Fingers of the Same Hand

Ren’s rage had cooled, leaving behind the familiar, bitter sediment of despair that was the bedrock of his soul. But this time, it was different. The despair was not a bottomless, drowning pit of self-loathing; it was a focused, singular point of cold, hard failure. He held the small, scorched fragment of the heretical scroll in his hand, its cryptic, nonsensical words a maddening, impossible riddle that offered the only glimmer of hope in a world that had just been proven to have none. …all that is shadow is but a finger of the same hand, and where one finger touches, the hand may feel…

He sat on the cold obsidian floor of the now-repaired library, the new, perfectly smooth table before him untouched. The terrified lore-keepers had been dismissed, and the ruin of his own making had been cleaned away, but the ghost of his failure lingered in the sterile silence. Days had passed since his outburst. He no longer demanded scrolls on holy fortifications or divine architecture. He had asked for only one thing: to be left alone in the absolute, crushing silence of his own thoughts.

He closed his eyes, his breathing slowing to a shallow, meditative rhythm. He had to try. He had to know if the mad prophet’s words were the key or just another dead end on a path of endless, tormenting dead ends. He reached out with his mind, not with the explosive, brute force of his anger, but with a quiet, searching, and almost delicate touch. He focused on the shadows in the room—the deep, absolute darkness pooling under the new table, the long, distorted shadow cast by a towering bookshelf. He tried to feel them, not just as a passive absence of light, but as a medium, a substance, a single, interconnected ocean of which these were but tiny, shallow pools.

The result was a jarring, violent, and soul-shattering shock.

His consciousness was ripped from his body and thrown into a chaotic, screaming maelstrom of unfiltered, simultaneous existence. He was everywhere at once, a single point of awareness fractured into a million pieces. He saw through the eyes of a thousand different shadows at the same instant: he was the sharp, crisp sliver of darkness under a sun-scorched rock in a vast, empty desert, feeling the oppressive, dry heat and the scuttling of a scorpion nearby. At the exact same moment, he was the murky, freezing, and lightless depths of a subterranean lake, feeling the immense pressure of the water and the slow, blind movement of the creatures that lived within it. He was the fleeting shadow of a hawk circling high above snow-capped mountains, feeling the rush of the wind and the thrill of the hunt, his vision a dizzying, panoramic view of the world below. And he was the shifting, crowded darkness between two market stalls in a bustling human city, smelling the clashing scents of spices and sweat, hearing the babble of a hundred different conversations in a language he did not know, all at once.

He heard a million disconnected whispers, smelled a million clashing scents, felt the textures of a million different surfaces, from the grit of sand to the slimy surface of a wet stone. It was a torrent of raw, unfiltered sensory information, an ocean of existence pouring into the thimble of his human mind. He was drowning in the everything-ness of the Void’s reach.

With a choked, desperate gasp, he tore his consciousness back, a fisherman violently reeling in a line that has hooked a leviathan. He collapsed onto the floor of the library, his physical body slamming against the cold obsidian, his head screaming with a migraine so intense, so blinding, it felt like his skull was trying to split open from the inside out. He lay there, trembling and disoriented, the after-images of a million different worlds searing behind his eyelids. It was impossible. The theory was madness. It was a path to insanity, not to her.

Days later, Azazel found him in the throne room. Ren was not on the throne, but standing before it, staring blankly at the shadows on the wall, his face pale and gaunt, his grey eyes holding a haunted, distant look. The ancient demon lord approached, his steps slow and measured, his crimson eyes filled with a low rumble of concern.

“My King,” he began, his voice a quiet intrusion into Ren’s self-imposed torment. “The chieftains grow restless. They see their king wasting away in the dark, speaking to no one. They begin to doubt. They whisper of weakness.”

“Let them doubt,” Ren rasped, his throat dry, his voice a faint, scratchy thing. He didn't turn to face him.

“You are attempting the Art of the Unseen,” Azazel stated. It wasn’t a question. “The lore you found. The mad prophet’s riddle. I know of it.”

Ren finally turned, his tired grey eyes, shadowed with sleeplessness and pain, fixing on the demon lord. The flicker of hope was so faint it was almost pathetic. “Then teach me.”

“I cannot,” Azazel admitted, and for the first time, Ren heard a rare note of something akin to fear in the ancient being’s voice. “It is an art no one has mastered in ten thousand years. It is considered heretical for a reason. To reach into the sea of shadows is to risk the dissolution of the self. The mind is a vessel, my King. You are trying to pour the entire ocean into a single cup. It will overflow, and the cup will be lost. Without a powerful, singular anchor for your consciousness, your mind will simply unravel, your memories and will scattering across the infinite darkness until nothing of ‘you’ is left.”

“An anchor…” Ren whispered, the word sparking a new, desperate thought, a fragile branch of logic in the chaotic forest of his mind.

“You are trying to find a place,” Azazel said, his ancient wisdom cutting to the very core of the problem with a surgeon’s precision. “Zion. It is a concept, a location, a single grain of sand on an infinite beach. The shadows are infinite. You are casting a net into the ocean, hoping to catch one specific fish. You will be lost in the vastness every time.” Azazel took a step closer. “Do not search for a place. Search for the one thing you desire above all else. Your will must be a hook, not a net. Let your obsession be your guide.” The old demon’s crimson eyes were filled with a grim, knowing understanding. “Focus on your Light-Bringer.”

The advice was a key, unlocking a door Ren hadn't known was there. It was a simple, elegant, and terrifyingly dangerous solution.

The weeks that followed were a grueling, private hell. Ren shut himself away in his personal chambers, forgoing food, forgoing sleep, forgoing the duties of his crown. He practiced. To the Fallen outside his sealed door, they saw only a king who had secluded himself, a terrifying, explosive power that had gone dormant and silent. Lilith and the other chieftains grew more agitated, their fear of him warring with their confusion and contempt for his inaction. Only Azazel stood guard at his door, a silent, unmoving sentinel, turning away all who would question their King’s strange, self-destructive meditation.

Inside, Ren was fighting a war on a battlefield no one else could see. He learned to navigate the sea of shadows, to build mental walls, to filter the overwhelming, screaming noise. He had partial successes that were as frustrating as they were promising. For a single, terrifying, exhilarating moment, he saw the world through the shadow of a small bird perched on the high, white walls of Zion itself. He saw the breathtaking vista, the clean, sunlit air, the impossible architecture. Then he was violently, brutally repelled by the barrier’s holy aura, the psychic backlash so intense it threw him across his chamber, leaving him with a bloody nose and the searing, phantom pain of a holy burn on his soul. He touched the shadow of a travelling merchant miles away from the Citadel and heard a snippet of a child’s song in a language he didn't know, a sound of such simple, innocent beauty that it brought tears to his eyes.

Each attempt was a monumental effort of will, and each failure left him weaker, more drained, more disconnected from his own physical body. The Void was an infinite power source, but his human mind, his soul, was a fragile, cracking conduit.

He knew he was at his limit. His body was thin and frail, his mind frayed to the breaking point. He felt his own consciousness, the very fabric of Sasaki Ren, beginning to unravel at the edges. He knew, with a calm, fatalistic certainty, that he had only one more attempt in him before he either succeeded, or his mind shattered completely, his essence scattering into the infinite darkness like so much dust in the wind.

He sat on the floor of his dark room, the silence profound. He did not think of Zion. He did not think of the barrier, or the war, or his crown, or his failure. He thought only of Akari.

He focused his entire being, every last shred of his will and his memory, on a single, perfect, and sacred moment: the feeling of her head resting on his chest in the quiet darkness of his old room, her breathing soft and even against his skin. He remembered the exact scent of her hair, a mixture of shampoo and her own unique, personal fragrance. He remembered the impossible, life-affirming warmth of her presence, the quiet murmur of her voice as she had whispered her dreams of their future. He gathered all of his love, all of his desperate, obsessive, and all-consuming loss, into that single, unshakeable point of focus. She was his anchor. She was his hook. She was the only true thing in this or any other world.

He reached out.

He plunged back into the chaotic sea of shadows, but this time, he was not lost, he was not drowning. He was a compass needle, ignoring the entire, screaming world, pointing only in one, single, absolute direction. He moved through the darkness with a speed and a clarity he had never felt before, a torpedo of pure will in a chaotic ocean.

Then he hit the wall. It was not physical. It was a wall of searing, holy static, the outer edge of Zion’s great, invisible barrier. It screamed at his profane presence, a chorus of a million celestial voices trying to burn his consciousness away, to purify him into nothingness. It was a purifying fire, and he was the ultimate, absolute impurity.

Akari.

Her name in his mind was a silent prayer, a shield of shadow against their light. He pushed against the wall of holy energy, his will focused into a point so fine, so sharp, it was more absolute than any blade. He did not try to break it. He searched for a crack. An imperfection. A single, tiny, forgotten shadow in their perfect fortress of light.

And he found it.

It was the shadow cast by a single, loose stone on the inside of the Citadel’s outer wall, a tiny, insignificant sliver of darkness in a place that was supposed to have none. It was a flaw in their perfect creation. It was a finger of the same hand.

With the last, desperate, and final ounce of his strength, he pushed his consciousness through that tiny, beckoning sliver of darkness.

The world shifted. The screaming of the barrier was gone. He was through. He could not see. He could not hear. But he could feel. He was a mote of cold, alien darkness in a world of oppressive, sterile purity. He could feel the constant, powerful hum of the holy barrier all around him, a cage of light he was now inside. He had done it. He had breached the unbreachable, if only with a whisper of his soul.

And somewhere, deep within that fortress of light, beyond the walls and the halls and the endless, arrogant prayers, he could feel it. A faint, distant, but impossibly, wonderfully familiar spark of warmth.

Her.