There were twenty of them.
They stepped through the broken mirror like shadows unfolding from the cracks in the world. Each one wore a familiar face — friends, teachers, even family.
But the way they smiled?
Empty. Wide. Hungry.
The kind of smile you wear when you're trying to remember how humans do it.
The kind of smile corpses wear in nightmares.
Yuna fired first.
An arrow of violet light sliced clean through the throat of the nearest copy of their homeroom teacher.
The thing didn't bleed.
It just crumbled — like glass.
And the next one screamed.
---
Reiji moved before the echoes finished.
Two glyphs lit in the air, green and white. Wind and shield. He yanked Daigo behind him as spectral claws slashed from the left — a version of Daigo's own mother, smiling as she lunged.
"None of this is real!" Reiji shouted.
But it didn't help.
Because the pain still was.
Karin flung twin blood-snares into the crowd. One latched onto a copy of Principal Kenzaki — the headmaster who had supposedly retired two years ago.
The other latched onto someone that looked like her.
Same hair.
Same eyes.
Same scar on the brow — the one only she and Arata had ever noticed.
The copy stared back at her.
And whispered:
> "You always knew it would be you."
Then exploded in her face.
---
Yuna had gone full frost-slayer mode.
She darted through the fog, loosing arrows of pure cryo-magic. Each hit froze a doppelgänger solid — then shattered them.
But for every one she destroyed, three more took its place.
They were multiplying.
Changing.
Glitching.
Faces blurring into others.
Reiji saw one with his own face — screaming, mouth sewn shut.
Another had Daigo's hair and Karin's voice.
Then—
He saw Arata.
The real one.
---
Not in the swarm.
Not among the monsters.
Above them.
On the floating remains of the shattered mirror, like a shard of moonlight hovering midair.
Eyes closed.
Arms limp.
Floating — not falling.
His body was wrapped in black thread. Void-thread. Unraveling and re-stitching every second like the world couldn't decide if he should exist.
And behind him…
A man stood.
Cloaked in an old Tenryuu Academy uniform. Faded black and red. The emblem was different — not the current one, but the ancient Dragon-Sun Crest erased from history.
His eyes glowed gold.
And when he spoke — it shook the entire realm.
> "You shouldn't be here."
---
Reiji's glyphs shattered from the pressure of that voice.
Karin fell to her knees.
Daigo screamed and passed out.
Yuna landed hard beside Reiji, gasping.
"Who the hell—?"
But Reiji already knew.
Sort of.
He'd seen the name once.
Buried in the headmaster's forbidden records.
> "You're the First Legion-Bearer."
The man nodded once.
"Yes. And he—" he gestured to Arata, "—wasn't supposed to awaken."
Reiji's heart thudded. "What does that mean?"
The man didn't answer.
He stepped off the mirror shard and walked through the air toward them.
As he moved, the monsters froze.
Like time had stopped for them.
Then shattered into glass dust.
Every single one.
Gone.
---
The man landed silently.
Now up close, he looked no older than twenty — but his presence felt like it weighed centuries.
"I am Shōren Yukigami," he said.
"Former Wielder of the Hollow Crown."
"Last Knight of the Starless Era."
"And guardian of the last Voidline."
Reiji spoke carefully. "Why is Arata floating like that?"
Shōren looked up.
"The Void chose him."
"The what?" Yuna asked.
Shōren turned to her.
And what he said next broke every rule of magic they'd been taught:
> "Our world exists because of edits."
> "Reality has been rewritten… over and over."
> "Every timeline, every war, every death we avoided… leaves behind remnants."
> "Fragments."
> "These fragments form a network."
> "And that network is called the Voidline."
---
Reiji couldn't breathe for a moment.
"No one remembers alternate timelines," he said flatly.
Shōren nodded.
"They're not meant to. But some people can."
"People like you."
"People like him."
He pointed at Arata.
---
Yuna stepped forward, trembling. "What does that mean for him?"
Shōren exhaled.
"It means Arata's soul has been overwritten."
"Partially."
"By a version of himself that lived… and died… in a timeline that was erased."
> "He is becoming a Legion."
---
Karin whispered, "What's a Legion?"
Shōren looked at her.
Not with pity.
With respect.
> "A Legion is a soul composed of many selves."
> "Timelines that never existed. Choices never made."
> "They remember."
> "And they want."
> "They want to live."
---
Reiji shook his head. "So he's not possessed."
"No," Shōren said. "He's corrupted."
"By himself."
"By the him that could have been."
> "And soon… he won't be Arata anymore."
---
The sky split.
---
A tear opened above the void — not just a rift.
A seam in reality itself.
And something looked through it.
Something vast and curious.
Reiji fell to his knees.
Yuna screamed.
Karin's blood exploded from her fingertips uncontrollably.
Daigo — unconscious — began to float.
And above it all, Arata opened his eyes.
Black.
Empty.
And he spoke:
> "So many me's."
> "So much hunger."
> "Let me wear them all."
---
The cliff collapsed beneath them.
Reality distorted.
The world reversed — time played backward, shattering all sense of place.
And Shōren — the mysterious guardian — shouted only two words:
> "RUN NOW!"
---
And then—
Everything exploded into white.