The air trembled.
Not because of a sound, but from the absolute absence of it. As if the world were holding its breath, suspended between one heartbeat and the next.
Ryouhei took a step forward, and the ground beneath his feet seemed to protest. Not from his weight, but from the tension clinging to his shadow. In front of him, at a distance impossible to measure with ordinary senses, the Man Without a Shadow watched him. Or so it seemed. It was hard to tell when he had no face. His figure, barely outlined against a bleeding horizon, stood with unnatural stillness.
Sera, beside him, said nothing. Her breathing was controlled, measured, as if trying to hold something inside. But her fingers —slightly trembling— betrayed the calm on her face.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Ryouhei murmured, not looking at her. His voice was swallowed by the dense fog surrounding them, as if the space between them and the enemy distorted more than just distance.
"Like a truth that was never meant to be spoken," she replied, barely audible. "This isn't just another battle. It's an echo."
An echo of what —neither said. But both knew.
The landscape was fracturing in temporal glitches: fragments of trees growing in reverse, stones levitating for a second before crumbling into sand. Reality, unsteady, began to show cracks in the presence of the Man Without a Shadow.
A whisper broke the silence. Not from outside, but from within.
"You're in the wrong place again."
The voice had no owner, no gender. It was an amalgam of his own doubts, fears, and buried memories. Ryouhei closed his eyes for a moment, and in his mind, he saw his reflection multiplied: one that laughed, another that cried, one that stared back at him with contempt.
It wasn't the enemy that was unraveling them. It was the moment itself.
And then, the Man Without a Shadow took his first step.
It made no sound. It stirred no wind. But with that movement, the battle became inevitable.
"Ready?" Ryouhei asked, turning toward Sera. She lifted her gaze, her eyes cutting through the fog with the strength of someone who had already decided.
"I always was. But this time… it's not just to survive."
Both raised their weapons. One with his fractured mind and a sealed ability born of fear. The other, with the flame of a faith once lost and now reclaimed.
The Abyss, expectant, devoured them.
And the real battle… began.