[... That's disturbing. Kratos's confusion deepens into wary discomfort, and he shifts as if to pull away from the laughing visage of his best friend, whom he hasn't seen laughing like that for thousands of years, and certainly not for something so inconsequential.

[Maybe this isn't real after all. Maybe everything he remembers from the tower was just him finally slipping into a true state of insanity, different from Mithos's.

[But Yuan finally stops laughing, and it's difficult to fake or imagine a telepathic communication -- or the sense of mana, which is most definitely Yuan's. Still, Kratos checks that again, with an unintentional but faint mental touch, like he's just making sure there isn't a danger here.

[I don't like it.

[It's too different. It's not Yuan at all. And it fills Kratos with a deep and abiding unease, that for some reason Yuan might be wearing his hair so differently. 'On the run' sounds like something ongoing. 'On the run' makes it sound like a while.

[It's not a thought, precisely, but a vague sense of dread and how long since ...? loud enough for Yuan to hear.]