The laughter faded, but its shape remained.

Zeik felt it linger in the space between moments—a residue that clung to the obsidian flat like cold ash. When the crimson orbs began to rise, he tracked them without lifting his head, counting by instinct rather than sight. One became two. Two became ...

He felt tense—disarmed and, above all, afraid.

The instinct was immediate and visceral: run. Open his eyes. Tell Fenri to do the same. Abort the crossing before whatever waited here could finish noticing them. His mind flooded with regret, with the certainty that he had miscalculated—that this was ...

Zeik and Fenri settled onto the Traversing Mirror as if it were nothing more than a frozen lake at the end of the world.

The surface did not creak. It did not complain beneath their weight. Frost and ash lay unmoving, a perfect stillness that invited the mind to follow suit. Breath slowed. Muscles ...

Zeik did not answer at once.

When Aerys spoke the words “you’ve already seen the end,” something in Zeik shifted—sharply, involuntarily. The calm he had worn like a second skin fractured, and what lay beneath it surged forward.

His face twisted but not in anger. His posture stiffened as though a ...

Zeik did not answer Fenri at once.

The exchange had left him unsettled—not wounded, not insulted, just… misaligned. The rhythm of it all felt wrong. He could feel Fenri’s emotions brushing against him like cold iron: suspicion, judgment, a restrained hostility that never quite crossed into open ...

Zeik kept his distance as Fenri continued forward, ice flowering beneath each measured step. The space between them remained deliberate—not avoidance, not submission. Simply boundary. Fenri’s words still hung in the air, sharp and clean as cut glass.

What is all your… wisdom… worth if it can’t be ...

:twisted: Fenri’s words hit harder than the cold wind off the Strait.

“Zeik… again. And uninvited, no doubt. I’d love to stay and trade pleasantries, but I have to clean up your mess. If you’ll excuse me.”

Zeik didn’t flinch, but something in his expression tightened—just enough that anyone ...

The rift in the sky drew shut behind Zeik with a long, cosmic groan, as if the heavens themselves were struggling to stitch their torn veil back together. Through the narrowing tear, the beasts that stalked behind him—creatures dredged from starless voids and impossible ecosystems—growled and clawed ...

Zeik did not look at Aerys when he answered.
His gaze stayed on the ruin — the black earth, the snapped roots, the bodies baked into the trench like offerings to a god who relishes in cruelty.

When he finally spoke, it was quiet… but the quiet of a collapsing star.

“… have you ever wondered why ...

Zeik listened while Aerys spilled himself into the ash—grins, jibes, the casual cruelty of a young man trying to measure legend with bravado. He let the boy speak; his silence was an instrument, not indifference. The ghosts at his shoulders drew in closer as if to hear what the living might say ...