Kenjiro's boots dragged across the obsidian grit. Every breath was a jagged rasp, scraping against lungs that felt like they had been scrubbed with glass. He stopped, his weight leaning heavily on the hilt of the mythic blade. The blue light of the system interface flickered into existence, bleeding through the murky air.
[ SYSTEM INTERFACE: STATUS REPORT ]
Host: Kenjiro Arisaka / Renji Kurozawa
Condition: Critical Internal Hemorrhage | Severe Mana Depletion
Health: 9/100
Mana: 3/500
[ ACQUIRED REWARDS & SKILLS ]
* Shadow Extraction (Level 5): The ability to pull souls from the freshly dead. Current Pool: Fulgur-Serpent, Fubuki-Ryū, Twin Cinders, Bone-Eater Chimaera.
* Void Core (Passive): Enhances the density of mana.
* Nirvana (Ultimate): Dimensional erasure. (Current Status: LOCKED – Insufficient Mana)
* Artifact: Heaven-Piercer Spirit Arrow (Soul-bound).
The Warden materialized from the shifting grey fog. He didn't offer a hand. He stood three paces away, his mask a blank void of judgment.
"Kenjiro, accept the defeat," the Warden said. The voice was flat, devoid of pity.
"You are a broken vessel. If you cross this threshold, the mountain will not just kill you. It will erase the memory of your existence."
Kenjiro's jaw tightened until the bone groaned. He forced his knees to lock, pushing himself upright. "Time... isn't a luxury I have." He spat a thick glob of copper-tasting blood onto the stone. "Losing isn't in the blueprint. To be a King, I have to walk through the wreckage. Even if the wreckage is me."
He slammed a clenched fist against his sternum. A violent surge of mana—a jagged mix of Abyss-green and Void-blue—tore through his skin. The pressure hit the ceiling, sending a spray of stone shards down like black rain.
"I serve this last punishment before I leave!"
He gripped the hilt, the green flames of his aura coating the steel. He ignored the Warden and stepped toward the fifth path.
[ WARNING: UNIDENTIFIED SENTINEL DETECTED ] [ Target: The Weaver of Grief ] [ Type: Psychic Illusion / Rank: Calamity ] The path swallowed him in an ink-like fog. After twenty paces, he hit a barrier that felt like cold oil.
[ ALERT: YOU ARE ENTERING AN ILLUSION DOMAIN ] [ Warning: System interference is NULLIFIED. Logic and Mana cannot save you here. Only the Host's Will governs the outcome. ]
Kenjiro walked through.
The world shattered.
Illusion I: The Cry in the Dark
"Kerry! Kenjiro! Help me!"
The voice wasn't just loud; it was intimate. It felt like Hana was standing inches behind him, her breath warm against his neck before the wet, sickening thwack of steel meeting meat silenced her breath.
Kenjiro's knees buckled. He hit the ground hard, his palms pressing into the phantom mud of the village. The scent of her iron-rich blood rose from the dirt, cloying and sweet. He squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead resting against the cold stone of the true path, while in his mind, he saw her reaching out, her fingers trailing across the dirt as she crawled toward his shadow.
"It's a lie," he wheezed, a thick glob of blood hitting the floor. The sound of her agonizing sob vibrated in his inner ear, a jagged frequency that made his vision blur. He forced himself to stand, his legs shaking with a palsy that had nothing to do with his injuries. He walked forward, stepping over the place where he felt her hand clutching at his ankle. He didn't look back, even as her voice dissolved into a gurgling plea.
Illusion II: The Father's Disgrace
The mud of the village transitioned into the damp, decaying leaves of the deep forest. The air grew heavy with the scent of pine and ozone. Kazuki lay pinned beneath the massive, splintered trunk of a cedar, his face a map of burst capillaries and grinding teeth.
"You brought this on us," Kazuki rasped. Every word sent a fresh spray of blood onto Kenjiro's boots. "Look at what your 'destiny' bought, boy. A grave for your mother and a slow death for the man who fed you."
Kenjiro stopped. His breath came in shallow, panicked bursts. He looked at the axe lying just out of Kazuki's reach—the same axe that had taught him the weight of wood and the value of a day's labor. The guilt was a physical pressure, a tightening coil around his throat that made it impossible to swallow.
"I didn't..." Kenjiro started, his voice breaking. He fell to one knee, the jagged bark of the illusionary tree cutting into his skin. He wanted to reach out, to heave the timber off his father's chest, but he knew the moment he touched the wood, he would be lost to the dream. He watched his father's eyes turn dull and glassy, reflecting Kenjiro's own horrified face. He stood up slowly, his chest aching as if the timber lay across his own ribs, and stepped through the corpse.
Illusion III: The Abandoned Sister
The forest vanished, replaced by the sterile, biting scent of bleach and sickness. The light was a harsh, flickering fluorescent that made Kenjiro's head throb.
Hikari sat on the edge of the hospital bed, her small frame looking skeletal under the thin gown. She was pulling her hair out, the black strands falling like dead spiders onto the white sheets.
"Five hundred years, Renji," she whispered. The name hit him like a bullet. "I waited until my skin turned to parchment. I waited until I forgot the sound of your laugh. You were off being a King, and I was just a girl who couldn't breathe."
She stood up, her movements jerky and unnatural, like a marionette with cut strings. She wrapped her cold, thin fingers around his throat. Kenjiro didn't fight her. He let the phantom pressure choke him, his face turning a bruised purple as he stared into her hollow eyes.
"I'm sorry," he choked out, blood leaking from his ears now, the psychic strain rupturing the small vessels in his head. He felt the life draining out of him, the seductive urge to just stop fighting and die here with her. But as her grip tightened, he remembered the Warden's mask. He leaned his forehead against hers, a final, silent goodbye, and walked through the wall of the hospital room.
Illusion IV: The Meat of the Villagers
The hospital dissolved into a grotesque banquet hall. The walls were hung with the flayed skins of the people of Itosai, the faces recognizable in their frozen masks of terror. In the center of the room stood a table heaving with roasted meat.
Kenjiro staggered toward the table, his stomach cramping with a hunger that felt like a living thing clawing at his insides. He saw Sato's face, charred and glistening with fat, resting on a silver platter.
"This is the fuel for your throne," a thousand voices whispered from the rafters.
"Their lives are the mana in your veins. Eat, King. Consume the debt."
Kenjiro vomited. He fell onto the table, his hands sinking into the warm, greasy remains of the people he had failed to protect. He let out a raw, animalistic scream, his fingers clawing at the wood. The smell was everywhere—under his fingernails, in his hair, in the back of his throat. He forced himself to look at every face, to memorize the cost, and then he pushed himself off the table. He crawled across the floor, his body slick with the grease of the illusion, until the banquet hall bled back into the grey fog.
Illusion V: The Mirror of the Monster
He stood before a mirror that reached the ceiling. The glass was cracked, spiderwebbing from the center. He didn't see a boy. He saw a towering, three-headed nightmare, its scales dripping with the blood of a thousand innocents.
The monster held Hana's head in its primary jaw, the teeth grinding through the bone with a sickening crunch.
"Is this the 'King' you promised to be?" the mirror hissed.
Kenjiro stared at the monster. He saw the emerald glow in its eyes—the same glow that now lit the dark of the fifth path. He felt a terrifying sense of recognition. He wasn't looking at a monster; he was looking at his own soul, stripped of its pretenses.
He didn't scream this time. He stepped forward and pressed his bleeding forehead against the cold glass. "If I am a monster," he whispered, his voice a low, jagged vibration that cracked the rest of the mirror, "then I will be the one that monsters fear."
He slammed his head into the glass, the shards slicing into his scalp, but as they fell, they turned into smoke.
Illusion VI: The False Peace
The final veil was a simple room. It was quiet. The air smelled of jasmine and sun-warmed cedar. Hana was there, her hands busy with a needle and thread. Kazuki sat by the fire, his laughter a low, comforting rumble. Hikari was on the floor, drawing in the dirt.
"You're home, Kenjiro," Hana said, her smile so bright it hurt to look at. "The mountain was just a fever. Come, sit. The tea is poured."
The peace was a physical weight, a siren song that promised an end to the cold, the blood, and the crushing responsibility of the Crown. Kenjiro felt his grip on his sword loosen. His heart slowed. He could almost taste the tea, almost feel the warmth of the fire on his frozen skin.
He looked at his mother. She looked so real—the small mole near her eye, the way she tucked a stray hair behind her ear. He wanted to stay. Every cell in his body screamed for him to just sit down and forget the five hundred years.
He raised his mythic blade. His arms felt like they were made of lead, every muscle fiber tearing under the strain of defying the dream.
"I'm already dead," he whispered, a final tear tracking through the blood on his cheek. "And the dead don't drink tea."
He drove the sword into the floorboards.
The world shattered like a falling chandelier.
Kenjiro fell to his knees on the cold, damp stone of the fifth path. He was hyperventilating, his face a ruin of tears, sweat, and blood. The ink-gate was gone. The fog had retreated, leaving a hollow silence that felt heavier than the screams.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ] [ The Weaver of Grief has been Shattered. ] [ Mental Fortitude: UNMEASURABLE ] [ Reward: Soul Fragment 'The King's Resolve' ] THUMP.
The floorboards of the mountain buckled. The sound didn't come from the air; it came from the core of the earth.
THUMP.
A roar erupted—a sound of grinding glaciers and ancient, frozen spite. It was so loud it physicaly pushed Kenjiro back. The frost on the walls grew an inch in a second, jagged spears of ice erupting from the ground like teeth.
Kenjiro flinched, his hand flying to his marked wrist, which was now pulsing a violent, rhythmic red. He regained his composure, his grip on the blade tightening until the leather creaked.
The mist at the end of the hall cleared. A throne of blue ice sat there, and atop it, a figure ten feet tall, encased in armor of eternal frost, began to rise.
"The Glacial Sepulcher has awakened," Kenjiro said, his voice overlapping with a ghostly baritone.