The silence had changed.
It wasn't the same one Ryouhei had embraced during his voluntary isolation weeks ago, when he searched for answers in hollow caves or in the roots of trees that whispered lies. This silence was denser, as if someone had squeezed it with their hands until it cracked. He walked through mists that hadn't been there before, in a forest he knew by heart… and yet no longer responded the same to his steps.
The world hadn't changed. He had.
Since the anomaly, since the vision of the Man Without a Shadow, something had broken. Ryouhei didn't say it. He didn't consciously think it. But he felt it—in the cracks in the ground that spoke of paths not taken, in the shadows that stretched too long under absent moons, in the echo of his breathing that sometimes sounded like someone else's.
Sera noticed. But she said nothing. She glanced at him sideways, like someone watching a person fade without realizing it. Her words, once firm, had become softer. Her gestures, more restrained. As if she didn't want to shatter something already close to breaking.
But Ryouhei didn't fully notice.
Not really.
In his mind, he justified the numbness as "strategy." He called his silence "focus." And the weight in his chest was simply "fatigue." There was no time for weakness. Not before the confrontation. Not now that they knew the Man Without a Shadow wasn't just a threat… but a mirror.
That night, he slept alone, despite the fire and the nearby presence.
And in his dream, the forest had no leaves. Only faces, thousands of them, hanging from the branches like dried fruit. Some were familiar—extras, victims, enemies, even allies. Others were his. Not one, but dozens of versions of himself, each trapped in a moment that never happened.
One Ryouhei who never escaped slavery. Another who joined the heroes. One more who betrayed Sera. All of them stared at him in silence, but with blame in their eyes.
And at the center, like an impossible totem, stood the Man Without a Shadow… as a child.
He wasn't a monstrous creature. Just a child crying in a room where the light of the three moons fractured him into pieces. A child who reached out to Ryouhei—not to attack, but to ask for something. Company. Forgiveness. Meaning.
Ryouhei woke up in a sweat. The fire still crackled. Sera slept peacefully, but her left hand trembled as if she had shared the same dream.
He said nothing. Got up. Walked to the edge of the clearing. And vomited silently.
"It wasn't real," he told himself. "Just a side effect. Something the system left inside me."
But when he looked at his shadow, he saw a piece was missing. A tiny part. An absence of the whole.
And for the first time since arriving in Eclipsi
a… Ryouhei was afraid of himself.