Wind slapped against Hill's face, jerking him awake. His eyes cracked open to the soulscape.
But not the one he knew.
The oppressive darkness was gone. Instead, a bright ring of blue light seemed to emerge from the horizons all around him, as if it was converging on his location.
Above, instead of that endless darkness that he remembered, a shell of ice was slowly creeping across the sky. The black void was morphing into a cold dome that bent the light in unnatural ways.
Beneath him, cracks split the ground, weeds bursting through them in search of sunlight. The air—once feeling dead and heavy—now carried the bite of plant and wet earth.
The dead bodies of the Harbinger Deity and Hill still lay sprawled where they fell, but now they faced a water fountain that wasn't there in the first place.
The fountain was fashioned from white marble, it's edges jagged with ice crystals and snowflake patterns beaten into the stone.
Water trickled down, each drop hitting with a sound that rang too clearly across the empty landscape. At its center stood a woman carved from stone, robes frozen mid-flow, hands reaching out like she might grab whoever approached.
Behind it stretched a stairway climbing to a hill that wasn't there before either.
And crowning that hill sat a mansion that broke every rule of architecture. Its size crushed reason—walls too tall, windows too numerous, its style mixing elements that shouldn't work together but somehow did. Like something ripped from a nightmare disguised as a dream.
"The hell?" Hill muttered, forcing himself up, his head throbbing incessantly. He scanned the changed landscape, his stomach feeling tight due to his confusion. "Did I do this?"
Nothing made sense. Standing on two shaky legs, Hill wondered if this was death—if the thing in the cave had finished him after all.
He bit his lip hard enough to taste copper, then forced his breathing steady. He'd expected himself to die anyway. His time in Igashia had always felt borrowed, he never judged himself as one capable of surviving that hell. Not that he wanted it to end, but he'd accepted the odds. He knew his limits.
Yet... death shouldn't feel this real. Right?
This was his soulscape—he knew it in his gut. But why had it transformed? He hadn't caused this. His soul art couldn't possibly—could it? Too many gaps in his understanding of rinshu and the powers at play remained.
"Phoebe!" he shouted, voice cracking. Nothing answered except wind that cut sharper now, whistling between unseen cracks. The Phantom Hand was still recovering, evidently.
He tried looking through his mind's eye in order to see the runes and check on Phoebe's status, but darkness greeted him.
"Shit," he spat.
Looking up, the ice shell strangled the last patch of sky. Soon the dome would seal completely.
And with that, the frigid air continued to get colder. It bit through his clothes. Each breath of his came out in white clouds that puffed out like cigarette smoke in the air. The wind picked up, throwing asphalt grit against his skin like tiny blades.
His eyes fixed on the mansion.
I should get inside before it gets too cold.
Hill broke into a run toward the stairs, legs burning after just twenty steps. He'd misjudged the distance badly.
Halfway up, his lungs were already struggling. The mansion loomed far, while behind him the ice dome completed its conquest of the sky. Everything shimmered in the blue light of the horizon.
The wind was now hammering him, nearly knocking him sideways. Each step felt more and more difficult.
When he finally reached the top, the door swung inward on its own, as if it had expected him. Hill stumbled inside, collapsing onto the hard floors as the door slammed shut, cutting off the storm's howling voice.
He lay there with his chest heaving up and down. When he finally looked up, his breath was stolen from his lungs.
The foyer stretched higher than should be possible. A chandelier hung from chains thick as his wrist, the crystals catching the light of the tiny flames of the candles. The marble under his palms felt incredibly smooth.
The walls were covered in rich tapestries that depicted scenes from other times. Knights with faces obscured by their helmets. Ladies in gowns that seemed to ripple when not directly observed. Various beasts of myth and legend.
It felt post medieval.
To his left stood a dining hall. The table stretched too long for the room it occupied, covered with china that gleamed much too brightly. Candles burned, casting the room in a warm glow.
The murals here showed battles of various size and scale, of knights fighting against dragons and other foes.
Connected to this room was a kitchen that smelled of woodsmoke and cooking meat. Appliances that belonged to no specific era lined the walls—an iron stove alongside things Hill couldn't name.
The walk-in freezer caught his eye. His impoverished family back on earth could never afford such an appliance.
Fire already burned in the stove, filling the kitchen with fresh hot air. Something bubbled in a pot, smelling of something like beef stew.
He staggered toward the warmth and allowed it seep into his bones.
"Ahh," he moaned, his eyes closing.
The sharp tap of metal against wood snapped his eyes open. The sound came from the dining hall.
Hill froze. His pulse hammered in his throat. He strained to hear past the blood rushing in his ears.
Nothing.
The wind's playing tricks. It has to be.
He edged forward, peering around the doorframe.
And there it sat.
At the table's far end lounged a figure holding silverware in rigid fingers. Its face gleamed bone-white, black ink circling its eyes and dripping down hollow cheeks like tears frozen mid-fall. Its smile stretched far beyond what human lips could manage, teeth too numerous and uniform.
It wore a striped shirt—black and white fabric stained rust-brown in patches. A beret perched at an angle on tight black curls.
But those eyes—they burned deep red, like coals after the fire dies. They fixed on Hill with recognition no stranger should possess.
Hill knew what this was. Back when he was eight years old, his father had taken him to a backwater carnival show. In the freak tent stood something just like this.
A mime.