The day before the Crucible.
Karu, Ayumu and Cho stood on the rooftop of the Division five command post nearest the barracks, Karu his gaze fixed on the horizon where the sun should have risen in warm gold. Instead, it flickered in and out of phase—moments of blinding white light collapsing into a dark shadow, then surging back again over and over again. Karu drew in a breath of the cool summer air in Tokyo, he was cracking his fingers fingers. "He's coming closer," he murmured to the emptiness beside him.
At the far right side of the command post its rooftop, Cho Linsun adjusted the straps of her combat harness where her guns were hanging, her eyes scanning the fractured skyline. Every few seconds, time snipped and rewound—seconds repeating themselves like the stutter of a broken record. Cho's punched the railing out of anger. "The King of Hell's influence is bleeding more and more into our world," she said softly. "It's not just Tokyo at this point. The global time net is collapsing."
Below the two of them, Ayumu ran into the command center, Kagetsu following her closely. Monitors lined on all the walls, each displaying disconcerting images: a street in Shinjuku center where every pedestrian moved in perfect unison. The they all paused for a heartbeat, then they all fell back into a chaotic motion; a surveillance camera in Mumbai and Paris showed an entire city block frozen and burned at the same time mid-stride; at the far end, a looped shot of Lucien standing alone against a backdrop of broken dawn.
Kagetsu tapped the nearest display. "That's now three concurrent time shadows of Lucien recorded over the Pacific and thr Atlantic. Satellites confirm: he's flickering between past, present and future echoes of himself."
On the far left of the control room, Lisa flipped through the satellite logs with practiced calm. "The distortions started growing on earth started twenty-four hours ago," she said, voice clipped. "But in the last eight hours, they've intensified even further by a fivefold." She paused at a line of code. "These aren't natural anomalies, thats clear. The King of Hell's machinations warp reality on earth—fracturing cause and effect until they bleed into our dimension."
Beside her, Kisuke—Division IIII new talent and Lisa´s friend—nodded gravely. He tapped the glass table in the center of the control room, and a three-dimensional map of the globe spun into view. Tiny red blips marked temporal ruptures: Chile, Siberia, New Guinea, India… and faintly, Southern Patagonia. "If we don't contain this problem right now, the world will rewrite itself in his image."
Lucien stood on the center of the ridge of Division V's compound, alone against a sea of shifting daylight. The ridge dropped away into dense forest in the Alpes, then the glittering edge of Hokkaido's southern coast. Then he was back at the ridge again. The wind teased at his white hair, it was cool despite the summer sun. But the sun itself wavered—its very essence unsteady, as if the concept of sunrise had become uncertain.
He breathed slowly, tasting the tense and charged air. Behind him, far below, the base slowly stirred to life again: the hum of the kitchen where Rylen prepared breakfast and meanwhile Emiluna calibrated her Chronomend in the subterranean chamber; the impact the whole building felt when Jason's kintic fists pulverizing reinforced dummies in the training yard.
Lucien did not move. He didn´t want to.
For four days staight—no, five days—they had counted the hours until the Crucible will start. He could feel reality loosening around him, transporting him to different places and he heard whispers and promises in the wind that he was already inside it. Each one of his heartbeats felt like an echo through multiple timeframes and dimensions, each breath a testament to worlds unraveling.
Karu's voice crackled in his mind, giving him some kind of peace: "You aren't alone anymore." He tilted his head to his right side, trying to still the swirl of memories—visions of scorched fields, of time reversed mid-fall, of dying voices screamig for help with no faces. He swallowed. "Almost time," he whispered to himself, the words a lifeline.
Below him, Ayumu's silhouette appeared on the ridge, followed by Karu, Cho, Kagetsu, Lisa, and Kisuke. They reached him one by one. Giving him and hug and forming a silent circle. Kagetsu placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "We're ready when you are, Lucien."
Cho raised her chin. "Whatever waits for you inside that Crucible, you'll face and kill it as our brother." Ayumu stepped forward, eyes bright with unspoken resolve. "I don ´ t like you Lucien. But when your in there, beat it. No chains," she added. "No rewriting."
Lisa folded her arms over eachother. "The battlefield they've built for you—where time and space collapsed—will bleed into our world if you fail. The King of Hell and the Council will destroy our earth. But we believe in you."
Kisuke produced a small, ring-like device etched with interlocking runes. He pressed it into Lucien's palm. "It will never bring out your true God of Vengeance powers. So you will always remain human. This will also anchor you if the distortions try to tear your soul apart. It's an emergency conduit—should you lose yourself in there, it'll pull you back right back to us."
Lucien closed his gloved hand over the ring. He felt its warmth and love, a hum beneath his skin. He looked at each and one of them, his chest tightening with gratitude and dread. "Tomorrow guys," he said, voice steady despite the quiver and anxiety in his heart, "I walk in alone. But I will carry you all with me in there. Because of you guys i will win."
They all nodded. The wind shifted, carrying the faintest echo of a distant scream. No words could answer that—the day slept uneasy on the edge of fate.
Beyond the mortal human world, in the Void of the Eternal Balance, a circle of luminescent figures assembled again. The Council of the Eternal Balance sat upon floating pillars of prismatic light, their forms half-seen through veils of cosmic haze. They gazed upon Lucien's multiple life‐lines, weaving threads of potential into the tapestry of destiny.
One by one, they spoke in a chorus that rippled through dimensions:
The First spoke:
"You have proven your strength, Vessel of Vengenace.""You have held the flame of vengeance for long enough without letting it consume your soul.""But the balance demands one final testament of true will and strenght."
A sliver of void‐light coalesced at the chamber's center: it was a humanoid shape, slowly solidifying itself in its true form. From its feet rose a cascade of floating blades, each orbiting like a miniature moon—each blade looked like a fragment of some shattered hero's memory. Its skin was the color of liquid moonlight, a surface that was drunk in every mote of light around it. One arm ended in a fist of living shadows and the dead , the other in a forearm comprised of shifting, mirror‐bright gears. Where its face should have been, a flawless mask of polished gold reflected the void—yet Lucien knew as soon as he faced it he would see his own face twisted in those reflections, a whispered promise of the hunter's mimicry.
"You shall be tested one last time, but not by the wrath of gods, but by the echo of your own possibility," the Council intoned. "Defeat the Sovereign Warden Seryx who will let you unleash your true powers, and you prove that you are the god of vengeance or the King of Hell."
At their words, the void‐light surged, shaping Seryx's true form in harsh relief. The runes carved into the floor of the chamber flared with energy as they bound him in place. Then, with a sudden crack like the shattering of a star, the bond released—and the hunter was finally free.
Seryx's first ever movement was a blink—a confluence of three afterimages stepping from one side of the chamber to the other. Not even The first could keep up with that. His voice, when he spoke, was layered with dying universes: a child's cry, a battle‐worn general's bark, and an ancient whisper older than creation. "I am what you could have been… if you forgot why you fought."
Time didn´t exist around him: seconds skipped, minutes folded back. His body glowed with veins of black light, pulsing in counters to Lucien's heartbeat. "I will unmake you when we meet," he said. "So that whatever comes after us may inherit something less than divine."
And then he vanished out of the Coucil of eternal Balance meeting room, melting into the void—and through that disappearance Lucien felt the first true tremor of fear. He felt something even the gods couldn´t describe.
The night fell soft and silent over Division V's compound, though "night" was a fragile concept now on earth. The stars in the sky stuttered in and out of view, as though blinking in Morse code. In the gardens next to the command post, pathways were curved between bonsai and cherry blossoms, but the blooms themselves froze mid‐flutter, droplets of dew hanging suspended like tears.
Lucien couldn´t sleep and wandered through this ghostly grove, every footstep echoing in the hush. His Divison V robe, tailored to bear the sigils of Division V, brushed against the lavender‐scented grass. It all came back to him. Memories of his battles against the near one level 1 monster and the ice that came from Forstjaw Reiken, flitted through his mind. He paused beside a stone lantern, its cautious glow caught in the shifting temporal current.
Karu suddenly appeared at his side, carrying two cups of tea. One green and one black. He handed him the balck one in silence. Lucien accepted it, feeling the warmth seep through the ceramic, a small anchor in the tempest of his mind. "Black tea, my favourite," Lucien said. "Strong enough to wake a ghost."
He managed to give a smile, lifting the cup to his lips. The first sip was always bitter—familiar comfort. Karu sat beside him, his robes forming a pair of dark petals in the moonlight. "Lucien you're going to step into the that Crucible at dawn," he began with a firm voice, "and they'll strip everything away everything until only your essence remains."
He set the cup down. "What if there's nothing left of me?"
Karu's eyes glowed with quiet fire. "There is. I have seen it with my own eyes. The core of your heart is more than just a weapon."
A rustle of robes announced Rylen, Jason, Emiluna, Ayumu, Cho, Kagetsu, Lisa, and Kisuke crossing the garden's marble bridge. They gathered like a silent court, each offering a final token of faith to their beloved Lucien. Ayumu pressed a small carved pendant into Lucien's palm. "For clarity," she said. Cho placed a gauntlet modified with time‐seal runes. "To keep you focused." Kagetsu offered a sealed scroll to Lucien. "For memory, so you won´t forget who your real rival is." Lisa touched him on his left his shoulder. "For balance." Kisuke laid a vial of silver‐tinted oil on a stone plinth. "For anchoring soul to flesh."
Lucien looked at each of them in turn, his heart swelling. "Thank you," he whispered. "I… I'll see you all soon. Thats a promise."
Rylen, Jason and Emiluna all stepped forward last, his dual blades sheathed at his hips. Jason his kinetic gauntlets on his fists and Emiluna her with her long silver hair that looked so beautifull in the nightsky. Rylen spoke quietly: "Remember what I told you Lucien. You can carry the fire—but you don't have to become it." He placed a gentle hand on Lucien's chest, over the heart. "Don't let them erase your shape."
Lucien closed his eyes for a moment. Taking it all in. A single snowflake drifted down—impossible in midsummer—and landed on his cheek before melting. "Together we´ll win," he murmured.
They formed a circle around him. For a moment, time held its breath. Then Emiluna whispered, "Rest now. Tomorrow, all the realms watches you fight."
Lucien nodded, drawing a slow breath. The black tea still in his hand tasted of resolve. Ahead lay a trial no mortal had survived. But they would survive together, even if the world broke.
And so the final night passed and the morning fell, the garden's petals trembling in the dying light of fractured time—an hour borrowed before the Crucible's dawn.