Darkness.

Dama drifted through it, eyes barely cracking open.

It wasn't the suffocating, writhing shadow-mass he had fought the Curse of Hatred in, but an emptiness. A void where even the idea of "down" felt like a abstract concept.

Everything felt distant. Blurred. Wrong.

His thoughts came in sluggish waves, like they were trying to swim through thick tar to reach him. "What…was I…doing?"

He instinctively lifted his hand toward the side of his head—but didn't feel hair. Didn't feel skin. Didn't feel anything.

His hand reached, but no sensation followed. No feedback, no weight, no warmth.

"…Wha…?" He muttered, voice small and dazed, swallowed instantly by the void.

Before he could question it further, a sound drifted to him.

A child's cry—thin, high-pitched, trembling. It was the type of cry that screamed at anyone's parental and protective instincts. However, the cry clawed at Dama in a way only one thing ever did: Giona.

The familiarity stabbed through the fog in his mind, and when he repeated Giona's namei n his head, everything slammed back into him at once.

The nightmarish realm. Giona crying. The Curse of Hatred choking him against the wall. Saa'ir's arrival. Mumu fighting. Nini changing form. Light. Pain. Love. Falling.

Dama jolted upright—or tried to.

Instead, his sudden motion sent him flipping backward, tumbling weightlessly in place. He was floating.

"A—Aah! Saa'ir! Mumu! Nini! Giona!" He shouted, twisting, spinning, desperately trying to right himself. His voice cracked with rising panic. No answer came. Just the endless quiet and—

The crying. Dama had almost forgotten in his panic. He snapped his head around, searching for the source.

Then, he saw them.

Far ahead—distance made meaningless in the void—was a small blue figure, tiny horns poking from its head, curled over the collapsed body of a much larger blue figure. The child's shoulders shook with each sob, clinging desperately to the unmoving form beneath them.

But that wasn't what sent a jolt of ice and fire through Dama's chest.

Circling them were men in black cloaks. Each cloak bore a symbol on the back—one burned into Dama's memory so deeply that even the void couldn't dull it: The Soul Divination Council Insignia.

The same insignia Giona drew to represent the 'bad men.'

The same insignia Dama saw on the backs of the nightmarish figures conjured by the Curse of Hatred.

The same insignia of the group he believed had traumatized and abused Giona so much to the point she looked as ghastly as when he first found her—broken.

Rage erupted in him, hot enough to override the numbness.

"HEY!" Dama shouted, voice raw. "What are you doing?! Get away from them!"

He tried to run, or swim, anything to propel himself forward. But the void held no traction, no resistance. His attempts only sent him spinning again, helplessly rotating in place.

"GET AWAY FROM THEM!" He screamed, fury shaking his weightless form as the cloaked men remained eerily unfazed.

"It's no use, child."

The voice drifted through the void like a warm breeze, soft and melodic—pleasant enough to make Dama's heart skip. It wasn't just beautiful, it was ethereal, too perfect to belong to anything mortal.

Dama flinched at the sound, twisting wildly in midair to find its source.

But the source was already beside him.

A figure stood there as if it had always been part of the void. The thing was tall—easily six feet—so Dama had to tilt his head back to look up at it. That small, instinctive motion made his breath hitch. It was shaped like a woman—soft curves that would make most woman jealous, graceful posture, the kind of silhouette many think that a goddess would have.

But what caught Dama's attention the most was that she was white. Not pale. Not light-skinned. White.

Cloak that covered her entire body white. Hood white. Skin white. Strands of hair he could see poking out from the hood white. The long cloak she wore rippled gently in a nonexistent breeze, much like Saa'ir's mystical garments.

Her hood obscured her face, leaving only the chin visible—smooth, flawless, and the same soft white as everything else about her. Her hands, slipping from her sleeves, bore the exact same hue. It was as if she was carved from pure ivory and draped in garments of the same material, like the Goddess Helia statue back in Enohay.

Despite every difference in shape, presence, and even aura, Dama couldn't help himself. "S-Saa'ir…?" He whispered, both hopeful and confused.

The figure didn't turn toward him. Didn't move. Didn't even part her lips.

Yet a voice, her voice, answered him anyway—in his mind.

"No," she said calmly, "I have no name. Only a title. A purpose. But I do know the individual you speak of."

"She knows Mr. Saa'ir?" Dama thought as his gaze drifted back toward the small blue child and the ring of black cloaks, eyes fixed on the scene.

His face became agitated at the sight anew. "No, that can wait for now, I have to help!" He swallowed and, instincts louder than fear, put everything else aside. "Miss, is there anything we can do to help them?"

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The figure's head tilted, considering. "No," it answered gently, "not here. What you are seeing is merely a memory fueled by negativity and one's unwillingness to let go. Such memories linger like a curse. We can only observe and learn."

Dama's brow furrowed. "Then why am I even—" he stuttered out of sheer frustrated confusion, "—why am I even here? Why am I seeing this at all?"

"There is reason, child. It seems something in you is awakening. Your powers—what you call your Soulful Technique—are stirring. You are one of the very few who can touch life itself." The words were stated plainly, as if imparting a simple fact about the weather. "Everything in the universe is connected. Even what cannot normally be seen...

The mind and its memories.

The heart and its emotions.

The soul and one's soulful technique.

The body anchoring the physical.

Consciousness and Unconsciousness.

Life and Death.

Clarity and Insanity.

Mercy and Malice.

Love and Hatred.

All of it is bound together by the concept of life."

"You must have recently come across a soul," the figure went on, "felt its tremors, its echoes, ones that saturated itself into your own sensitive soul. Thus, you are interacting with their surface-level subconscious—memories that they replay, memories they refuse to let go."

Confused, Dama glanced back at the crying blue child and began to speak. "I—I remember meeting someone like that—!"

A sharp memory stabbed through him then: the day they arrived in Briarstone, that morning he and Liam came across a shadowy figure. Dame remembers not seeing much because of the blizzard—only the silhouette, the strange horns, and small size.

Dama's breath hitched. "The Oni…!" The realization landed like a stone in his chest. "If this really is a memory of the Oni, t-then the larger blue figure must be a parent. And the black-cloaked men...they must have hurt the parent..." the cold knot of understanding tightened in Dama's gut. "No wonder they seem not fond of us humans..."

The white-cloaked figure nodded with faint, approving grin. "It looks like you've answered your own questions, Dama Jinbia. Good."

However, Dama shook his head, brow creased. "No, there's more." He turned his gaze to the figure beside him with prejudice—they not only know Saa'ir, but also his own name. "Tell me, how do you know my name, where are we, who are you, and why are you here?"

The figure turned her head slightly, just enough for Dama to see more of her face. "You wear your heart on your sleeve, child. That is how I know not only your name, but also your past, your present, and possibly even your future. Your innocence. Your kindness. Even your purity of soul, mind, and heart—I can see why 'she' chose you."

The last part Dama didn't quite catch due to the figure lowering her voice. She then continued, "As for your second question—we are in the realm between consciousness and dreams. The realm of memory. A place that mirrors what the heart clings to and what the mind tries to forget."

The figure turned her gaze back ahead. "Now, as for who I am—"

"You're a curse..." Dama blurted out, unable to stop himself. "Just like that…thing: The Curse of Hatred."

His own voice startled him. Fear. Anger. Confusion. All tangled and trembling. He hated how small he sounded—but the words spilled out anyway.

The figure went silent.

The only sound was the child's soft crying in the distance, echoing endlessly across the void, each sob unraveling weaker and weaker.

As if swallowing his own fear, Dama gulped before forcing himself to continue. "The way you knew my name. The way you speak directly into my head without moving your mouth. The way your aura feels—all of it reminds me of the Curse of Hatred."

He hesitated, then added: "But...it's different. You don't speak my name with venom. You don't painfully force your voice into my head. Your aura doesn't feel like I'm drowning in anger. I feel at peace with you..."

Slowly, the figure lowered her hooded head, letting more of her face slip into view.

Its lips—smooth and white as porcelain—curved into a small, knowing grin.

"To be so perceptive, yet this young…" she murmured. "You are right, child. I have a...connection to the one you call the Curse of Hatred."

It paused.

"It is my other half."

A shocked Dama groped for words. "T-Then, then that would make you—!" he started, voice cracking.

Before he could finish, the figure turned.

The hood shadow swallowed everything above a pale, sharp nose. But where the shadow ended, the face began: a chin, a mouth, a nose—features exact enough to be human, but too smooth like a doll.

Slowly, deliberately, the figure's hands came up and curled around the edges of the hood. It peeled the fabric away.

What stared back at him made his pupils shrink to pinpricks.

It was Giona.

Not like a memory or a dream-blur. Not a trick of light. In an instant, Dama was looking eye to eye with Giona's face—soft, familiar, the same shining blue eyes. The likeness was uncanny, down to the exact slope of her nose and skin complexion.

Dama's chest constricted. For a breathless second all the air left him, everything in him was a tangle of disbelief and some new, heat-faint feeling that made his cheeks burn. He found his voice only as a whisper. "G-Giona…?"

His stare slid down. The body beneath the cloak had also changed to match the face—the same smallness in the shoulders. The same soft, dainty hands that fit into his palms like a fragile things. Even the same feminine curves that's been on his mind for awhile. All of it tugged at his heart in a way that had nothing to do with danger: a warm, awkward recognition of someone he cared for—mixed with the clumsy, innocent stirrings of a boy growing into a young man.

Fear threaded through the feeling, too—because who else could stand here wearing Giona's face but something that could imitate her perfectly? The only difference was the figure's expression, being blank. Seeing Giona's face with no emotion behind it was kind of creepy.

The figure watched him with an almost amused tilt. "Fascinating," she said, voice soft and amused, "so you see me as a girl named Giona…" She paused, as if tasting the name. Then, almost wistful, she added, "I haven't heard the name Giona in a long time."

"FInally, for why I am here—I was called here. Called by you," the figure pointed at Dama, "by your love."

Dama blinked, still processing everything. "My—my what...?"

The figure drifted closer until their faces were inches apart. Her hands, impossibly warm against the cold of the void, cupped either side of Dama's face. Dama's body yielded immediately to the familiar soft touch of Giona's hands.

Then it spoke with the exact cadence and conviction of the moment Dama had screamed when he fought the Curse of Hatred. Every word landed the same as the first time:

I don't care who—or what—you are. You will not lay a finger on her! My grandmother said I had a gift—a Soulful Technique—one that could help others! I never understood why…until now. It was given to me for moments like this! To protect those I love! I swear—no matter what comes—I will protect you, Giona, until the day my soul passes on!

Heat rose in Dama's face as the memory of his own voice echoed back to him.

The figure smiled warmly at Dama's reddening face. "This Giona you speak of, is she the same Giona you see before you now?"

He stammered a small, embarrassed "Y-Yes..."

"I see, then that is to be expected." The figure said, smiling wider. "To those who lay eyes on me, I appear as the ones they love most. That is my power, my gift, and my curse of Love."

Hearing this, the pieces clicked into place, everything aligned.

"Y-You're—!?" Dama began, but the world folded inward with a sudden, irresistible sleepiness. His eyelids drooped, the void seemed to tilt. He couldn't fight it.

The Curse of Love held his gaze as Dama's limbs grew heavy. Its voice turned soft, almost teaching, as if explaining a lesson both simple and ancient.

"Emotions are powerful tools. They are born from memories, and cultivated into physical action, actions that only birth more memories that said actions affect, and those memories shape more actions."

The Curse of Love got closer.

"It is a cycle. Emotions can lift a heart or drag it into ruin. Memories can comfort or torment. Actions can heal or harm. Even the freedom to love or to hate whoever you choose—each is both a gift and a curse the 'she' has given us alongside life. Even Love and Hatred are just as much of a gift as they are a curse."

The Curse of Love now was nose to nose with Dama.

"Remember this, Dama Jinbia: everyone has something or someone they love and care for. Even the darkest hatred can be fueled by the purest love…"

Everything went black.

"I wonder, in a world dominated by violence and hatred, will you see what you have been given as a gift or a curse—and how will you use them to make whatever change. That, I believe, is what 'she' wants to see."

"Isn't that right, Yggdrasil?"

-

Next: (Chapter 106) Ghostly Mediator: Part 2

Canonically Next: (Chapter 73) "Who is Giona?"

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