The only light in the chamber came from the softly crackling fire.
Kai sat cross-legged, sharpening his nodachi by touch alone. Across from him, Mortem sat on a worn blanket, his long fingers plucking quietly at the strings of a spirit-flute—an old shamanic instrument that only sang when its wielder was known by ghosts.
Tonight, it barely murmured.
“You’re quiet,” Kai said, his voice low, careful.
Mortem glanced up. His silver eyes caught the firelight like twin moons. “It’s the rain.”
Kai set his blade down. “It’s more than that.”
Mortem didn’t respond. He shifted, his gaze falling back to the flute.
Kai leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You always sing when we camp. Even when Vance complains and Liang pretends he’s meditating.”
Mortem let out a small laugh. “That’s because I don’t care what they think.”
“Then why not tonight?”
Mortem's fingers froze on the strings. He looked down at the flute, then beyond it, into the fire.
“I forgot my name in the Old Tongue again,” he said quietly.
Kai blinked. “What?”
Mortem’s voice was hollow. “I was born with a name that wasn’t Mortem. Silas gave us new names when we joined him. Names to remind us what we were becoming. I accepted it. I wore it like armor. But sometimes… when I sing to the spirits, I can feel the old name trying to slip through.”
Kai sat very still, the fire painting soft lines of red across his face. “Do you remember it?”
Mortem nodded once.
Kai waited.
The silence stretched long. The fire crackled. Rain pattered faintly on the cave roof above.
Then Mortem spoke.
“My name is Hen Gan Hynafiad.”
The syllables lingered in the air like incense—soft, solemn, sacred.
Kai's breath caught. He repeated it reverently. “Hen Gan Hynafiad.”
Mortem smiled faintly, the edges of grief in his expression. “It was my mother’s name for me. Before she died. Before Silas. Before I learned that people only love what they think they can keep.”
Kai didn’t speak right away. Then he did the one thing Mortem might understand: he peeled off his gloves, bloodstained and worn, and reached across the flickering space to rest his hand over Mortem’s.
“You’re still him,” Kai said softly. “Even if Silas tried to rewrite the story.”
Mortem’s throat worked. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “Don’t tell the others.”
“I won’t,” Kai said. “But I’ll remember. Do you miss her?”
Mortem nodded.
"I want to see her one last time."
Kai's expression softened. “Then sing.”
Mortem’s eyes fluttered closed. For a long moment, he let the silence hold him.
Then, with a slow breath, he brought the spirit-flute to his lips.
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This time, as the melody wove into the darkness, the flute glowed softly beneath his fingers.
Because for the first time in years, he sang his true name.
And the spirits remembered.
_____________________________
The memory dissolved like mist in sunlight.
Kai’s eyes snapped open.
The cave was gone.
The firelight replaced by cold, silver-tinted moonlight pouring in through the boarded slats of the Lazarus Island safehouse. His body was stiff, skin clammy with sweat. His blood—thick with exhaustion—stirred uneasily beneath his skin. The name still echoed in his mind.
Hen Gan Hynafiad.
Mortem's real name. His brother’s name.
And yet…
Kai sat up slowly, breath shallow, fingers curling instinctively toward the hilt of the nodachi resting beside his cot.
He wasn’t alone.
Across the room, where shadows clung unnaturally thick despite the pale moonlight, something was watching.
A figure stood just beyond the warded threshold of the safehouse. Motionless. Cloaked. Familiar.
Too familiar.
"Mortem?" Kai whispered.
No answer.
He rose to his feet, bare soles pressing against cool concrete. His breath fogged slightly as he stepped closer. The wards hissed faintly, sensing something wrong, but they didn’t react fully.
Not yet.
Kai’s voice was firmer this time. “Hen Gan?”
The figure stepped forward—and the air seemed to retract from him. The pressure in the room shifted, like something sacred had been upended. His cloak peeled back to reveal robes Kai didn’t recognize—jet-black, lined with bone-white thread that shimmered like sinew. His eyes, once a tranquil silver, now glowed with a sickly green hue, threaded with cracks of deep obsidian.
His spirit-flute was gone.
In its place was a jagged horn, crusted with dried ichor and whispering from within.
Kai took a step back, disbelief clashing violently with instinct.
“No,” he said. “No, this isn’t you.”
The figure tilted his head slightly, like someone testing a shape they hadn’t worn in a while.
When he spoke, it wasn’t Mortem’s voice.
It was underneath Mortem’s voice.
“I liked that name,” said the thing wearing his brother’s body. “Hen Gan. It was fragile. Sweet. But I prefer Hollow Fang.”
The room recoiled. Even the walls seemed to shrink inward.
Kai’s hands trembled. He gripped the nodachi tight, drawing it slowly, reverently. Its edge gleamed crimson under the moonlight. The name carved into its hilt burned faintly.
Blood Asura
“You’re not him,” Kai said, every word edged with pain.
“Oh, but I am,” Hollow Fang replied, stepping over the wardline. “I wear him like a beloved coat. And inside, he sings. All your names. All your memories. Every campfire, every song, every secret. I taste them.”
He smiled—and it was wrong. Too wide. Too human. Too hollow.
Kai launched forward, sword blazing with red light, aiming for the center of the thing’s chest.
But Hollow Fang vanished like mist, reappearing behind him, breath hot against Kai’s neck.
“You don’t get to kill me,” he whispered. “Not yet. You gave me to the dark when you left him. When you followed Zhan’s lies. When you chose silence over sight.”
Kai spun, blade carving through the air. A deep scratch tore through Hollow Fang’s robe—but no blood followed. Just smoke.
“You’re lying,” Kai growled. “I never turned from him.”
“You forgot him,” Hollow Fang hissed. “And I remembered.”
Kai felt the pulse of spiritual sickness pouring off his brother’s form. This wasn’t simple necromancy. This was a sahkil. One that had grown roots through Mortem’s soul.
“What do you want?” Kai asked, voice hoarse.
“To finish what your brother wanted,” Hollow Fang said. “To rip the Veil open and let the sahkils in.”
Kai shook his head. “I won’t let you use him.”
“He offered himself,” Hollow Fang whispered. “In the tombs beneath the Paris catacombs. Why do you think he summoned me? He wanted power. You think you’re the only one Silas broke?”
Kai’s hands trembled. His eyes burned.
“That may be,” he said. “But I’m the one who’s going to put you down.”
He raised the nodachi, its edge glowing with radiant hunger.
Hollow Fang’s form shuddered, shadowy wisps peeling from his limbs. His voice dropped, guttural, inhuman.
“Then try.”
The battle that followed was nothing like the others.
Hollow Fang was taunting. He blurred between walls and floor, casting veils of illusion to mirror Kai’s worst memories. The day Silas branded him. The look in Dario’s eyes as he walked away.
Kai fought them all.
He let his blade burn through pain. Through memory. Through fear.
Finally, he cornered Hollow Fang against the warded mirror.
The spirit tried to fade—but Kai had adapted. He surged forward with blood magic, casting a radiant glyph into the floor that ignited around them both.
“I see you,” Kai said.
And for a heartbeat, the real Mortem flickered beneath the corruption.
Kai faltered.
Mortem’s voice—faint, strained—whispered through:
“I’m sorry, Kai.”
Then the sahkil screamed—and vanished in a burst of ash and black light, slipping through a crack in the world.
Kai collapsed to his knees, chest heaving.
He stared at the place where Hollow Fang had vanished.
Mortem was still in there.
Somewhere.
But for now, Kai was alone again.
He sheathed the nodachi with a shaking hand.
And in the silence, the memory of that campfire returned—of a name whispered across flames.
Hen Gan Hynafiad.
“I’ll find you,” Kai whispered to the empty air. “I swear. I’ll bring you back.”
Outside, the wind howled.
And the shadows moved.
