The wind cut through his coat like it didn't care he was there.
Elias Mori, a tanned man with combed black hair like the void, dark blue eyes whose light has been snuffed out and a figure that showed he no longer cared about himself, stood motionless before the two gravestones, a lone figure in a cemetery half-forgotten by the world. A businessman no longer wrapped in the sheen of silk or the weight of tailored power, just a man in a charcoal overcoat two sizes too large, hunched against the wind, soaked to the bone.
The first stone read:
Hana Mori
Beloved Wife.
Fierce Heart and Gentle Hands.
1989–2021
The second, smaller one:
Emi Mori
Beloved Daughter.
The Brightest Star.
2015–2021
He knelt, mechanical and slow, as if his bones had learned grief too well. The umbrella he held dropped beside him, forgotten. Rain pattered against his back, his hair, his face yet he didn't move to wipe it away.
"I know I've been gone too long," Elias murmured, voice raw from disuse. "I've been… trying to stay busy." His words were brittle, like dry leaves underfoot. "You know how I was."
He reached out, fingers trembling, brushing a single dead leaf from Emi's name. The stone was slick with rain. Cold and unyielding.
"I sold the house in Okinawa," he said after a long pause. "The one you hated. Said it looked like a villain's lair." A hollow, breathless sound escaped him. "You were right."
The silence pressed in.
His eyes stayed fixed on the gravestone.
"I can't remember her voice anymore." His breath caught. "Our daughter's laugh. It's… gone. Like it was never real."
No answer came. Only the soft percussion of rain against lifeless stone.
"I've been reading this book," he said, reaching into his coat and placing the battered novel between the graves. "'Cries Of The Chosen.' Fantasy. Magic. End of the world." His lips twisted. "The hero, Caelum Ardent, he gives everything. Bleeds for people who spit in his face and he never breaks."
He exhaled, as if the words themselves hurt to carry.
"He's the kind of man you believed I could be." He looked down at his hands, calloused, twitching, stained in ways soap could never cleanse. "But I built things that broke people. I traded time for power. Time I should've given you and our daughter."
Then, quieter, almost too soft to hear:
"They called from the hospital. Said you wanted to speak to me" He shut his eyes. "And I told them… I-I was in a meeting.... to wait until after I'm done." His fists clenched, nails cutting into flesh, drawing crimson blood. "A fucking meeting."
His voice failed. The ache returned, black and bottomless, devouring from within.
"I gave away all of my fortune. Shut down the worst of the factories. Tore apart everything I built… hoping maybe I'd feel something like penance. Like peace." His voice cracked. "But I still wake up crying, and I don't even know why."
His forehead touched Hana's name, reverent and broken.
"I'm sorry." A breath, shallow. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The words were a prayer, a curse, a surrender.
The rain fell. The graves said nothing. Many hours passed or minutes, he could not tell.
When he finally rose, his legs felt numb. His chest throbbed with a hollow ache he couldn't name. But his hand moved automatically to the book lying between the stones.
Cries Of The Chosen.
He returned to his apartment with it, no, not a home. Just a place filled with furniture he no longer used, windows he rarely opened, and an office untouched since the day he lost his two brightest stars.
He poured a drink he couldn't taste. Sat in a leather chair that had once held power.
He opened the book again, seeking something he'd never find.
Caelum's last companion was dying. The hero held her close, whispering a promise he couldn't keep. I'll carry your name. I'll protect everyone.
Elias swallowed hard.
"I couldn't even protect my own family..." he whispered.
The words blurred. His vision blurred. The glass slipped from his hand and shattered, but he didn't move. The pain in his chest wasn't a metaphor anymore. It seized him, sudden and cruel.
He tried to breathe.
The world went dim.
Darkness overtook him.
.
.
.
Silence.
Then, he felt a sensation, soft and foreign. Not cold marble or leather from his apartment, but of earth. Damp, living soil, padded with moss. The air was rich and sharp, loamy with a strange metallic sweetness, like rain bleeding through copper.
Elias gasped, lurching upright like a drowning man breaking the surface.
The sky above was wrong. Twin moons hung low, pale and massive behind the skeletal silhouettes of trees that bent like spires. Their bark shimmered faintly, silver veins pulsing beneath rough black wood. A hum hung in the air, not machine born, but deep, like something sung from the roots.
He staggered to his feet, breath ragged.
"No…" The word came hollow. "This… isn't real."
His chest still ached, phantom pain, but something else was wrong. His body.
Slimmer. Lighter.
His suit was gone. In its place, rough robes hung loose on unfamiliar limbs, smelling of ash and herbs. His fingers trembled, thinner, longer.
"What the hell…"
His voice caught, higher, softer. Unfamiliar.
The forest pressed in with quiet intensity, but water called in the distance. A river or lake, he didn't know. Only that he needed to see himself.
He moved, stumbling over roots, bare feet squelching through moss that gave off a faint bioluminescent glow. Spores drifted up with every step, weightless as memory.
Through the trees, a lake emerged, still and dark as obsidian. The scent of minerals clung to the air, sharp and clean. He dropped to his knees at the edge, heart hammering.
And looked.
It wasn't him.
Not the face that had stared back from boardroom mirrors or the bathroom sink after sleepless nights.
A boy, no, a teenager, stared from the water. Raven-black hair, disheveled and damp. Honey skin glowing beneath the twin moons. Wide brown eyes, storm-wracked. Lips parted like he was about to scream, but didn't.
"No." Elias's voice shook. He reached up, touched his cheek. The reflection mimicked him. "No, no, what is this?"
He slammed a hand into the water hoping it was just a hallucination. Ripples tore across the surface, but when it settled, the same face stared back.
"Who is this?!"
His voice echoed into the trees, unanswered.
Then it came.
Not pain.
Not exactly.
A fracture.
Silent. Sudden.
Not of bone.
but of his own mind.
Something buried breaking open.
Memories that weren't his flooded in, not just images, but also feelings, raw and unfiltered, slamming into him like waves with nowhere to go.
A child under a crimson crystal tree, sobbing into shaking hands.
Jealousy.
Worthlessness.
A hundred spells cast by classmates while he sat empty palmed, pretending not to care.
Isolation.
A teacher's look of quiet pity.
A mother's voice, soft but exhausted
"It's okay, Eiden. You weren't meant to shine like them."
His breath hitched. His hands clutched at the moss like it might anchor him.
"What.... what is this-" he rasped.
The feelings came faster.
Anger. Humiliation. Hope. Grief.
Not his, but he felt them.
All of them.
Like a dam had burst inside his skull.
Another life poured into him, unchecked.
Laughter, childish, bright.
Emi's.
Then her crying.
A hospital bed.
Pride. Shame. Rage. Guilt.
Touch, warmth, love.
Hana's.
Then her corpse in a coffin.
A cemetery
Anguish. Despair. Sadness. Hatred
It was too much.
Too loud. Too fast. Too real.
He tried to push it out, to breathe, to hold onto himself, but every memory came with the full weight of the emotion that birthed it.
Like drowning in feeling.
Love and despair twisted together.
Joy turned bitter by regret.
A child's awe, crushed under failure.
A man's grief, sharpened to glass.
"I.. I can't-" he choked. "My head hurts-"
His scream tore from his throat, broken and aimless.
He collapsed, convulsing, nails clawing the soil. The forest spun, light shattered behind his eyes. Tears flowed without permission, from both lives, both selves.
Elias.
Eiden.
Elias.
Eiden.
Which one was he?
He didn't know anymore.
"Fuck... is this my retribution..?"
The forest was still.
The moons stared down, silent.
He lay curled in the moss, body trembling like a storm had passed through and left him hollow.
His reflection rippled in the lake.
And the boy, the man, wept for a life lost, and another he hadn't asked for.