CHAPTER 188—MEMORIES II
The wind across the summit had begun growing violent.
It rolled down from the crimson sky in heavy currents, dragging strands of fog across the mountain while the glowing lines beneath the stone pulsed harder with each passing second. Leylin stood motionless within it, his hood finally blown backward as the rising pressure swept across the peak.
For the first time since arriving in the realm, his appearance was no longer hidden beneath shadow and fire.
Seraphine's breath caught faintly.
His skin had changed again.
The crystalline texture remained, but it no longer resembled glass. It had deepened into something darker now, something closer to polished smoke or blackened obsidian veined faintly with crimson beneath the surface. It wasn't lifeless black. It carried depth to it.
Layers. Like dark storm clouds compressed into solid form. Beneath the translucent exterior, faint outlines of muscle and human structure could still be seen moving naturally underneath, giving the unsettling impression that a real body existed somewhere beneath the crystallized shell trying slowly to emerge.
And his eyes..those crimson eyes beneath the blowing dark hair..felt sharper now..Older.
Leylin's expression remained narrowed as he stared toward the spirit.
With a Troubled expression on his face
As though something inside him was struggling against a memory that refused to surface completely.
The spirit still looked shaken.
Its gaze kept drifting upward toward the stars before returning immediately to Leylin again, like it physically could not stop comparing the two.
Seraphine finally stepped forward.
"Leylin..."
Her voice was quieter now.
"What is he talking about?"
Leylin didn't answer immediately.
The wind continued moving around him, pulling at the dark robes hanging from his shoulders while the summit trembled faintly beneath their feet.
For several long seconds he simply stood there staring at the spirit.
Then finally.."I don't know."
The answer came slowly.
Honest.
His gaze shifted briefly toward Seraphine before returning to the figure ahead of them.
"Perhaps it truly is the spirit of this realm... or the memory of the cultivator who once owned it."
He paused after saying it.
Because the explanation sounded wrong even to him.
Leylin frowned slightly.
No..not wrong,Incomplete.
The feeling sitting inside his chest had not disappeared.
That faint sense of familiarity.
The same uncomfortable feeling one gets while standing inside a place they've never visited before yet somehow know intimately.
His eyes narrowed further.
"...but it doesn't feel like that's all it is."
The spirit reacted subtly to those words.
As Its form had become far more stable now.
The shifting faces had slowed almost entirely, finally settling into the outline of a man who appeared neither young nor old. Shoulder-length dark hair spilled loosely around his face while the crimson translucence of his body flickered faintly beneath the mountain light. He no longer looked like a distortion trying to become human.
He looked human already.
Or at least close enough to unsettle the difference.
And beneath the surface of that crimson spectral body..something moved.
Not organs.Not veins.
A galaxy,or at least what appeared to be one hidden beneath it's swirling skin as it looked.. beautiful
Tiny swirling currents of distant light rotated slowly beneath the translucent layers of his form, like entire starsystems had been compressed into the shape of a man and hidden beneath skin made of dying light.
The spirit looked at Leylin silently.
Then toward the stars again.
And the fear returned to its expression immediately.
---
Leylin's expression changed.Not dramatically.
But that was what made it worse.
The confusion left his face first. Then the hesitation. Then the lingering uncertainty that had been there ever since the spirit first spoke of knowing him.
What remained afterward was cold.
Purely cold.
The crimson winds across the summit intensified suddenly as the pressure around him shifted. Seraphine felt it immediately. The atmosphere itself seemed to tighten instinctively around Leylin's body, as though the realm had sensed the subtle change in his state before either of them had moved.
The spirit noticed it too.
But by then it was already too late.
Leylin crossed the distance between them instantly.
No explosion, No dramatic burst of speed.
One moment he stood several meters away.
The next, his hand had already closed around the spirit's throat.
The mountain shook violently beneath them.
Crimson light erupted through the summit lines while the constellation above dimmed faintly for a fraction of a second, as though the realm itself had reacted to the sudden leak of intent from Leylin's body.
Seraphine's eyes widened, that speed..she had not sensed him move!
The spirit's body slammed backward against the ancient stone formation at the center of the summit, Leylin's fingers tightening slowly around its throat as his crimson eyes stared directly into its face.
Gone was the uncertainty from before.
Gone was the calm curiosity.
For the first time since awakening in this realm..something tyrannical surfaced from beneath Leylin's restraint.
"You enter my realm," he said quietly, his voice carrying a sharpness Seraphine had never heard from him before, "speak as though you know me... then look at me like something is wrong with my existence."
His grip tightened slightly as strangely the spirit did not resist.
That was the disturbing part as It simply stared at him, Almost too... carefully.
Leylin's gaze darkened further.
"What did you mean?
The winds screamed louder around the summit.
"What am I supposed to remember?
Silence followed.
The spirit looked directly into Leylin's eyes for several long seconds.
Then slowly,very slowly..it tried to speak.
"I thought...Its voice faltered immediately
The moment the words began forming, the galaxy-like currents beneath its translucent body became unstable. The lights swirling beneath its skin distorted violently while cracks spread across portions of its spectral form.
The spirit's expression changed instantly.
Pain.but it did not seem like ordinary pain.But a strange kind of Pressure.
The kind caused by trying to force something too large through something too small.
Leylin felt it immediately.
The air had grown heavier.
No..not heavier...Denser.
As though the summit itself was struggling to withstand the shape of the thing the spirit was trying to say.
The spirit's mouth opened again.
Its body trembled harder..."I thought you were..
The words never finished.
A violent distortion suddenly ripped through the mountain.
The stars above flickered.
The crimson lines beneath the summit fractured outward.
And then the spirit choked violently, one hand immediately clutching its own throat as though something invisible had closed around it.
Its face twisted in genuine terror.
Not because it was being attacked.But Because it had understood something.
The spirit looked back at Leylin.
And for the first time since awakening
it truly looked afraid to continue speaking.