Words weren't enough.
Ryouhei and Sera had spoken. They had shared fears, half-truths, and fragments of their own abysses. But at the core of it all remained a cruel truth: what was coming couldn't be avoided through mutual understanding.
The clearing where they stood seemed frozen in time. The trees of the Threshold Forest were distorted, as if some force was stretching them from their centers. The air was thick with static, a dull hum that seemed to rise from the ground itself.
Sera held her staff tightly, her knuckles pale. Her gaze, usually serene, now brimmed with raw determination. Beside her, Ryouhei had wrapped his thoughts in layers of ice. He didn't want to feel. Not yet. Not when the faceless presence could appear at any moment.
"Are you ready?" she asked, eyes locked on the horizon where the mist was beginning to tear apart.
Ryouhei nodded slowly.
"No. But it doesn't matter."
A figure emerged from between the trees.
It was impossible to say if it was walking or floating. It was as though the world moved aside to make way for him. The Shadowless Man carried no haste, no anger, no urgency. Only that void that followed in his wake. His face remained indistinct, veiled in darkness, but the mark of anomaly clung to him like a cursed halo.
"You came," Sera said, steady.
The Shadowless Man did not answer with words. Around him, reality began to distort. The system responded: Warning: Unregistered Entity. Rewrite in progress.
Ryouhei felt it instantly. It wasn't magical distortion. It was the world itself trying to reject his existence. But he was there, in front of them, more real than anything else.
"He's waiting for us to make the first mistake," Ryouhei murmured. "He wants to see how far we'll go before we break."
Sera turned her face slightly, eyes searching for his.
"Then let's not give him the satisfaction."
And so, without shouting, without a sudden explosion of violence, the confrontation began.
Not with magic, or with steel, but with will. With truths.
"I remember who you were," Ryouhei said.
The Shadowless Man stopped.
A silence. Then, a crack opened behind him. A fleeting image. A hospital bed, ragged breathing, a single tear falling unseen. An echo of humanity.
Sera held her breath. Ryouhei took a step forward.
"You're not here just out of hatred… you're here because the system abandoned you. Like it has with thousands."
The silence trembled. The face of the Shadowless Man did not change, but something in the air did. For the first time, he didn't seem invulnerable. He seemed… uncertain.
And then the battlefield, symbolic until now, began to unravel.
The sky turned a sickly red.
The real battle was about to begin.