The shard opened with a flickering ripple—like moonlight slicing through a black tide, sharp and cold and fleeting. I stepped through, and it pulled at me the moment I crossed the threshold. Pulled hard. A wrenching, visceral tug, as if the fabric of reality itself sought to unravel me. My bones twisted, my muscles warped, my frame collapsed inward, then expanded again in a violent pulse of reformation. The sensation was familiar by now, but no less unpleasant—a reminder that no matter how many times I crossed the shards, my body would never fully reconcile with the unnatural act. I held my breath, focused inward. I adapted.
I had enough control now, enough mastery of the shape I wore to mold it, to shrink it just a little—just enough to pass as almost average. If two meters of crystal and shadow could ever be called average. My form was a compromise, a deliberate choice to blend into the world I'd entered, though blending was never truly possible. Not for someone like me. My presence carried weight, not just in mass but in the way eyes lingered, in the way whispers followed. But I'd learned long ago that if you stand tall, walk with purpose, and act like you belong, people tend to stop asking questions. Or, at least, they ask them quietly—after you've gone.
I landed in a region I'd only ever read about in brittle, pre-war tomes and half-remembered stories . Murasakibara. One of the great equatorial continents of Yuma, a sprawling, sun-drenched landmass teeming with ancient life. Even before the Sundering, it had been the largest by far, a titan among continents. Dense jungles stretched like kingdoms, their canopies so thick they swallowed the sun whole. Storm-glass cliffs, older than history, gleamed with the petrified light of forgotten tempests. Cities, carved from the bones of kaiju's long dead, stood as silent sentinels, their spires piercing the haze of time. This was a land that breathed myth, where every root and stone seemed to hum with the weight of stories uncounted.
The air was thick with humidity, heavy with the scent of sap and earth and blooming life. The heat was horrible...i think the residents seem to handle it...fairly it was, unrelenting, a living thing that coiled around them like a serpent. Murasakibara was brilliant, alive in a way that made my pulse quicken, as if the land itself were watching me, weighing me.
And what I found was something else entirely.
These demons were different, from the ones i met since the last time i was here the other ones seemed . They smiled when they met me—wide, open, sun-dappled smiles that caught the light filtering through the jungle canopy. Their eyes didn't burn with malice; they shone. Warmly. Curiously. Like I was an old friend returning from war, not a stranger who'd slipped through a tear in the world.
The first night, they brought me food before I could even ask, I tried to tell them that i dint need food really. As a crystalline anything counts as energy, even the very air but their hospitality knew no bounds i recieved A fruit I'd never seen before—green and gold, its skin buzzing with a faint, electric heat that tingled against my fingertips. Roasted meat, tender and fragrant, wrapped in broad, waxy leaves that smelled of rain. Honeyed rice, sticky and sweet, molded into perfect spheres. Cool springwater, served in carved stone cups so smooth they felt like glass under my touch. They sat with me as I ate, cross-legged on woven mats, their laughter soft and unforced. Some even knelt, their heads bowed as if I were someone important. Someone titled. A lord, perhaps, or a wanderer of legend. I didn't correct them. Let them believe what they wished—it was easier that way.
Their kindness was strange, though. Too polished. Too intentional, like a stage play rehearsed for the hundredth time. It wasn't just hospitality; it was a performance, a deliberate act. As if they were trying to show me something—not just about their world, but about themselves. As if they needed to prove, perhaps desperately, that they were no longer what their ancestors had been. I couldn't blame them. Their history was a heavy one, written in fire and death, stained with the blood of war, slavery, and infernal oaths sworn in the dark. The weight of evil lingered in their eyes, even as they smiled. But none of that showed on their faces. Not here. These were the warmest hosts I'd ever known, unshakably generous. Alarmingly so.
Belial shifted uncomfortably at that passage and flipped the page.
They fed me constantly, piling fruit and roasted roots into my hands, sometimes when I was still chewing the last bite. They insisted I stay longer. Try this. No, that. Sit, listen to our children sing. Their voices were earnest, their gestures fluid and inviting. Their culture was loud and bright, built around stories, tradition, and harmony. It reminded me of the Grukin—of the ancient halls beneath the Obsidian Cliffs, where song was sacred and names were chanted in echoing praise. Murasakibara held a similar heartbeat—honor-bound, expressive, alive with a pulse that thrummed through the earth itself. But where my homeland was all steel and firelight, sharp edges and smoldering embers, they were laughter and leaves. Sunlight through cracked shutters. Drumbeats that made the ground hum beneath my feet.
It was heartwarming. Soft. The kind of soft you forget to trust. But for a time, I did.
*For one week, I forgot the stars. I forgot the ceaseless weight of duty pressing down like the gravity of a dying sun.
I forgot the silence of command, the echoes of every order I had ever given that sent someone I loved to their death.
I let it go, or tried to.
*I let myself sink into the rhythm of their world. I watched their dances, wild and fast like lightning storms at dusk, their bodies weaving patterns that seemed to pull the very air into motion. I drank their honey wine, which buzzed in my veins like a second pulse, sweet and heady, consumed by my body into pure energy. I learned their songs, some of them, at least. One was about a mountain who fell in love with a wandering storm, its melody heavy with longing. Another a boy born from a giant peach who embarks on a journey to defeat Kaiju on an island, often accompanied by animal companions.. A third was instrumental, played on a curved horn carved from the skull of a whale-sized beast that once swam the skies of Yuma. I listened as the old horn-player, her fingers gnarled but sure, made that mountain cry, the notes rising like a lament to the stars.**
It was a blissful week, a fleeting reprieve from the weight of my purpose. But peace is a mask, and masks are meant to be removed.
I had business to attend to. And the stars do not wait.
Belial sighed, the breeze slipping around him like a whisper, cool and fleeting. The notebook in his hand creaked gently as he closed it. Leather-bound, worn at the edges, its pages filled with memory and meaning, scribbled notes, half-formed thoughts, fragments of a journey that stretched across worlds. He sat still for a long time, his legs folded beneath him atop the mountain ledge. The air up here was thin but clean, sharp enough to raise bumps across his arms, even through the loose shirt he wore.
Belial stared out across the horizon. The moon hung pale and unwavering in the night sky, casting a soft, silver glow over the jagged ridgelines of the mountain. The valley stretched endlessly below, a quilt of green and shadow, its edges dissolving into the haze.. But there was something else down there, too. Something..,or someone that called to him.
The Prince. The lonely prince. The one who'd touched all of this in ways Belial still didn't fully understand. He had read fragments of the prince's story, seen traces of his influence in the way he lived, The prince had walked here, had shaped things, changed things. His presence was a thread woven into the fabric of This world, faint but undeniable. Belial wanted to know what he would do next, what paths he would carve through this land of light and shadow.
But the answer wouldn't come sitting here, lost in dreams. The stars were calling, their light a cold reminder of the oaths he'd sworn, the burdens he carried. He rose slowly, tucking the notebook beneath his arm. His bones ached slightly as he stretched, not from age, but from stillness. He was not made for rest. His body, his soul, his purpose—they were forged for motion, for pursuit, for the endless chase of truths that lay just beyond reach.
One last glance. The moon, still there. Watching. Eternal.
And then Belial turned and began the long descent into the darkness below.