...And seeing old dead faces.

Chapter 13: Dream walking.

After a candid dinner and a round of tense, polite conversation, the guests began to drift out into the fortress’s quieter corridors, each escorted back to their quarters by servants, guards, or, in D’Vorah’s case, by the unnerving ease with which she seemed to move through a room full of strangers. Fenrir and Kitana parted for the stairs, her hand brushing his for only a heartbeat before she turned toward their chambers, while he descended alone into the depths of the fortress, following the directions Kotal had given him before dinner.

“After the sun goes down and the moonlight settles over the city, come to the lower chamber,” Kotal had said, his voice low and certain. “There, I will have my decision.”

Now, as Fenrir descended the stone steps, that promise pressed heavier and heavier against his shoulders. His mind would not stay still. Erron’s easy smile sat wrong with him, like a blade hidden under a velvet glove. D’Vorah’s calm, searching eyes lingered in the back of his thoughts, along with the faint, crawling sense that she was always listening for something no one else could hear. And Kotal, Kotal had earned his respect, but respect did not erase caution. If the Osh-Tekk general wanted to test him before placing his fate beside theirs, then Fenrir would meet it head-on. Still, the weight of everything gnawed at him. Mileena and Skarlet were facing a room full of enemies tonight. War was gathering at the edges of Outworld, and every answer seemed to carry the cost of three more questions.

The chamber at the bottom waited in silence. Kotal stood before a ceremonial column with a carved bowl blackened by age, as if it had been used for rites long before the fortress had been remade around it. The doors shut behind Fenrir with a heavy finality that made him glance back once before the sound of stone and iron settled into place. Thin green smoke curled across the floor, spreading low around Kotal’s feet and then around his own boots, cold at first and then strangely warm, like breath drawn from an ancient altar. The general held a bundle of dried lavender sage in one hand, dark and rich with gold-veined stems.

“Greetings, Emperor,” Kotal said, his deep voice carrying through the chamber with ceremonial calm. “You will remain here a while.”

Fenrir looked around, his unease sharpening. The room felt old in the way sacred places did, old enough to remember every vow spoken in it. Green torches burned in their sconces, but their light did little to soften the shadows. They seemed to gather instead of disperse, thickening along the walls as though the chamber itself was watching. “What is this place?”

Kotal’s eyes lowered briefly, and he murmured something in his native tongue under his breath, a prayer or invocation Fenrir could not make out. Then he answered, “The Ixmucane. My bloodline comes here when we come of age. It is one of the few rites I could preserve after the merging.”

Fenrir's attention sharpened. “And the purpose of my visit?”

Kotal’s mouth curved by the slightest degree. “To be tested.”

The answer settled between them like a stone in deep water.

“Why?” Fenrir asked, though he already felt the edges of the answer closing around him.

Kotal moved slowly, deliberately, circling the chamber with the calm of a predator that already knew its prey would not flee. “Because I have chosen my side in this war. You already know that. The contract is settled.” He held Fenrir's gaze. “But politics is not enough. I will not place my trust, my people, and my future in the hands of a man I do not understand.”

Fenrir gave a small, uneasy laugh, but it died halfway in his throat. Something was wrong. The chamber seemed to tilt with him. His limbs felt heavier, then suddenly lighter, as if his body could not decide whether it belonged to him. The scent of the sage thickened, sharp and earthy and almost sweet, and the sound of Kotal’s voice began to stretch, each word echoing as though it were being spoken from the far end of a dream.

“I want to know the man beneath the title,” Kotal said. “Who is Fenrir Blackmore?”

Fenrir opened his mouth to answer, but a cry split the chamber before he could speak. A woman’s voice. Familiar, distant and impossible.

“Mother…?”

His knees weakened. The floor seemed to drop from under him. He reached for balance and found none, only the sensation of falling, falling downward through darkness and cold water, pulled under by forces he could not fight. The voices came with it, first whispering, then overlapping, then turning upon him like a storm.
“Where were you when I needed you?”

“You are a mistake.”

“Look at you, small as a bug. Why did Destiny choose you instead of me?”

“Murderer. Coward. Liar.”

“Why should I save you? You couldn’t save me.”

“This is all your fault.”

“SON OF THE DEMON.”

“BASTARD.”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU SAVE ME?!”

The words struck in waves, some old wounds, some fresh ones, some so poisoned they hardly sounded human. Fenrir fought upward through them, through the black water, the pressure and the shame, clawing toward a pale, distant light that flickered above him like the last thing left in the world worth reaching for.
When he broke the surface, he gasped hard, dragging in breath as water spilt from his hair and clothes to the ground below. He raised his head, ready to demand an explanation, ready to fight if he had to.

Kotal was gone.

The chamber had vanished, too. In its place stood a field of strange, dream-bright silence, and before him, washed in pale light, loomed a sight Fenrir had not seen in years, and never wanted to see again.

His childhood home.

The manor stood before him like a memory refusing to die. Its pale walls gleamed too cleanly under the strange dream light, almost holy in their brightness, but the air around it felt wrong, too still and saturated, as if the world itself had been painted over an old wound. Beneath Fenrir's feet, a shallow puddle of water glimmered in the grass, the only thing that felt truly real.

“Impossible…” he muttered.

The front door was already open.

From somewhere inside came a lullaby, soft and familiar, sung in a voice that stopped his breath for a fraction of a second. Fenrir's hand tightened around Arondite, and he moved forward slowly, every step measured, every muscle coiled. If this was a trick, then it was a cruel one. If it was not, then it was something worse.
A nightmare with his childhood stitched into it.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the past hit him like a blade. The hall was exactly as he remembered it: the same paintings, the same furniture, the same stairs polished by years of footsteps long gone. The smell of old wood and ink lingered in the air. And there, seated near the window with a book in her hands, was his mother.

Kimiko looked up from her favourite book, “The Tale of Genji”, and smiled as if no years had passed at all.

“Fenrir,” she said gently, setting the book aside. “Where were you?” Her gaze drifted past him with mild concern. “Were you out playing with Alian again?”

For a moment, he could only stare. His sword slipped from his hand and struck the floor with a dull clatter. His throat tightened. Then the part of him that had been starved for years moved before thought could stop it.

He crossed the room and hugged her desperately, like a man trying to hold on to something the world had already taken from him once.

Kimiko stiffened in surprise, then returned the embrace with both arms, holding him with the same warmth he remembered from childhood. “Oh, son…” she whispered, her voice breaking into tenderness. “It is all right. I am here.”

His eyes burned. “You shouldn’t be.”

“And yet,” she said softly, easing back just enough to look at him, “here I am.” Her hand rose to his cheek. “Are you all right, son?”

“…I’m broken, mother.” He said in a whispery tone.

She studied him for a moment, then smiled sadly, as if she understood too much and too little at once. “I see no crack,” she replied. “Only a little wear.”

That almost made him smile.

He looked around again, more sharply this time. “Why am I here?”

Kimiko rose, and something in her shifted. She still wore his mother’s face, still had her voice, but there was a clarity in her now, as if the room itself had turned her into something older than memory. “That is not for me to decide,” she said. “But I can guide you.”

She gestured toward the stairs.

Fenrir hesitated only a second before following. At the top of the stairs stood a wooden door with a thin line of light leaking through the frame. He reached for the handle, but it would not budge.

“You know where it leads,” Kimiko said from beside him, though she had not climbed the stairs at all.

“I do.” He frowned. Then he turned, unsettled. “Why is Father’s office locked?”

“Why do you assume it is locked to keep you out?”

His jaw tightened. “Because you brought me here.”

Kimiko gave him a calm, almost sad smile. “I showed you a path. You chose to walk it.”

“Stop speaking in riddles.”

“I am not speaking in riddles,” she said, her tone gentle but firmer now. “I am speaking in the language your mind understands best.”

He exhaled sharply, frustration cracking through the fear. “This is ****.”

“No,” she answered. “This is you.”

That silenced him.

Her expression did not soften. If anything, it became more severe, more knowing. “The Osh-Tekk did not do this to you. This is your own mind, Fenrir: your dreams, your fears, your regrets, all given shape. You have spent years trying to outrun them. Perhaps it is time to listen.”

He looked away. “I have been better off since I was a child by not listening.”

“Have you?” she asked quietly. “Or have you simply been louder than them?”

The question landed hard…too hard.

Fenrir's shoulders sagged. “I owe him nothing.”

“No,” she said. “But you carry his blood.”

The air in the hallway seemed to tighten around that sentence.

“That blood has weight,” she continued. “Power and legacy. A history most would kill to possess.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You do not get to choose only the parts of yourself you like,” she said, and now something was commanding beneath her warmth. “Stop resisting it.”

“I’m not a demon.”

“No,” Kimiko answered with heartbreaking certainty. “You are a Nephilim.”

The word struck him like cold water.

She stepped closer. “The last one, as far as you know. You keep treating that as if it were a curse, as if it only brings pain. But you are alive because of what lives in you, Fenrir. Not despite it.”

He shook his head. “It only hurts people.”

“That is what you tell yourself because it is easier than facing what you are.”

He laughed bitterly. “You make it sound like a blessing.”

“It is not a blessing,” she said. “It is a burden. But it is yours.”

He looked down at his hands. “If I am carrying all of this… then why does it feel like I am falling apart?”

“Because you are fighting half of yourself.”

The hallway darkened around the edges. Even her figure seemed to flicker now, as if the dream were thinning and something deeper was pressing through. “There is a demonic current inside you,” she said. “You are not becoming it. You are starving it, and starving things become violent.”

Fenrir swallowed. “I am not a monster.”

“I know that.” Her voice softened again, but only slightly. “But you cannot keep pretending balance means denying one side of your nature. One day, if you keep refusing it, the wrong part of you will win.”

He closed his eyes. He hated how much sense that made. “I am sorry,” he said at last, and the words came out raw. “I am sorry that giving me life took away your life.”

Kimiko’s expression changed then, and for the first time, it was not comforting. It was almost offended. “No,” she said firmly. “You do not apologise for existing. You and your brother were the greatest gifts I ever had.”

Fenrir looked up, stunned.

Her eyes shone with something fierce and maternal. “I would never be ashamed of giving birth to you. Never.” She lifted a hand and touched his chest. “But you must stop running from yourself. There is power in you waiting to be shaped. If you refuse it, it will consume you instead. You have felt it, haven’t you?”

He nodded once, reluctantly. “It has been harder to control since I became emperor.”

Her expression grew serious. “Then it has begun.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

She answered without hesitation. “Accept yourself.”

Fenrir went still.

The air around them seemed to tighten. A sword began to form in her hands, the shape resolving from light as if the weapon had always been waiting for this moment. She held it out to him with both hands.

“You did not think I gave you Arondite for decoration,” she said.

Fenrir's eyes widened. He took the blade carefully, and the instant his fingers closed around the hilt, a low heat answered through the steel. The edges shone with a soft blue light, almost like silver flame breathing around the weapon’s length.

“It was keeping me in check,” he murmured.

“It helped,” she corrected. “But it was never only the sword. It was you, too.”

He looked down at it, feeling the weight settle into his grip as if the weapon recognised him. Not as a tool, as something older.

“What now?” he asked.

Kimiko’s smile returned, shorter this time, sadder. “Now you move forward.”

Fenrir looked toward the staircase again, then back to her. “I know where I need to go next,” he said slowly. “I just do not know how I am going to explain it to them.”

“They will understand,” she replied. “Those girls are stronger than you think. And if they love you, they will want you to survive this.”

Her eyes softened. “As for your father…yes. He will be waiting. Intrigued, if nothing else.”

“To what end?” Fenrir asked. “A cure?”

Kimiko shook her head. “Something better.”

She raised both hands to the sides of his head. A sharp current of power ran through him at once, hot, bright, and sudden. He gasped, his whole body seizing for a moment as the vision bled into him rather than around him.

When it passed, he felt altered. Sharper. Stronger. And somehow less divided.

He looked at Arondite, and the glow along its edge burned brighter now, more vivid, as if the sword had accepted the change before he had.

Kimiko watched him with quiet approval. “There will be surprises ahead,” she said. “You should be ready.”

“This is…” He exhaled, still feeling the aftershock in his bones. “Incredible.”

Then his brow furrowed. “Father will release the other side, right?”

She nodded. “As he should. That is where your path leads.”

Her form had already begun to fade at the edges, the dream pulling her away. “You will face enemies stronger than you. You will need what lies buried in you. Outworld needs you to win.”

Fenrir reached for her hand. “Mother—”

“There is one more thing,” she said, squeezing his fingers one last time. “Seek the wolf that walks beneath the moon. Follow him through the fields of his ancestors and through the spirit realm. There is still something waiting to be found.”

A distant howl seemed to thread through the silence as she spoke, faint but unmistakable, like a memory carried on the wind.

Then she touched two fingers to his forehead.

The world shattered.

Fenrir was thrown backwards through the dark, through water, through echo and breath and the violent pull of life.

Fenrir came back to himself in fragments.

At first, there was only the echo of the vision, heat without flame, voices speaking through water, the sensation of something vast brushing against the edges of his soul. Then the room slowly gathered around him: the cool weight of the mattress beneath him, the faint scent of candle wax and old parchment, the steady crackle of a flame nearby.

He opened his eyes.

The chamber was no longer the Ixmucane shrine. The carved stone and sacred smoke had given way to a more restrained space. An office, though an Outworld one, with the sort of elegance only an emperor or a general would permit himself. A custom marble desk stood at the room’s centre, its surface dressed with a cloth that softened the stone beneath it. A candle burned in the skull-shaped holder beside a ceremonial dagger, and beside those sat scrolls, folded parchments, and an ancient tome currently being turned with deliberate care.

Kotal read without looking up.

“Nephilim,” he said at last, his voice even and deep. “Little is recorded of them. A rare crossing of bloodlines, a being born of opposing natures.”

Fenrir's hand twitched against the blanket as he sat up slowly, still feeling the strange aftertaste of the ritual in his head. His body was his own again, and yet not quite. There was a new lightness to him, a coiled strength beneath the skin, as if something had been tightened and sharpened inside him while he slept.

Kotal turned one page with a measured sweep of his hand.

“Human and demon,” he continued, “appear to be the most documented mixture. A consequence of proximity, history and conflict.”

Kotal closed the tome with a solid thud and turned toward him.

“So states The Dead and Best Left Forgotten Races,” he said dryly. “By Shang Tsung.”

That finally coaxed a slight grin from Fenrir. “A charming bedtime story.” He let out a low breath through his nose and pushed himself farther upright, one hand braced against the bed as he studied the emperor. “How did you get your hands on that?”

“I asked for it.”

Fenrir arched a brow.

Kotal’s expression barely changed, but there was a faint edge of satisfaction in it. “After his dismissal from your command, I had Barong retrieve what records he was willing to part with. The book was among them. There is knowledge in there better held by those willing to use it properly.”

“And you think that’s you?”

“I know it is,” Kotal replied, not boastful, merely certain.

Fenrir's gaze drifted briefly to the desk, then back. “And that extract is supposed to mean something to me?”

Kotal did not answer immediately. Instead, he watched him in silence, as if the silence itself were part of the test.

Fenrir felt it at once. Not hostility. Not quite trust, either. Assessment. He remained seated, shoulders loose but ready, mind already running through options. If this became a trap, he would need only a heartbeat.

Kotal’s voice broke the stillness. “You muttered the word in your sleep.”

Fenrir stilled.

“There were others as well,” Kotal went on, his tone unchanged. “Names. One sounded like an animal. Another like a realm. And then that one again.”
Fenrir's eyes narrowed by a fraction. Kotal had not simply been reading while he slept; he had been listening.

He stood slowly and reached for his jacket, which hung on the bedside stand. His body moved with a new ease, as if the ritual had adjusted more than one thing. He noticed it and filed the sensation away for later.

For now, there were more important concerns.

“Don’t ever **** me again,” he said.

Kotal did not flinch. “I have done no such thing.”

Fenrir paused, jacket half in hand.

Kotal’s gaze remained calm, almost severe. “What you saw was not placed in you by my hand. The Ixmucane did not create the vision. It only opened what was already waiting beneath the surface.”

Fenrir searched his face for deception and found none.

Kotal folded his arms behind his back and continued, “All that you saw Emperor was your own mind. Your soul. It fears its memories, it's buried knowledge. If there was danger in it, it came from within.”

Fenrir's jaw tightened. The afterimages of the ritual still burned faintly behind his eyes, too vivid to dismiss, too intimate to ignore.

Kotal watched him carefully. “I will ask plainly,” he said. “What did you see?”

Fenrir moved to the door, checked the corridor through a narrow opening, and found it empty. No guards lingered outside. No eavesdroppers. He closed the door and locked it.

When he turned back, the room suddenly felt smaller.

“I saw things,” he said at last. “Some of them might be real. Others… I do not know.”

Kotal’s eyes did not leave him. “And which of them troubled you most?”

Fenrir gave a humourless half-smile. “That is a dangerous question.”

“It is also the correct one.”

A beat passed.

Then Kotal exhaled and lifted the back of his arm, revealing the scar there, the mark that had once felt like a brand and now seemed to pulse with a quiet, sunlit heat. Fenrir's eyes shifted to it, attentive but not surprised.

“When I came of age,” Kotal said, “my father took me through the rites. I saw what our people had endured, what we had become, and what we might yet become. Past, present and future. It was not a comfort; it was a burden I chose to carry.”

He lowered his arm again.

“I believe the vision has made a burden of you as well.”

Fenrir met his gaze, and for the first time since waking, the weight of the ritual settled fully in his chest. Not fear, not exactly, purpose.

“I think,” Fenrir said carefully, “I have a new quest.”

Kotal’s expression sharpened almost imperceptibly. “A personal one.” Fenrir gave no answer.

“One concerning the nature hidden in your blood,” Kotal pressed.

Fenrir let out a soft breath, almost a laugh. “The cat is out of the bag, then.”

Kotal’s mouth curved with restrained amusement. “Your language remains strange.”

He chuckled at his comment, “I’m not human,” Fenrir said.

Kotal took in the admission with a stillness that lasted a little longer than comfort demanded. Then he said, very quietly, “Nephilim.”

Fenrir's hand shifted behind him, fingers resting near the hilt of Arondite by instinct more than intention. “That going to be a problem?”

Kotal did not answer at once.

The emperor’s eyes remained on him as he weighed possibilities with visible restraint. Advantage. Risk. History. War. All of it seemed to pass through him in silence before he finally spoke.

“On the contrary,” Kotal said. “It may alter the war before us.”

Fenrir gave him a searching look. “You make that sound like a good thing.”

“I make it sound like a reality.”

Kotal stepped away from the desk, moving with the deliberate grace of a predator that had long ago learned patience. “You are not an ordinary piece on the board, Fenrir. If the blood in you is what I suspect, then Outworld may yet possess a weapon our enemies did not account for.”

Fenrir's gaze sharpened. “I am not a weapon.”

“No,” Kotal said, stopping a few paces short of him. “You are worse than that. Weapons can be pointed and set aside. You still choose.”

Fenrir's eyes narrowed slightly at the assessment.

Kotal’s voice deepened. “Choice is burdensome. Power does not respect restraint. It tests it. Breaks it, if it can. You speak often of holding back, of justice, of mercy. Those are admirable things.”

The emperor’s eyes did not leave his.

“They are also luxuries war does not always permit.”

Fenrir's answer came without hesitation. “Then war will have to make room.”

Kotal’s brow lifted, faintly amused. “And if it does not?”

“Then I will make it.” He answered, his tone resolute.

For a moment, Kotal looked almost pleased. Not because he had won an argument, but because Fenrir had answered like a man who meant it.

“Good,” Kotal said. “Then perhaps you are not as unprepared as I feared.”

Fenrir huffed softly. “That’s a strange compliment.”

“It is the only kind I offer.”

Kotal watched him for a moment longer, then sat at the edge of the chair behind the desk, finally allowing the conversation to settle into something closer to strategy than challenge.

“You were changed by the ritual,” he said. “Describe it.”

Fenrir glanced at him. “You truly do not know?”

“I know what the texts tend to say about the ritual. I want to know what you felt.”

So Fenrir told him.

He spoke of the chamber, of the darkness beneath the chanting, of the sensation of being pulled through his own blood as though it were a river older than memory. Of the voice. Of the presence. Of the mother he had not expected to feel and the strange comfort of being seen by something that had already crossed the threshold of ****. He spoke in pieces at first, then more steadily as the memory took shape.

Kotal listened without interruption. By the time Fenrir finished, the candle on the desk had burned low enough to bend the flame.
“Hm,” Kotal said at last. “And you are stronger?”

Fenrir flexed his hand once, feeling the answer settle into his muscles. “Yes.”

“Then the ritual succeeded.”

He nodded. Kotal’s eyes narrowed. “There is another concern.”

Fenrir sighed. “Of course there is.”

“The wolf.”

Fenrir went quiet.

The room seemed to tighten around the phrase. Not because either of them understood it yet, but because both knew it mattered.

“I have a theory,” Fenrir said after a moment.

“I am listening.”

“There is a shaman-warrior in Earthrealm. A friend of mine. A spiritual guide, too, when he chooses to be. He knows things most people ignore until it is too late.”
Kotal studied him. “And you believe he may know what the vision meant.”

“It is possible.”

“Possible is not enough to stake a journey on.”

“No,” Fenrir said, his voice lowering. “But it is what I have.”

Kotal’s silence after that was longer than before, calculating.

“And the descent you intend to make,” he said eventually. “To the Netherrealm?”

Fenrir's face tightened. “It has to happen.”

“Perhaps…And the trip you plan to take to the underworld?” He said, his tone grave.

“It has to happen, whether I like it or not,” Fenrir replied with sorrow and a stern look.

“I will make sure to keep Outworld in check, lending as much help as I can to the queens.” He answered respectfully, trying to calm his concerns.

That earned the emperor a brief, more genuine look of amusement. “Good to know.”

Kotal rose again, then paused as if deciding whether to say what came next. Fenrir sensed the shift before the words arrived.
In the end, Kotal said, “Jade spoke highly of you after Sun Do.”

Fenrir went still.

“She did not speak of victory,” Kotal continued. “She spoke of character. Of restraint under pressure, of what you chose not to do when it would have been easier to do otherwise.”

The general’s right hand pressed firmly to his chest.

“That day, I chose where I stood. I pledged my life and honour to you, Fenrir Khan, Emperor of Outworld and Edenia.”
The words carried weight, the kind that outlived battles.

Fenrir looked at him for a long moment, then the tension in his shoulders eased just enough to let warmth show through.

“And I accept it,” he said quietly with a smile at the end. “With pleasure.”