In the heart of an obsidian citadel deep within a realm untouched by mortal hands, a mirror shimmered, pulsing with unnatural life. The frame was carved from twisted bone and veined crystal, its surface a swirling canvas of ash, light, and memory. Within its depths, a single figure watched.
He reclined in a throne sculpted from petrified shadows, draped in a mantle of void-silk. Voryn, the Hooded Lord, the architect of despair, remained still. Though his face was hidden beneath a dark veil of cloth, his eyes, when they flickered beneath the hood, held the gleam of a mind that saw too much.
He watched the mirror.
Kharzad had fallen. The Cult's last major outpost in Aethelmar, broken by the very foxes he had once manipulated into slaughtering the weak. He had seen it. The moment Laverna kissed the fox boy beneath the stars. The moment Zera pledged her sword. Tessara, Maika—all drawn into his web, and yet resisting his thread. The bond of the Crests, once meant to fragment, had united.
He remained silent, unmoved. Only the twitch of his fingers tapping the throne's armrest betrayed his annoyance.
From the shadows, the Hooded Lady emerged. Her cloak whispered against the cold stone, a silhouette of elegance and malice.
"They've grown stronger," she said softly. "Stronger than even your mirror foresaw. The Crests do not break them, my Lord. They bind."
Voryn did not look at her. He continued watching the mirror as it played the aftermath: rebels cheering, Shin raising his hand, the light of four Servant Crests intertwined with his own. Maika's blade raised in honor. Laverna's power is blazing. Zera and Tessara stood proud at his side.
Then, Voryn spoke.
"Strength was never my concern," he murmured. His voice was deep and cold, like a whisper from beneath a grave. "Strength is predictable. It can be measured, challenged, redirected."
The mirror darkened. Swirls of ash coiled like smoke into the air. A new image flickered.
The Eastern Continent.
Mountains split by black spires. Cities reduced to temples of silence. Hi Okami flags draped over ruined monuments. The realm beyond, lost.
"The corruption is complete?" Voryn asked.
The Hooded Lady smiled and stepped beside him, her fingers gently tracing the edge of his throne. "The Eastern Continent belongs to you. The true Hi Okami Clan was extinguished the moment Maika fled with the Taiyo no Men. The rest have been replaced. All of them now wear the mark."
She paused, leaning closer, whispering.
"Every child. Every elder. Every soldier. Their minds are yours."
Finally, Voryn turned his head, only slightly. "And Maika?"
The Hooded Lady frowned. "Her rebellion stings. She should have died with her father."
A flicker in the mirror. The past, rendered in pale violet: Maika's father shielding the Loyalists as flames devoured the last shrine of the East. The Taiyo no Men glows in her hands. Her flight through the sands. His death.
Voryn did not react.
"Let them have Aethelmar," he said. "Let them cling to Coralis. I am not interested in fractured soil."
He stood, and the ground trembled. The mirror shook.
"They have won a battlefield, not the war. They have yet to see what lies beneath the mask."
The Hooded Lady watched as he descended the steps of his throne. Her eyes glowed with eerie admiration.
"And when will you reveal yourself, my Lord?"
He paused beside her, hand brushing against her cheek. "When the last light flickers. When even Shin Soma doubts his strength. Then, and only then, will the world remember my name."
The mirror shattered.
Not with glass, but with flame, burning violet, spiraling upward like a screaming soul. Its remnants hovered in the air like dying stars.
The Hooded Lady leaned forward, her breath a sultry whisper against the cold air between them. Her fingers curled into the folds of Voryn's mantle, and then—with a hunger that burned hotter than hellfire—she claimed his lips through the shadows of his hood.
It was not a kiss born of tenderness, but one forged in flame and ruin. Fierce, greedy, and starving. Their mouths collided like colliding storms, her teeth grazing his lower lip beneath the veil of darkness, his hands unmoving but pulsing with power. It was worship and war in equal measure.
Voryn responded in kind, pressing into her with slow inevitability, letting the moment stretch like a string of fate. There was no need for words. Their union was a contract sealed in malice and promise.
They kissed like sinners baptized in flame, the air between them warping with heat and shadow. Her breath hitched, laced with a hunger that was as much madness as it was lust. And in that embrace, they reveled—not in love, but in the elegance of annihilation. In control. In ruin.
In victory.
When the Hooded Lady finally pulled away, her lips were flushed, breath ragged, eyes glittering with unholy satisfaction.
"The world will break beneath your will," she whispered.
Voryn's sinister smile was the loudest affirmation.
"Then let the world burn."
Voryn did not speak again. He turned, vanishing into the veil of shadows, each step echoing with finality.
In the silence that followed, the broken mirror shimmered one last time.
A whisper:
"Even light casts shadows... and in mine, the foxes dance."
The screen went dark.