Eye-bending

"ENOUGH!!" Ikol screeched, wings snapping outward like dark banners of war. "About Mugiwara!"

The courtyard crackled, as if the very air had been thrown into trial.

The name alone ripped the laughter straight out of Hiroki and Bird's chests, leaving only a raw, unsettled silence.

Ikol's eyes—those deep, black beads that had seen the fall of kingdoms and the birth of monsters—turned razor-sharp, slicing through the space between them.

This wasn't the petty trickster anymore.

This was something older.Something that had survived the death of gods.

And it was about Shotaro.

Ikol settled, feathers bristling, voice dropping into a low, ancient rasp that seemed too large for his small, cursed form.

"I was a god," he began, each word dragging unseen weight behind it. "Born of Asgard's golden breath... not merely from Odin's will, but from something far more dangerous—his doubt."

The boys listened, frozen in place.

"For the safety of your tiny, mortal minds," Ikol continued bitterly, "know this—gods, demons, myths... we are born not from flesh, not from divine blood, but from the collective prayers, fears, and failures of humanity itself."

His wings folded tightly around his body, shadows stretching from him like a second skin.

"It's complicated," he muttered, as if even the truth sickened him. "But I have lived many ages... many lives... worn many faces. A friend to some, a betrayer to others. A father. A monster. A fool."

He shook his feathers once, scattering motes of green fire across the wind.

"In the halls of Asgard, I danced on the edge of the gods' vanity—celebrated when they won, mourned when they fell, and laughed as I shoved them into chaos just to see what would break first: their crowns or their pride."

A glint of something ancient and venomous flashed in his eyes.

"I fathered beasts.I tricked kings.I burned bridges even the Norns were too terrified to weave again."

He paused, letting the enormity of it all settle in the boys' bones.

"And yet—" Ikol whispered, voice like a blade slipping between ribs, "in the end, even gods were abandoned."

The courtyard trembled under that truth.

"I was stripped of my name. My form. My glory.Reduced to a crow—a fucking scavenger—by powers too old and cruel for even me to outwit."

Ikol's voice hardened.

"But even like this," Ikol snarled, his talons gouging deep trenches into the cracked earth, "I see what others cannot."

He turned his head sharply, black eyes narrowing at the far-off horizon where Shotaro had vanished with Amaya moments before—as if he could still smell the burning mark Shotaro's existence left on reality itself.

"And Mugiwara Shotaro..."He exhaled, the sound more like a dying world's final breath than anything mortal.

"...is something even the gods themselves feared."

A shiver ran through the courtyard.

A silence so deep it felt like it dragged the stars closer to listen.

Ikol's voice dropped lower, turning into something ancient and raw—a tone that belonged in the echoes of creation, not in a cursed crow's throat.

"My father..."He spat the word like it tasted of ash.

"The All-Father Odin... can see many things. All things."

The boys leaned closer, hearts thudding in their ears.

"Past, present, and future—it's all the same river to him. No riddles. No blind spots. Not a metaphor, not some pretty poem you whisper in prayer."

Ikol's wings bristled, the very ground trembling beneath him.

"Odin is omniscient," Ikol said, each syllable heavy as iron chains."The pure, absolute definition of it. He knows everything.Every heartbeat.Every betrayal.Every death.Every choice not yet made."

He paused, the enormity of what he was about to say weighing the air down like gravity thickening.

"But when it comes to Mugiwara..."Ikol's voice cracked slightly—not in weakness, but under the strain of truth too heavy for any being to comfortably speak aloud.

"...it's like watching a blank screen."He snapped his beak shut sharply, the noise like the slam of a prison door.

"A white void.No images.No sounds.No future.No past.Just... nothing."

He shook his head, as if trying to shake off the memory.

"And it's not just Odin," Ikol rasped, feathers twitching uncontrollably. "All-seers. Prophets. Oracles. Gods of time. Even the mind readers among the Nephilim legions... all of them."He paused, his voice dropping into a whisper:

"They cannot see him."

The courtyard seemed to shrink inward, the weight of the revelation making the sky feel too low, too heavy.

Ikol spread his wings wide, the green fires of his ruined magic sparking at the tips.

"And anyone caught up in his narrative—"Ikol's eyes gleamed like twin stars imploding—"—they get the same pass."

"No matter how cruel the seer.No matter how ancient the gaze.No matter how absolute the will"—He ground the words out like curses dragged from his soul.

"Once you're tangled in Mugiwara's story... you vanish from the sight of the cosmos itself."

The words lingered in the courtyard like smoke, thick and suffocating.

The wind howled again, scattering petals like the ashes of forgotten dreams.

Hiroki and Bird sat frozen.

Mouths dry.Hands trembling.Souls... shrinking under the crushing weight of what they had just heard.

Understanding, at last, that Shotaro wasn't just strong.Wasn't just stubborn.He wasn't just another delinquent with a rough past and a bigger punch.

He was something else entirely.

A walking blindness to the endless, merciless gaze of the gods.

A crack in the mirror of the world itself.

And whatever story he was dragging them into—

Even Fate had looked away.

"Tell us more!!" Hiroki burst out, half-standing, voice cracking under the pressure. "What's with Aniki... what the hell is Aniki?!"

Ikol's beady eyes gleamed under the dying light.

He cocked his head once, slow and deliberate.

"Why exactly," Ikol croaked darkly, tilting his head at an unnatural angle, "is your Aniki?"

Bird's jaw tightened. His fists curled so tight that the bones cracked.

"Stop fucking around, crow," he growled."What's wrong with him?"

Ikol chuckled.

A dry, brittle sound, like ancient bones splintering under the weight of memory.

"What's wrong with Sho—"

[SHOTARO: JOURNEY OF A HERO THAT KEPT MOVING FORWARD]

Ikol stood not as a crow—but as himself.

Loki.

Not the trickster of sagas spun by drunk poets.

Not the villain pantomimed on cheap stages.

But something colder.

Sharper.

A shadow stitched together from too many betrayals to count.

His raven-black hair fell wild and tangled around his shoulders. His coat—dark violet torn through with green scars of light—whipped in a wind no one else could feel. A thousand broken crowns jingled at his belt, trophies of fallen kings and lost futures.

He exhaled, and the ground rippled beneath him like a dream breaking apart.

And then—with a careless flick of his wrist—

The world bent.

The courtyard around them darkened, folding inward like the pages of an ancient, cursed book.Shadows stretched and twined into rows of crimson-velvet seats, arching up and up into impossible heights.

Before the boys realized it, they were standing in the middle of a theater carved from night itself.

A single stage glowed at the center, drowning in the low, golden light of a dying sun.

Loki strolled toward it leisurely, hands behind his back, the echo of his boots tapping against reality like a clock ticking down.

He stood center stage and gestured lazily.

Without a sound, the air in front of them shimmered—and became a window.

A window not into the present.

Not into the future.

Not even into the past.

But into Odin's Sight.

Or more precisely—

Odin's Blindness.

The boys leaned forward instinctively, eyes narrowing.

Inside the shimmering window, the vision was broken.Not foggy.Not dark.

Pure white.

Blinding. Empty.No details. No movement. No sound.

Just absence.

Where everything else Odin could see—the birth of stars, the betrayal of kings, the secrets whispered at the end of time—was crystal clear...

Where Shotaro Mugiwara should have been—

There was nothing.

Loki turned to face them, arms spread wide like a preacher unveiling revelation.

"Behold."

"But when he looks at Mugiwara Shotaro..."

Loki's voice slithered through the air like oil dripping onto hot iron.

"...he sees nothing but static."

The window—once a clear pane into the All-Father's omniscience—shattered into noise.

Not just snow.

Not just distortion.

But something alive.

The screen pulsed like a dying heart, each flicker sending jagged fractures through reality itself. The static wasn't random—it breathed, in and out, in and out, a rhythm too deliberate to be machine, too wrong to be natural.

Hiroki's fingers dug into his own arms hard enough to draw blood.

Bird's pupils dilated, his breath coming in shallow, panicked hitches.

Loki watched them, his smile a blade slowly twisting.

"No spell," he murmured, "no prophecy, no divine eye can pierce this."

He lifted a single finger.

The static screamed.

And then—

The screen turned red.

Not the red of blood.

Not the red of fire.

The red of something older.

The red of a wound that never healed.

And in the center of it all—

A silhouette.

Flat.

Two-dimensional.

A cutout of a man pasted onto the fabric of existence, edges fraying like burned paper.

It didn't move.

It didn't need to.

Its presence alone made the air curdle, the shadows around it twisting into shapes that hurt to look at.

Loki's voice dropped to a whisper, each word a nail hammered into their skulls:

"This is what my father sees."

A beat.

The silhouette's head tilted.

Just slightly.

Just enough.

The screen glitched—

—and for a single, fractured second, they saw something else.

A child's hand, fingers curled into claws.

A woman's scream, frozen mid-air.

A crow exploding in emerald fire.

Then—

Gone.

The silhouette returned, unmoved.

Unchanged.

Watching.

Loki exhaled, his breath rattling like dry bones in a coffin.

"Of course," he murmured, "I have... toned it down."

His grin widened, cracked at the edges.

"For your sanity."

Hiroki's knees buckled.

Bird's mouth opened in a silent scream.

And the silhouette—

—just kept staring.

Not at them.

Not at the screen.

Through it.

As if it had always been there.

As if it would always be there.

Loki leaned in, his voice a razor dragged across their nerves:

"Shotaro Mugiwara isn't just another prayer to the divine that they will hear & forget."

A pause.

The static swelled.

"he is the answer to those prayers."

"But when he looks at Mugiwara Shotaro..."Loki's voice dipped into a whisper that seemed to crawl under their skin."He sees nothing but static."

The window crackled faintly—white noise filling the air like a swarm of invisible insects.

Hiroki's throat tightened.Bird swallowed hard, his mouth dry as ash.

Loki watched them closely, his smile slow, heavy, patient—the satisfaction of a man revealing a murder scene behind a painted wall.

Without needing to say it aloud,they both knew:

He had bent the rules of existence just enough to make this revelation possible.

Because no natural law, no sight divine or mortal, could ever show what should not exist.

And no ordinary fate could survive a boy whom even the gods could not see.

Then—Loki's voice shifted.

Low.Almost playful.

"And sometimes..." he said, dragging the words out like nails across glass,"he gets nightmares."

The screen shifted violently.

The crackling static bled into a deep, sickening blood-red hue—the colors bleeding across the walls of the theater, dyeing the velvet seats, staining the floor.

The once-stable picture became distorted, twitching and lurching like a dying heartbeat caught on obsolete film.

A low, droning hum buzzed at the edge of their hearing, so deep it made their bones ache.

And then—

From the ocean of red static—

A figure.

A black silhouette.

Standing far off in the distance,nothing more than a warped 2D cutout against the bleeding horizon.

It didn't move.

It didn't breathe.

It didn't exist the way a normal thing should.

It simply stood there.

Staring.

Not at the theater.Not at the world.

At them.

Its head was slightly tilted, like a broken marionette dangling from its last string.

There were no eyes visible.And yet Hiroki and Bird felt them.Searing into their skulls.

The hum grew louder, vibrating the floor, rattling teeth in jaws, whispering a language no throat should ever speak.

The silhouette remained.

Unmoving.Watching.Waiting.

Loki's voice cut through the analog rot, so casual it made the horror worse.

"This," he said, smiling faintly,"is what my father suffers from."

He gestured lazily at the silhouette, as if introducing an old, unpleasant acquaintance.

"The truth."

The figure twitched—just once.A jerky, snapping motion that made Hiroki recoil instinctively.Bird gripped the edge of his seat so hard his knuckles whitened.

"And before you two break," Loki added in a bored tone,"I've lowered the intensity of this particular nightmare... for your sanity."

The red static pulsed, like a heart trying to tear itself apart.

The figure tilted its head farther, the impossible angle creaking like twisting metal.

The air tasted like electricity and burnt copper.

And somewhere in the deep static hiss,if they strained their ears—if they dared to listen—

they could swear they heard a voice.

A low, broken, mechanical whisper,woven into the electric distortion.

Not a scream.

Not a cry.

A terrorized confession.

A voice carrying the weight of a god's fear,whispering across a sea of corrupted reality:

"The truth... it looks like Shotaro..."

And then—the blood-red static collapsed inward with a deafening pop,the theater, the window, the nightmare—all evaporated into dust.

The world snapped back to normal like a rubber band pulled too far.

The cracked courtyard reappeared.

The sunset above burned heavy and crimson.

And there sat Loki—casually perched beside them on the ground,legs crossed, looking for all the world like he hadn't just dragged them to the doorstep of cosmic insanity.

Hiroki's voice was hoarse when he spoke, his hands still trembling faintly.

"What is with Shotaro...?" he calls him by Aniki do not.

Loki didn't answer immediately.He simply stared at the horizon, as if watching ghosts walk where mortals couldn't see.

Finally, he spoke.

"It hasn't been long since you two met him," Loki said, voice low and ancient."You see a brother.A fighter.Someone like you."

He turned, fixing them with a gaze that seemed to peel their souls open.

"But he was something else...long before the Red-Eyed Ronins were ever formed."

His words weighed heavy enough to anchor the wind.

"He has a history," Loki said. "A history blackened in fire and written in blood."

"And only he has the right to tell you that story.""Not me.""Not any god."

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.

Bird and Hiroki sat frozen, feeling as if they stood on the edge of a pit too deep to see the bottom.

Loki leaned closer, his smile gone.

"Beware," he murmured,"of thinking you already know him."

He stood slowly, brushing the dust from his tattered coat, as his voice dropped into something darker, heavier, a truth buried beneath countless ages of forgotten prayers.

"Shotaro Mugiwara is not just a strong person," Loki said, his tone cutting like a blade drawn across the heart of the world.

His next words came like a prophecy carved into bone:

"When the prayers to the lords are ignored...when the cries of the broken go unanswered...when the gods turn deaf and the heavens turn blind—those voices travel."

He paused.

And when he spoke again, it was with finality.

A whisper wrapped in doom.

"And at the end of that forsaken path..."

Loki's eyes gleamed like a dying star—

"HE. IS."