---
The explosion of flame was silent—light without sound, heat without fire.
Ren was the first to react, shielding Aiko and Himari as smoke spiraled outward. "He's coming back."
Kai muttered, "Or something else is."
A figure stepped from the flickering remains—cloaked in smoke, energy dancing like threads around him. It was Yuki, but his eyes shimmered with both void black and flame gold. His aura rippled in waves, distorting the ground.
Aiko's breath caught. "That's not just aura manipulation anymore… it's something else. He's fused both elements."
Yuki stumbled slightly. "I… remember things. Not all, but enough. The Eidolon—it's been watching longer than we thought."
Nogitsune walked forward, arms crossed. "You fused with the version of yourself you feared most. How do you feel?"
Yuki looked up, half-dazed, half-serious. "Hungry."
A beat.
Kai burst out laughing. "You fused reality and the void—and you still want food?!"
Aiko giggled. "That's so you."
Ren smirked. "Glad you're back, weirdo."
But Haru didn't smile. His eyes were fixed on the sealed door that had just become visible behind the flame's wreckage.
"…Did anyone notice it opened itself?"
Everyone turned.
The great blackened door, with ancient markings like veins of light and shadow, now stood ajar.
Himari whispered, "The Eidolon is awake."
Yuki stepped forward, void and reality swirling gently behind him. "Then let's knock before it comes out to greet us."
---
The moment Yuki touched the edge of the door, it opened without sound—no groan of ancient metal, no mystical burst. Just silence. Cold, surreal silence.
The group stepped inside one by one.
What they saw wasn't a room. It wasn't even a realm.
It was memory made real.
Fragments of time floated mid-air—echoes of battles, forgotten landscapes, ancient cities crumbling, laughter… screams. Everything suspended like glass shards in a voidlit sky.
Yuki walked forward, eyes reflecting a hundred versions of himself in the shards. "These are… not all mine."
Nogitsune's voice was low. "They're memories stolen. Lost. Some from you. Some from creatures who never got to tell their stories."
Then they saw it.
The eighth flame.
Suspended like a beating heart above a cracked pedestal, surrounded by sigils no one could read—except Himari, whose lips moved silently.
She was translating without realizing.
"This is where the world was rewritten… once."
Suddenly—
The flame pulsed.
A voice—soft, layered, ancient—echoed without direction:
> "You've come farther than I expected, fox-child… but you are still incomplete."
Everyone froze.
Yuki looked around. "Who said that?"
Then, in the center of the memory-space, a figure began to form—not fully shaped. Its face shifted constantly. At times it resembled Yuki. Then Nogitsune. Then… something unrecognizable.
The Eidolon.
> "You stare into what should not be seen. Yet you keep walking forward. Why?"
Yuki didn't blink. "Because I'm not afraid anymore."
The Eidolon tilted its head, smile barely forming.
> "Then let's see if your friends feel the same."
The memory shards began to fall.
Each one glowing, threatening to crash into the group like glass meteors.
And in the middle of it all, the eighth flame began to burn black.
---
The sky cracked.
No—reality cracked.
The Eidolon's body shimmered like broken glass, and each reflection it cast was a possible future—some of the group dead, some corrupted, some... not themselves.
Yuki stepped forward, aura flaring in hues of white and deep void. "I don't care who you were made by. You're not taking anyone."
The Eidolon floated inches above the fractured ground. "I do not take. I reveal. This place is built from your souls, your fears. If you fall here… you were never meant to stand."
Haru vanished in a blur of light, reappearing above the Eidolon with a divine axe of raw spirit energy. "Then let's change fate!"
He struck.
**CRASH—**the impact rippled through the realm, but the Eidolon didn't even flinch. Instead, it reflected the blow—Haru was hurled back, crashing into a floating platform of glass.
Ren launched himself next, wind swirling like blades. His wings burned white with spiritual fire. "Get Yuki out of here! I'll—"
"No!" Yuki shouted, raising his hand. Void burst outward, and reality warped—Ren was pulled back, safe from the Eidolon's counterattack.
Aiko, glowing with aura manipulation she barely understood, stepped beside Yuki. "I've got your back."
The Eidolon turned its formless gaze to her. "You, who saw nothing and pretended to see all… what will you give to protect him?"
Aiko's aura pulsed, thin strands of violet weaving into Yuki's. For a moment, her eyes glowed.
Then—a shockwave blasted across the glass world.
Visions of past and future swirled violently. The group could barely stand as memories bled into the air:
A child Yuki reaching for a fox mask…
Nogitsune, screaming in a battlefield lit by a burning moon…
A version of Aiko walking alone, covered in blood…
A Ren who wore a crown of feathers, standing over a mountain of ash.
Yuki dropped to his knees. "These… aren't just futures. These are fragments of possible truths."
The Eidolon's voice echoed, distant and close all at once.
"Step deeper, kitsune. Prove to me you are not another mistake of myth."
---
Next: Yuki unlocks a memory that isn't his—but it feels real.
And the Eidolon's true face begins to take form.
"If you're enjoying the ride, don't forget to leave a power stone or a comment—it really helps this grow!"