The sky looked like a pure white crystal cracking bit by bit, the fractures spreading farther until they returned again as three great splits that divided the heavens into three halves. It was stunning—beautiful even. The shards of light shimmered faintly along their edges, refracting like a thousand tiny rainbows in the cold night air. Each split seemed alive, pulsing with a rhythm that mirrored some distant, hidden heartbeat of the world itself.
Sora stared upward in shock. Even someone like him, could not look away. The sky resembled a sea of pure shining crystal, sending wave after wave of pale light across the lonely darkness. The glow moved calmly through the night as if soothing the sky itself, melting the deep black above and making the darkness sigh quietly. It was the kind of beauty that could make a human scream in awe, the kind that could make even a blue rat smile a little after a long time. The light did not burn; it merely touched, like a delicate caress that left warmth behind.
For the first time in what felt like ages, Sora felt strangely comfortable. His small chest rose and fell with a rhythm that had not existed in him for days, the tension in his shoulders loosening just enough to allow the faintest sense of peace. The distant hum of the city, normally intrusive and harsh, now felt like a muted chorus, a gentle accompaniment to the fractured sky.
Beside him, the knight—tall as a bear and strong as a bull—slowly dropped to one knee. His other leg was still bleeding heavily, crimson blood spreading across the cobblestones beneath him. The red liquid flowed between the stones and reflected the fractured sky above, forming a lonely mirror of light upon the dark ground. Every droplet seemed to carry a memory of some unseen pain, glinting faintly as though the night itself acknowledged his suffering.
Once again, light touched the sky.
Long ago a demon had wished that the last time light embraced the heavens would remain the final one forever. Yet his hope never passed the will of the crystalline sky. The memory of that ancient wish lingered faintly in the atmosphere, a whisper among the fractures, like the echo of a song sung long ago and now only half-remembered.
Somewhere inside the city stood a house of red and white.
The house was ornate, asymmetrical, and strangely eclectic, its halls decorated with dark wood and deep crimson walls. Shadows pooled in the corners as if waiting for instruction, and every carved detail seemed to watch, silent but insistent. Perched upon a high-backed chair of polished rosewood sat a boy with terrifying stillness. His skin was pale and translucent, his hair equally white, and his eyes carried the color of fresh arterial blood. Without breathing, without even the smallest motion, he looked exactly like a porcelain doll placed carefully upon a throne. Even the softest creak of the floorboards might have seemed an intrusion upon his presence.
Through the halls of the Red House, a haunting Victorian melody slowly began to unfold. A nocturne from a detuned harpsichord echoed through the corridors while the mournful voice of a solitary violin rose beside it. The music carried a sharp, crystalline rhythm that felt mechanical, almost like the ticking of a clock counting down toward something inevitable. It spread across the red halls and filled the air with a strange sweetness that felt nostalgic and unsettling at the same time. The notes shimmered faintly as they floated, leaving behind a trace of cold air that smelled faintly of rosewood and old ink.
Under the flickering glow of gaslight, two lovers began their dance — the Danse Macabre.
The man, pale with white hair and piercing green eyes, led the woman with stiff aristocratic grace. Her black hair flowed softly around her shoulders while her blue eyes remained locked onto his. Their movements were perfectly synchronized as they glided across the ballroom floor, every step falling naturally into the rhythm of the haunting melody. Each pivot, each step, seemed to brush the very air into waves, leaving a subtle shimmer of light in their wake, almost as if the dance itself bent the ambient glow to its will.
Together they drifted across the polished floor toward the open balcony where the shattered sky shone like broken crystal above the city. The wind from the balcony tousled the woman's hair, and the faintest chill traced along their exposed skin, adding an almost imperceptible shiver to the elegance of their performance.
As the song rose toward its tragic crescendo, the woman allowed herself to fall in a graceful feigned collapse. The man caught her immediately in a practiced embrace, pulling her close as their bodies formed a final silhouette against the fractured sky beyond the balcony. Every inch of the dance, every gesture, carried the weight of timeless ritual, as though they were not simply performing, but enacting a memory older than the city itself.
For a brief moment the world fell silent.
In that stillness, the doll's ruby eyes slowly dissolved into hollow black voids. A faint whisper echoed somewhere between the walls and the fractured heavens, a sound so soft it was almost imagined, carrying with it a sense of inevitability.
The music changed.
The gentle nocturne twisted into a frantic and discordant crescendo as the melody spiraled into something unnatural. Shadows within the Red House began to detach from the walls, stretching and gathering as though the darkness itself had awakened. The boy remained seated, yet his presence shifted subtly as the shadows moved toward him, forming a silent tide of black around the dancing couple. The very air seemed to thicken, carrying the faint metallic scent of tension and anticipation.
The gaslights flickered violently before dying one after another, plunging the ballroom into suffocating darkness where only the shifting shadows remained. The warmth of the room vanished instantly, replaced by a deep ancestral cold that settled into the bones of the house itself. Every wooden beam, every stone, seemed to resonate with the chill, amplifying the sense of quiet terror.
The lovers remained frozen within their final embrace, their graceful forms unmoving as though their spirits had been etched permanently into the air of the ballroom. Dust motes hung suspended in the cold, illuminated faintly by the last flickers of light before disappearing entirely.
The Red House fell silent once more.
The elegant dance ended in a heavy stillness that felt eternal, leaving behind only the faint mechanical chime of a distant music box playing a lonely melody somewhere in the empty halls. The sound reverberated faintly, carrying the echoes of forgotten laughter and vanished days, a haunting reminder of life and motion that once had been.
Back beneath the fractured sky, Sora slowly turned his gaze toward the knight.
Something felt strange.
The man who had fought the hollow creatures without hesitation now looked different. His eyes were fixed upon the sky with unmistakable terror, his entire body trembling as though he were staring directly into inevitable death. The fractures reflected in his pupils, mirroring the sky's broken brilliance, yet twisting it into a visage of horror only he could see.
Sora tilted his head slightly, confused.
Why was he afraid?
After surviving those two hollow creatures, why would something like this frighten him?
Humans are strange, Sora thought quietly. They throw their bodies everywhere like fools.
After a moment of silence, Sora asked,
"Is something wrong?"
The knight's face turned red with fury.
"Something wrong?" he shouted, his voice exploding as spittle flew from his mouth and landed on Sora's face. "THIS IS YOUR FAULT!"
Before Sora could react, the knight struck him violently with his hand, sending him sliding across the cobblestones.
"FROM THE MOMENT I SAW YOU HERE I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!" the knight roared. "I'M SURE OF IT NOW—YOU CURSED RAT!"
He pointed a trembling finger toward the shattered sky.
"THAT LIGHT… THOSE FRACTURES… THEY COME FROM THE FIRST DAYS AFTER THE TRAITOR KILLED THE SUN!"
His voice shook between rage and fear.
"A SIN COMMITTED AGAINST THE SKY… A SIN THE HEAVENS WILL NEVER FORGET!"