Falling wasn't what Leo expected.
There was no screaming wind, no rush of speed. It was more like being unwritten—as though existence itself erased him line by line, then began to rewrite.
Colors bled across the inside of his eyelids. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or remembering. The warmth of her hands. The cold silence of his room. A heartbeat that wasn't his.
Then—
Pain.
Not sharp. Just real. Solid. Gravity returned. Breath returned. The scent of dust and moss invaded his lungs.
He gasped.
Leo jolted up with a cough, his back pressing against what felt like damp stone. He blinked rapidly. The light above was... wrong.
The sky wasn't blue.
It was red.
Not a burning, angry red. It shimmered like molten glass — warm, slow, bleeding across clouds shaped like runes.
"…Nimrune," he muttered, though he didn't know how he knew.
He looked around.
He was lying in a stone circle — ancient, cracked, and overgrown with thorned vines. Tall stones marked the perimeter, each carved with sigils that pulsed faintly as if watching him. The clearing was surrounded by towering trees with black bark and violet leaves. No birds. No breeze. Just an eerie stillness.
Leo staggered to his feet, the memory of his fall still rattling in his bones.
Then… he felt it.
Something inside him shifted.
Like a door he hadn't noticed before, now unlocked.
A heartbeat, not entirely his.
A presence.
He gasped again, clutching his chest. Emotions not his own flickered across his senses — grief, guilt, longing. A memory that did not belong to him: a girl crying in an empty field.
Emotional Echo.
It had already begun.
Leo stumbled forward, catching his reflection in a puddle. He looked the same—older, maybe. Sharper. There was something ancient in his eyes that hadn't been there before.
Then a whisper echoed from behind a nearby stone.
"…Another one?" a voice muttered. "They're dropping faster now."
Leo spun around.
A cloaked figure stepped from the treeline, holding a glowing staff. She wasn't human. Her skin shimmered like pearl, and her eyes were entirely silver.
"You're not from here," she said.
"Understatement," Leo muttered.
The woman stepped closer, studying him with unnerving calm. "You landed in the Runeground. That means one of the gods marked you."
"Lucky me," Leo replied, forcing himself to stand straighter.
She paused. Then, slowly: "What did you trade to get here?"
Leo looked up at the blood-red sky.
"…My past."
---
Meanwhile, far above, in a realm that no map could chart, the rookie god hovered in silence. His arms were crossed. His gaze followed the ripple Leo's descent had left in the threads of fate.
"Interesting," he whispered.
He drifted backwards into the ether, watching dozens of other soul-threads moving like tangled vines through the system grid. But Leo's thread glowed differently — like a spark that refused to extinguish.
"He's not like the others."
The god sighed, rubbing his forehead.
"…And he's going to cause trouble."
A pause.
Then a smirk.
"…Good."