Darkness wasn't absence—it was presence.
Thick...Breathing.. Watching
Syaoran floated in it, cold and motionless, as if suspended beneath an ocean of shadow. His breath wouldn't come. His heartbeat slowed. And then—
A whisper.
> "Do you remember me?"
He opened his eyes.
And stood in a memory that wasn't his.
---
A crumbling garden beneath a golden sky. Statues of faceless kings, vines curling around their broken crowns. A girl sat beneath the largest statue, humming. Her face was blurred, but her voice…
It was the voice from the vault.
> "You promised you'd never leave."
Lightning flickered across the sky, unnatural and slow.
Syaoran stepped toward her, but the ground pulled away beneath his feet—
And the world shattered.
---
He woke to chaos.
The vault chamber had exploded into war.
The Masked One stood in the center, hovering, draped in red mist and flickering runes. A childlike body wrapped in silken robes, with no face—only a cracked mask stitched to skin. Runes crawled across its limbs like veins.
And its voice…
Was many.
> "Who am I?"
"Where is he?"
"Why does it hurt?"
Syaoran stumbled to his feet. Aris was shielding Teren, both injured. Kira stood bloodied near the broken door, her blade trembling with wind and flame.
The cultists were gone—either dead, disintegrated, or lost to the entity's awakening.
And the Masked One turned toward Syaoran.
Its mask twitched, the cracks shifting.
> "You… are mine."
---
Lightning surged from Syaoran, a reflex—pure instinct. The bolt struck the Masked One dead center.
It laughed
Not cruelly
Like a child being tickled
Then it moved
Faster than thought.
One moment it was in front of him—
the next, behind.
Its fingers brushed his shoulder, and for a moment, he wasn't in the vault anymore.
He was on a battlefield.
The sky was burning.
And at his feet lay a girl with his face.
Dead.
The Masked One's voice whispered in his head.
> "You let me die."
Syaoran dropped to one knee, gasping.
---
Aris dashed forward, blade blazing white. "Get away from him!"
She struck.
The blade cut through the mist—
and struck something solid beneath it.
The Masked One shrieked—high, unnatural.
Its body flickered. Flickered again.
Then it collapsed—convulsing, twitching, bleeding red light.
And spoke in a voice like Syaoran's.
> "I was you. I am you. I will be you again."
Then the vault ceiling began to crack.
---
Teren screamed over the roar of collapsing stone, "It's destabilizing! That thing was an anchor!"
Kira grabbed Syaoran, dragging him to his feet. "MOVE!"
They ran
As the Bloodgate chamber caved in behind them, runes exploding, reality warping, and the Masked One's laughter fading into the dark.
---
They didn't stop until the crowsong city was far behind.
Ashen ruins at their backs. Blood on their boots. The sun rising over the scarred horizon.
Only then did Syaoran speak.
"Who was she?"
Kira turned to him. "Who?"
He looked down at his hand—still faintly glowing.
"The girl the Masked One remembered."
Aris looked away.
And Teren said softly:
> "Not who.. When."