The air grew thick, almost liquid. The clearing where they had stopped vibrated with an energy that didn't belong to this world. Ryouhei felt it first: a subtle shift in pressure, a distortion in sound. The leaves crunched differently. Even the silence had gained new weight.
"He's here," Sera murmured, narrowing her eyes. The violet glow in her iris briefly intensified. "We were waiting for this, weren't we?"
"No," Ryouhei replied. "But we needed it."
They exchanged no more words. Something between them no longer required explanation—a silent understanding born from shared breaks. In front of them, the shadows distorted, trembling as if reality itself began to unravel.
And then, he appeared.
The Man Without a Shadow did not walk. He simply was. A blink later, he was there. A tall, thin figure cloaked in ragged robes that seemed to absorb light. But the most disturbing part wasn't his form—it was what surrounded him: the absolute lack of a shadow, as if reality itself rejected him.
"You see it," Sera murmured, invoking a sealing symbol in the air. "He doesn't belong to this story."
"What if neither do we?" Ryouhei replied, raising his left hand.
He activated one of the runes carved into his skin: "Third Moon Imposition." It wasn't a visible skill, not at first. But perception around him shifted. The battlefield ceased to be a forest. It ceased to be a place at all.
In his mind, Ryouhei had already projected ten possible outcomes. In five, they lost. In four, they survived. In one… he didn't know what happened. And that was the one that worried him most.
The Man Without a Shadow raised a hand. There was no spell, no chant, no dramatic gesture. He simply… collapsed the space before him. The ground curved inward, as if an invisible force was dragging matter toward a conceptual void.
Sera jumped aside, raising a shield of corrupted light. The impact rumbled like a held-back scream. Ryouhei slipped between two realities—a rift opened by his ability—and reappeared behind the entity, drawing his ceremonial blade.
What he didn't expect was the pain. Despite his stealth, his precision, the projection… the entity had already seen him. It remembered him from futures that had yet to occur.
A voice entered his mind, soundless, language-less.
"How many times have you tried to kill me before this moment?"
Ryouhei staggered. A chill ran down his spine. The entity spoke in a line that didn't belong to this chapter of his story. It was as if the Man Without a Shadow remembered every attempt… from every timeline.
Sera, unaware of the mental intrusion, summoned a spear made of fractured code. The weapon vibrated with corrupted energy—a blend of light and rot. She threw it with pinpoint precision. The entity deflected it without touching it, and in that instant, Ryouhei understood something.
"He can't focus on more than one thing at a time!" he shouted.
That was the key.
The strategy shifted. It wasn't about power—it was about overloading his consciousness. While Sera attacked with increasingly symbolic spells—some without concrete form—Ryouhei used his passive ability to open minor space-time rifts. They weren't portals, but imbalances.
And in one of those tears, it happened.
A figure appeared, just for a second. It was the Man Without a Shadow, but different. Human. Young. Desperate. Locked in a white room with numbers carved into his skin and tears that evaporated before falling.
"You saw that?!" Sera gasped, panting.
Ryouhei didn't respond. He was frozen.
That echo… that fragment… was a version of himself.
But more broken. Older. Maybe… from a line that didn't survive.
Or maybe… an inevitable future.
The Man Without a Shadow roared—without a mouth, without vocal cords. It was a conceptual roar. Everything shook. The clearing became a crater. The night seemed to bleed. And in the midst of the chaos, Sera grabbed Ryouhei's hand.
"Don't let the future consume you," she whispered. "We're still now."
And that phrase was enough for him to keep going.
Because even if the enemy came from impossible timelines, even if each battle shattered him further… he still had something to protect.