Sleep found Rei like fog—slow, creeping, weightless. One moment he watched the ash roll across the hills of Druvadir from the ruined tower. The next… he was no longer there.
No smoke. No stars. No Kaia.
Only hum.
Only silence.
And motion.
The train hummed through tunnels of steel and shadow.
Outside, the lights of Tokyo blurred like falling stars — streaks of red, amber, and pale blue smearing the rain-soaked windows. The glass trembled faintly against Rei's temple. He didn't move. Didn't flinch. His reflection stared back at him in fractured neon: tired eyes, black hoodie, the weight of hours behind a screen.
Even the soft chime of the next station, Ōmori, barely pulled him back.
He blinked. Exhaled. Pulled his bag closer.
Another day ended.
The station's doors hissed open. A gust of cold air swept in — laced with wet concrete, vending machine coffee, and the distant ozone tinge of wires too old to keep dry.
Rei stepped out. The yellow line of the platform bit beneath his shoe.
He paused. Glanced upward.
The clouds hung low, heavy — brooding like forgotten gods. Gray upon gray. No stars. No sky. Just the echo of city breath.
He liked it that way.
Ōmori was quiet. Quieter than Shibuya, where people talked too loudly and lights flashed like memory seizures. Quieter than Akihabara, where every window shouted.
Here… no one looked too close.
And that was perfect.
His apartment was a concrete cube with ambition. He climbed three flights of stained stairs, unlocked his door by muscle memory, and stepped into the same breathless box he had left that morning.
A bed. A desk. A window that never opened all the way.
And in the corner — the PC.
The screen lit up before he even sat. His fingers moved automatically.
Tales of Astralfall.
An old RPG. Pixel art. Text boxes. Music that mourned its own world.
Rei had beaten it six times.
Tonight, he started again.
Not to win.
Not even to play.
To remember.
He wandered pixel fields where grass never swayed. He walked through crumbled castles and watched the shadows of once-gods flicker between code. He didn't press forward. He stood still—just to hear the wind that wasn't there.
He didn't know if the game made him lonely, or if loneliness made the game matter.
Maybe both.
01:14 A.M.
The clock blinked like an old man too tired to keep time. Rei's stomach growled.
He stood. Slid on his hoodie.
Down the stairs. Past the sleeping hall light.
Into the night.
The streets were empty. Rain drizzled like the world itself was sighing. A vending machine blinked blue and white. A drunk salaryman lay curled beside it like yesterday's story.
Lawson's light shimmered ahead.
Inside, the air smelled like boiled pork and bleach. Rei walked past the drinks. Ignored the alcohol. Picked up curry bread. カレーパン. His favorite.
At the counter, the clerk didn't speak.
Scan. Bow. Bag.
Rei stepped into the silence once more.
He passed the vending machine again.
Didn't buy.
Just stood there.
Let the low hum enter him.
Let the wind curl under his hoodie.
The city… breathed.
Somewhere above, a plane blinked red through clouds he could not pierce.
He stared up.
And for the first time that night—
He felt watched.
Not by cameras.
Not by people.
By something… older.
Something waiting.
Later, when he would awaken to a world of chains and fire and ruin—
Rei would remember this night.
Not for meaning.
But for silence.
For being the last.
The last time his name was still his own.
The last time he was just a man.
Then the hum cracked.
The screen of memory shattered.
"Riftborn?"
A whisper slithered from the shadows.
Familiar.
Unforgiving.
"Do you enjoy the peace?"
The city dissolved around him.
Neon warped. Rain evaporated. The floor beneath his shoes crumbled.
He fell—
—through glass.
Through time.
Through self.
Darkness awaited.
But not emptiness.
A presence.
It coiled around him.
No hands. No teeth.
But pressure.
A will.
A hunger.
"Back at the slave pits," it hissed, voice like silk burned over fire, "I watched. I fed. I thrived. On their fear. Their despair. You heard them scream, didn't you?"
Rei flinched.
"You were one of them. And yet... not."
"You carry it. The fracture. The seed of the Void."
"Do you want power?"
He tried to speak.
He could not.
The voice pressed in. Whispered from within.
"Power to blink. Power to erase. Power to devour."
"You have it. You just don't understand it yet."
A thousand faces swam in the black: Kaia's bloodstreaked expression. The Rift Spawns. Overseer Malrec, eyes bulging as his throat bled. The masked figure atop the Keep.
All circling.
All converging.
And at the center—
Himself.
Burning violet.
Erasing the world.
"Soon," the voice said, softer now, like a lover in the dark, "you will know what lies beyond the power you hold."
A pause.
Then—
"Little Riftborn."
He gasped.
His eyes flew open.
Kaia was crouched beside him, blade half-drawn, one hand on his shoulder.
She must have heard him.
Rei was drenched in sweat.
Breath shallow.
She didn't speak.
Not yet.
Because she saw something.
Something new.
Something waiting just behind his eyes.
And Rei…
Rei only whispered one word.
Still haunted. Still shaking.
"…it spoke again."
Dawn came quietly.
Not with fire. Not with gold.
But with a slow bleeding of light that crept along the torn sky like a wound unwilling to clot. The stars had already retreated, veiled not by distance, but by the world's hush—like they, too, waited to see if the morning would hold.
And for a time, it didn't.
The hilltop where the watchtower lay remained still. The trees at the edge of Druvadir loomed in silence. Smoke no longer rose from Blackstone's corpse in the west, but its shadow still clung to the air. Cold. Weighty.
Kaia moved through it without sound.
She had not slept.
Even after the long march, even after the battle, the escape, the Rift Spawns—the burden in her chest would not let her rest. She had kept watch from the tower's peak through the night, eyes narrowed against the dark, ears tuned to things that did not make noise.
But now… she descended.
The moment her feet touched the lower stone, she saw him.
Rei sat on the slope's edge. Not far from the fire pit, not close to the trees. Hunched forward. Cloak wrapped tight. Head bowed.
She knew the posture.
Not exhaustion.
Not grief.
Containment.
She approached without a word. Let the silence settle. Then, as the wind shifted, she asked:
"…Did it speak again?"
Rei didn't look up. But he nodded.
His voice was raw, still caught somewhere between sleep and something deeper.
"It waited until the dream felt real."
Kaia sat beside him. The stones beneath them were damp from the night air, but neither of them cared.
"What did it say?" she asked.
He hesitated.
Then, slowly:
"It mocked me."
She turned toward him, her profile still and sharp in the low light.
Rei's fingers twitched slightly. He stared at them. As if expecting them to vanish.
"It said it fed off the fear in Blackstone. Off my fear. Off the others. The slave pits. It enjoyed it."
He swallowed.
"It told me I have power. The kind that erases. Devours. That I could use it if I only stopped fighting it."
His gaze drifted to the trees.
"It said I would. That soon, I'd see what lies beyond this… this thing inside me."
A pause.
Then he said, more softly:
"I think it's already in me. Not just touching me. Rooted. Like it's always been there, waiting to bloom."
Kaia was silent.
She watched him a moment longer, then looked away.
"You're not wrong," she said.
He blinked.
"You've felt this before," he said.
She nodded once.
"When they branded me," she said, voice low and dry, "something followed. A hunger. Quiet at first. Distant. But the older I grew, the louder it became. I thought I'd buried it. But when I saw you blink—when I saw what you did in that courtyard—I felt it stir again."
Her claws flexed in her lap.
"I don't think it ever left me."
She stood, her eyes scanning the trees, the horizon, the path ahead.
"The Order never marks without purpose. And they never let power go to waste."
Rei rose beside her, slower, his body still stiff with aftershock.
Kaia pulled the ragged cloak tighter around her shoulders. The ash-stained fabric flapped faintly in the wind.
Then she said, cold and clear:
"We can't stay here."
Rei frowned. "Where would we even go?"
Her answer was not hesitant.
"To the Frostfang Grove."
He turned toward her fully now. "That's your home."
"Was," she said. "Now it's where answers sleep. Where the roots grow deep enough to remember things even the Rift has forgotten."
Rei's eyes searched hers. "Will we be safe there?"
Kaia's lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"No."
Then, more softly:
"But we might learn how to fight."
She stepped past him.
Paused only once to say:
"At dawn, we move."