The shadows of the three moons spun around me like living ink.
They weren't light. They were correction.
> Underline, strike through, rearrange the story.
The Other Ryouhei stood firm as the lines of his body began to blur. His form flickered between versions: one in imperial robes, another in bloodstained armor, another with obsidian eyes.
He was made of every possibility I had abandoned.
"Do you really think you can rewrite me?" he asked, not with anger, but curiosity.
"I am what happens when you stop being afraid."
I raised my hand.
The lunar rings spun… but one stopped.
The third moon. The smallest. The red one.
—
Pain.
Not physical. Mental. Like a voice whispering inside:
"If you rewrite me, you're no longer you."
Because that moon represented my rage.
My hidden desire to crush this world at its roots.
I had used that moon many times. But I had never confronted it.
—
Sera saw my hesitation.
"Ryouhei. If that part of you resists… don't force it."
"Then what do I do?"
"Negotiate with it."
Negotiate with a moon.
Either I was losing my mind…
or gaining freedom.
—
I closed my eyes and spoke to myself. To that broken, furious, incandescent part of me:
"I don't want to deny you. I just want to guide us toward something that makes sense."
The red moon trembled.
And then… it answered.
> "Fine. But I want blood. I want someone to pay."
> "Then write with me."
—
The moon spun again. The system screamed.
The Other Ryouhei howled as his form was struck through.
His lines rewritten. His story shattered.
Turned into an illegible footnote.
Sera could barely breathe.
"Did you do it?"
"I didn't kill him."
I made him a marginal note.