Chapter 3: Phantom Bloodline
The world fractured.
A scream echoed—
but it wasn't the Voidspawn's.
It was mine.
"Brother...?"
I stood frozen, my breath caught in my throat.
The creature before me still looked like a monster—
but its voice, its posture, even the scar above its right eye...
It was exactly like him.
"Kaito..." I whispered.
My older brother.
The one who vanished the night everything ended.
Flashback.
A year ago.
Our house, drenched in rain.
Lightning cracked the sky.
I came home late.
The front door was open.
I found Mom first.
Her eyes wide open.
No wounds. No blood.
Just... empty.
Then Dad. The same.
And finally—
Kaito.
He stood at the center of the living room, face pale, body trembling.
His hands were covered in black ink.
His last words before disappearing:
"It's inside me, Hiragi. If you ever see me again… run."
Now he stood before me again—half-human, half-monster.
"Don't believe what your eyes tell you," Airi said behind me.
"Voidspawn feast on memory. They wear your past to break your soul."
But it was too real.
Too sharp. Too raw.
"Was it really you that night, Kaito?" I asked.
The monster grinned, then charged.
I didn't move.
Airi intervened.
She summoned a spear of pure shadow and hurled it—
piercing through the creature's chest.
It shrieked, body unraveling like thread in a storm.
Gone.
Silence.
I fell to my knees.
"He was already gone, Hiragi."
"What you saw… was just a mask."
I looked at Airi.
For the first time… she looked genuinely sad.
"The Void doesn't just kill," she said.
"It remembers. It steals faces you love, just to twist the knife deeper."
That night, I stared at my ceiling again.
Only now… it stared back.
The mark on my palm glowed faintly.
Then came Nolan's voice.
"So, you've met the Echo of Blood."
"That was only the first. The others are waiting. Some will look like your friends. Some will sound like your dreams."
"Are you ready to forget who you are, just to remember what you must become?"
I didn't answer.
But I already knew:
This wasn't about saving the world.
This was about surviving myself.
To be continued…