A Symphony of Shattered Shadows

'Rhys:'

"Wonderful." A pause, thick with malice. "…Awesome."

Umbra's voice slithered through the air like a blade dragged across bone. Before the final syllable faded, he slammed downward, the impact of his descent cracking the earth like a god's hammer. Dust erupted in a suffocating cloud, swirling around the crater's jagged edges. Within the haze, two pinpricks of crimson burned—twin embers of pure bloodlust.

He emerged slowly, boots crunching gravel into powder. The dust clung to him. Ahead, Celestia lay broken, her silver armor shattered into jagged shards that glittered like tears around her. Beneath the ruin, a black compression shirt clung to her torso, stained dark with blood. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged hitches.

"You…" Umbra crouched beside her, tilting his head as if studying a curious insect. "You would have made an exquisite Hunter. A masterpiece of rage ." His gloved hand hovered above her throat, shadows writhing beneath his fingertips. "But you have accepted your death."

" How…"—he clicked his tongue—"boring."

Then he turned.

His gaze locked onto mine.

Those eyes.

They weren't just red—they were alive, pulsing with a light that seemed to devour the air itself. My body betrayed me, trembling so violently my teeth clacked together. It wasn't fear. It was primal, cellular recognition—the instinct of a rabbit staring into the maw of a wolf. This wasn't death. Death was mercy. This was…

Unmaking.

"Weak," Umbra purred, taking a step toward me. The ground hissed where he walked, as if the earth itself recoiled.

"Yet you cling to life like a child to a rotten doll, you wouldn't accept your death. Why?"

Another step.

His grin split his face, too wide, too many teeth. "May I know your name?"

The question hung in the air, syrupy and venomous. My mind emptied. Hunter. The word looped, shrill and panicked. He'll turn me into a Hunter. A thing. A monster. A—

Shadows pooled at his feet, then surged. One moment he stood ten paces away; the next, his breath chilled my face—rot and iron and something sweetly decayed. His hand closed around my jaw, forcing my head up.

"Name," he repeated, softer now. A lover's demand.

"Rh-Rhys," I choked.

"Rhys…" He lingered on the syllable, his grip tightening. For a heartbeat, his pupils flickered—a fracture in the nightmare. "That name… I have heard it before." Then the moment shattered. His grin returned, sharp enough to cut. "No matter. Let us see what you become."

His free hand pressed against my chest. Cold flooded me, a thousand needles piercing flesh and bone.

"A Tier 4?" he whispered. "Or will you surprise us both?*"

Something warm blooms in my chest.

At first, I think it's relief—a final, fleeting comfort. Then I look down.

Red.

So much red.

Umbra's fist is buried to the wrist in my ribcage, his fingers curled around something that twitches inside me. My blood pulses around his arm in rhythmic gushes, hot and obscenely alive. It slicks his skin, drips between his knuckles, pools in the hollow of my collarbone. I cough, and the warmth floods my mouth—metallic, thick, wrong. It spills down my chin, splatters across Umbra's face.

He doesn't blink.

His eyes are the worst part. Not the color, not the hunger. It's the indifference. Like I'm a cracked cup he's tipping over to watch the contents drain. My vision wavers, edges curling into static. The world narrows to those eyes, that fist, the wet, ragged sound of my own breathing.

So this is it?

The thought drifts, detached. No fury. No grand epiphany. Just… quiet. A numb sort of surprise. All that running, all that fear, and it ends here? A laugh bubbles up, dies as another cough wracks me. More blood. Always more.

Umbra leans closer. His free hand brushes my cheek, almost tender. "Look at you," he murmurs. "Still clinging. Still hoping."

His fingers tighten inside my chest.

This isn't how it was supposed to be.

The warmth spreads, a perverse mimicry of embrace. I thought death would be cold. But this? This is a campfire's glow. A hearth. A memory I can't place—Mom's hands, maybe, tucking a blanket around me. Umbra's, No, Sepia's laughter, bright and whole, before the accident turned it jagged. A promise we made sitting on the bench: "Friends forever."

Lies. All lies.

The fire dims.

ECHO: (I never found you, did I, Sepia? Not the real you. Not the boy who taught me to skip stones, who took the blame when I broke Father's sword. Where did he go? Was it my fault?) 

Cold creeps in now, leaching the warmth, the color. Shadows crowd the edges of my mind. But there's… light. Faint. Gold. A voice—hers? Celestia's?—calling from somewhere far away.

Wait. Please. I'm not ready.

But the light fades.

The last thing I feel is his hand, still inside me, squeezing.

…I'm sorry.

ECHO: Shards. Pieces. Putting together.

[Hunter transformation request]