"...Incarnate? What do you mean?" Sol looked towards the person sitting in front of him, still obscured by the shade.
"I guess I do owe you some explanation." The hooded man snapped his fingers, and all of a sudden, their surroundings shifted in color and light, now resembling the Longrass Meadow near the Old Chief's house.
Sol looked around, and he saw himself, already coated with the black-red flameveil and on his way towards Nia's position, like a shadow streaking upon the burning fields, desperate to satiate its hunger and quench its thirst. The air itself looked warped, heat shimmering above the Longrass as it burned. "That's--" His words were cut off as he realized what he was seeing were the moments happening outside of his own consciousness, a living window he could not close. "That's me."
"Why am I covered with... flames? Black flames?" Sol moved towards the direction of his own body, instinct dragging him forward, but an invisible wall stopped him short, firm as stone, cold as iron. "Wha--"
"Unfortunately, there is no way for you to interact with that side from here, at least for now." The hooded man played with a coin in his fingers. It didn't come from anywhere. It felt like the coin had been there all along.
Nothing moved. They just stood still, like a moment in time carved out as a single, immersive picture. The temperature, the smell of the Longrass burning, the landslide, even the feeling of the snow that Sol touched, were genuine.
It was too real for a dream, too vivid for a memory.
"Let's see..." The hooded man did not move from his seat. "To make things simpler, let me tell you what you were trying to do."
He stopped for a bit, then continued with a lower, more commanding voice. "You are about to turn all of this into another failure."
"Failure? Another?" Sol looked at him intently. Apparently, the change in lighting could not even shed any light on what was being obscured under his white hood. The shade drank it all.
"Yep. As I have said." The hooded man played with his coin for a while, then, with a flick, the coin changed into a dagger. It was thin but very sharp, with ornate handles and jewels embedded inside the blade. The weapon felt ancient, and terribly powerful. The dagger changed into other shapes: a black dagger veiled with shadows, a straight dagger that absorbed light, a longer dagger that looked like it had been carved from a dragon's tooth. "I have tried this thousands of times, kid. And all of them have been failures. There are rules and regulations preventing me from taking total control, so my hands have been tied all this time. So now, I attempted something a little bit different."
The dagger disappeared. His hands were now playing with dice of many shapes and forms, each face catching the light for a heartbeat before it slipped away. "Just like you, I improvised."
Sol looked at him with worry. The things in his right hand were not there before, and the sight of the daggers, and then the many dice, sent a shiver down his spine. They scared him for how effortlessly they were summoned and dismissed. In fact, everything the man had shown thus far sent a chill to his bones. Every single one of them was an artifact of immaculate power. Whoever this person was, he held power Sol could not imagine.
The hooded man continued. "In the majority of the attempts, you didn't even make it this far. The chasm killed you. The cold killed you. The Elk killed you. The Garm killed you. The creature inside the caverns killed you. The apex of the mountain killed you. Heck, you even killed you. In all subsequent... more successful tries, the ones where you managed to survive long enough for it to matter, you held on to the hunger for far too long. It broke you apart."
"In the later attempts, you managed to move forward. You managed to do everything right, yet your power betrays you, your lineage refuses to work alongside you, your namesake forsakes you. In all of those attempts, only once have you ever almost reached the end." The hooded man created a cup in his right hand, a golden grail, empty. From his left hand, he poured some liquid into the cup, seemingly from nowhere, and sipped some of it before continuing. "Not even once have you arrived at this point with such clarity, as if you're being guided by invisible strands of fate itself. And looking back, I think it's because of the girl."
"The girl?" Sol looked towards the still surroundings of the Longrass Meadow, and saw Nia, clutching both her hands, preparing to do something. Even frozen in place, she looked braced against something unseen. "Nia..."
"Yes. The girl." The hooded man sipped again from his grail, and dismissed it. It disappeared into thin air. What he held in his right hand now looked like a small, miniaturized version of a tome, almost invisible, almost see-through, yet simmering with golden, greenish light. "Never once did she appear in the attempts as a companion. You were always alone, or you were accompanied by someone else."
Sol turned his body around to see the back of the man's throne. "Someone else?"
"..." The man did not answer his question. Instead, he continued. "Six thousand, six hundred, and sixty-five attempts. Not even once have I managed to reach out to you. Not even once have I managed to steer you off the path of self-destruction. Not even once have I managed to relieve the pain of existing from your mind."
The atmosphere shifted. Sol noticed it, like a foreboding sense that suddenly came right before a tragedy would strike, like the calm before the last storm one will ever see. The stillness tightened. The hooded man also noticed it.
"I said too much." His hand stopped fidgeting with the tome. "Well. You asked before who I was, so I intend to answer that question, at the very least."
Their surroundings turned back into darkness, as sudden as before. Sol found himself back at his chair, never remembering when he walked back there. The hooded man dismissed the tome and leaned forward.
"I'm a friend. A very invested one." The man stood up. His right hand was extended towards Sol, waiting for him to take it. "And I am here to make sure you do not accidentally kill the key to our freedom."
Sol looked at the hand, still wary of what the handshake might entail. The offered palm felt like a door, and Sol could not tell what lay behind it.
"What will happen if I accept your hand?"
"You just have to find out."
"...Do I have a choice?"
Sol could not see any expressions from him, but he knew that the man was currently smiling cheekily, like it had been decided long before Sol ever asked.
"What do you think?"
"...No, huh. I knew it." Sol scratched his head. However, there was a feeling inside him that told him this man did not really have the intention to hurt him, or the people he cared about. Especially Nia. It felt like a hunch, yet it also felt different. It felt like the moment when the skies clear after a blizzard, or a moment in time where the rainbows appear in the sky right after the rain, or the dawn after a long, dark night.
It felt natural.
It felt inevitable.
"...I trust you." Sol looked at the hooded man with a determined expression. "But if you dare to hurt the ones I care..." He extended his right arm.
"I will hunt you down."
The moment their hands touched, flames erupted from their hands, banishing the darkness. Heat licked up his wrist, bright, soundless, and the air filled with a gold that made his eyes sting. There was nothing that Sol could see except for the darkness from inside the White Hooded Man's shade. And how there was one singular sun, obscured in the middle by an eclipse, the ring shining brightly in the middle of the pitch blackness, like an eye.
Watching him.
"Oh, don't you worry." The Eclipsed Sun flickered. "That's never going to be my intention."
Sol's peripheral vision kicked in. And surrounding him, far, far away from the horizon behind the golden flames that burned, were thousands upon thousands of shadows of all shapes and sizes. There was one that stood upon two legs, yet towered above everything else like a giant. There was one shaped more like a spider. A massive shadow dragon breathed darkness from behind them all. And lastly, from inside the lines of the thousands of shadows, one particular shadow walked forward. Thin, warped, and it went down upon its four limbs, not unlike the version of him currently streaking towards Nia's position. It looked at him with its two golden, beady eyes. A shiver ran down Sol's spine.
They are waiting.
"This is borrowed time, kid. You will have to find an answer to your hunger real soon." Sol couldn't see it. But he knew that the man standing in front of him was currently smiling, and it wasn't a devious smile either. It's a genuine smile. His words seemed to emanate from the surrounding light from the flame as it enveloped them both, warm as a vow and heavy as a chain. "And besides, I have full faith in you, now that we are connected..."
The golden flames swallowed them whole. The hooded man flapped his wings, and an owl emerged from the heat, the same owl that Sol encountered at the start.
"...That you will guide me to the ending."