The aftermath of the "sermon" was a heavy, suffocating silence. The academy treated Henry not just as an anomaly, but as a bomb that had failed to detonate. The day after was a study in strained normalcy. Henry sat through his classes, Helia a statue of radiant vigilance beside him, her golden eyes never leaving his form.
Look at them all, Tsukuyomi's voice purred in his mind, dripping with amusement. They're like mice in a room with a sleeping cat. So tense. So wonderfully terrified.
Henry tried to ignore her, focusing on the lecture about trans-dimensional physics, but the words were just noise. At lunch, Kaelen sat with them, his usual chipper demeanor a brave front in the face of the social exclusion zone Henry now carried.
"So, is it true your other self can command shadows? Can he make shapes? Could you make a shadow puppet of a dragon? Or is it more of a... a general ooze?" Kaelen fired off questions, his way of pretending everything was normal.
Henry just picked at his food, offering one-word answers. Across the dining hall, Lyra watched them. The fiery contempt in her eyes was gone, replaced by a deep, troubled apprehension. She looked away the moment Henry glanced in her direction, clearly preoccupied and unwilling to approach him.
"Okay, time's up," Helia's calm voice cut through Kaelen's stream of questions as Henry finished his meal. "Training is on."
Henry waved a tired goodbye to his friend and followed Helia to a secluded training ground. The task was the same as always. Balance. Control.
He stood in the center of the grounds, meditating, trying to coax his Solari light into existence. He focused, pushing past the memory of his other self's terrifying power, trying to find his own. Many attempts resulted in nothing, a frustrating emptiness. A few times, he managed to conjure a small, trembling ball of light in his palm, only for it to flicker violently and explode with a harmless but disheartening pop. His frustration mounted with each failure.
Unseen, behind a row of statues, Lyra watched. She saw his struggle, the sweat on his brow, the grimace of effort. This was the same person who had manifested a monster of pure terror from shadow. The contradiction was a puzzle she couldn't solve, and it gnawed at her.
As the sky began to bleed into the purples of twilight, Helia stood. "That is enough for today." She conjured her small, miniature sun, its steady daylight halting the encroaching night and Henry's potential transformation.
She approached him, her expression uncharacteristically grave. "Before I let the change take you, I must ask you something. Is Joseph still speaking with you? In your head?"
Henry froze. He thought back. The guiding voice, the comforting presence of his adoptive father... it had been gone for so long he hadn't even registered its absence. He slowly shook his head.
"I thought as much," Helia said, her gaze intense. "You should concentrate on the seal he made for you. You didn't notice, but on the night of your... demonstration... one of the seals broke."
She pointed to the intricate tattoo on his arm. Henry's blood ran cold. One of the seven locks, which had always been depicted as shut, was now clearly, terrifyingly, open.
Fear, sharp and immediate, pierced through his exhaustion. Joseph. Had something happened to him? He had to know.
Henry dropped to the ground, crossing his legs and closing his eyes, ignoring Helia completely. He poured all his focus, all his will, into the tattoo. He didn't just look at it; he pushed his consciousness into it.
The world dissolved with a poof.
He was standing in a black, empty void before a massive, spectral gate. The Gate of Seven Locks. And just as Helia had said, the first lock was undone, hanging open and limp.
But he wasn't alone. In front of the gate, a faint, shimmering form of Joseph, looking weary and translucent, was locked in a desperate struggle. He held a spectral sword, parrying blows from a figure of solid, confident darkness.
His other self.
The Night-Henry fought with a cruel, effortless grace, his red eyes gleaming with amusement as he forced Joseph back step by step. As Day-Henry watched, horrified, his other self spotted him.
He pushed Joseph away with a contemptuous shove, sending the old warrior's spirit staggering back.
"Oh," the Night-Henry said, a slow, terrible smirk spreading across his face. "Thought you'd never come."
He extended an open hand, and with a flash of darkness, Tsukuyomi's katana flew into his grasp. The goddess herself materialized behind him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders in a possessive embrace, her chin resting on his shoulder.
"Oh, my," Tsukuyomi purred, looking from one Henry to the other. "Are my poor babies going to fight?"
Day-Henry was paralyzed with a fear colder and deeper than any he had ever known. He hadn't come for a fight. He only wanted to check on Joseph. And he had just walked into the warden's war.