Rain still clung to the eaves, tapping a slow, tired rhythm against the palace windows. Inside the royal wing, lacquered walls and carved beams blurred into a soft haze around the bed where Kazuki lay. His eyes were closed, his breath shallow. Bandages hugged the angles of his face; the air smelled of antiseptic and rain and something sweeter — the ghost of home.
Voices rose from the room beyond: frantic, threaded with relief and fear. A chorus built and broke the same way storm wind does.
"Kazuki! Wake up, wake up, Kazuki!"
They pressed their faces against the doorway—his mother weeping, his sisters murmuring, his brothers shouting in the way only brothers know how. Even from the thin place between sleep and waking, Kazuki could hear them as clearly as if they spoke into his ear. He could not move. He could not speak. But he could think, and his thoughts were unforgivingly lucid.
Am I in my room? he wondered. The bed… the quilt… this is my room's bed. I can hear Mother crying; my sister checking my temperature; the second sister shouting; Arthur's voice—confused. Second brother yelling with the younger sister. And there are officials here too—high-ranking ones chanting my name.
The commotion was a feverish halo circling his consciousness. Then the world shifted.
Where the royal chamber ended, Kazuki's spirit realm began — an interior space carved from memory and raw power. Stars bled into a black sky; a cold wind moved through corridors of thought. Atop a hill in that place, two eyes waited: the Chaos spirit's twin orbs, amusement dripping from them like venomous rain.
The eyes laughed. The voice rolled across the soul-plane, playful and razor-bright."You know, it's fun to watch your second life fall apart too."
Kazuki opened his eyes there — not the ones on his broken face, but the ones the spirit-plane allowed — and spoke with a calm that barely touched the anger under it."Mr. idiotic Chaos spirit, I am still alive."
The Chaos spirit's laugh cut into the thought like a blade. "You may be alive, but imagine waking to the storm you will face. Imagine the questions. Imagine them learning that you hid your true identity — that you are not the eleven-year-old they believe, but a reborn man with memories that weigh like anchors. Think of your family's faces when they learn your prophecies, your plans. You told your father to help you, yes, but how will you explain the rest? The lies are a web, Kazuki. One tug and it all shows."
The spirit's cadence lilted into mockery, and Kazuki could hear the old, taunting voice like a grandfather trying to frighten a child. The Chaos spirit spat the words out deliberately slow, twisting them into a parody:"Ahh, jUsT thInk AbOuT iT… jUsT iMaGine ThiS… jUsT iMaGine ThaT…"
Kazuki's lips curved into a subtle, cold mimicry. He echoed the cadence back in a voice that sounded older than his years, the absurd rhythm cruel against the spirit's mockery. For a heartbeat the two tones danced — one mocking, one mirror.
Then Kazuki's voice went flat, steel under silk. "Do you really think you can scare me with that? I don't give a damn what you say. Your words are worthless. I already know what I'm doing. I will do everything I've planned. You are no one to interrupt me. Shut your idiotic mouth. Your noise is meaningless."
The chaos-eye blinked, taken aback; the derisive ripple that always followed its taunts faltered. For the first time in a long while the spirit's amusement frayed.
A hush fell — not in the palace, but in Kazuki's soul. The last thing the Chaos spirit managed was a low, offended chuckle that petered out. Then the realm went still.
He opened his eyes in the real room.
Faces blurred by tears and relief leaned toward him; a hand — his mother's — rested over his forehead, gentle and trembling. A physician's tools glittered on a nearby tray. His sister fussed with his blankets. The eldest brother's voice, hoarse with command, kept asking whether he was truly awake. High-ranking officials lingered in the doorway, eyes hard, mouths closed.
Kazuki inhaled. The room smelled of comfort and consequence. His lips moved once, barely — not aloud, but in the theatre of his thought.
Here we go.
He felt the weight of what waited beyond these curtains: questions, revelations, the labyrinth of explanations he would be forced to give. He felt the pressure of a thousand small decisions — who to spare, what to tell, which lies to let stand, which truths to burn down. He felt the echo of the Chaos spirit's eyes in the corner of his mind, not as a threat but as a reminder of how thin the margin between control and ruin could be.
Kazuki's eyes closed again for a moment. Then he opened them, and in the dim light they were clearer, sharper — a boy's face, a man's resolve, the delicate mask of innocence setting into place.
He forced a slow breath and, for the first time since the fight, allowed a small, almost private smile, not monstrous and not kind — simply the expression of someone walking willingly into a storm.