Shin leaned against the wall of the second-floor corridor, idly counting the streaks of light drifting past the window outside.
Deep-layer dream or not, the feel of the air — that faint brine of the ocean wind — was real enough to convince anyone.
Inside the library, magical fluctuations were clear even through the thick wooden door — a roiling, overlapping tangle of energies, like voices too tangled to make sense. Fragments of sound, disconnected.
That was part of what confirmed this was a dream. If it were real, if they were simply speaking in a language he'd never heard before, his Ultimate Being hearing would still have parsed it eventually. That it couldn't meant the words carried no coherent logic — the way dreams always did.
But one emotion Shin could sense with perfect clarity through the door.
Great Witch Snow's.
A moment ago she had been the protagonist of her own story — young, brilliant, newly crowned, certain the world was hers to lead wherever she chose.
Then a single sentence from a prophecy had shattered every image she'd built of her future. Her confidence. Her conviction that genius could surmount anything.
Shin understood this feeling completely. The young always fought hardest against destiny — hadn't he? He was no different.
About half an hour passed. The magical ripples within the library gradually stilled.
Creak —
The door swung open — slowly, without its earlier ease. Something heavier in its movement now.
Snow stepped out.
She was still wearing the outer garment she'd grabbed earlier, draping it carelessly. The signature sun hat hadn't come with her — left behind in the rush. Her ice-white hair lay slightly tangled against her cheek.
But what Shin noticed first was her face. White as paper.
Those pale blue eyes — normally bright with life and unmistakable pride — were shadowed now, dull and lost.
"Mother— Great Witch, are you alright?"
Shin moved toward her, reaching out instinctively to steady her.
Because in his real life, this small, difficult, occasionally infuriating Great Witch had stood like a mountain in front of him and Meruru for as long as he could remember. He had grown so accustomed to watching her compose and unflappable that seeing her like this — raw, brittle, stripped of everything — made something in his chest ache in a way he hadn't anticipated.
But Snow stepped sideways, out of his reach.
She looked up at him directly.
The playfulness and curiosity were gone. In their place was a look that held three parts bewilderment and three parts blame — though she knew, somewhere below the anger, that she had no right to blame him.
She simply could not control her own feelings anymore.
"What are you still doing here?" Her voice came out rough, slightly unsteady.
"Great Witch—"
"You said you were from the future. You said you were a child I raised after the Witch Clan was destroyed."
Snow stepped forward, and in that moment the full force of the Wind Great Witch's power surged through the corridor — wild, uncontained.
"If that's the case, then you already knew this was coming, didn't you?!"
"I—"
Shin opened his mouth and found he didn't know where to begin.
Yes. He knew the Witch Clan would fall. He also knew, from the image the Great Witch had shared in the chat, that the cause was human betrayal and slaughter.
But the specific details — how it had unfolded, what had happened step by step — he genuinely didn't know.
The Great Witch had carried all of it alone, buried under sixteen years of illusion, never once sharing the weight of it with Shin or Meruru. Not even a hint.
"If I'm going to be your child in the future, you must have told me everything! Eventually!"
Snow's eyes were reddening. She pointed back at the library, and Shin could hear it in her voice — the edge of a sob he recognized:
"So tell me. What happened? How did we lose to humans? I'm a Great Witch. I have [Death Rewind]. Why couldn't I save everyone?"
"You must have told me this — you had to!"
Shin stood still and let the Great Witch's anger wash over him. He knew she wasn't truly blaming him. She needed someone to direct the tempest at — someone who would absorb it without breaking.
And besides — as the child raised by the Great Witch Snow, even if she genuinely had no cause to be angry at him, he would have taken it without question.
Because she and a girl named Meruru were the only irreplaceable bonds this boy had in the world.
Of course.
The real Snow had never once described the night of the massacre in any detail. Until not so long ago, Shin hadn't even known the Witch Clan had been wiped out at all.
And it was only now that he truly understood — that gnawing, contradictory urgency she carried, that desperate need to take revenge against humanity — it had been taking root since this very moment.
"Can't say it anymore, can you?"
"Ha. I knew it. You're just some liar who made up a story to amuse me — exactly like those vile humans."
Snow gave a cold, self-defeated laugh.
"Go away. I don't want to look at you right now. I'm not your mother. And I don't want to hear any more of your nonsense about the future."
"If that's what the future looks like — I'd rather never have heard it—"
The words didn't finish.
Because a broad pair of shoulders she'd known for all of about an hour suddenly wrapped around her — a hug she hadn't asked for, from someone who was technically still a stranger.
And yet how warm it was. Snow had forgotten the last time she'd felt warmth quite like this. The boy's unexpected action cut clean through whatever she'd been about to say, and left her at a complete loss:
"You — what are you doing?!" She raised her hand to strike his head — and then, just as it came down, something softened the blow instinctively.
Not that it would have hurt him either way.
"I don't want the Great Witch Snow to be unhappy."
"You're right — all of this is my fault. If only I were stronger… please. Punish me however you like. Punish the useless child that I am."
"You idiot — what are you even saying, I can't understand a word—"
"We literally only met today. Child doesn't even—... sniff…"
The fist that had been clenched and ready went slack and fell. All her anger dissolved into nothing against the warmth of the boy's embrace.
Snow quietly wiped the corner of her eye — terrified of this stranger seeing her cry — and as her voice trailed off she spun and rose up and away—
"I'm sorry… um." She had meant to address him by name, but realized she still didn't know it.
"Shaya." Like he'd read her mind, Shin answered first:
"My name is Shaya. You can call me that, Great Witch."
"Alright then… Shaya. I want some time alone. Don't disturb me, please."
Bang.
The bedroom door closed — firmly, but not violently.
A binding spell snapped into place the moment it shut, sealing the door against any attempt to open it, which showed how much of herself Snow was still holding together in front of him.
Shin stood in the empty corridor, looking at that closed door, and let out a slow, even breath.
"Just wait, Mother."
"I'll take care of all of this. Maybe not right now — but in the near future, I will."
He turned toward the library.
As a guest in the Great Witch's shared dreamscape, he couldn't simply stand here and wait. He had to act.
Even if Snow had shut herself away, Shin's instinct told him there were other presences in this dream — other things capable of dialogue.
For instance, those three Great Witches just now.
Earth. Water. Fire.
He turned, following the faint residual traces of three magical signatures still lingering in the air, and moved deeper into the corridor.
Dream logic extended itself beneath his feet.
The manor's hallway grew longer and stranger than memory, each door along it seeming to conceal one of Snow's past. Afternoon laughter over tea with her clanswomen. Late nights bent over spellbooks by candlelight. The naïve, slightly embarrassing intensity she wore when practicing incantations—
At last, Shin stopped before the door of the deepest room — the library.
Three indistinct, faceless silhouettes stood there, backs to him, looking out at the endless sea beyond the island.
"My apologies for interrupting, Great Witch-es." Shin spoke without deference or nerves.
The three silhouettes didn't turn. Or perhaps even if they had, Shin still wouldn't have been able to make out their faces.
That was a form of intentional erasure.
In a dream, the appearances of anyone other than the one dreaming depended entirely on the clarity of the dreamer's memories. By rights, the other three Great Witches should have been crystal-clear in Snow's mind — unless she had deliberately chosen to forget them.
"Hello, newcomer."
A warm, unhurried voice — carrying the faintest thread of a sigh.
That was the Earth Great Witch, Hana.
Strangely, the moment her voice reached Shin's ears, some of the heaviness that had settled in his thoughts lifted. Even the drowsy fog of the deep-layer dream thinned slightly.
"I have a fairly good idea of why you're here."
"You want to ask, on Snow's behalf — why the witches lost to humans?"
To be continued…