There was no ground.
Not in the way ground should feel.
What held us up was something else—like memory pressed flat beneath our feet. It shifted if I moved too quickly. Flexed like stretched paper. Reflected light that didn't come from any sun.
Genzo crouched, touched it with two fingers. The surface rippled outward, casting rings through the nothing.
No sound followed.
"What is this place?" I asked, quieter this time.
He didn't answer.
The air was heavy—not with pressure, but awareness. Like the world itself had eyes here, and they had all turned toward us.
A thread pulled behind my ribs—steady, not urgent.
Not a warning.
A summons.
***
We walked.
We didn't know which direction. But the surface allowed it.
The horizon bent strangely—folding inward, shimmering at the edges with colors that didn't have names. Now and then, I saw glimpses of things just out of reach.
A temple bell swinging with no wind.
A field of cranes frozen mid-flight.
A clock melting into water.
They vanished if I looked too long.
Then the ground changed.
It hardened.
The thread behind my ribs grew warm.
We stepped into a clearing, though there were no trees.
No sky.
Just a space that felt round and wrong.
In the center stood a small pedestal—worn wood, half-broken, holding nothing.
But as I stepped closer, something flickered above it.
Not an object.
Not a person.
A vision.
Just long enough to make my breath catch.
A woman with silver hair, sitting in a chair made of starlight.
Her eyes opened, and she said—
"It always begins with forgetting."
Then she was gone.
And the pedestal shattered.
***
The floor beneath us trembled.
Cracks formed in the distance—lines of light and thread, pulling outward like the world was being drawn in reverse.
And from behind it all—
Slow.
Steady.
Familiar.
I looked at Genzo.
But his eyes weren't on me.
He was staring at the space behind me, jaw set.
And when I turned—
I saw a mirror.
A perfect, flawless pane of polished glass.
But what I saw in it wasn't me.
Not entirely.
Just a version of me.
Older.
Wounded.
Alone.
He raised his hand at the same time I did.
But mine trembled.
His didn't.
***
A fine crack split the mirror.
Not shattering—just enough to mark the surface. Like time itself had drawn a single line between us.
The image flickered. My older self lowered his hand. Turned his head slightly, as if hearing something I couldn't.
Then he disappeared.
Not vanished—peeled away, like a page turned too fast.
Behind the mirror, something pulsed.
I stepped closer.
The surface no longer showed a reflection. It showed threads.
Thousands of them.
Suspended in the dark, crisscrossing like veins of gold in black stone. Some still. Some writhing. All connected to something just out of sight.
Then a voice echoed—not through the air, but through the floor beneath us.
"He still doesn't see it."
It was female. Calm. Cold.
Genzo's hand moved toward his sword.
I didn't move at all.
Because I recognized the color first.
Indigo.
A soft light spilled across the broken ground. Not cast by flame. Not by stars.
But by her.
She stepped forward slowly—out from behind the threads, from behind the mirror that no longer showed anything.
The mask she wore was unchanged.
The robes still dark, still frayed at the hem.
But here presence…
It bent the space around her.
As if the void itself had grown tired of resisting.
And all at once—
I realized.
She hadn't been chasing us.
She had been leading.
***
The thread behind my ribs pulled tight—so tight I thought it might snap.
And then—
The ground responded.
Not beneath our feet.
Beneath hers.
Where she stepped, the surface rippled. Threads began to peel from the floor—slow, golden, curling upward like smoke in reverse. Some hung still. Others pulsed faintly. But they all led outward, into the dark.
And from that dark—
Something came through.
At first, it was just a sound.
Not a voice.
A pulse.
Low and steady, like a drum being beaten at the bottom of the sea.
I looked at Genzo.
He was already turning, blade drawn, eyes narrowed.
Not fear.
Instinct.
Then the first mask appeared.
Hovering in the dark. Smooth. Blank. Pale like ivory left in the rain.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
Each one attached to something shifting behind it. No limbs. No form. Just movement—coalescing into shapes that shouldn't stand but did.
They didn't make a sound.
They simply watched.
Waiting for her command.
***
"Do you feel it?" I asked.
"Yes," Genzo said quietly. "And we're not the only ones."
Because in that moment—
Other threads tugged against mine.
Not from within me.
From somewhere close.
Someone else was coming.
And they were bringing their own memories with them.
***
The figured behind her didn't move.
They waited.
Like actors behind a curtain, masks ready, roles memorized.
The woman in indigo raised one hand.
The threads curling around her arm tightened, spiraling upward like veins of gold pulled from broken history.
She didn't speak.
But the void answered anyway.
The floor beneath us pulsed—once, then again.
The threads behind my ribs began to pull harder, not in panic.
In direction.
Not toward her.
Away.
I turned—back into the dark, back toward the nothingness.
And I felt them.
The others.
Not their bodies.
Their presence.
Each one like a breath just on the edge of memory.
Their threads tugged against mine.
Not dragging.
Calling.
***
Genzo took a step backward, toward me. He didn't ask.
He felt it too.
The time around us began to shift—not collapsing, not vanish.
Just change. As if our feet were no longer waling on surface, but choice.
Each step forward now echoed. Not sound—memory.
A stone path formed beneath us, pulled from the past. From Rin's garden. From Shuji's shop. From the training stump where Genzo first struck steel with me.
The void wasn't unraveling.
It was rethreading.
And we were talking straight into it.