The stillness wrapped around Mo like a second skin — not heavy, but close, like breath caught in the back of a throat.
Behind him, the portal's shimmer had vanished, sealing him in this submerged dream-world. He wasn't floating. He wasn't walking. It was both, and neither. The "ground" beneath his feet felt like memory: not solid, but there, somehow.
Aylen was nowhere in sight.
He didn't panic. That wasn't his way. Still, something gnawed at him — not fear, exactly. More like the weight of a question he'd been avoiding for years finally deciding it wouldn't wait any longer.
The figure ahead stepped from shadow. Female, definitely — not the water-woman, and not a threat. At least, not yet.
Her hair fell in damp, ink-black waves over pale shoulders, framing a face Mo could almost recognize. Skin like porcelain, with a quiet sadness in her eyes that didn't quite match the rest of her beauty. She looked… familiar. Not someone he'd met before. Someone from a memory that didn't belong to him.
"You made it through the first gate," she said, voice calm, faintly amused. "Most don't."
Mo's eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
She stepped closer. No echo. No ripple. "That depends. Who do you need me to be?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he looked past her. This place — this test — it was meant to strip him down. And if that was true, then nothing here was real. But the feeling in his chest, the tightening just behind his ribs, that was real enough. It always was.
The woman tilted her head, watching him like a puzzle with a missing piece.
"You're angry."
"I'm a lot of things," Mo said quietly. "But anger's just the loudest one."
She smiled — not mockingly. More like she understood.
"Then show me," she said. "Let it out. Speak it. Or carry it forever. The Shamshir doesn't care. But I think you do."
Mo didn't move. His jaw clenched, eyes hard. This wasn't a conversation. It was a mirror.
The scene shifted, sudden as breath being knocked out of lungs.
He was standing in the ruins again — smoke curling in the distance, blood soaked into the dirt. His younger self knelt beside a crumpled figure. A hand outstretched, trembling. Reaching for someone already gone.
The adult Mo watched in silence. Not stone-faced. Not cold. Just… quiet.
"I remember this," he murmured.
The woman beside him folded her arms. "You don't think about it anymore."
"I think about it all the time."
"Not clearly. Not honestly."
Mo looked down at his younger self. At the tears he no longer remembered shedding.
"She died because of me," he said.
"No." The woman's voice sharpened. "She died because someone made a choice. And it wasn't you. But you've been punishing yourself for it ever since."
The ground cracked, shadows splitting open like ink bleeding into paper. The young Mo vanished into them, the memory folding inward.
"You don't want healing," she said, softer now. "You want to be worthy of the pain."
Mo turned to her. His eyes weren't angry anymore — just tired. "And you? You're part of this place too?"
She nodded.
"Then you already know. I'm not here to be healed."
"No," she said. "You're here to survive."
And suddenly, the space around them exploded — a flood of light, cold and brilliant, swallowing the shadows in one rush. Mo staggered back, the Shamshir flaring at his side as power surged through his body. He could feel it — the pull, the weight, the old scars burning clean.