Everything was burning.
Or—no.
It had been.
The heat clung to him like it didn't know the fight was over. In his chest, behind his eyes, between the joints of his fingers—residue. The world wasn't on fire, but his body still believed it.
He didn't move at first.
Something about the silence felt wrong. Not calm—but emptied. Like the sound had been scraped out.
Where…
He opened his eyes. Light flickered above—white, clinical. It wasn't the flame he initially took it for. But the illusion held. His skin remembered where he'd just been.
He remembered fire everywhere.
Light took over that room.
And then, the following shadows stretched past their edges, climbing walls that shouldn't hold them. The ground had buckled with his understanding of physics.
He remembered that. The way the room went black, hollow. He remembered feeling like he was in another dimension.
Did I die?
He blinked again. Slower.
Ceiling tiles. Steel braces.
Buzzing light.
It smelled—sanitized, sour. Like rubbing alcohol and static. Not smoke.
No.
Not dead.
But wrong. Something in him wasn't settled. Like he'd been gutted and stuffed back together with something extra. He could feel it, faint and low—like a second heartbeat tucked inside the first. And even moreso, there were… thoughts, behind his, beyond his own consciousness.
He tried to sit up. Pain exploded across his ribs. Muscle caught the signal late. He winced, stopped. But the pain wasn't the worst part, it seemed like the past diluted his experience of the present.
A figure moved in the periphery.
Not a threat. But still—he watched.
The figure stepped into light. Their coat was familiar, frayed at the hem.
"You're awake," the voice said.
His mouth was dry. "Who are you?"
A pause.
Then the voice softened. "Damn. That bad?"
No name yet. No confirmation. His mind catalogued everything instead: The tiles beneath him. The lighting. The stillness of the air.
This wasn't the Foundation.
His head turned. Slowly. "Who—"
"Fūre," the figure said, quietly. "It's me."
There it was.
More memory stirred. The Fox. Yeah, he almost did die. Fighting the fox, at the foundation..
Kamo's thoughts continued to connect, feverishly. Back to the fire.
The moment everything went dark. He wasn't unconscious. Not yet. Kamo remembered he felt a sharp pain that woke him.
Then it put him right back under, and the world folded inward and forgot what rules it was following.
Kamo didn't answer. Just looked past him, to the wall behind. It was clean. No scorching. No void absorbing it.
That… isn't right.
"You're in the lab," Fūre said, like that explained something. "You've been out for a while."
Kamo let out a low breath. It felt like it scraped something loose on the way out. "... I won?"
Fūre didn't reply.
Not immediately.
"Technically," he said at last. "But that's not why you're here."
Kamo's eyes sharpened. "Explain."
Fūre's lips pressed into a line. "Nagitsu thought you were dying. He used the fail-safe."
Kamo froze.
"The one I warned you about," Fūre continued. "Last resort. Only if you had no other options. But Nagitsu didn't know you were still stable."
"...So what happened?"
Fūre looked down. "If I had to guess—And this is just what was reported—Your Tenshi acted. Just for a moment. It—"
He stopped. Reconsidered.
"It made a decision for you."
Kamo's body tensed. That cold, weightless pressure behind his chest—the second rhythm. The quiet pulse.
"This presence, in my head." he said slowly, "Do you know what it is?"
Fūre nodded once. "I'm pretty sure you didn't leave the battlefield alone."
Kamo turned. Stared down at the floor.
The shadow at his side felt different. Like it'd been inhabiting something. Someone.
Kamo's eyes lingered on the shadow again. The more he stared, the more wrong it looked. It wasn't his, not exclusively.
"I don't get it," he said. "You're telling me he's inside me?"
Fūre didn't answer immediately. His hand braced the edge of a steel counter, gaze distant.
"I—I've seen something like it before."
Kamo's eyes narrowed. "From who?"
"The man I used to work under," Fūre said. "My old 'boss'. He was the only kynenn alive who used necromancy."
Silence.
"He could trap a soul inside a corpse. Sometimes even while it was still fresh. I watched it happen a small few times. But it was deliberate. Ritualized. Controlled."
"You're saying I did that?" Kamo asked. "I don't even know how."
"You didn't, probably can't." Fūre's tone was flat. "But your Tenshi could've."
That made Kamo sit back slightly. Not in disbelief. Just processing.
"I gave Nagitsu a failsafe," Fūre continued. "A drug. It was supposed to trigger Heaven's Projection. Just in case."
Kamo looked up sharply. "Right"
"If you were dying. And Nagitsu thought you were. So he injected you."
Kamo was quiet for a long beat.
"And?"
"And I assume it worked," Fūre said. "For less than a minute. Your Tenshi took control. And it completed the only goal you were still holding onto."
"Recruit the boy," Kamo said. Voice low.
Fūre nodded. "But he was already dead. So the Tenshi did what made the most sense, based on what it had access to."
The air in the lab suddenly felt heavier. Or maybe that was just Kamo noticing how his breath didn't feel like it was fully his.
"You're saying the Tenshi bound his soul. Into my shadow."
"I'm saying that's the only explanation that fits what I know and what I've seen. You're the only other person I've ever met with a power even close to his, if you asked me I'd call it 'darkness'. And if his Tenshi is the same as yours, and he has the ability.."
"Talk to me plain, Fūre. Ain't tryin' to press you." Kamo asked.
Fūre met his eyes.
"Call it a glitch," he said. "A freak outcome no one designed. You were the medium. The drug gave the spark and I guess the tenshi made the call."
"You said the drug worked," he muttered. "So why do I feel like I almost didn't come back?"
Fūre didn't answer immediately. He reached over to the console, pulled open a drawer, and took out a vial—empty, black glass. He set it down beside the cot with a dull clink.
"That's what's left of it," he said. "The projection compound. Last-resort only. You weren't supposed to survive it and the fight."
Kamo glanced at the vial, then back to Fūre. "What it it?"
"A tailored surge." Fūre's voice was clinical now. "It forces a direct override of your nerves and hormones—pulls the Tenshi through you for less than a minute, with full branch access."
"And then what?"
"Then the body shuts down. Everything. takton, heartbeat, parasympathetic nerve response. I had to restart you more times than I could count, you couldn't properly digest the drug once it's run its course.
Kamo's breath hitched—barely—but it was there.
"You were alive," Fūre said. "Technically. But your takton flatlined. And it's not like I could use a second dose."
He picked up the vial, turned it once in his fingers, then tossed it into the bin.
"Don't ask me for it again," he said. "If Nagitsu had waited thirty more seconds, you might've walked out of there on your own."
Kamo's throat went dry.
"So I wasn't dying," he said.
"You were close," Fūre replied. "But the drug made it worse. It saved the mission. Not you."
The silence that followed was heavier than before. Kamo leaned back into the cot. The ache in his chest had depth now.
"I don't think that thing is safe for use," he said.
Fūre didn't argue.
"It was an experiment, I'm right with you on that"