Chapter 19
The rain had not yet touched the ground when Orion felt the island shift.
It was subtle at first—a soft tension in the soil, like a creature tightening its muscles beneath a blanket of stone. The gray mist that lived between the trees thinned, then thickened again, stretching and coiling around him like curious fingers tracing the edges of his presence.
Orion slowed his steps.
Not because he sensed danger.
But because the island was… responding.
The path beneath his feet was no ordinary dirt trail. It pulsed faintly, in a rhythm far too deliberate to be natural. Every footstep he left behind glowed for a moment—white, then black—before fading back into the same muted gray as everything else on this impossible island.
When he exhaled, the mist breathed with him.
When he blinked, the shadows blinked back.
And when he finally stepped through the last line of withered trees, the landscape opened before him like the mouth of an ancient beast hiding its fangs behind beauty.
A vast expanse of black bamboo forests stretched to the horizon. Rivers glimmered with silver currents that flowed upward instead of down. In the distance, mountains drifted in slow circles around each other like planets caught in gentle gravity.
Everything was wrong.
Everything was alive.
Everything recognized him.
Orion didn't need the Domain of Rivers and Mountains to understand the truth—this place was not a location. It was a memory. A record. A dream carved into the bones of the world.
And it was watching him.
He took another step.
A pressure pressed against his chest—soft at first, like a polite greeting. Then stronger. Then overwhelming. It pushed against his ribs and lungs until his breath trembled.
Orion's vision tilted.
The river ahead rippled as if something stirred beneath its surface.
Then he heard it.
A voice—not spoken, not whispered, but resonating directly in the space between heartbeat and thought.
"…you finally returned."
Orion froze.
That voice was young. Familiar. Almost identical to his own—but smoother, calmer, as if spoken by someone who had seen the same horrors as him but learned to wear them like a crown.
The bamboo parted.
A figure stepped out.
Orion felt every hair on his neck rise.
The silhouette was tall, slender, and wrapped in gray mist that clung to him like a second skin. Long silver hair fell over one shoulder, and twelve vast wings—six black and filled with galaxies, six white and glowing with temporal halos—folded behind him in quiet majesty.
For an instant, the world refused to breathe.
Because the one walking toward Orion was not an illusion.
Not a ghost.
Not a projection.
It was him.
Or rather—
His past self.
The one who ruled this island long before Orion's memories fractured.
The one who wrote the records of the Black Shores.
The one who lived before destiny erased his existence.
The past Orion stopped a few paces ahead. His face was calm, unreadable, illuminated only by the glow of stars moving beneath his shadow-glass skin.
He didn't smile.
He didn't gesture.
He simply said,
"…good to meet you, my future self."
The world fell silent.
Even the rivers paused mid-flow.
Orion's heart hammered once—hard—echoing deep into the void-like air. He tried to speak, but his voice stuck somewhere between disbelief and instinctive recognition.
The past Orion continued softly, as if reciting words he had waited thousands of years to say:
"I trusted you. I trusted that the path I could no longer walk… you would finish in my place."
Mist swirled around his ankles, gathering like fog obeying its master.
He lifted a hand, palm glowing with the same eclipse light that slept inside the current Orion's body.
"You now have full access," he said, "to the Black Shores."
The ground trembled under that name.
Every bamboo stick cracked in unison.
The rivers shifted direction.
The sky darkened to an eclipse.
"These shores," the past continued, "hold thousands of years of my records. Countless lives. Countless battles. Countless truths."
"And yet…"
His voice softened.
"…you will notice that your chapter is missing."
Orion's breathing stopped.
"My page," the past version said with a faint, almost sorrowful exhale, "was erased by my own hand."
He lowered his palm.
"And now that page… is you."
A gust of cosmic wind swept through the bamboo forest. The mist around them spiraled into a vortex, drawing the two Orions closer.
The past stepped forward.
"This is our last meeting," he said quietly.
Then, with a voice that resonated through every timeline—
"We will now become one."
The world shattered into starlight.
Pain, memory, time, echoes, and entire lifetimes crashed into Orion at once. His back arched, the wings of space and time bursting outward in a violent bloom of cosmic power. His skin glowed with collapsing galaxies, threads of black and white lightning weaving through his bones.
The fusion was not gentle.
It was rebirth through destruction.
It was evolution through annihilation.
It was two versions of himself—two eras, two wills, two destinies—merging into a single being.
A roar tore itself from Orion's throat, shaking the island to its roots.
He was falling.
He was rising.
He was ending.
He was beginning.
Then, with a sudden stillness—
Everything stopped.
The bamboo straightened.
The rivers resumed their flow.
The mountains drifted quietly once more.
And at the center of it all, kneeling on the ground as the mist parted around him…
Was the new Orion.
Transformed.
Reborn.
Awakened.
A Stage 1 lifeform again—but with the full mythical creature form sleeping beneath his skin.
And every record of his past now resting inside him.
He exhaled, the air trembling from the echo of cosmic power.
Then he raised his head slowly.
The island—his island—welcomed him back.