At dawn, Merinet separated them without ceremony.
"Rina, you go with Eris and the others to the Sunstone Grove. You will learn to condense your light into a blade, not a blast. Kenji, you come with me."
Rina shot Kenji a look, not jealousy, but a warrior's assessment. "Don't break." He gave a single nod. "I won't."
Merinet led him not to a glade, but deep into the heart of the mountain the woods crowned. The air grew cold and still. They entered a cavern where the only light came from faint, ghostly fungi on the walls. In the center was a flat stone dais, encircled by nine black iron stakes driven into the rock.
"Your power is not a tool," Merinet said, her voice echoing. "It is a consciousness. A hungry one, born of ancient blood and death. To control it, you must first face it. And to face it, you must give it a voice."
She produced two heavy manacles forged of dull, grey iron. "These are null-metal. They will dampen the physical manifestation. But they cannot protect your mind." She chained his ankles to two of the stakes. "If the shadow takes the wheel, I will contain you here. If it takes you fully… I will be forced to put you down."
Kenji's mouth was dry. He knelt on the cold stone as instructed, palms flat on the dais. The null-metal was ice against his skin.
Merinet began to circle him, her footsteps silent. She started chanting in a low, guttural tongue that seemed to make the shadows in the cavern deepen and writhe. She burned a handful of black sage; the smoke didn't rise but sank, coiling around Kenji like serpents, seeping into his nose, his mouth, his pores.
A deep cold, different from the null-metal, invaded his bones.
At first, it was just pressure. A presence at the back of his skull. Then, a "voice". It was his, but wrong, deeper, layered with a thousand whispers, slick with malice.
"Finally… you invite me in. Tired of being a scared little boy?"
Kenji's vision doubled. The cavern faded. He stood in a void of swirling grey mist. Before him, a figure coalesced. It had the shape of a man, but was woven from darkness and shifting scarlet embers. Two points of hellish red light burned where its eyes should be. It took a step forward. The sound was like cracking bones.
"Look at you. Kneeling. Chained. Just like your father at the end."
"My father was stronger than you," Kenji gritted out in the void.
The shadow-thing let out a wet, rasping laugh. "Strong? He was a dog on a leash. My leash. He thought he was using me… but I was the one who tasted the Sun Tribe's fear. I was the one who savored their light as it went out. He just held the sword."
Rage, white-hot and blinding, erupted in Kenji's chest. "Liar!"
"He spared the girl out of weakness. A moment of pathetic sentiment. And it got him killed. A failure to the end."
"SHUT UP!" Kenji screamed, the fury swallowing his fear, his reason. It was the opening it wanted.
In the cavern, Merinet watched.
Kenji's body, kneeling, began to tremble violently. The dark veins she'd seen flare before now erupted, crawling across every visible inch of skin like black lightning, glowing with a sickly violet light. His back arched, his head wrenched upwards, mouth open in a silent scream. His eyes flew open, the pupils had vanished, consumed by inky darkness.
Then, the shaking stopped.
A terrifying stillness fell.
Slowly, mechanically, Kenji's head lowered. His arms, held out to the sides by the chains, went limp. He rose to his feet, the null-metal chains straining. The movement was all wrong, too fluid, too powerful. He wasn't standing; something was puppeting him up.
A dark aura, thick as oil and cold as the grave, began to bleed from his body, smothering the faint fungal light. The air crackled with static.
Merinet stopped chanting. She settled into a low, ready stance, her hands coming up,not glowing with magic, but shaped into precise, open-handed combat forms.
"Well," she murmured, a fierce light in her eyes. "It seems it's time."
The thing wearing Kenji's body moved.
It wasn't a lunge; it was a blur of darkness. It closed the distance in a heartbeat, a fist sheathed in swirling shadow aimed at Merinet's throat.
Merinet didn't flinch. She swayed aside, the punch missing by an inch. Her own hand shot out, not to strike, but to deflect the follow-up elbow strike, redirecting its force into the empty air. The null-metal chains on Kenji's ankles snapped taut, yanking his footing off-balance for a split second.
"Fight him, Kenji!" Merinet barked, her voice sharp as a whip, cutting through the cavern's gloom. "It's using your anger! Your pain! It's not your strength, it's your poison!"
Inside the void, Kenji was drowning. The shadow's laughter was everywhere. "She's weak! She chains you! They all want to cage us! Let me out! Let me show them true power!"
Outside, the shadow-Kenji recovered with unnatural speed. It couldn't use ranged shadow attacks due to the null-metal, but its physicality was enhanced to terrifying levels. It launched a barrage of blows, fists, knees, claws of solidified darkness forming at its fingertips.
Merinet was a phantom. She dodged, parried, deflected. She used the limited range of the chains against it, constantly maneuvering to keep them taut, to rob the entity of its momentum. A shadow-claw grazed her arm, tearing her silks and drawing a line of blood that smoked with residual darkness.
She didn't cast a spell. She fought with preternatural skill, every move efficient, every block a lesson. She was showing the shadow it could be opposed.
"KENJI!" she roared, ducking under a savage swipe that would have decapitated her. "Your father fought this thing every day of his life and won until his last breath! You are his son! NOW WIN!"
In the void, her voice was a lifeline. The shadow's taunts were a storm, but her words were an anchor. His father fought it. His father… won.
The blinding rage cracked. For a second, he saw not the shadow's tempting power, but the cost in his father's weary eyes. The cost in his own white hair.
NO.
In the cavern, the shadow-Kenji faltered mid-charge. The dark aura flickered.
Merinet saw it,a flicker of brown in the endless black of his eyes. She pressed, not with an attack, but with her voice, pouring conviction into it.
"It has your rage, but it does NOT have your will! Take it back!"
With a sound that was part scream, part roar, Kenji slammed his own consciousness forward. He didn't fight the shadow with anger. He fought it with the cold, hard certainty,of who he was. Kenji. Son of Arran and Elara. Not a weapon. Not a monster.
The dark veins receded like tides pulling back from a shore. The aura snuffed out. The shadow-claws dissolved.
Kenji collapsed to his knees on the cold stone, gasping, the manacles clanking. His eyes were his own, wide and shell-shocked, but clear. Sweat and tears dripped from his chin.
Silence, broken only by his ragged breaths.
Merinet stood before him, her arm bleeding, her chest rising and falling steadily. She looked down at him, not with pity, but with fierce, unwavering approval.
"Now," she said, her voice returning to its normal, melodic timbre. "You have met it. And you have told it 'no.' Remember this feeling. This is the first step of control."
She knelt, unchaining his ankles. "The shadow is part of you. It will always speak. You must learn to be the one who decides when to listen."
Kenji looked up at her, the phantom of the red-eyed thing still burning in his mind. He was terrified. He was exhausted.
But for the first time, he was not helpless before the darkness inside.
He had faced it. And he was still here.