By IMERPUS RELUR
--
The skies of the mirror realm darkened—
as if the ink itself had been wounded.
Kai-VI stood still, yet the entire realm moved around him.
Sketch lines stretched from his hands into the air like strings, bending physics.
> "You abandoned the system," he said.
"So I became the system."
> [DUEL INITIATED]
Class: Self vs Self
Ink Field: Absolute Memory
Risk: Terminal Echo Collapse
Reya stepped forward. "Don't let him draw first."
But Kai lowered his hands.
> "No," he said. "If I fight like him, I lose."
So he reached into his chest—
and pulled out a page.
Not a weapon.
A memory.
---
He unfolded it.
The drawing was crude, old—one of his first.
A girl smiling beneath a tree. A family not sketched in detail.
A peaceful world he never pursued.
Kai-VI hesitated.
> "Why show me this?"
> "Because it's what you forgot too," Kai said.
"You're not just my anger. You're my unfinished hope."
---
The mirror realm cracked.
Kai-VI dropped his weapon.
He collapsed to his knees as the world around him turned to dust.
> "You didn't destroy me," he whispered. "You... drew me in."
---
> [DUEL CONCLUDED]
Echo-Class Self: Integrated
Inkborn Skill Unlocked: Echo Merge
Allows user to unify hostile alternate timelines into memory threads.
Elai ran forward. Reya sighed in disbelief.
> "You won by surrendering," she said.
Kai smiled faintly.
> "No. I won by remembering what made me draw in the first place."