Hajin let out a long, exhausted sigh as the silence of the flower field settled around him, the spot where the Goddess had been standing now completely empty save for a few golden particles still drifting lazily through the air.

He was tired, not the kind of tired that sleep could fix but the deep, bone-level exhaustion that came from having your entire understanding of the world ripped apart and reassembled in the span of a single conversation.

The gods were corrupt, the shard system was a counterfeit, the reincarnation cycle was broken, and oh, apparently a dead goddess had just called him her son before dissolving into light.

’At least I learned a lot today,’ he thought, dragging a hand down his face while staring at the endless field of flowers stretching out in every direction. ’Quite a lot, in fact.’

"Master."

The voice came from right behind him and he turned to find the cyan-haired woman standing there, her eyes still slightly wet from watching the Goddess disappear but now burning with an entirely different kind of intensity.

"That woman," she said, her voice careful but barely containing the curiosity bubbling underneath. "Was she really the Goddess? The actual Goddess of Reincarnation?"

"Yeah," he replied, rubbing the back of his neck. "But only a fragment, not her true self. She said the real her is still dead and won’t come back until the recovery is complete."

The woman went completely still for about two seconds before her composure shattered entirely.

"I saw a goddess," she whispered, both hands rising to press against her cheeks as her eyes went wide and a deep flush spread across her face.

"An actual goddess was standing right there, right in front of me, in my world, and she had wings, and she was so beautiful, and she kissed you on the forehead and called you her son and I was right there watching the whole thing."

She was practically vibrating, her hair swaying with every animated gesture as she bounced lightly on her feet, completely lost in the excitement of what she had just witnessed.

He watched her for a moment, a faint, tired smile pulling at his lips despite everything, but then a thought suddenly crossed his mind and the smile faded as his expression shifted into something far more focused.

He started walking toward her.

The change in his demeanor was immediate enough that she noticed it instantly, her gushing cutting off mid-sentence as she registered the look in his eyes. Her own eyes widened slightly and she took an instinctive step backward.

"M-Master?" she stammered, her flush deepening as he kept closing the distance without saying a word.

She took another step back, then another, her hands dropping from her cheeks to hover nervously in front of her chest while he continued advancing with that same intense, unreadable expression.

"Wait, why are you looking at me like that," she said, her voice climbing half an octave as she kept backing away through the flowers.

He closed the gap in two quick steps, reaching out and catching her by the wrist before she could retreat any further and pulling her toward him until barely a foot of space remained between them.

Her breath caught audibly in her throat as he stared directly into her eyes, his green ones locked on with an intensity that made her heart pound so hard she was convinced he could hear it.

’Oh no,’ she thought, her mind racing at a speed that would have put her mana circulation to shame.

’Is he going to... no, this is way too fast, we literally just met, I am not ready for this, I have not prepared myself mentally or emotionally and my hair is probably a mess from sitting in the grass and—’

"What’s your name?"

The question landed like a bucket of cold water on a bonfire.

She blinked, the deep crimson flush on her face freezing in place as her brain completely stalled. "What?"

"Your name," he repeated, still holding her wrist and still looking directly into her eyes with the exact same intensity. "You never told me your name."

She stood there for a moment, her flush slowly fading as something shifted behind her eyes. "Oh, right," she said, letting out a small, slightly embarrassed laugh while tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "My name, of course, it’s..."

She stopped.

Her mouth was open but nothing came out, her eyes flickering with confusion as the words refused to form. She tried again, her lips parting and closing several times while the color slowly drained from her face.

"My name," she whispered, her hands beginning to tremble. "What is... my name?"

The playful energy that had been radiating from her moments ago collapsed instantly as she sank to her knees in the middle of the flower field, both hands pressing against the sides of her head while her breathing turned rapid and uneven.

"My name, my name, my name, my name," she repeated over and over, her voice growing more frantic with each repetition as she dug through centuries of memories and found nothing, absolutely nothing where the most fundamental piece of her identity should have been.

"Why can I not remember my name? I had one, I know I had one, so why is it gone?"

He crouched down in front of her, and without hesitating he placed his hand gently on top of her head, his fingers settling into her hair with a calm, steady warmth that cut straight through the spiraling panic.

"It’s okay," he said quietly, his voice carrying the same tone he used when Juna was overwhelmed. "If you can’t remember it right now, that’s fine. You can tell me later, whenever it comes back to you."

She looked up at him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears and her lips trembling slightly as she opened her mouth to say something, the beginning of a question forming on her face but the world suddenly shattered.

The flower field, the sky, the warm sunlight, all of it cracked like glass and exploded outward into blinding white light as he felt his consciousness violently ripped from the Spirit Ring’s world and slammed back into his physical body.

His eyes snapped open.

He was lying on his back in a bed, the familiar ceiling of their inn room slowly coming into focus while the faint glow of a candle flickered on the bedside table.

His entire body ached, every muscle screaming in protest as his senses slowly readjusted to reality.

And sitting right there beside the bed, carefully wiping blood and dirt off his legs with a damp cloth, was Juna.

She hadn’t noticed his eyes opening yet, her ears flat against her head as she worked with quiet, focused precision, her tail curled tightly around her own waist in the way it always did when she was worried.