. The mist twisted inward. The dead leaves at their feet lifted and spun. A thin line of purple light appeared between two trees, vertical and bright against the darkness.
Malachi stopped immediately.
In the same instant, he stepped in front of Shunjiro.
The movement was not dramatic. It was not loud. One moment, Malachi had been walking beside him. The next, his body stood between Shunjiro and the opening portal, one hand already resting near the hilt of the giant sword on his back.
Shunjiro’s hand went to the Devil’s Luck Dagger.
The purple line widened.
A portal opened in the middle of the dead forest, its edges glowing with familiar spatial distortion. Shunjiro’s stomach tightened before anyone stepped through.
He knew that portal.
A man emerged from it with smooth, unhurried confidence.
Tsubasa Astoria.
His black hair fell around his face, marked by that unmistakable white patch that made him look almost unreal beneath the Shadow Realm’s dead sky. One purple eye and one pale-white eye settled first on Malachi, then slid past him toward Shunjiro. He wore the same kind of confidence he had carried in the Coastal Kingdom, but it was quieter now. More controlled. Less playful at the edges. Malachi’s presence forced even someone like Tsubasa to choose his posture carefully.
Behind him stepped another figure.
Shunjiro’s breath caught.
He recognized him immediately.
The beastkin’s canine ears rose from his hair, and his tail shifted once behind him before falling still. His golden eyes were sharp, but unreadable, and the twin jagged katanas he had used back during the entrance exams rested at his sides. Shunjiro remembered him from those early days in Radiance: the cocky beastkin who had fought Yoshinori, the quiet recruit under Kaito, the one whose anger always seemed to sit too close beneath the surface.
But now he wore a purple cloak.
The same purple cloak that marked the Eclipsed Abyss.
Shunjiro stared at him, stunned.
“Jayiden…?”
Jayiden did not answer.
He stood behind Tsubasa in silence, his face still and his eyes fixed somewhere past Shunjiro as though he had been ordered not to speak or had chosen not to waste the effort. The lack of response made the sight worse. If Jayiden had smirked or insulted him, Shunjiro might have known what to feel. But the silence left only questions.
Why is he with them?
Shunjiro’s grip tightened around the dagger hilt.
He had not known Jayiden well, not the way he knew others, but Jayiden had been part of those first days. Part of the same beginning. Seeing him in that cloak felt like finding a familiar road leading somewhere rotten.
Malachi’s voice cut through the tension.
“Tsubasa.”
Tsubasa smiled faintly.
“Malachi.”
The way they said each other’s names made the forest seem even colder.
Tsubasa took one step forward, then stopped when Malachi’s fingers shifted against the sword hilt.
“I am not here to fight,” Tsubasa said.
“That is often said by people who brought someone with swords.”
Tsubasa glanced back at Jayiden as if remembering he was there, though he did not introduce him.
“He is not here to fight either.”
Jayiden remained silent.
Malachi’s expression did not change.
“You opened a portal in front of us.”
“I did.”
“Then speak carefully.”
Tsubasa’s smile softened, but the playfulness did not fully return. His attention moved past Malachi again, settling on Shunjiro with a strange kind of respect.
“You look better, Shunjiro.”
Shunjiro did not move from behind Malachi.
“I am better.”
“I can tell.” Tsubasa’s mismatched eyes narrowed slightly, not with hostility, but with interest. “Your energy is steadier. Much steadier than it was when I left you here.”
“You abandoned me here.”
“I placed you where you could grow.”
Shunjiro’s jaw tightened.
“You left me to die.”
“If I wanted you dead, you would not have woken up near someone capable of protecting you.”
Malachi’s gaze sharpened.
Tsubasa lifted one hand calmly.
“Do not misunderstand me. I am not claiming kindness. I am saying there was intention.”
Shunjiro stepped slightly to the side so he could see Tsubasa more clearly around Malachi’s shoulder.
“You knew Malachi would find me?”
“I knew there was a strong chance you would find him, or he would find you. Either outcome served the same purpose.”
Malachi’s voice lowered.
“So that was your goal.”
“Yes,” Tsubasa said. “For him to train.”
The admission made Shunjiro go still.
He had wondered if Tsubasa’s decision had been careless, if the man had tossed him into the Shadow Realm simply because he could. Now Tsubasa stood there speaking as though the entire month had been part of a design. As though Shunjiro’s terror, confusion, and desperation had been acceptable costs for a result someone else wanted.
“You used him,” Malachi said.
Tsubasa did not deny it.
“I gave him an opportunity.”
Malachi’s hand tightened on the sword hilt.
“That is a dangerous way to describe manipulation.”
“Most opportunities are manipulation from a different angle,” Tsubasa replied. “Kingdoms manipulate children into believing service is glory. Guilds manipulate the talented into chasing ranks. Families manipulate sons into inheriting dreams. At least I am honest enough to admit that I wanted something from him.”
Shunjiro’s anger rose, but he kept it controlled. A month of Malachi’s training had not made him calm all the time, but it had taught him what happened when emotion took the reins too quickly.
“What do you want?” Shunjiro asked.
Tsubasa looked at him fully.
“The same thing I wanted before.”
Shunjiro knew the answer before Tsubasa said it.
“I want you to join Eclipsed Abyss.”
The words settled between the trees.
Malachi did not move, but the pressure around him seemed to deepen.
Shunjiro felt Jayiden’s silent presence behind Tsubasa. The purple cloak. The katanas. The unreadable golden eyes. A recruit from Radiance now standing behind a criminal who had taken him from his friends.
“You came all this way to ask again?” Shunjiro said.
“I came because now you are in a better position to understand the offer.”
“I understand enough.”
“No,” Tsubasa said, and for the first time, his voice lost some of its smoothness. “You understand what you have been told to fear. That is not the same thing.”
Shunjiro’s eyes narrowed.
Tsubasa stepped only slightly closer, careful not to cross whatever invisible line Malachi had drawn between them.
“I am not here to drag you through a portal. I am not here to threaten your friends. I am not here to force your answer with a blade at your throat. If I wanted obedience, I would have chosen someone easier to break.”
Shunjiro said nothing.
Tsubasa continued, his tone quiet but firm.
“I am offering you the chance to see what waits beyond the path Radiance has prepared for you. You want to protect your friends, do you not?”
The question hit too close.
Shunjiro’s grip tightened, but he did not answer immediately.
Tsubasa’s gaze stayed on him.
“You have seen what happens when kingdoms fail to protect people. The Coastal Kingdom fell into blood and ruin while powerful people arrived too late. Your friends bled. Your guild was shattered. One of your own was taken. Tell me, Shunjiro, if you return to Radiance and simply keep walking the path they give you, how many times will you arrive after the damage is already done?”
Malachi’s voice cut in.
“Careful.”
Tsubasa looked at him.
“I am being careful.”
“You are using wounds that are still open.”
“I am speaking to someone who wants them closed.”
Shunjiro’s chest tightened at the mention of his friends, but beneath the pain came something steadier. Tsubasa was not wrong that Radiance had failed to prevent that tragedy.
But truth used like a hook was still a hook.
“What would Eclipsed Abyss give me?” Shunjiro asked.
Tsubasa’s expression shifted, almost approving.
“Freedom from pretending the world is protected by titles. Strength without permission. Knowledge your kings hide because they fear what people would do with it. Enemies you have not even been told exist. And people powerful enough to help you become someone who does not have to watch helplessly while those he loves are torn apart.”
Shunjiro felt the words press against him.
They were tempting because they were shaped around exactly what he feared.
That made them dangerous.
Malachi remained between them, silent now, but his presence anchored Shunjiro. Not controlling him. Not answering for him. Just standing there as proof that someone strong could offer guidance without trying to own the person receiving it.
Tsubasa seemed to notice that too.
His eyes moved briefly to Malachi, then back to Shunjiro.
“I respect you,” Tsubasa said. “More now than before. You survived here. You learned. You became steadier. I can feel it. That means the choice matters more than it did a month ago.”
Shunjiro’s gaze flicked to Jayiden.
“And him?”
For the first time, Jayiden’s eyes met his.
He still said nothing.
Tsubasa did not look back.
“He made his choice.”
Shunjiro’s expression hardened.
“Did he?”
A faint silence followed.
Jayiden’s tail shifted once behind the cloak, but his face remained unchanged.
Tsubasa’s voice stayed calm.
“Everyone comes to Eclipsed Abyss for a reason. Some come because kingdoms failed them. Some come because revenge gives them a direction no one else will. Some come because they are tired of being told what shape their lives must take.” His gaze sharpened. “You could come because you want to protect what remains before it is taken from you too.”
Shunjiro felt anger flare again.
This time, it came with clarity.
“You talk like you are offering protection,” Shunjiro said, his voice tightening, “but the last time I saw you, you were standing over Suzu like you had already decided she belonged to you. Then you threw me into this place and left me behind.”
“I took Suzu because she would have been killed, imprisoned, or used by people who feared what she had become.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know enough.”
“You do not know my friends.”
“No,” Tsubasa said. “But I know what kingdoms do when something dangerous stands in front of them. They call it justice if they kill it, mercy if they lock it away, and research if they cut it open carefully.”
Malachi’s eyes darkened.
“That is enough.”
Tsubasa accepted the warning with a small nod.
“I have said what I came to say.”
Shunjiro stared at him, breathing slow.
The dead forest seemed to wait with them.
“You want me to leave with you right now?” Shunjiro asked.
“I want you to consider seeing what I am offering before rejecting it because Radiance taught you to.” Tsubasa’s voice softened slightly. “You do not have to decide today that Eclipsed Abyss is your home. But you could step through the portal, hear us, see us, understand what is moving beyond your kingdom’s walls. Then, if you still want to return to Radiance, you can decide with your eyes open.”
Malachi let out a quiet, humorless breath.
“You expect him to believe you would simply let him leave.”
Tsubasa looked at him directly.
“I expect him to understand that if I wanted to cage him, I would not be asking.”
The portal behind him pulsed softly, purple light rippling against the mist.
Shunjiro looked at it.
Then at Jayiden.
Then at Tsubasa.
The offer stood before him like a doorway into everything he did not know. Eclipsed Abyss had taken him, frightened him, manipulated him, and still, Tsubasa spoke of protecting his friends with enough calm conviction that Shunjiro understood why people might follow him. That was the most unsettling part. Not that Tsubasa sounded like a villain.
That he sounded like someone who believed he was giving Shunjiro a chance.
Malachi did not turn around, but his voice reached Shunjiro steadily.
“You do not owe him an answer shaped by fear.”
Shunjiro looked at Malachi’s back.
The words settled him.
Tsubasa smiled faintly.
“I agree.”
Shunjiro’s eyes returned to him.
“You agree?”
“Yes. Fear makes poor decisions. So does loyalty when it refuses to ask questions.” Tsubasa inclined his head slightly, respectful and unreadable. “Think carefully, Shunjiro. That is all I ask.”
The portal glowed behind him, waiting.
Tsubasa extended one hand, not as a command, not as a threat, but as an invitation.
“Come with us,” he said. “Let me show you what Eclipsed Abyss can offer you, and then decide whether Radiance is still the only place where you can become strong enough to protect your friends.”
Shunjiro stared at the hand Tsubasa held out to him.
Before he could answer, Malachi spoke.
“No.”
The word cut through the forest with quiet finality.
Tsubasa’s mismatched eyes shifted from Shunjiro to Malachi.
Malachi stood between them, broad shoulders still, one hand resting near the massive sword strapped across his back. His expression had not changed much, but the air around him had. The patience in his face had thinned into something cold and immovable.
“You have said enough,” Malachi said. “Leave.”
Tsubasa lowered his extended hand slowly. He did not look offended. He did not look surprised. If anything, there was a faint trace of disappointment in the way his smile faded, as if Malachi had confirmed something he had expected but hoped to avoid.
“I do not wish to cross blades with an EX rank,” Tsubasa said.
“Then make a wise decision.”
“I came prepared to do so if necessary.”
The forest went silent.
Shunjiro felt his stomach tighten. Malachi did not move, but the threat changed the shape of everything around them. The dead trees, the mist, the portal, Jayiden’s stillness, all of it seemed to shrink beneath the weight of what had just been said. Tsubasa stood calmly across from them, hands relaxed at his sides, face composed. He was not posturing like someone desperate to prove himself. That made it worse.
Malachi’s voice lowered. “Prepared does not mean capable.”
Tsubasa’s pale-white eye narrowed slightly while the purple one stayed almost gentle. “Perhaps. But preparation still matters.”
His gaze slid past Malachi again and settled on Shunjiro.
“Shunjiro, I asked you a question. Malachi should not be the one to decide your answer.”
Shunjiro’s jaw tightened.
“He did not decide anything for me.”
“Then let me hear it from you.”
Malachi took one step forward.
Tsubasa’s tone sharpened, though his composure remained intact. “If you stand in the way of his answer, Malachi, then I will have to remove you.”
For the first time since Shunjiro had met him, Malachi drew his great sword with the full intent of using it.
The massive blade came off his back with a slow, heavy scrape that seemed to drag against the air itself. Its dark metal caught the purple light of Tsubasa’s portal and reflected none of it. Malachi lowered the sword to his side, and then his aura rose.
Shunjiro nearly stopped breathing.
The pressure slammed into him like the weight of an entire mountain dropping onto his shoulders. His knees bent before he could stop them, and his hand tightened around the dagger until his knuckles ached. Dark purple energy coiled around Malachi’s body, not wild, not uncontrolled, but vast enough that the forest seemed to bow away from it. The mist scattered from his feet. Dead leaves trembled across the ground. The trees closest to him creaked under the pressure, their branches shivering as if something enormous had turned its gaze upon them.
Shunjiro had known Malachi was powerful.
He had trained under him for a month. He had been thrown, corrected, overwhelmed, and humbled more times than he could count. He knew Malachi belonged among the eight strongest people in the world. He knew the title EX rank was not decoration.
But knowing and feeling were different things.
This was the first time Malachi had allowed his aura to rise this high, and Shunjiro’s body reacted before his pride could. His heart pounded so hard it hurt. His breathing turned shallow. Every instinct in him screamed that he was standing near something far beyond him, something old and crushing, something that could end a battlefield by deciding it was finished.
So this is an EX rank.
Tsubasa did not step back.
That frightened Shunjiro almost as much.
The runaway prince stood beneath Malachi’s pressure with his expression calm, his cloak shifting lightly in the distorted air. He looked at Malachi’s blade, then at the aura rising around him, and although his face lost the last trace of amusement, fear never reached it.
“I had hoped you would be more patient,” Tsubasa said.
“I was patient when I allowed you to speak,” Malachi replied. “Now you are leaving.”
Tsubasa raised one finger.
Shunjiro saw Jayiden disappear.
That small movement was all the warning he received.
His eyes snapped upward as a portal tore open above him, purple light flashing against the black sky. Jayiden fell through it with both jagged katanas drawn, his cloak whipping around him as the blades raced downward toward Shunjiro’s head and shoulder in a crossing strike.
Shunjiro moved.
The Devil’s Luck Dagger cleared its sheath in a black arc, his spiritual energy snapping into the weapon as he twisted aside. Steel crashed against darkfire metal with a shriek, sparks scattering between them. The force drove down his arm and into his shoulder, but he held. His boots dug into the dirt. The ground cracked beneath one heel.
Jayiden’s golden eyes widened slightly.
Shunjiro shoved upward with everything he had.
Jayiden flipped back from the force, landed on the ground in a low crouch, and slid several feet through the black dirt before stopping. His twin katanas stayed raised, angled forward. For the first time since stepping out of Tsubasa’s portal, he smiled.
“You’re not a shrimp anymore,” Jayiden said.
Shunjiro adjusted his grip on the dagger, heart still pounding from Malachi’s aura and the sudden attack. “You finally decided to talk.”
Jayiden’s smile faded into something colder.
Behind them, Malachi’s pressure remained heavy, but Shunjiro knew he could not look away from Jayiden. Tsubasa had done this on purpose. Jayiden was here to keep him occupied, to drag him away from the conversation while Tsubasa dealt with Malachi.
The thought made anger flare in Shunjiro’s chest.
But Jayiden was already stepping sideways, blades ready.
Shunjiro matched him.
“Why?” Shunjiro asked.
Jayiden’s ears twitched beneath his hood.
“Why what?”
“Why are you with them?” Shunjiro’s eyes flicked to the purple cloak. “You were in Radiance. You trained under Kaito. You were one of us.”
Jayiden let out a low breath through his nose, almost a laugh, but there was no humor in it.
“One of you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No,” Jayiden said. “I really do not.”
Shunjiro’s grip tightened.
Jayiden began circling him, tail shifting slowly behind him. “Radiance was never my home.”
“Then why join the exams?”
Jayiden’s golden eyes hardened. “Because I needed a path.”
“To what?”
“To power.”
Shunjiro watched him carefully. “For Eclipsed Abyss?”
“For myself.” Jayiden’s voice lowered. “I need power to fulfill my goal.”
“What goal?”
For a moment, something moved behind Jayiden’s expression. Rage, old and buried, sharp enough to cut through his silence.
“To kill the man who massacred my home.”
The answer struck Shunjiro harder than he expected.
The forest around them seemed to recede for a heartbeat. He did not know Jayiden’s story. He did not know where he came from, who he had lost, or what kind of ruin had turned him into someone who could stand behind Tsubasa wearing that cloak. But he understood the shape of the feeling. Rage. Helplessness. The need to become strong enough that the next person who tried to destroy what mattered would fail.
“I understand wanting power because of hatred,” Shunjiro said quietly.
Jayiden’s eyes narrowed.
“No, you do not.”
“I understand more than you think.”
“You lost a fight,” Jayiden said. “That does not make you understand a massacre.”
Shunjiro flinched inwardly, but he did not back down. “Maybe not. But you do not have to stay with Eclipsed Abyss to get stronger.”
Jayiden’s stare sharpened.
Shunjiro took a careful breath. “Join me.”
For the first time, Jayiden looked genuinely offended.
His smirk returned, but this one carried teeth.
“Join you?”
“I am serious.”
“You think you can offer me something?” Jayiden’s voice rose, anger bleeding through the restraint. “You, standing there with a new cloak and a dagger, suddenly speaking like you know what the world is? Like because you survived one month in this place, you can pull me away from the only road that might get me close to my goal?”
“That is not what I am saying.”
“It is exactly what you are saying.” Jayiden’s grip tightened around both katana hilts. “You are weaker than me, Shunjiro. Less experienced. Less useful. You know nothing about what I need. Asking me to follow you is an insult.”
Shunjiro’s eyes hardened.
“You are looking at it wrong.”
Jayiden’s lips curled.
“Am I?”
“Strength is not just standing behind someone dangerous because they promise you a shortcut.”
Jayiden moved before the final word fully left Shunjiro’s mouth.
He came in low, fast enough that the dirt exploded behind his feet. Shunjiro barely caught the first katana with his dagger, the jagged edge grinding against darkfire metal. The second blade flashed toward his ribs. Shunjiro twisted away, but Jayiden followed the dodge as if he had expected it, driving a knee into Shunjiro’s stomach and forcing the air from his lungs.
Shunjiro staggered back.
Jayiden slashed from a distance.
Spiritual energy burst from the katana in a crescent, thin and sharp, racing toward Shunjiro’s chest. Shunjiro brought the dagger up and cut into it, black aura flaring as the crescent split around him. The force made his arm shake, and in that instant of blocked vision, Jayiden closed the distance.
That was his rhythm.
Close in while the enemy answered the energy.
Shunjiro realized it half a second too late.
Jayiden appeared at his left side and drove one jagged katana into him.
Pain exploded low on his left side and just below the line of his stomach. His breath vanished. His eyes widened as the blade bit deep, not striking anything vital, but tearing enough that his entire body locked in shock.
Jayiden pulled the katana free.
The jagged edge dragged through flesh like a saw.
Shunjiro choked on a cry and stumbled back, one hand clamping over the wound as blood rushed between his fingers. The pain was immediate and savage, so intense it tore through his thoughts and dragged him back to the moment Suzu had cut him apart. For one horrible second, he was back in the ruined district beneath the red dome, staring at a body that should not still be his.
His knees nearly buckled.
Move. Heal it. Now.
Golden light stirred beneath his palm.
Shunjiro pushed spiritual energy through his hand, not into an attack, but into the wound. Sand shot from his skin in a concentrated stream, golden grains forcing themselves into the torn flesh. His teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. The sensation was awful, rough and hot and deep, like pouring countless tiny needles into his own body. The sand packed into the injury, knitting against blood, slowing the bleeding, pulling the torn edges together faster than they would have healed on their own.
It did not remove the pain.
It did not fully close the wound.
But it kept him standing.
Jayiden stared.
His golden eyes flicked from Shunjiro’s hand to the wound, then back to his face.
“What did you do?”
Shunjiro breathed through clenched teeth. “Something I learned.”
Jayiden’s expression shifted with intrigue, and that made Shunjiro realize he had shown him something new. Something Eclipsed Abyss would want to understand. He pushed the thought away. Hiding did not matter if he died trying to protect a secret.
Jayiden rushed again.
Shunjiro met him.
Their weapons clashed in a sharp flurry, dagger against twin katanas, darkfire scraping against jagged steel. Shunjiro could feel the difference between them with every exchange. Jayiden was faster. Cleaner. His footwork was better, his instincts sharper, his experience carved into every movement. He fought like someone who had been shaped by survival long before Radiance ever gave him a training field.
Shunjiro had improved.
Jayiden was still ahead.
But the gap was not as wide as it once would have been.
Shunjiro used that thought like fuel.
He blocked a downward strike, ducked the second katana, and stepped inside Jayiden’s range. Their shoulders nearly collided. Shunjiro shoved him away with his forearm, creating the smallest gap between them.
His left hand snapped up.
Sand fired from his palm in hardened bursts, each shot larger than a pellet but small enough to move fast. The golden grains compressed into sharp, dense rounds that tore through the air like bullets.
Jayiden’s eyes widened.
He crossed one katana in front of him and deflected the first two, metal ringing as the hardened sand glanced off the blades. The third struck his shoulder. The fourth pierced his side. The fifth grazed his cheek, drawing a thin line of blood before he twisted away.
A coating of spiritual energy shimmered around Jayiden’s body, tight and controlled. It dulled the impact enough that the sand did not tear through him the way it should have, but it did not stop them completely. Small punctures marked his cloak and skin, each one shallow but real.
Jayiden landed several feet away, one hand briefly touching the wound at his side.
His smirk returned.
“So you picked up more than a dagger.”
Shunjiro kept one hand near his wounded side, sand still working beneath his palm. “You should probably worry about that.”
“I am.”
Jayiden crossed both katanas into an X shape.
Spiritual energy surged along the jagged blades, bright and sharp. The air in front of him compressed as the energy gathered, and Shunjiro’s eyes narrowed. He knew this stance. He had seen it before during Kaito’s early training, when Jayiden had used a similar technique against Sora in the forest spar. Back then, Shunjiro had been watching as someone far below the level needed to respond. Now he was the one standing in its path.
Jayiden swung.
An X-shaped crescent of spiritual energy tore forward, wide enough to cut through him and the trees behind him in a single line.
Golden sand burst from around his body, rising in a tight spiral from the ground to his shoulders. He covered himself in spiritual energy at the same time, bracing his feet, dagger held across his chest. The cyclone thickened, the grains grinding faster and faster, every rotation guided by the control Malachi had beaten into him over the past month.
The X-shaped slash slammed into it.
The impact nearly drove Shunjiro backward. His boots carved trenches in the dirt, and pain tore through his wounded side as his body strained to hold the defense together. The sand screamed against the spiritual energy, grinding against it, stripping at its edges, bending the attack off its intended path grain by grain.
Then the slash veered.
It tore away from Shunjiro, ripped through the cyclone’s outer edge, and slammed into the trees to his right. Several trunks exploded apart in a violent crash, dead wood collapsing in a thunderous chain as branches snapped and dust filled the air.
Shunjiro had no time to feel relieved.
Jayiden was already on him.
The first katana came for his shoulder. Shunjiro caught it with the dagger and pivoted, letting the force slide past instead of trying to stop it directly. The second blade stabbed toward his ribs. Sand from the cyclone shot between them, striking Jayiden’s wrist hard enough to shift the angle. The blade scraped across Shunjiro’s cloak instead of piercing his side.
Jayiden clicked his tongue and pressed closer.
Shunjiro kept the cyclone moving.
The sand circled him in a golden storm touched by faint black wisps from the energy around the Devil’s Luck Dagger. It was not large enough to engulf the battlefield, but it was enough to change the space around him. Every clash now carried a second threat. When Jayiden leaned in, sand snapped at his face. When he tried to circle left, grains hardened and fired toward his knee. When he raised a blade for a heavy strike, sand cut across his forearm, forcing him to adjust.
The damage was minor.
Scratches. Small punctures. Stinging impacts.
But it disrupted him.
For the first time, Jayiden had to retreat.
Shunjiro’s chest rose and fell quickly. His side throbbed with every breath, the wound only partially closed beneath the packed golden sand, but he was standing. More than that, he was forcing Jayiden to think. The realization flashed through him so suddenly that it almost became a smile.
I’m doing it.
He did not have time to enjoy it.
Jayiden dashed back in, faster than before, eyes bright with challenge. Shunjiro met him with the dagger raised, sand spiraling around his body and firing in sharp bursts whenever Jayiden entered too close.
Jayiden’s katanas forced Shunjiro back step by step.
Shunjiro’s sand kept forcing Jayiden away before the pressure could become fatal.
Neither of them looked toward the other battle.
But they both felt it.
Malachi’s aura still weighed over the forest like a storm made of dark purple pressure, and beneath it, Tsubasa’s calm presence remained unsettlingly steady.
Malachi did not turn to watch them. He trusted Shunjiro enough to keep his eyes on the threat in front of him, but the grip on his great sword tightened all the same.
Tsubasa stood before him, cloak shifting gently in the wind from the open portal, face calm despite the crushing aura pressing down over the forest.
“You trained him well,” Tsubasa said.
Malachi’s dark purple energy deepened around the edge of his blade.
“You should have left when I told you to.”
Tsubasa’s mismatched eyes lowered briefly to the great sword, then rose to meet Malachi’s gaze.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But then I would not learn whether the former king of the Shadow Realm is still worthy of being called EX.”
Tsubasa’s final words barely had time to settle.
Malachi moved first.
He did not rush forward. He did not raise his sword or release a dramatic burst of power. For a man carrying a blade large enough to split a creature in half, the first attack came with almost no movement at all. His dark purple aura pressed deeper into the ground, and the black dirt beneath Tsubasa’s boots began to tremble.
Tsubasa noticed too late.
A thick cloud of purple smoke seeped from the earth beneath him, curling around his ankles in a slow, unnatural spiral. His mismatched eyes dropped toward it, and his calm expression cracked.
“What-”
The smoke erupted.
Around fifteen hands shot upward from inside the purple haze, each one formed from shadow and spiritual energy, their fingers long, dark, and clawed like something born from the same nightmare as the Shadow Realm’s beasts. They wrapped around Tsubasa’s ankles, calves, and knees with violent force, locking him in place before he could open another portal beneath his feet. The hands dug into him like living restraints, dragging his balance downward and pinning him to the dead ground.
Tsubasa’s eyes widened.
Panic flashed across his face, sharp and genuine.
He tried to lift one leg, but the hands tightened. More smoke poured around him, twisting upward as if the ground itself had decided to devour him. His portal energy flickered at his fingertips, unstable for the first time, and his breathing hitched as Malachi began closing the distance.
Malachi walked toward him with the great sword held low at his side.
Each step was quiet.
Each step made the pressure worse.
The dark purple aura around him rolled outward in slow waves, flattening the mist and bending the dead grass away from his boots. The great sword dragged lightly through the air, its edge humming with restrained force. There was no anger on Malachi’s face, no shouted threat, no wasted motion. That calm made him more terrifying than if he had roared.
Tsubasa’s fingers snapped upward.
A portal opened above him.
From within it, a storm of kunai rained down.
The blades came fast, too many to count at once, dropping from the purple opening in a silver-black shower. They plunged into the shadowy hands binding Tsubasa’s legs, cutting through wrist after wrist, severing fingers, tearing apart the grip that held him in place. The hands writhed as they were sliced, dissolving into smoke and fragments of spiritual darkness, but more tried to rise from the ground to replace them.
Tsubasa forced one leg free.
Then the other.
Malachi was already there.
Tsubasa threw himself backward as a portal opened behind him, his body twisting toward escape. The movement was desperate, almost ugly compared to the smooth confidence he usually carried. His cloak snapped behind him as he fell toward the open portal, but Malachi’s sword was faster than his retreat.
The great blade swept through the air.
It did not fully catch him.
It caught enough.
The edge carved across Tsubasa’s chest in a brutal diagonal line, tearing through cloak, flesh, and spiritual defense before he vanished completely. Blood sprayed outward in a red arc, stark against the purple glow. Tsubasa’s mouth opened, and blood spilled from his lips as his body fell backward through the portal.
His eyes locked with Malachi’s for one final instant.
Then he disappeared.
The portal snapped shut.
Silence crashed down over the forest.
Malachi stood with his sword extended, blood dripping from the edge. The dark purple aura around him still churned, but his eyes had shifted past the spot where Tsubasa had vanished. He turned his head sharply toward Shunjiro.
Across the clearing, Shunjiro and Jayiden were still locked in motion.
Their weapons clashed again, dagger against twin jagged katanas, sparks snapping between them as Shunjiro’s golden sand cyclone tore around his body. Jayiden’s cloak was ripped in several places, his arms marked by shallow wounds from hardened sand. Shunjiro’s side still bled beneath the healing grains packed into his injury, but his stance held firm. He was breathing hard, eyes focused, dagger raised as Jayiden pressed in with another vicious exchange.
Then the ground beneath both of them split open in purple light.
Shunjiro felt it first as a sudden drop in pressure under his feet.
His eyes widened.
Jayiden looked down at the same time, surprise flashing across his face.
A portal opened directly beneath them.
Neither had time to jump away.
The ground vanished, and the two of them fell.
Shunjiro’s sand scattered upward as his body dropped through the opening. He reached for the edge of the portal, but his fingers caught only empty air and curling purple light. The Shadow Realm tilted above him, Malachi’s towering figure appearing for a single, fractured heartbeat at the edge of the closing world.
“Malachi!” Shunjiro shouted.
Malachi lunged.
He was fast, faster than Shunjiro’s eyes could fully follow, but the portal was already swallowing them. His great sword vanished from Shunjiro’s view as purple light folded inward, and the last thing Shunjiro saw was Malachi reaching toward him with fury finally breaking through his controlled expression.
Then the portal closed.
Shunjiro was gone.
Jayiden was gone.
The clearing stood empty except for Malachi.
He stared at the place where the portal had been, his hand still extended, fingers curled around nothing. The dark purple aura around him thickened until the ground beneath his boots cracked. Tsubasa’s blood still marked the edge of his great sword, dripping slowly onto the black dirt.
There was no trace to follow.
No lingering path.
No opening left behind.
Tsubasa had taken Shunjiro, and Malachi had no idea where.
The thought struck deeper than he allowed his face to show.
For thirty days, the boy had filled the dead mansion with questions, stubbornness, reckless courage, and the kind of hope Malachi had not heard in those halls for years. Shunjiro had arrived lost and desperate, and Malachi had watched him become something sharper. A student. His student.
And now Tsubasa had taken him again.
Malachi lowered his hand slowly.
The aura around him pulsed once, heavy enough to make the nearby trees groan.
He turned his sword, flicking Tsubasa’s blood from the blade in a sharp red line across the dirt, then lifted the massive weapon and set it back across his shoulders. The motion was controlled, but the air around him shook with restrained violence. His jaw tightened. His purple eyes burned in the direction Tsubasa had vanished, though there was nothing there but mist and dead trees.
When he spoke, his voice was low.
“I warned you.”
The words disappeared into the forest.
Malachi began walking.
He did not know where Tsubasa had gone. He did not know where Shunjiro had been taken. He had no trail, no map, nothing to follow. All he had was fury, memory, and the certainty that the Shadow Realm was not wide enough to hide someone from him forever.
His footsteps crushed the black dirt beneath him.
The dead forest parted around his presence as he moved deeper into it alone, sword on his back, aura still simmering like a storm trapped beneath skin.
“I will hunt you down, Tsubasa,” Malachi said aloud, each word carrying through the trees. “I will kill you, and I will get Shunjiro back.”
The mist swallowed him slowly as he walked forward, leaving the empty clearing behind.