Omella’s words settled over him like a heavy blanket—warm, comforting, safe.

The black ooze that had clawed at his mind retreated, seeping back into the unseen. The floorboards beneath him dissolved, and when he blinked, he was standing in a courtyard. He knew this place. It was here he had been broken down and reforged into a warrior. The process had been brutal, merciless at times—but when it was over, the satisfaction was undeniable.

Slowly, his eyes lifted. Someone stood across from him, their form hazy at first. A silhouette, unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar all the same. When it spoke, the voice resonated deep within him—not Omella’s, not exactly, but carrying echoes of familiarity.

“My own voice… no,” he murmured, “my father’s. My older brothers’, maybe.”

Darkness swelled at the edges of the sky, pushing inward, pressing close. But then the figure came into focus. Tall. Armored. Radiant in a way that wasn’t threatening, but commanding. Like staring up at a mountain—immovable, awe-inspiring.

An avatar, he assumed. A vessel.

The voice spoke again, carrying its question. For a moment, Momo hesitated, but as the void faltered, driven back at the edges of his vision, he smiled. The answer washed over him like a cool breeze on a blistering day.

“A brave man fears only when fear protects his honor and guides his duty,” he said, voice steady now “He does not fear the danger before him—he fears failing his duty, his honor, and the people he has sworn to protect. Bravery is not the absence of fear… but the mastery of it.”
 
The chitinous knight of green plate that showed no face nor hands, not even the neck or a glimpse of the eyes, raised the hand and clasped it in a fist.
Father's pride, expectations fulfilled. A start of a journey where lessons are not weight but tools.
"Yes. Fear is a screeching ghost of false perfection. Mortals and gods err alike."

The courtyard was bathed in winter frost. It left a thin crust on the roof and hazarded the ground, from which thin mist rose and numbed what skin it had to touch.
It was not black, it was not unknown. There it was, Momoshiro's own echo in the mist, stood there in exquisite raiments, a staff with eight rings in hand, a scroll in the other - a deific vision, if not for the wind blowing it this way and that as it traveled to the courtyard. And yet, that vision looked to Momo. Frowned, accusatory finger aimed.

But around Momo, the air was warm, though only slightly. A bird song, distant, sounded from outside.

"That ghost makes demands of you it never toiled for."
Long hours of training. Failing, trying again, failing again, stopping to think. Putting it all together. Trying again, and failing again, but no longer flailing in unknown, knowing the mistake. Trying again, and reaching it. Trying again, and reaching the goal again. Hours of trying, thinking, perfecting, and at some point - growing confidence. Mastery.
Perfection was the dogma in the ghost's scroll, eternal and ephemeral.
Mastery could only have so fine a finish, before it put one back onto the wheel.
Only mastery could better the world.

"Look it in the face. You, judging you. Why are you judging you?"
 
Outside the hut, the spirits waited in silence beneath the shelter of the barrier, Momo's curtain. Perhaps they understood its purpose in some instinctive way, though Momo had never been certain. They just… knew. The curtain resonated with them, and that was enough.

They were a strange gathering—some no larger than rats, others looming like carriages. A few wore monstrous visages, twisted and terrifying, while others seemed almost serene, beautiful in their strangeness. Some flitted about with quick, darting motions; others moved as if wading through syrup. Different in every way but one—each spirit’s gaze was fixed on the alleyway’s mouth, watching. Waiting.

And there it stood.

The cursed spirit stared back with a forest of eyes. Its body was somewhere between a lizard and a hound, slick with shadows, its six legs ending in jagged red talons. Black-and-violet smoke curled off its body in steady trails, coiling thickest around its tail. Rows of fangs gleamed in its maw, sharp and unending. But it was the eyes—dozens of them—studded across its face, its throat, its chest, even the tip of its tail, all unblinking, all locked on the hut.


Momo blinked once. Then again. The apparition with the staff stood before him, but something was wrong. With the third blink, his world shifted—his body was smaller, his perspective lower. His hands, trembling in front of him, were small. A child’s hands. His smaller tail curled tightly around him in reflex, protective. His old training gi held snug against his frame.

He swallowed. He knew this feeling. He was himself, yet not—the boy he had once been. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to meet the figure before him, his ruby eyes wide, searching.

The question pressed on him. He tried to answer.

“I’m hol—” His voice faltered, too high, too young. He hesitated, then tried again. “I’m holding myself to impossible standards… and breaking apart when I can’t reach them.”

The wintry air from the scene did not reach him. Birds called nearby. Snowflakes drifted past in silence as young Momo glanced around the courtyard.

“…Right?”
 
Barely a quarter of a minute passed in the outside. It seemed that thought traveled faster than grains in an hourglass.


The knight was gone.
Someone was kneeling beside him. Much shorter than the suit of chitin plates. An... elf? The waif's face was gaunt, angular, not a face Momo had ever seen before. Skin and hair - pallid, as if drained of color. Fingers as frail as spider legs, with long and narrow nails. Eyes - two orbs of green, no whites, no pupils, like chrysoprase stones. The only other tinge of color was a slight pink shimmer on the skin, like play of light on mother of pearl.

Not a pretty girl, not an imposing authority. As she knelt near the little Momo, she was almost shorter than him.
"All well and good," her slightly dulled voice was quiet, but pleasant, unlike her appearance. "You know the theory, Momoshiro."

The... weather around them. It wasn't winter. It was clarity, the bleached unforgiving midday on paved stones. Frost lingered.
"Fear itself is not your opponent. This is the domain of your father, is it not? It served you well. It provided you with good foundation, challenged you to grow in skill. But all things exist in balance. You are worthy. And there will always be room to grow."

Lulling waves. Cool shadow in summer. Mother's voice when she smiles.
"Nothing takes root in a monolith, though. You are not a monolith either. Fighting with yourself hasn't done you good when darkness pours over, has it? You'd lose even if you won. What would a wise master do? One that has learned the harmony of the mind?"
A nod at the misty figure. It was so tall. A vision of a perfect world. Of a demanded, and then self-demanded, standard.
 
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The younger Momo, wide ruby eyes gleaming, turned toward the figure beside him. Another avatar, perhaps? He wondered why Omella never appeared as herself. Then again, this place bent to thought and memory—if you could choose any form, why wouldn’t you? The foxboy exhaled softly, recognizing the irony. His current form wasn’t by chance. He had made himself smaller, younger—an unconscious defense. A reaction born from the shadows of his mind and the weight of memory.

The figure before him was… otherworldly. Her skin shimmered with a pearlescent sheen, like moonlight on water. Momo searched his memory for anything similar. Perhaps there was a spirit somewhere with such a glow. But flesh and blood? No. He had never seen anything like her.

Something stirred in him—an ache, a tug. The inexplicable desire to reach out, to draw her into an embrace, to offer comfort. He didn’t act on it, but the pull lingered, a quiet gravity he didn’t fully understand.

Her words reached him like sunlight breaking through a storm, pushing open doors inside him long rusted shut. With every affirmation, the ground beneath him steadied, becoming solid stone—immovable, unshakable. He turned her questions over in his mind, chewing on them, searching for truth in his own voice.

Frost glittered nearby, catching the light in delicate patterns. He followed her nod, lifting his gaze toward the misty silhouette that loomed ahead. It resisted focus, like staring into the sun. Momo quickly looked away, grounding himself in the quiet strength of the stones beneath him.

“I think,” he began, and though he stood in the body of his younger self, his voice came out steady—his voice now, the voice of the man he had become. He had returned to himself again.

“A wise master would understand that there is no light without darkness, and no darkness without light. Neither is what people think they are. Darkness isn’t evil, it isn’t malicious—it just… is. Just as light isn’t pure or selfless. They’re halves of the same whole. They live in everyone, because we all walk through both.”

His hand rose, scratching thoughtfully at his chin—an old, familiar gesture.

“The trick,” he added softly, “is to not let one swallow the other.”
 
Correct emotion, though suppressed. Wrong attribution. Recalibrate, guide.
If only the fox man knew how many maneuvers went through his neurons every split instant to maintain this dream, better still, to be present in it, to keep it consistent enough to form a pattern rather than disjointed clues scattered in the aftermath of waking. She realized that she was in her initial body and in view too late - a slip of her own mastery in managing too many processes.

"Your feelings are like that, too, aren't they?" The voice was soft and slightly dulled, almost lulling in its low variance. "And you - are you. You came for help. This is a good start. But now you need to balance the tempers."

The thin palm gestured at the misty vision.
"That part leaves bruises on your thoughts at a word too harsh from a stranger, makes you doubt. It's not your fault that you were molded that way. Harshness tempers resilience. Too much, however - and it will bring you to the point of breaking. Now that you are grown, the power is yours to alter your own mold. Ground it in who you are now, in the present, without leaving anything out. Can't fix a clumsy arm by cutting it off, only by training it. I'm here to help you. So, to that end - what is the opposite of harshness?"
 
“Softness… kindness.”

The words came without hesitation. He didn’t need to mull them over, didn’t need to wrestle with doubt. The answer was simple—astonishingly so. Clarity had a way of slipping through when you stopped feeding the noise, when you set aside the doubts and the shadows.

Momo lowered himself to the ground, legs folding neatly beneath him. His arms rested loosely in his lap as he drew in a slow, steady breath. He held it for a moment, then released it in a long, calming exhale.

Balance.

His ears tilted downward, softening as his eyes closed. His tail curled around him, a warm, protective circle, and he breathed again. In. Out. Each cycle a rhythm.

Balance.

Somehow, in this place, in his mind’s eye, he saw water—a pond, a lake, its size unimportant. At first it thrashed, ripples colliding and breaking against one another. But with every breath, the turmoil lessened. The surface smoothed, the waves softened into ripples, and finally, the water stilled.

Balance.

Now and then, a bubble rose from the depths, breaking the calm, disturbing the surface—but as he focused, the ripples eased, and the water settled once more.

And for the first time in longer than he could remember, his mind was still. His thoughts, quiet. Peaceful.
 
Krava watched the scenery change without attempt to affect it, drifted along the thought pathway with the meditating foxling. Unseen, once again, just a cuttlefish in the neuron streams. The tendrils relaxed, pressed together mirroring the palms. There was no idle prayer. Just a thought path, branching off from Momoshiro's and running alongside.

Compassion.
One would always seek to give others what they had inside, even if they denied it in themselves, both good and bad.
One would always seek to make up a facade of what they lacked. Compassion to oneself meant knowledge of the truth, too.
In a wise ruler of mind's pathways, the choice to push those limits would come from truths.
Not out of some heroic need to match the unreachable perfection, or else loathe oneself under the mirk of anxiety bursting through repression.
Not out of a malformed sense of obligation or virtue - all words for expecting to receive others' goodness in exchange.
Knowing oneself, and staying grounded in that knowledge enough to have mercy, was the true source of inner peace.
Not today.

The inner self was always dreadful to behold, lurking shadows, self-demands and selfish notions all wrapped around unmet hungers - for love, for acceptance, for being seen. Perceived or present, it didn't matter to a mind. But like any growling, starving beast in an impossible corner - one had to face it, soothe it, train it and feed it so it obeyed. Discarded, untended, denied, the unembraced would growl and seek to erupt into the world it was no less a part of than its denier.

She failed, she thought, observing the change.
Perhaps, the exorcist would learn himself, in time. Perhaps, he'd die before that.
For now, a temporary respite.
"It's time." the voice carried from a distance.

A floating sensation, the dream disassembling.


Omella patted the creature on the head, a bit of sympathy on shrunken features. Oblivious to spirits, she hobbled to the empty hearth and sat down on the stone slab, slouching with a tired sigh. One hand rested squarely at the right side of the head where she could feel Lock stirring. Hush, hush, little mind, waking without a body is folly. Soon, soon. Stay lulled between the thought paths. Dream of nothing. Hang in balance.
Weren't they all?
 
Momo stirred, his brows knitting before softening into a smile at the gentle headpats. His tail gave a slow, content swish as he pushed himself upright. The white fox ears atop his head twitched, angling toward the door, and his ruby eyes narrowed briefly before he turned back to Omella, seated quietly by the hearth.

“I feel better… but something tells me that wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

Hopping down from the table, the foxkin tilted his head as he studied her. The scenes he’d just experienced flickered through his thoughts—the figures, the voices, the shifting shapes that had shared that inner space with him. He couldn’t help but wonder how they were connected. Were they fragments of himself, projections? Avatars shaped by Omella’s hand? Or something else entirely?

He shook the thought away. The mind was a labyrinth of half-formed images and feelings. It could have been anything.

Lowering himself into a crouch so his gaze was level with hers, his tail swayed idly behind him, betraying his restlessness.

“What happened in there?” he asked at last, his voice careful, steady. “What were you trying to do?”

He hadn’t meant it as an accusation—though he knew it might have sounded like one. He only wanted to understand. Time was short, and not knowing left him uneasy.
 
"Just what I told you we would be trying to do."
For all the success he seemed to have just achieved, the man was anxious rather than curious once again. That answered that.
"Fears have roots, roots are very primitive and need to be recognized. Then, an appropriate balance needs to be achieved." She winced. "First dive failed. You chose to run from your fear again, block it out. That temporary solution will have to work for now."
The wrinkled head was rubbing at the right side, clearly uncomfortable, as if trying to shoo away a migraine. This one, however, was a little bit more complicated than a migraine. Lock had to remain dormant. A side-glance cast to the chicken.... no, too primitive. She wanted her friend floating and capable of at least thoughtspeak.
"You were about to fight something outside?.. I... need a moment."
 
“I…”

His hand lifted halfway, then faltered, dropping back to his side. His ears flattened, his tail sagged.

Failed.

Momo rose slowly to his feet. He thought he’d done well—made the right choices, taken the right steps—but the truth pressed against him like a weight. He hadn’t. Even with a guide, he couldn’t see the right path. And though he had only just met her, the thought of letting Omella down stung worse than any wound. Tears welled in his ruby eyes, but he sniffed sharply and brushed them away before they could fall.

Failed.

“Right… outside.”

He turned, hand resting on the door. For a moment, he looked as though he might say more—but instead he only shook his head and pushed the door open. It closed softly behind him.

Failed.

Outside, the spirits lingered in their usual stillness, calm as ever beneath the curtain’s protection. Momo’s gaze lingered on them, wondering again what it was about Omella, about this place, that drew them here. His eyes shifted to the cursed spirit clawing at the barrier, probing and prying in frustration.

It seethed.

Momo stepped forward, and with each pace a quiet, steady calm settled over him. As he crossed the barrier, the cursed spirit recoiled, bracing for an attack.

But none came.

The foxkin only exhaled, long and tired, before lifting his gaze. The spirit towered over him, twice his size, bristling with malice.

Momo’s red eyes hardened.

FAILED.
 
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She shrugged, not quite buying into the crestfallen look. Priorities.
"For now, temporary will have to do. There is an immediate danger, and I am not going against the clock." But the cadence of the voice changed, more familiar to that, other, strange figure that did not look like a kindly grandma at all.
The shaman looked defeated, like he was about to cry and give up altogether. In Krava'quiloor's mind, there was a cool assessment, picking the details out with curiosity, ready to prod.

She'd not done imprint planting into someone not part of the hive before. It rooted naturally, especially in creatures that felt obliged to her - like Ng'Lock Chu'urtosh. Elder needed a different sort of aid - helping filter the invasive past, even though no regrets remained for the future. Here? Introspection brought Momoshiro to exactly the age when the root started burrowing. Would take a more concerted effort, though.

She shrugged off the rags that held her form to the exact mass that Krava's was, and with a cough, a gasp and a groan of irkdom when the nerves rearranged and the flesh shrunk to its no less featureless outline. The clothes fit better, though, the marigold and yellow cottons on top of the black second skin with purple sheen she stepped into. None would be the wiser, and she didn't have to touch dead matter directly.

The not-elf stepped out of the door and squinted, grimaced in the daylight, casually maintaining light steps to drift to the exorcists, layered long tunics, almost a dress, floating with diminished weight. The silk-white hair was put up, without hands or tools, in an elaborate updo of six braids interweaving.
"Mind lending me your sight, Momoshiro?" she queried, casually. "You got me curious, I have to admit."
 
Momo was so intent on the cursed spirit that it took him a moment to notice the old wom- wait who was this? His crimson eyes widened in surprise—was this..? He had seen this person before, in his mind. No matter, he didn't have time to parse this new information.

The spirit lunged.

Momo moved without thought. Instinct surged. He stepped in front of them, arm snapping up, palm outstretched. A portal spiraled open inches from his hand, dark energy coalescing. From it burst a storm of crow-like spirits—hundreds of them, sleek black wings tipped with crimson. Each bore six wings and multiple red eyes, slicing forward like living blades. They tore into the cursed spirit, driving it back in a screech of claws and smoke.

As the creature reeled, Momo reached into his robes, pulled free a slim glasses case, and handed it toward Not-Omella without even looking.

“Special glasses—so you can see. Please, get behind the curtain.”

His tone was clipped, urgent, not out of frustration but concern. He couldn’t afford distraction, not with their safety at risk.

The crows dissipated back into the portal, and in their place it widened. A massive, gray-blue arm shoved its way through, then another. A towering four-armed spirit emerged, muscles coiled like steel cables, a white mohawk cresting down its back into a long, foxlike tail that mirrored Momo’s own.

The cursed spirit lunged again, a frenzy of claws and smoke. It fought like a beast—wild, relentless, unthinking. Momo’s guardian spirit braced its stance, planting heavy feet as the two titans collided. They grappled, claws raking against flesh, the air thick with the sound of tearing and snarling.

But slowly, inexorably, the grey-blue spirit began to slide back.

Momo’s eyes narrowed. His hand flicked in a sharp gesture, summoning again. Another spirit appeared—this one calm, serene. It hovered cross-legged in the air, elephantine features tranquil, one massive hand raised with two fingers extended in ritual focus.

The four-armed guardian suddenly released its hold, leaping back. In the same breath, invisible force slammed down on the cursed spirit with crushing weight. The ground shattered beneath it, walls quaking as the beast was pinned, thrashing, unable to rise.

The elephant spirit’s gravitational might pressed it deeper, holding it there. Friend or foe, it made no distinction—hence the retreat of Momo’s first summon.

The foxkin recalled the battered guardian but held the elephant in place, its invisible grip unyielding. The cursed spirit writhed and snarled, but its efforts were wasted. Unless it could break the elephant’s will, it would never stand again.

Only then did Momo turn, glancing toward the not-elf —whether they had retreated to safety or chosen to stay—and beckoned them closer with a slight tilt of his head.

“That,” he said, voice low but steady, “is a cursed spirit.”
 
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Glasses twirled in the spidery fingers, the study of them taking a long moment before Krava put them on. Nothing like she'd seen, even though the elder did have visors to ease the Shroud perception. All inventions between the two of them. So many.
Glanced over the shoulder, spotting these other... spirits hiding behind the veil. Most of them were haunting her little sub-lair hut. Curious.
Then again, there were three components, and to one of which she was casually blind unless it thought, learned and wanted.

She watched the shaman weave, then, summon those things that weren't quite creatures, put them into attrition with the centipede. The creatures themselves weren't in the bodies her craftsmanship would deem entirely right. But, before it got to her, Krava assessed differently - the spirit bodies weren't in the prime, grounded state, either. They didn't need to obey laws that corporeal creatures did.

As the witchfire-green eyes followed the battle, part of her mind dedicated to studying the designs, completely transfixed. Perhaps, the small things hoarded her hut not because of the veil. She did spark thought in parts of the systems she would create, after all. The small aspects could then gain consciousness, and body, at the price of becoming just like her and hers - existences inscrutably woven together, where one of the three essences was not inside the other, nor contained, nor accumulated, but one was as the other. Rendered them blind to this side of the world, the more fickle flows of the Shroud and aspects that were adopted, but... they had other strengths, her and hers.
Was she giving spirits bodies - in a manner of speaking, this whole time?
How amusing.

"How do you process it? Break its will so it serves without questioning? Strip its mind away so it relies on yours alone for action?" She asked calmly. There was a curiosity, collected, studious approach to observing the 'cursed' spirit as it was suppressed by other ones. Controlled other ones, that seemed between weave-weapons and thralls. Where did they go, back through that portal? What needs would something without a body have, what wants without a mind? Though she knew exactly nothing about the realm of spirits, she stood firmer grounded in her own. "You are very efficient. I have not seen extensions such as what you seem to... manifest?"
 
Crouched beside the shallow crater left by his elephant spirit, Momoshiro watched the smoky, canine-like curse writhe beneath the crushing force pinning it down. Some of his spirits carried unique abilities, others did not. Many he had captured for their powers alone—the elephant spirit looming behind him was a perfect example. With each one, his arsenal had grown into something versatile, unpredictable.

His ear flicked at Krava’s question. He turned, offering her a broad grin, red eyes narrowing to crescents as he smiled. He caught on that this person was Omella, or had been. Perhaps this was her true self, or just another visage. It didn't really matter to him.

“Spirits like this one? I have to beat them. Break them. Dominate them.”

He scratched the back of his head and pulled a face.

“I don’t love that word… but it fits,” he admitted with a shrug.

His gaze shifted back to the creature thrashing in the crater, his eyes sharp but heavy with thought.

“Once I take them in, they lose everything that made them… them. No self, no will. They become thralls. They don’t act unless I command it. They can’t.”

For a moment, his expression dimmed, a shadow of regret passing over him.

“When I was a kid, I thought it was different. I thought we were gaining partners—friends. I thought they came to us because they wanted to. Willingly. Happily.” He shook his head, a humorless chuckle slipping out. “I was so damn naïve.”

He pointed toward the cursed spirit, teeth bared in fury as it strained against the crushing weight.

“That one,” he said quietly, “I’m not keeping.”
 
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