The sanctum held its breath and then let it go in a slow, forgiving exhale.
After Naoko finished the final, precise motions that coaxed the mana-heart into place, she stepped back and watched the boy beneath the lamps. The dome of the ritual barrier trembled once, as if deciding whether to remain; then she let it fall away. The basin's waters still steamed in fine curls, and the runes in the floor cooled like embers suffocating under ash. Naoko moved to the far side of the chamber with the economy of someone who has always known the shortest route between duty and solitude. She shed the thin ceremonial robe she had wrapped herself in and returned to the black dress she wore as armor—a dress cut simply, all dark and shadow and the precise geometry of a woman who takes light and bends it to a purpose. She fastened the last clasp, smoothed the fabric, and sat on the low obsidian couch as a queen might seat herself after war.
Fifteen minutes stretched and folded inside those minutes like pages turning slowly in an ancient book. The sanctum smelled of boiled salt and metal, of scorched moon-essence and something faintly floral—perhaps a trace of the life-thread Elizabeth had lent. The lamps cast long, cool fans of light; the obsidian around them kept its secrets with a patient silence. Naoko's hands lay on her lap. Her silver eyes watched the sleeping boy on the bed as if reading maps in the rise and fall of his chest.
A soft, unexpected sound came first: a thin, tentative moan that was almost the echo of a remembered name. Then Jin moved—small, like a fish turning under water—then deeper, until he sat up. The change was not abrupt. It was the reluctant opening of a window: first a creak, then a breath of air. He blinked; his lashes cast slight shadows on cheeks still pale from the sanctum's chill.
When Jin's eyes found the room they were startling. Crimson, rich and alive, they gleamed with a softness Naoko had not allowed herself to expect. His skin was clean and pale as a new coin; his lips the color of a pressed petal. Black hair fell in a careless fringe over one eye—habit, or inherited style—and it made him look younger than the weight of the world he had been given.
He rubbed one eye with a languid, almost playful motion and then swept his gaze across the sanctum. He blinked at the sight of his mother—Naoko—who watched him with that cold clarity. For a bare moment his expression registered confusion, then a slow, ironic smile that curved one corner of his mouth like a small, dangerous secret.
"Good morning, dear mother," he said with a mock ceremony, the amusement in his voice quick as a knife's flash. "Did you sleep on the couch so I could keep your bed warm? Such generosity."
Naoko's face did not shift. Her silver eyes measured. "You mean to tell me you were asleep for seventeen days," she said, the words flat and factual as ledger entries. She did not ask with accusation; she recited.
Seventeen days hung in the air like a sudden detail discovered in the margins of a map. Jin's grin softened into surprise—an almost childlike surprise that made Sion's chest give a small, involuntary clench behind the door where she waited. He made a small, half-laughing noise.
"Seventeen?" he repeated. "That's… quite a nap." He looked at Naoko without any question. It was not rudeness; rather, it was the trust that had grown between a boy and the woman who had shaped more of his fate than perhaps anyone else. He did not ask why—he did not press the blank space where answers should be—because with Naoko there were always reasons that required no voice.
His hands drifted to his body, an instinctive check. The linen at his waist was different from the cloths he remembered. A wry, embarrassed half-smile tugged at him. "Mother—I appear to be without the pants I had on," he said lightly, the tease thin and effortless.
Naoko's reply was a single, even phrase. "I took them from you," she said.
He sighed—part amusement, part resignation. For a brief moment his memory tried to stitch itself back together. The last thing he could conjure was the feeling of fatigue, of being called to his mother's room and sliding into sleep like a man slipping under cold water. Then the curtain had fallen. Now the stage had opened and he sat, ready, with the irreverence of someone waking into a life set by others' designs.
He regarded his hands with a thoughtful frown. "Why does my body feel… different? Not just new clothes." He turned his palms as if to inspect their unfamiliar weight. The question was both naive and ancient—the wonder of being in a body remade.
"You are half-god now," Naoko said, voice steady as a measure. "You will not feel what you expect at once. You have completed your breakthrough. Your mana core has been rebuilt; its name is no longer simply mana. It is now divine energy —clearer, denser, more stable. You will use it as I do. Do you understand? Now get out of my chamber. People await you."
His eyes flicked up to hers—curiosity, defiance, and a thread of something that might have been gratitude braided together. He rose with a grace that had nothing of haste, steady and clean. When Naoko indicated his clothes, he walked to her wardrobe, unfastened the door, and folded the garments she offered with the casual ease of someone dressing for battle.
He drew on black pants and a black shirt, the fabric sitting along his body like armor softened for movement. A long black leather coat fell to his calves, heavy and deliberate, and he buckled on fingerless leather gloves. Combat boots closed with precise snaps. For a moment his silhouette was that of a common soldier; for another—a breath later—it was the silhouette of someone who could walk between courts and wars without bending.
When he stepped from the room the corridor held three figures. Sion stood first, her chestnut-red hair catching the halo of a chandelier; her eyes—those ember-browns—glowed with something near-fierce relief. She wore her usual daring clothing, the kind that mocked the palace's hush, and the sight of Jin drew her like a moth to flame. Alongside her were the two other women: Elizabeth, whose presence softened the hard edges of the corridor with warm grey elegance, and Tishara, whose golden hair and emerald eyes caught the light and held it like a blade reflecting sun.
Sion's first movement needed no permission. She surged forward and wrapped her arms around Jin with the force of a spring released. Her embrace crushed and sheltered; she pressed jin her face To her chest as if to sear the contour of him into memory. Jin's face was buried in the warm, yielding curve of her breast; he smiled, half-ironically, at the sensation of being claimed.
"Oh, this is touching," Jin said with a mocking lilt, teasing even as his body relaxed into the awkward, immediate solace. "What if I fall in love with you, Mother? Look at what you do—are you trying to seduce me?" His voice held no real complaint; the ribbing was a shield to make the moment less sharp.
Sion laughed in a way that was more like a bark of delight, eyes shiny with unshed tears. The roughness around the eventals of her grin steadied into something like joy. She tightened her arms for a second, then laughed again, the sound bubbling into a small, fierce happiness. "You idiot," she breathed against him. "Don't make me weep. You're alive. That's what matters."
Elizabeth watched with the soft, irrational awe of a woman meeting the future in flesh. Her voice, when she spoke, came wrapped in the honey of a smile. "What a marvelous sight," she murmured. "It warms the heart—seeing him like this."
Tishara's earlier edge had melted into something else—curiosity, wonder, and a small, guarded tenderness she barely owned up to. "Who would have thought you had custodial feelings, Sion?" she teased, mild and sharp.
Sion snapped back with a clipped edge, the old fire returning for a heartbeat. "Who are you to talk, you tramp? Don't lecture me—your backside needs another lesson." Her words landed like a playful slap and the corridor grew light with the noise of two women who knew how to wound and then stitch the cut with jest.
A small pause opened then; Jin drew back just enough so that his face was visible between Sion's hair and the collar of his coat. His crimson eyes glittered with a teasing light and his smile had found a new, private lilt.
"Ladies," he said mildly, voice soft but bright. "I'm pleased the spectacle pleases you. But if you have the kindness—might I know your names properly?"
Elizabeth flushed a little, surprised by how the boy—her grandson—did not remember their faces as family. She raised a hand to her mouth in a quick, delicate cough and then managed to say, as though the truth had been a surprising jewel she had to dislodge from her throat.
"Mm—my name is Elizabeth Rotchy," she said, voice gentle and warm. "I am Naoko's mother. I am your grandmother."
Her declaration hung on the air like a small, fragile offering. Jin took it in with the casual gravity of someone cataloguing facts—family trees to be noted, alliances to be weighed.
Tishara, never one to be outmaneuvered in spirit, stepped forward with a mischievous tilt. "Well then—hello, nephew," she chimed. "I am Tishara Rotchy. Naoko's younger sister. Strange to greet you like this—who would imagine Naoko would give birth, that she would be a mother? Congratulations, little bastard. You are half-god now—welcome."
Jin's expression did not brighten or crumble; it simply folded into a neutral register that made him look older and more amused than his years might claim. Family lines mattered to him, but not as some did—he carried them like garments tried on for size and fit. Naoko and Sion and Amelia and Shizana were the family that anchored him; new names were interesting, but not the center Except for Rena, his wife.
He looked at them and inclined his head once, a courteous and slightly sardonic bow. Then, with a small, ironic smirk, he fell into the cadence of his new life—part jest, part challenge, and all of it contained within the bright danger of those crimson eyes. The corridor smelled faintly of burned wood and fresh-laid cloth and the aftertaste of sanctified water. The palace around them resumed its endless patience, folding the moment into the long, slow history of Rotchy.
For now they stood together at the doorway of Naoko's room—family newly named, loyalties reasserted, and a boy who had been broken and remade at the axis of their wills. The future, still a shadowed map, waited. The next steps would be taken in its ink. For the moment, mouths were full of small, combustible joys, and the obsidian halls seemed to listen with a patient, almost indifferent kindness.
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heat: Thanks so much for reading
Prepare yourself, it's time to see Jin return to the story in a new place and with new people
Note: Jin now has divine energy or The energy of gods
So don't be surprised if he wrote one of two ways
The heart of mana or the center of mana is now called the source or essence of divine energy