Chapter Text
Little Harumi used to wave at the citizens through the palace gates, her chest aching with a desire to hug the entire city. She had loved Ninjago with the fierce, blind devotion only a child could possess. Tonight, Princess Harumi stood at those same gates, watching the smoke rise from the streets she had just sabotaged. The crushing weight of the Quiet One's mask rested in her hands. The contrast was dizzying: the little girl who wanted to save everyone had successfully become the woman who ruined everything. To really know how this woman came to be however, you had to go back. Back before the masks, back before Morro, even. In fact, you had to go back to the day everything started. The day Harumi found the tiny necklace with the three mask charms on them. The onix trinity.
A few years after her parents death, and after the great Lord Garmadon sacrificed himself to save Ninjago (something that the ninja could not) Harumi wanders down the dusty orphanage halls. The heavy wooden door in front of her creak as she pushes them open.
The orphanage library was always freezing cold, smelling faintly of mildew and rotting wood. To seven-year-old Harumi, it was a sanctuary. The other children avoided it because it was dark and gloomy, but Harumi loved the silence.
It was the only place she could escape the pitying stares of the caretakers and the cruel whispers of the kids who called her an outcast. She had lost everything.
Her parents, her home, her safety—all crushed under the foot of the Great Devourer. Her giant, loving heart felt like it had been violently ripped out of her chest.
One rainy afternoon, while pulling down a heavy, water-damaged book on Ninjago’s ancient history, her fingers brushed against something cold hidden behind the shelf.
It was a velvet pouch, stiff with age. Inside lay a necklace made of dark, polished stones, adorned with three tiny, terrifyingly detailed Oni mask charms. The moment Harumi’s bare skin touched the necklace, a deep, resonant hum vibrated up her arm.
“...Hello?... Can anyone hear me?...”
Harumi gasped, dropping the necklace onto the dusty floorboards. The voice didn’t come from the room; it echoed directly inside her mind.
It wasn't scary. It sounded exhausted, heavy with grief, and deeply sorrowful.Trembling, the little girl picked the necklace back up. “Who are you?” she thought back fiercely.
“A soul trapped in the dark,” the voice replied, softening. “I am Garmadon. I was... a father. A protector. But the venom in my veins drove me mad, and I ruined the world. Now, I am free of the curse, but I am locked away in the Departed Realm, forced to watch the city suffer from afar.”
Over the next few weeks, the library became Harumi’s secret church. She would curl up between the bookshelves, clutching The Onyx Trinity tightly against her collarbone.
Garmadon didn't talk to her like a monster. He talked to her like a grieving father. He listened to her cry about her parents. He validated her anger at the ninja who had failed to save the city.
One evening, Garmadon made a promise that sealed her fate forever.
“If you find a way to open the gateway, little one, I can return. Not as the monster who destroyed Ninjago, but as the man I was always meant to be. I will protect you. I will ensure no child ever has to cry in the dark again. Will you help me fix the world, Harumi?”
Clinging to the necklace, her eyes filling with a fierce, burning hope, seven-year-old Harumi nodded against the cold stone. “I will. I promise.” And she swore to herself that she would NEVER break that promise. Not like so many people had broken promises to her. She wouldn't let anyone else suffer like she had.
Funny how circumstances change, isn't it?
Seven-year-old Harumi loved everything and everyone. But love is fragile. And the last remaining piece of it in Harumi's heart broke the day the boy who looked like Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon shattered her only hope.
Harumi stared down at the fractured pieces of the ancient artifact resting in her palm. Before the look-alike had smashed it, the relic had hummed with a dark, comforting energy.
Through it, Lord Garmadon’s voice had reached her from the Departed Realm.
He hadn’t sounded like a monster; he had sounded like a savior. He had promised her that if she brought him back, he would fix the world. He would make things right. He would be the protector her parents never had. He had convinced her.
And then, a boy with green eyes and a cruel smile had taken that away, leaving her utterly isolated in the dark. Harumi squeezed the broken shards until the sharp edges bit into her glove.
The sweet, loving little girl she used to be was officially dead, buried under the rubble of the Jade Palace and the dust of a ruined relic. She didn't want to love the world anymore. She wanted to punish it.
She would still open the Oni Portal. She would still bring Garmadon back. But she was no longer doing it out of a child's desperate hope. She was doing it for cold, calculated revenge—for the parents she lost, for the savior they silenced, and against the green-clad ninja who dared to break her future.
It took months in the shadows of Ninjago's underworld to uncover the truth behind the face that ruined her life. Harumi had tracked the rumors of the green-eyed boy through smoke-filled alleys and forgotten archives until the pieces finally clicked together into a sickening picture.
The boy wasn't Lloyd Garmadon. His name was Kyler.
He was a secret kept hidden in the monastery's deepest shadows—the son of Master Wu. Because of that shared bloodline, Kyler looked identical to his cousin Lloyd, bearing the same blonde hair and striking features.
But Kyler hadn't broken her artifact out of malice. He had done it because he was a prisoner in his own skin. Morro, the vengeful Master of Wind, had escaped the cursed realm and possessed Kyler's body, using the boy’s striking resemblance to Lloyd to sow chaos.
Harumi stared at the stolen photograph of Kyler on her planning board. To the rest of the world, Morro was the villain and Kyler was just a victim.
But Harumi didn't care about possession, ghosts, or family secrets. When Morro-in-Kyler smashed the artifact, he didn't just break stone; he severed her lifeline to the only person who promised to fix her broken world.
Lord Garmadon’s true, reformed voice was trapped on the other side, and she was left in the dark.
A cold, sharp smile touched Harumi’s lips as she finalized her plans for the Sons of Garmadon. She would still perform the ritual. She would still open the portal. But her vengeance had found a new, specific target. She would tear down the ninja, destroy Wu's hidden legacy, and make both Morro and Kyler bleed for what they took from her.
She was ready for her first strike.
Harumi didn't send her gang. A grudge this deeply personal had to be settled by her own hands.
She tracked Kyler to a quiet, sunlit village on the outskirts of Ninjago, far from the chaos of the city. As she watched him from the tree line, her chest ached with a familiar, bitter envy. Kyler was laughing with a kind-faced baker and a blacksmith—his adoptive parents. They smiled at him with the same pure, unconditional love that Harumi’s parents used to give her. It was sickening.
She didn't know that Kyler was entirely clueless about his true heritage. He had no idea he was the son of Master Wu, or that he shared a face with the famous Green Ninja. He didn't even know that the phantom whispering in the back of his mind was his adopted spiritual cousin, Morro. Kyler just thought he was a normal boy with a safe, happy life.
But Harumi didn't see innocence. Through her eyes, she only saw the face of the boy who had arrogantly smashed her artifact in the city alleys months ago, severing her connection to a reformed Garmadon. She only saw the smirk he had worn when Morro was pulling the strings.
She waited until twilight when the village grew quiet and Kyler walked alone near the riverbank.
The strike was silent. Harumi ambushed him from the shadows, her red-and-black blades flashing in the moonlight. Kyler was completely untrained; he didn't have the instincts of a ninja or the power of a ghost to protect him this time. Morro, trapped deep within Kyler's subconscious, tried to surge forward to command the wind, but it was too late. The physical vessel was too weak, and Harumi’s rage was too fast.
With a final, desperate gasp, Kyler fell into the rushing water, his life cutting short before he ever learned who his real father was. The river carried his body away into the dark, leaving no trace behind.
Harumi stood on the bank, wiping his blood from her blade. She felt no remorse, only a cold, hollow satisfaction. She believed she had just executed her tormentor.
In reality, she had just murdered Lloyd's secret cousin, buried Wu's hidden legacy, and silenced the only boy who could have told her the truth. Now, the stage was perfectly set. Lloyd remained completely oblivious that he even had a brother, Morro's spirit was cast back into the void without a host, and Harumi was ready to unleash the Sons of Garmadon on a city that had taken everything from her.
But that didn't stick for as long as Harumi was prepared for. She then, met Lloyd Montgomery Garmadon, and he life was thrown for a loop, yet again.
The first time Harumi looked into the real Lloyd Garmadon’s eyes, her universe fractured.
She had spent months preparing for this moment. She had practiced her lines, perfected her fragile "Princess" persona, and sharpened the knives she intended to plunge into his back. She expected to feel a surge of triumphant malice when she finally stood face-to-face with the bloodline of the boy she had murdered by the riverbank.
Instead, she felt a sickening, dizzying vertigo.
"Are you alright, Princess?" Lloyd asked. His voice wasn't the cruel, mocking sneer she remembered from the alleyway. It was soft. Quiet. Genuine.
He stepped closer, offering his hand to help her down from the royal carriage. Harumi forced her fingers to remain steady as she placed her hand in his. She braced herself for a spark of darkness, some sign of the monster who had shattered her artifact and left her isolated from Garmadon.
But Lloyd's hands were warm. Gentle. He held her with a fierce, protective reverence, as if she were something precious to be guarded, not a tool to be broken. When she looked up, she didn't see the cold, calculating glare of her tormentor. She looked into large, kind green eyes that practically radiated a pure, uncomplicated goodness.
They were the eyes of someone who loved the world. The eyes of someone who looked at Ninjago City exactly the way little Harumi used to look at it before the Devourer took everything.
A strange, terrifying emotion coiled tightly around Harumi’s ribs, suffocating her. It wasn't just the hatred she had carefully buried beneath her fake smiles. It was something far more parasitic.
She was falling for him.
It was a horrifying realization. She was supposed to hate him. She was supposed to use him to resurrect his father, punish his bloodline, and rule the ruins of the city. But every time Lloyd smiled at her, every time he awkwardly stumbled over his words trying to impress her, the icy fortress in her chest cracked. He was everything she had forced herself to stop being: kind, hopeful, and entirely innocent.
The guilt of what she had done to Kyler—the boy who shared this beautiful face—began to claw at the edges of her mind. She didn't know Kyler was a victim of possession; she still thought Kyler was the villain. Yet, looking at Lloyd, the idea of hurting someone with those eyes felt less like a victory and more like a sacrilege.
I will still bring your father back, Harumi promised herself, her internal monologue screaming against the softness growing in her chest. I will still destroy the ninja.
But as Lloyd gave her a reassuring squeeze of his hand, whispering that she was safe now, Harumi realized her mission had just become infinitely more dangerous. She wasn't just fighting the ninja anymore. She was fighting a civil war against her own traitorous heart.