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.
The flame had long since died.
Only embers remained, faint orange pulses beneath blackened bark and ash. Rei sat still beside them, cloak pulled tight, his breath shallow. The wind had dulled, but not vanished. It whispered now. Not in words — but in memory.
The mark on his chest itched. Not like a wound — but like a whisper under skin.
Then it began.
Not with thunder. Not with flash.
But with a pull.
The Fangstone called.
He rose without speaking. Kaia, curled near the shrine's ruin, stirred but did not wake. Or if she did, she did not stop him. As if she knew this step was not hers to share.
The path to the Fangstone had not changed.
But the world had.
The moment his hand touched the surface of that root-wreathed slab, the Hollow vanished.
And he fell.
Through frost. Through memory. Through the bones of time.
When he opened his eyes, he stood in a place that could not exist — a memory so vast, it had its own weight, its own gravity. The sky was a deep violet wound torn open by veins of Riftlight. No stars. Only streaks of bleeding energy across a dying firmament.
And from the Rift — they came.
Not one. Not few.
Legions.
Orcs poured out in howling packs, muscle and warpaint and iron rage. Behind them, demons with charred skin and eyes like inverted suns. Dragons with black-glass scales tore through the heavens, their wings casting endless shadow. Cloaked horrors crawled on a thousand limbs, weeping fog that ate steel.
And behind them all—
Armies.
Some with banners. Some with bone.
Armies of the breathing.
And armies of the dead.
The Rift belched them forth like a god retching out its sins, and the world shook with each scream. Towers fell. Forests burned. The seas boiled black.
Rei stood in the center of it — untouched, unseen, bearing witness to something the world had buried in myth.
And then—
Light.
A pulse.
A single blink.
And with it, seven stood.
Not monsters. Not mortals.
The Archons.
Their forms wavered, not out of weakness — but because language had no shape for them. Cloaks of mirrored flame. Wings of stone and starlight. One bore chains. One bore a bell. One burned so brightly Rei could barely see him at all.
They faced the Rift.
And from it — seven more came.
Not demons.
Not gods.
Not even things.
Sins.
Each one walked like a truth no one dared speak.
They did not march.
They arrived — as if they had always been, merely waiting to be seen.
The first shimmered in robes of flame, her halo a burning crown that scorched even the sky. Lust — not for flesh, but for transformation. The fire that devoured restraint and whispered: burn, and become.
Next came a creeping fog, thick with the scent of bark and rot. Sloth — a stillness so deep it strangled the wild. Even in sleep, she grew, and the world sickened.
Gluttony followed — cloaked in gold-inked silk, stomach stretched with memory. It devoured not food, but history. Scrolls, names, faces — all swallowed into silence.
Then envy crawled forth — vast and serpentine, its scaled body covered in weeping eyes. It did not seek beauty. It hated it. And dragged down all who dared to shine.
Pride strode tall, wrapped in thunder. A mask of silver hid its face, and a walking throne followed behind it like a chained god. It did not wish to rule—only to take.
Greed arrived like a code unraveling—an orb of mirrored metal with too many limbs, each one plucking secrets from the air. It did not crave wealth. It craved answers. And would erase the world to have them.
But the one that made Rei freeze—
Was wrath.
It stood taller than the rest.
Horns like a god's grave.
A cleaver burning in its hand.
Each breath it took cracked the sky.
And when it turned—
When it looked—
It saw him.
Not fully.
Not completely.
But enough.
Enough to make the stone scream.
Enough to make the Rift remember.
And when it turned its head—
It saw Rei.
Not truly. Not fully.
But enough.
Enough that the memory rippled.
The Fangstone screamed.
And just when it felt the Rift would consume everything—
Another figure appeared.
Not one of the Archons. Not one of the Sins.
It stepped from the Rift — but it did not belong to it.
Light bled from its form. Gentle. Blinding. Whole.
It raised no weapon. Wore no armor.
Only robes. Only presence.
And when it lifted its arms—
The Rift itself shuddered.
Its edges curled inward. Its scream turned to breath. The Rift closed.
The Archons vanished.
The Sins were sealed.
And silence swept the world.
Not peace.
Not victory.
Only silence.
The kind that follows thunder.
The kind that remembers.
Rei gasped and stumbled back from the Fangstone, falling to one knee in the snow. His breath came fast. His heart thundered. The mark across his chest burned.
Kaia stood nearby, her blade already half-drawn, eyes sharp.
"What did you see?"
He stared at the stone. At the roots still curled like ancient fingers.
"…The First Rift Wars."
Kaia froze.
He looked up at her, voice hoarse.
"I saw what came through. The sins. The Archons. The sealing."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Which sin did you see clearest?"
He hesitated.
Then answered.
"…Wrath."
She did not nod.
She did not speak.
But she understood.
Rei rose, slowly, the Fangstone still pulsing behind him.
Kaia stared at him a moment longer, then turned toward the glade.
"Then we have less time than I thought."
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."