The last breath of the Frost-Fang Clan lay farther still—Beyond the shrine.Beyond the song-stones and frost-braziers.Past the glades where the World Tree's roots grew too deep to dream.
They walked without speaking. Snow gathered at their boots, and silence clung to their cloaks like ash. The wind had lost its voice here — not still, but grieving. It carried only memory.
Between ridges and the rim of a frozen lake, the land opened like a wound. A forgotten hollow, tucked beneath the shadow of all that once was — the heart of the old Frostfang.
Rei saw it first: the broken longhouses, bone-wrought archways half-buried in snow, the runes etched into their spines now dulled by frost and time. The bones of fires long cold. Totems lay scattered, their fangs broken, their watchfulness stilled.
This wasn't a battlefield.It was a grave.
Kaia stopped at the center of it all. Her boots sank into the snow, unmoving. Her shoulders — once taut with fury — now held a stillness that spoke of weight far older than war. Rei watched her fists curl. Not in anger. In memory.
He stepped beside her, his breath barely mist.
"The Grove remembered your name," he said gently. "And this place… it remembers your pain."
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
The wind stirred again, low and cold, drifting over the lake like a dying whisper.
That night, the stars burned cold above the hollow.
Rei knelt beside the crumbled hearth, coaxing what little flame he could from wet wood. His fingers ached with the chill. The mark on his chest had gone quiet — but its silence felt more like watching.
Kaia had vanished into the woods, wordless, drawn to what she called the Ancestor Hollow — a place sacred to her bloodline.
He had thought to follow.He didn't.
Instead, he sat. Waiting. Listening to the crackle of flame and his own heartbeat.
Tokyo felt like another life. Another world. A subway platform blurred with neon. Steam rising from ramen. Blue screens in the dark. A bed too small. A life too quiet.
No one ever waited for him there.
Now, for the first time… he waited.
**
In the heart of the forest, beneath frost-thick branches and the shivering hush of starlight, Kaia knelt before a stone.
The Fangstone.
A crooked slab of blackstone, scarred and crowned by ancient roots. It shimmered faintly under the moon — the last place the World Tree had touched before the burning. Even now, its roots curled around the grave like fingers that could not let go.
She placed a talisman at its base — a silver thread braided with bone. An offering. A promise. A wound reopened.
"I failed them," she whispered.
The wind gave no answer.
But her memories did.
Her father's voice, roaring through a blizzard.The reek of burning fur.The brand that seared not just flesh, but name.Her mother's scream, choked by flame.The silence when it all ended.
And her. Still breathing.
That was the cruelest part.
"I don't know why I'm still alive," she murmured. "But I won't run anymore."
She didn't cry. But something beneath her ribs gave way, a silent cracking — like a frozen lake in spring.
Rei jolted awake.
Not from noise — but from the absence of it.
There was a hum beneath the Hollow now, deep and pulling. It thrummed in the mark across his chest. It called with no voice, only memory.
He rose, stepped past the sleeping fire, past Kaia curled in the shadow of a broken shrine. The Hollow awaited. He didn't question it. He walked.
The Fangstone stood before him, quiet, waiting.
He reached out—
And the world shattered.
He stood in the same hollow, but not the same time. The trees were taller. The sky was torn with violet light — auroras rippling across the heavens like veins of some great dreaming beast.
Before him stood a man: tall, broad-shouldered, furred, proud. A beastkin. His blade glowed with frostlight, sheathed at his side like thunder caged. Around him knelt warriors in silent reverence. Shamans hummed in low harmony.
And at the center… a figure cloaked in shadow. Not man. Not god.But Riftborn.
"Hollow Flame.""Breaker of Chains."
The titles weren't spoken.They were remembered.
The Riftborn raised a hand — and the trees recoiled.
Totems cracked. Stone groaned.The Fangstone screamed.
"The Rift does not choose," the memory whispered."It reclaims."
And then — silence.
Dawn painted the snow with pale gold.
Kaia stood barefoot at the lake's edge, eyes fixed on the still water, as if searching for something beneath it. Snow melted beneath her soles, not from warmth — but from presence.
Rei approached, an old ragged cloak still wrapped around his shoulders. He said nothing.
She spoke first, voice steady.
"You touched the stone."
"I saw someone. Another Riftborn. Another fall."
Kaia didn't look at him, but nodded once.
"You're not the first," she said. Then, after a beat, "But you may be the last."
She stepped forward and, without warning, pressed her thumb to his brow — smearing a streak of ash across his skin in the shape of a crescent.
A mark of mourning. Or remembrance. Or both.
Then she turned to him.
And for the first time, her voice was not a warrior's ——but a survivor's.
"Then don't repeat their ending."
**
Elsewhere…
High above the shifting towers of Cindralis Prime — where mind bends matter and memory is carved into crystal — a king stood in quiet thought.
The chamber was built of polished obsidian and floating glass, shaped not by hands but by will. No torches burned here. The light came from thought alone.
Behind him, a young woman knelt.
Her armor was silver over crimson — polished to a mirror's edge.
Her hair, like flame braided in discipline. Her heart, divided between doctrine and something unspoken.
"The Riftborn moves," she said softly, eyes lowered. "He walks beneath the old boughs."
The king said nothing for a time. His gaze remained fixed on the horizon — where the towers blurred into stars and time spiraled inward.
At last, his voice came. Deep. Calm. Measured like a judge's breath.
"The Grove awakens. The Seals begin to stir. And still… no one understands what wakes with them."
A beat passed. Then the faintest breath of doubt escaped the paladin's lips.
"…Should we act?"
He turned to her, not unkind.
"Would you chain a storm with parchment? A shadow with light?"
She looked up. She said nothing, but in her golden-amber eyes burned a fire — not wild, but waiting. A light unspoken, aching to be seen.
He stepped down from the platform, robes brushing the arcane runes that glowed faintly at his passing.
"Let him walk his path. Let him believe it is his own."
He placed a hand on her pauldron, heavy with meaning.
"The bindings were forged long before he opened his eyes. The Void does not give — it remembers."