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The sound of utensils scraping against porcelain echoed too loudly in the dining hall. My appetite hadn't been real until the first bite, and then it was as though my body rembered what hunger felt like. I devoured everything in front of . at, rice, stew, bread—it didn't matter. Each mouthful disappeared too quickly, washed down by gulps of water that barely touched the dryness in my throat.
What struck wasn't the food, though.
It was the eyes.
Every ti I looked up, at least one of them was watching . i with her sly smirk, though it was softer now, more tender than mocking. Rin with her chin in her hands, her ears twitching nervously every ti I raised my fork. Akane leaned back, arms folded, but her gaze didn't waver from for a second. Sora fiddled with her napkin, pretending not to look when I caught her, but her silver eyes darted back like magnets. And Elira—her regal composure never slipped, but the intensity of her stare was enough to make swallow harder.
It was overwhelming.
Finally, I set the fork down with a sigh, pushing the empty plate forward. "Okay. Enough. You're all staring like I'm going to vanish again if you blink."
The words broke the silence, but no one laughed. Not this ti.
Sora leaned forward, her voice quiet but steady. "Ren… there's sothing you need to understand."
I rubbed at my temples. "Sothing else? I already feel like I've woken up in soone else's story."
Akane shifted, resting her elbows on the table. "You deserve to know. All of it. What we did. What it cost."
Elira exhaled softly, almost like a prayer. "And what nearly destroyed us."
I leaned back, crossing my arms. "Fine. Hit with it. I'm listening."
The girls exchanged looks again, that unspoken current flowing between them, and then i broke the silence.
"When the clone took over, we tried everything," she began, her tone unusually subdued. "Every purification spell we knew. Every charm. Every ward. Elira scoured half her holand for relics. Nothing stuck. It was like trying to wash tar with water."
Elira nodded solemnly. "I returned ho, to the archives of my people. I brought back a grimoire—one far beyond what any of us should have touched. Forbidden texts, ant only for the elder council. Its pages alone threatened to unmake weaker minds."
I stiffened. "And you just—brought it here?"
"Would you have preferred we let the clone keep you forever?" Elira shot back, a rare flash of sharpness. "I would have sacrificed anything."
Her words cut, but I said nothing.
Rin's tail swished anxiously behind her chair. "We tried for days. Weeks. Nothing worked. The clone was too strong… or maybe too tied to you. Every spell we cast, he twisted back at us. And you… you weren't responding."
My stomach turned as I rembered faint echoes—flashes of light, the sensation of heat pressing against , voices shouting spells I couldn't grasp. I had thought those were dreams. But they hadn't been. They'd been real.
Sora's hands trembled as she folded them on the table. "Aya even tried reversing the spell—the one that created him in the first place."
I jerked upright. "She what?"
Akane's voice cut like a blade. "It nearly killed you."
My throat dried.
"She poured everything into it," Rin whispered. "Every ounce of her power. But instead of tearing him apart, it started unraveling you. Your body collapsed, your aura cracked. We almost…" Her voice caught, breaking into silence.
Elira's eyes lowered. "We almost lost you that night."
My hand went to my chest, feeling phantom pain where their words dug. I rembered sothing—like fire consuming my veins, the sensation of my body splitting in two. A scream that had never reached my lips.
I shook my head slowly. "And still… it didn't work?"
"No," i said flatly.
Sora shifted, and her silver hair slid across her shoulder as she finally t my gaze. "That was when I… found it."
Her words carried a weight the others leaned into.
"The grimoire?" I asked.
She nodded. "At first, I was just… reading it. Studying. Trying to find patterns in the spells we didn't understand. But the more I read, the more it started making sense. It was like the words… wanted to understand them."
I frowned. "Sora, that book was—"
"Dangerous," she finished softly. "I know. But it didn't feel wrong. Not for ." She clasped her hands tightly. "And then I found a spell. Not one ant to banish or destroy… but one ant to separate."
Akane's voice picked up, steady and calm. "We all helped. We gathered power from everywhere we could. Elira brought her elves here. They lent their strength, weaving mana into barriers around the mansion. Together, we cast it."
Elira's tone went heavy. "But we were not ready. The sheer weight of it tore the balance apart. A rift opened—violent, unstable. It nearly devoured everything."
I stiffened. "The vortex chamber."
She inclined her head. "Yes. To keep the magic from consuming us, we bound it there. Contained it, locked it into a place where the energies could churn without breaking the world."
"And ?" My voice was hoarse.
Sora looked at , eyes shimring. "The spell pulled you into the astral plane. It separated you from him. The original Ren… from the clone."
Rin's voice trembled. "We thought it failed at first. You collapsed. You didn't wake. The clone vanished, yes, but so did you."
Akane's jaw tightened. "We sealed him away sowhere else. We don't even know where. But your body…"
Elira finished for her, voice quiet as snowfall. "It remained, but lifeless. Your spirit was elsewhere. Trapped."
"And that's why…" I swallowed hard, throat burning. "That's why I didn't wake for three months."
Sora's hands shook. "We tried everything to call you back. Every day. I stayed with the grimoire. I searched, read, prayed. Until finally… finally… sothing gave way."
I stared at her, unable to form words. Her silver eyes glistened, her shoulders trembling with the weight of what she wasn't saying—how many nights she had cried over those pages, how many tis she had nearly broken herself chasing through ink and glyphs.
The room was heavy. Their silence pressed on like stones.
I laughed weakly, a sound with no humor. "So that's it then. Three months of locked away in the astral plane. Three months you spent fighting, building, bleeding… all while I was asleep."
But then Elira shook her head. "Not three."
The words landed like knives.
My heart skipped. "…What?"
"It was not just the three months you were gone in the astral," she said softly. "It was the weeks before. The days we tried spell after spell. The ti lost in our struggle."
Akane's voice was blunt, but quiet. "It's been nearly five months, Ren."
The air fled my lungs.
"Five…" I whispered, numb. "Five months."
The room tilted. I clutched the edge of the table, knuckles white. My heart hamred, my breath quickened, but no air ca. Five months. Stolen. While a mockery of lived in my place, poisoning everything I'd built.
Rin reached for , her hand trembling. "Ren—"
I jerked away, standing abruptly, the chair screeching against the floor. "Five months of my life… gone." My voice broke. "Just like that. Like so—so bad movie where the hero wakes up and the world's already moved on."
No one spoke.
I laughed bitterly, dragging my hands down my face. "Do you even know what that feels like? To open your eyes and realize the world kept spinning without you? That you were just… erased?"
Silence. Then Akane spoke, her voice low but steady. "We know, Ren. Because we were here. Waiting. Fighting. Watching days turn into weeks. Weeks into months. Watching you not move. Not breathe. Not wake. We know what it feels like."
Her words hit harder than anything.
I froze, chest heaving, my anger hollowing out. And then… I crumbled back into the chair, burying my face in my hands.
"Five months…" I whispered again. "Gone."
But this ti, I felt hands on my shoulders. Rin's warmth pressing from the side. Sora's delicate fingers curling against my sleeve. Akane's steady hand on my back. i's presence at my side, quiet for once. Elira standing tall, her aura wrapping like a shield around us all.
"We're here now," Sora whispered.
I let out a shaky laugh through the tears I didn't even know were falling. "Yeah. You are."
And for the first ti since waking, I let myself believe it.
The silence that followed was soft, almost fragile, like a thin sheet of glass balanced between all of us. Their hands lingered on , warmth pressing in from every side. I thought—just for a mont—that maybe things could steady. That maybe I could breathe again.
Then—
Click.
The door creaked open, spilling light from the hall.
"I'm back. Sorry it took so long, the rchants were being stub—" Aya's voice cut in, firm and even as always, until the words died in her throat.
Her eyes found .
The box she was carrying slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor, fruit and parchnt spilling across the wood.
Aya stood frozen in the doorway, staring at as though she were seeing a ghost.
And in her silence, the entire room stopped breathing.
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