At first, it was just details.
Small errors in the texture of the world.
The sound of footsteps when no one was walking.
The echo of our voices repeating words we never said.
An extra shadow, cast on a wall where no one stood.
Sera noticed it before I did.
"Ryouhei," she whispered one night beside the fire, "do your shadows... blink?"
When I looked at the ground, I saw mine projected by the flames. But it didn't move as it should. It didn't mimic my gestures. It blinked—literally—as if someone were drawing and erasing it in real time.
From that moment, something began to press down on the air.
—
The diary, which until then had guided us with fragments of the future, started to fail. Entire pages appeared smeared with black ink, as if someone had violently scratched out what was written there.
Others simply vanished, leaving cracks in the paper as though time itself had changed its mind.
The book was afraid.
And in a world like Eclipsia, that meant something worse than the script was approaching.
—
The first real clue came from a faceless villager.
We found him at the edge of an abandoned town that appeared on no map.
He wore a bell around his neck and murmured silently:
> "The man without a shadow comes when the story strays.
He doesn't walk—he corrects. He doesn't kill… he erases."
We tried to ask more. But the moment we touched him, the old man crumbled like ash.
No trace of a soul. No record in the system.
As if he had never been there.
—
That night, the trees whispered names we didn't know.
And in the reflection of a moonless lake, I saw something that left me breathless:
My reflection had a shadow.
But Sera's… did not.
I turned immediately. Sera was there. Alive. Real.
But her shadow had stopped following her.
—
"What's happening?" she asked, voice trembling.
I couldn't lie to her.
"We're being watched. By the world. The narrative.
And it's sent someone to correct what we did."
We didn't know how to run from something with no written name or detectable presence.
But the book, in desperation, wrote one last line before snapping shut with a dry crack:
> The one without a shadow has crossed the threshold. Don't run. Don't look back. Don't say his name.
And in the distance…
A figure appeared among the trees.
Tall. Faceless.
And beneath his feet, not even light dared cast a shadow.
The Man Without a Shadow had arrived.