Aether Nexus: Curse of Love & Hatred

Okun's face softened like a leaf curling towards the sun. He watched Dama closely, but his left eye—the one that always allowed Okun to see the potential and grain of a man—caught a light that made the chief's breath hitch in the smallest of ways.

There was hesitation in the boy, it showed around the edges, in the way his shoulders rose and fell. But, layered under that was the blaze of purpose: an ember that did not come from training or mere stubbornness. It was a spark, a shine of something deeper—small, keen, and powerful in the best possible way.

The chief's mind, quick to compare, measured it.

Liam's soulura was faint—present, but dim, like a lantern seen through fog. Other than being born with Affinity and the potential of a Soulful Technique, he was average.

Miuson's flare was broader, hotter, practiced into a shape by repeated practiced and a self-created need. His innate talent was apparent.

Dama's however—Dama's was different: a compact, bright shine that seemed to promise to rival the sun if properly used. His potential for both growth and power was rare nowadays—of that Okun was certain.

Okun then thought of Mumu and Nini, two stitched guardians who, moved, decided, and reacted like a living thing. They were living proof that Dama's gift had already made its mark, its potential known. The old chief felt a rare, reminiscent thrill—meeting a boy with the kind of raw potential he had in his youth.

Dama moved to lower himself into the same cross-legged position Liam and Miuson had taken. He had barely shifted when Nini—silent as a shadow and quicker than his own surprise—wound herself around him.

The fox's plush body slithered up like a living scarf, coils soft but firm. Her head tucked beneath his chin and she pressed her stitched cheek to his ribs.

For a heartbeat, Dama was rooted, both startled and comforted. "H-Hey, Nini? What's wrong?" Dama then managed, voice thin with worry.

Nini answered only with a low, anxious whine, the kind that conveyed more than words. She rubbed the side of her stitched head against his chest as if to physically move him.

Dama's face contorted into an affectionate confusion. "You're...worried about me?" He asked, half-laugh, half-plea. It came out soft, syllables trembling at the edges.

Miuson blinked; it looked, impossibly, as if Dama understood Nini's every twitch and tiny sound. "Can he really understand them?"

Mumu, who had been hovering with careful distance, gave a small, approving pat on Miuson's shoulders as if to say well done, and then padded over. He went down to Dama's level, eyes gentle, and placed both plush paws on either side of Nini's face. The two toys touched noses; Mumu rubbed her head in a slow, deliberate gesture, spreading a calm hush. A smile, wide and stitched, tugged at his muzzle.

What followed was wordless and intimate: Mumu was telling his sister she had nothing to fear. His body language was plain—hands steady, eyes fixed—and Nini's ears twitched as if she could feel the reassurance in the air. The tableau was odd and tender: two stitched guardians trading comfort like two parents conversing about their child.

Nini, for a moment, shook her head free from Mumu's hold. The motion was precise—left, then right—and it read like a small reprimand. She didn't want Dama to rush into danger, not without understanding the cost.

Mumu solemnly nodded back, a single, slow incline of his head that said, "I agree." But then he tapped one paw to his chest, another to Nini's head, and flicked his nose toward Dama. The gesture, clear as a bell, carried no words but a promise: whatever Dama chose, they would stand with him and protect him.

Nini considered her brother a second longer. Her ears drooped in embarrassment at being so worried; then, with a soft, resigned wag of a tail, she uncoiled. The fox's plush body loosened and slid back into a normal sitting position at Dama's side, though she stayed close enough that her warmth still pressed against him.

Dama's relief burst out in a laugh that was half-cry and half-relief. He stood and reached up, rubbing beneath Nini's plush jaw, his fingers kneading the soft fur. "I'll be all right," he promised, low and fierce, "I want to do this. You remember what Granny Tsu said, that I have a gift that can possibly help many! I want to keep everyone safe: you, Mumu, everyone in Enohay...even her—especially her..." his words were raw with feeling, an oath more than a sentence.

Nini surrendered herself in the softest possible way: pressing her head into his palm, sprawling her face in his hand and offering a broad stitched smile. Mumu gave a little huff, puffing up like a proud guardian, and Dama reached out to rub the his belly. "Thank you guys," he murmured, voice breaking a little, "I hope I can pay you back one day."

Mumu and Nini exchanged a look—something like a shrug passed between them—and then both shook their heads, dismissing the notion. Their mouths twitched into comforting grins as if to say, "You don't owe us anything. We're family."

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The exchange lightened the tightness in Dama's chest. Chuckling through his nerves, he mirrored Liam's and Miuson's positions without hesitation now: legs folded and back straight. When it came to cupping his hands, he realized he couldn't really copy Liam and Miuson. Fumbling for a bit for what to do with his one hand, he decided to just flex his hand in a podium like position.

Finally, Dama set his eyes on Okun and, with a voice that was steady despite the rapid drum of his heart, told the chief, "I'm ready."

Okun nodded. After settling himself behind the boy, his hands were steady, an old, practiced pressure that seemed to root the boy to the floor. "Close your eyes," the chief instructed softly, "breathe. Let whatever stirs you come—don't force it. Your soulura will answer when your heart speaks."

Dama obeyed. He closed his eyes and inhaled. He sifted through his memories like a child riffling through a stack of games, searching for the one that would burn brightest.

The first memory that came to mind was small and golden: the day Jula was born. He was four, raw with wonder. He remembered the way his little hands had trembled when his bedridden mother had placed the tiny bundle into them, how the newborn's cry had been the loudest, most urgent thing in the room—and yet, when Dama secured his hold on her, the crying had softened until silence, as if Jula could sense the safety of his arms.

He could feel the heat of that moment in his palms even now: the softness of Jula's hair, the steady thrum of life within her small body, the absolute, unreasoning promise that radiated through his small chest—"I will protect you." Even the love and happiness he felt when he felt a hand pat his shoulder and looked at its smiling owner, his father.

The warmth steadied him for a breath. But memory is a trickster, and the scene shifted without warning. His father's lamplit face dissolved; the wooden bedpost and blanket were replaced by gray sky and the sharp wind of a mountain peak. Where Jula's warm weight had been, there was now only the cold bite of snow and three crude headstones rising from frozen earth: one large, one medium, one small. Names were carved into the rock, blurred like frost on glass.

He remembered the years that followed as if he had watched them in someone else's life. The Hiyan Plague took them—father, mother, little Jula—and Dama had been left to make the graves. He remembered asking himself whether it was a blessing or curse not having bodies to bury due to being burned. He remembered the way the cold threaded through his clothes and into his bones, and how, after the weeping had bled dry, the world became an echoing nothing.

There was no dramatic collapse. He looked at his hand as if it were a stranger's, then back at the stones; the motion felt automatic, not his own. He did not notice himself sink to his knees until the snow bit the knees of his trousers. The wind stole his breath away in thin, cruel gusts that scoured the scene to its bare truth: his family had been alive and laughing a year before; now there were only cold stones and with names on them.

He felt the absence like a physical wound—an emptiness that made his chest hollow and his limbs feel like lead. The mountain's clean, sharp air only highlighted the hollowness, a question forming in his throat that had nowhere to go but out.

"Why?" He remembered whispering, the single syllable ragged and small against the open sky.

Mumu and Nini came up behind him as if they had always been there. Dama hardly noticed at first, but the two stitched figures moved with the quiet certainty of things that belonged to him.

Nini was first. She padded close, pressed her warm, plush body against him. Next, with the earnestness of a mother wrapping a scarf around her shivering child, wound herself gently around Dama's torso. Her plush fur was absurdly warm and soft against the thin fabric of his coat, and the coil was half comfort, half an improvised blanket. She tucked her head under his chin and nuzzled against him.

Mumu followed, bulky and careful. He bent, arms wide, and folded both of them in, a padded triangle of protection. His paws came over Dama and Nini in a slow, methodical hug.

In that embrace, in that moment, Dama remembered something unlatching inside his chest. The sob that came was the same raw thing that had emptied him at the graveside, but different now: it carried not only grief, but the small, fierce comfort of being held.

He cried against their soft fur, the sound muffled and private. Tears steamed on his cheeks in the mountain air; the cold stung but the hug was a small oven. He let himself lean into it, let the newness of these two—given life only a day ago, small miracles with his mother's love in every stitch—anchor him.

They did not ask for anything in return. They only offered warmth and a promise to always be by his side. Both Mumu and Nini simply knew Dama needed them.

Even as the old pain washed through him, Dama of the present, who stood off to the side as a spectator, could not summon the helpless hollowness that had once threatened to swallow him.

He had done the hard work since. He had learned, slowly and clumsily, to live again for reasons beyond his own survival. He had and will continue to carry the dead forward by living for them. The knowledge—that as long as he lived his life to the fullest helping others, his family would never truly die—steadied him; it changed the shape of his grief.

Where emptiness had been, gratitude began to bloom: for the vow he had kept, for the small surviving memories of family and home, for the vow to help everyone he can. Even though it will always be apart of him in some way, he has let go of his grief and looked towards a warmer future.

That warmth and image shifted, faces folded into the edges of his vision like paper sunbursts. First his mother and father, then little Jula as they had been alive and laughing. One by one, familiar faces softened into view.

Tsubasa with her gentle, urgent hands. Owain's broad, steady stance. Himon Koul's gruff, laughing face. Mary and Mari. Jaden. Moa. Juin. Liam. Kina. Every face in Enohay arrived smiling, as if someone had turned the world right-side up and let in light. They stood shoulder to shoulder and their smiles said: "You are not alone."

Mumu and Nini were there too, tall and proud at Dama's side, grinning at him with stitched mouths. The crowd beckoned with open hands and warm eyes.

This was it, Dama's simple, yet overwhelming dream he had always carried. Everyone he loved, safe and smiling, asking him to come stand among them.

Dama smiled the biggest he has ever smiled. Tears wet his eyes, his freckled dimples fully on show as he took steps toward them.

However, something in the back of his head, something within his subconscious, noticed something among the crowd of those he loved most was off.

Something was wrong.

Something was missing.

Someone was missing.

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Next: (Chapter 90) Dama's Trial: Part 2