He sat up, leaning against the wall, and stared at the notebook in his lap. White. Coffee-stained. Handmade. Bound together with rough rope that looked like it could fall apart at any moment.
'Rei's journal.'
His fingers brushed the cloth cover. Gentle. Almost afraid.
Because inside this book was probably everything. Every answer. Every secret. Everything he'd ever wanted to know about the voice that had lived inside his head for years.
And for some reason, that terrified him more than the idea of killing some god.
The handwriting wasn't the best. Messy. Rushed. Almost frantic—like his thoughts were sprinting and his hand was desperately trying to keep up.
He scanned through each page slowly. And beneath the writing, every single page had drawings. Sketches. Some rough, some detailed.
"06/03/3023"
He stared at the date. Ran the numbers in his head.
'Twenty years.'
"It's been a week since they took my sister. I feel conflicted. I miss her. I feel like I lost a part of me, yet I also feel complete. It's complicated."
Underneath was a drawing of a girl. Careful lines. Gentle shading. Drawn by someone who was terrified of forgetting.
He didn't need a name.
It was Liz. His sister.
"06/10/3023"
"I see her face. Every time. She smiled at me before they led her away. I went after her, but it ended the same way. Hurled back by Chris, my father's loyal man. And every time I wake up sweating, panicking. And every time I do—I lose something."
Underneath, he'd drawn her again. Same girl. Same care.
But something was different.
"06/13/3023"
"Something odd is happening. I had the same dream, but this time I couldn't see her eyes. I don't remember what color her eyes were. I ran to her—I thought if I got closer I could see them. But when I did, there was nothing. Just blank. And it shook me up."
He turned the page.
And the next.
And the next.
Just drawings now. Liz. Over and over. But with each page, something vanished. Her nose on one. Her hair on the next. Then her lips. Then the shape of her jaw. Page after page, the face came apart like sand washing away in slow motion.
Until the last drawing was just an outline.
Empty.
Blank.
Like Rei had forgotten who he was supposed to be drawing.
And he never looked back at the earlier pages.
Maybe he considered it cheating. Or maybe he was too afraid to see how much he'd already lost.
"07/15/3023"
"I can't remember how she looked. I don't feel anything anymore when I think about them dragging her away. I just stood there. Confused. Trying to remember her name."
"07/18/3023"
"The girl I loved told me I wasn't the same person she fell in love with."
"I don't know why this is happening to me."
He kept going after that. Wrote more. Page after page of trying to make sense of something that didn't make sense. Reaching for answers that weren't there.
He failed.
And ended the day with seven words.
"I feel alone. I feel so alone."
Underneath was one last drawing. Shaky lines. Barely held together. A man curled into a ball in the corner of a room full of people.
Every person in that room was facing away.
Not a single one looking at the man in the corner.
Shiro's fingers tightened around the page until the paper crumpled under his grip. His jaw locked. His teeth pressed together so hard they ached. His eyes burned—hot, blurring, turning the ink into dark smears he could barely see through.
And something inside him broke. He sniffled—quiet. Barely there.
This feeling. He knew it so well. Like an old wound he thought had healed, but…
Ari stirred on his lap. She slithered up to his hand and pressed against it, warm and steady.
He felt himself relax. Just a little. Just enough.
It was her way of saying get some sleep. And for once, he agreed.
The more he read, the more uneasy he felt. Like every page peeled back a layer he wasn't ready to see. He wanted to keep going—part of him needed to—but the rest of him wasn't sure he was ready to face what was behind the next page.
Or the one after that.
He closed the journal. Cupped Ari gently and placed her beside him on the pillow. Then he lay back, staring at the blank ceiling and listening to the sound of Ari breathing.
He let his eyes fall shut.
And he slept. Comfortably. Too comfortably.
So comfortably, in fact, that he didn't notice someone had entered his room.
His eyes snapped open.
Nora was standing there. In his room. Holding Ari.
He shot up.
Ari hissed at her—a sharp, annoyed put me down kind of hiss—but Nora was too busy cooing over the tiny snake to notice. Squeezing her gently. Tilting her head. Making the kind of face people make when they see something unbearably cute.
And then she stopped.
Slowly—very slowly—she looked down at what she was holding. A tiny pink serpent. The exact tiny pink serpent Luca had been talking about.
Her eyes grew twice their size.
Her body stiffened.
"It was you."
Her grip loosened just enough—and Ari took the opportunity. She launched herself off Nora's hands and landed on Shiro's chest like a tiny, scaly missile.
Nora's smile didn't fade. It was ripped off her face. One second it was there—the next, gone. Like it had never existed.
What replaced it was something he'd only seen once. It was the day they fought.
Her presence hit him like a wave. The kind of pressure that made the air itself feel like it was choosing sides—and, unlucky for him, it wasn't choosing his.
Her hair ripped free from its ponytail in dramatic fashion, whipping around her face like it had a mind of its own—and that mind was furious at him.
Her jaw clenched so tight he was kind of worried her teeth would crack before she could kill him.
And her eyes were what sent a chill down his spine. He remembered those anger-filled eyes before. And they were terrifying as always.
Whenever she got really, really upset, her storm-gray eyes thinned into something barely human.
And right now they were fully locked onto him. Unblinking.
She materialized her rapier. And the entire building began to tremble.
His body started to shake. Teeth chattering. But not from the cold.
From the very real, very immediate possibility that he was about to die half naked.
Ari hissed from his chest. Small. Defiant. Absolutely suicidal.
He looked down at Ari. Then up at Nora. Then at the cracks spreading across the walls.
'Okay. I should probably stop this before the house comes down and kills us both.'
"You know it would be kinda embarrassing if you killed me in my boxers, Princess."
A short pause.
"Do I just call you little princess, or just princess now?"
Everything stopped.
The pressure vanished. Her hair dropped. Limp. Still. The rapier lowered an inch—then another. Her eyes, those terrifying storm-gray eyes, went wide. Not with anger. Not with fury.
With something far more dangerous.
Recognition.
Her voice came out broken. Each word cracking like thin ice.
"What did you call me?"
He leaned back against the wall. A small smile tugged at his lips—tired, soft, almost relieved.
"You know, princess, I think we might be a bit too old to play the great, amazing, awesome princess versus the evil villain man." He glanced at the rapier still half-pointed at his chest. "Now you just point real swords at me."
And those words seemed to reach her. The sword dissolved from her hand. Her expression softened—cracked, really—like a dam that had been holding for years finally giving way.
She lunged at him.
Not with the rapier, to his relief.
She wrapped her arms around him and held on like he might disappear again if she let go.
Completely forgetting the part where he'd attacked the island and killed a bunch of people.
'Minor details, I guess.'
The hug was warm. Gentle. The kind that said everything words couldn't.
And then it got tighter.
And tighter.
And significantly less gentle.
"I guess you missed me a lo—" His ribs creaked. Then he remembered what she'd said about choking him to death herself. "Okay, little princess—let's not forget you still need someone to carry all your stuff on the hunt—"
She wasn't listening. Her grip only tightened.
'I'm going to die. By hug. This is how it ends.'
Then a whistle came from the doorway.
"Oh, you naughty kids."
A woman's voice. Smooth. Teasing. Dripping with amusement.