The world dissolved into formless dark.
Noir stood—or felt he stood—in an infinite void. Above him, a single pillar of pure white light fell like a lance, illuminating only him and the space directly at his feet. Beyond that, endless, swallowing darkness.
And before him, a mirror.
Its frame was tarnished silver, intricate with worn carvings he couldn't quite make out. In it, his own reflection stared back—pale, tired, bandaged. Human.
This is my soul, he thought dimly. Or what's left of it.
He reached out to touch the glass.
Flash.
Not a vision—a memory. But not his.
He stood on a battlefield where the sky was the color of old blood. The air tasted of ash and forgotten prayers. At his feet lay not bodies, but dissipating shadows—rippers he had unraveled with a thought.
In his hand, not a weapon, but a twisting skein of crimson energy, obedient and vast. The feeling was not rage, not vengeance. It was… cold certainty. The calm of a glacier eroding mountains.
This was not an invasion. It was a recollection.
Noir jerked his hand back from the mirror as if burned. His human reflection wavered, and for a split second, the eyes in the glass glowed with two pinpricks of serene, ancient crimson.
The voice that spoke next came from the darkness around the light. It was his own voice, but stripped of fear, of yearning, of warmth.
"You fight so hard to be small."
Noir spun, but there was no one. Only the dark.
"You cling to a single life. A single death. A name given to you by a woman who died to keep you forgetful."
"My mother…" Noir whispered.
"Was a guardian of a tomb. Your tomb. She buried me under layers of a child's mind. A clever cage of love and loss."
The voice held no malice. Only a chilling, analytical pity. "But tombs are meant to be opened. Death is the key."
"I'm not you," Noir said to the dark, his voice trembling.
"Aren't you?"
Another flash, triggered not by the mirror, but by the voice itself.
A different memory. A quiet, moonlit garden, millennia ago. The same silver-haired man from the Devil's Cradle, sitting across a stone board, moving pieces of polished obsidian and pearl. Not just as enemies. As… contemporaries.
Rivals playing a game that spanned centuries. There was a cold respect. A shared understanding of eternity that no mortal could comprehend.
The feeling was profound, weary loneliness.
Noir's knees buckled. The loneliness echoed in his own chest—a hollow, ancient thing he'd never known he carried.
"You feel it now. The weight of the years you've forgotten. The solitude of being… what we are."
"What are we?" Noir begged the darkness.
"A truth the Order fears. An answer to a question they are too frail to ask."
The voice began to fade, blending into the rustle of his own thoughts.
"You seek your mother's killer. You look outward, searching faces, chasing shadows. But the answer runs through your veins. You should look... inward. At the blood you inherited. At what makes you... you.""
The final flash was the most devastating.
Not a grand memory. A visceral one.
The air was thick with smoke and the coppery scent of blood. Buildings stood broken against a bruised purple sky—the Devil's Cradle, the night everything burned.
A younger Noir, maybe nine or ten, stood in the rubble, numb and hollow.
Before him stood a tall, silver-haired man, elegant and untouched by the chaos around them. His eyes held a strange, calculating kindness.
The man knelt, bringing himself to Noir's eye level.
"I need you to do something for me," the man said, his voice calm amid the distant screams. He pointed across the ruins. "There's a child wandering near the collapsed temple. He carries a red ruby. I need you to take it from him."
Young Noir stared, not understanding. "Take it?"
"Steal it," the man clarified gently. "It's very important. The ruby belongs with someone who can keep it safe."
Young Noir's hands trembled. He'd never stolen anything. His mother had taught him better. Had taught him—
But his mother was dead.
"I..." Young Noir's voice cracked. "I don't think I can—"
The silver-haired man reached into his coat and withdrew a single, misty candy. He held it up to the firelight, and it seemed to glow with inner fog.
"Consider this an exchange," the man said softly. "You do this for me, and I give you this. When the weight becomes too much—when you can't bear what you've seen—eat this. It will help you forget."
Young Noir thought of his mother's teachings. Then he thought of the emptiness.
He chose the emptiness.
His small hand closed around the candy.
"Good boy," the man said. "Take the ruby now."
Young Noir walked to the east wall. Found a crying child, maybe six years old, clutching a red ruby that pulsed with warm light.
"Are you here to help?" the child asked with tear-stained hope.
Noir grabbed the ruby.
The child screamed. Tried to hold on. But Noir was stronger.
The ruby came free, warm and wrong in his palm. The child fell backward, sobbing, reaching for what had been stolen.
Noir ran.
Back to where the silver-haired man waited, patient as death.The candy was still clenched in his fist, unopened. The guilt hadn't been dulled yet—that would come later, when the weight became unbearable.
"Perfect," the man said, examining it briefly without touching it. Then, to Noir's surprise, he turned to face away. "Now, you keep it."
"One day," the man said, his voice dropping low, "I will come back for you. When the time is right. Until then…"
He stood, cast one last look at the burning horizon, and vanished into the smoke.
Young Noir was left alone in the ruins.
A stolen ruby in one hand.
A misty candy in the other.
And the distant crying of a child he'd robbed.
The taste of ashes in his mouth.
...
The pillar of light above Noir flickered violently. The darkness pressed in, not attacking, but accepting. It felt like coming home to a house he never wanted.
"No!" Noir screamed, not at the voice, but at himself. He lunged for the mirror, gripping its cold frame. He stared into his own human eyes, clutching the memory of his mother's plea.
"I am Noir," he chanted to his reflection, a desperate prayer.
"I am Noir. I am my mother's son. I am Noir."
The darkness receded, held at bay by the fragile pillar of light and the face in the glass.
But the memories… they didn't vanish. They settled inside him like sediment. His sediment. From his past life.
...
Noir's eyes snapped open.
He was gasping, drenched in a cold sweat, his hands clenched as if still holding the mirror's frame.
The sterile, quiet room felt unbearably small, a flimsy prop against the vast, dark truth now breathing inside his soul.
He wasn't haunted.
He was the ghost.
And he had just remembered he was dead.