Shinichi opened his eyes to pain first.
Not sight. Not sound.
Pain.
It was everywhere—like his body had been pressed through a grate and bent out of shape before being left to rot. His vision was blotched with gray, as if someone had smeared ash across the world. The air smelled of damp earth and rot, the kind of smell that clung to lungs and never let go.
He tried to move.
Nothing worked.
His limbs felt like tangled ropes. His left arm didn't obey. His right leg screamed when he even thought about flexing it. Somewhere beneath him, the forest floor squelched with mud and fallen leaves.
Pain, and then a name came to him, unbidden.
"… Shinichi," he whispered, barely audible even to himself.
His voice was cracked, distant. Almost foreign. His head throbbed with a weight that made thought like swimming in thick mud.
He blinked, trying to focus past the fog.
The sky—or what he could see of it through the trees—was a murky greenish black. Branches twisted like claws against that bruised sky. Leaves that should have been vibrant were blackened or ghostly pale. Everything seemed… wrong.
Shinichi tried again to move, and agony flared so bright behind his eyes that he gasped.
He must have been here for hours… days… he couldn't tell. His clothes were torn, soaked with blood he hoped was his own. Memories tumbled at the edges of his mind—but when he reached for them, they dissolved into static.
He didn't remember how he got here.
He didn't remember why he was injured.
All he knew was pain, and the oppressive stillness of the forest.
He tried to move his head. Just enough to see the clearing he was in. His eyes slid over the ground—marred by deep gouges, as though something enormous had clawed at the earth. Broken branches, crushed ferns, scorched patches of soil.
And prints.
Hundreds of footprints, stamped into the mud in chaotic spirals around him—tiny, large, some like bird talons, others like humanoid feet. Many he couldn't identify.
He tried to push himself up, using his good arm, and black spots danced before his eyes.
A low sound broke the silence, like gravel rolling on stone—not close, but too close.
Shinichi froze.
His breathing hitched.
Nothing moved at first. Then the bushes to his right shivered, and something slunk out.
It was slender and low to the ground. Its body was ashen, with patches of gleaming obsidian where its skin seemed worn or broken. Two glowing embers blinked where its eyes should have been. Sharp claws clicked against the wet earth as it stalked toward him.
Shinichi couldn't tell if it was animal or something else.
He tried to speak, but only a rasp came out.
The creature tilted its head, watching him, expression inscrutable.
Then it opened its mouth—a cruel line of jagged teeth—and emitted a low, guttural growl.
Shinichi's instinct screamed run, but his body wouldn't listen.
The creature advanced, tail lashing, and Shinichi braced for impact.
But it didn't attack.
Instead, it stopped a few feet away and stared.
More came then—two, three, ten. Silent watchers, circling him with eyes that gleamed with something unsettling.
Shinichi's pulse thundered. He tried to cling to something familiar—anything.
His name.
He knew his name.
But nothing else.
The creatures edged closer. Teeth bared. A few lowered themselves to all fours. Others stayed upright, longer limbs spindly under mottled skin.
He tried to lift his arm again, weakly, almost nothing, and one of the creatures snapped its head toward him, eyes flaring with a yellow glow.
Shinichi froze.
His heart hammered like a war drum.
"W-wait…" he croaked. There was no strength in his voice. No conviction.
Nothing but fear.
And then one of them spoke.
Not in words. Not in sounds anyone could understand. But he felt it—a wave of something dark and clinging that pressed into his mind.
Hollow energy.
The word flared in his memory, even as everything else faded.
Hollow energy—that was what these things wielded. That was why the forest was dead. That was why the prints in the mud didn't match any creature he'd ever seen.
But the meaning of it… of how or why or what it truly was?
He didn't know.
He couldn't remember.
The creatures advanced as one, a slow, deliberate wave.
Shinichi's breath hitched again. His vision blurred. Pain spiked in his chest so sharp that for a moment he forgot to breathe.
He had no weapon. No training. No idea who he was beyond the name he clutched desperately.
Just pain.
Just fear.
Just the dark whisper of something coming closer.
One of the creatures lunged—with speed that should have been impossible.
Shinichi barely had time to scream.
The world became a blur of motion and agony.
Claws raked his side; he felt the tearing of flesh. Dirt and debris sprayed into his face. Something struck his ribs with a bone-crushing impact. Pain lit every nerve in his body like electric fire.
He curled into a ball instinctively, eyes squeezed shut.
And then—
A rush of power, cold and deep, surged inside him.
It was not warmth.
It was not light.
It was hollow.
The word flashed again in his mind—hollow energy—but this time tied to something else, something ancient and terrible.
Agony became a catalyst.
Something inside him responded.
He didn't know how—he couldn't explain it—but there, in the deepest part of his gut, a resonance awakened.
It was like falling through ice, like being hollowed out from the inside and carved into something unrecognizable.
He screamed—not out of fear, but because something new had erupted within him.
The forest seemed to freeze.
The beasts recoiled, ears flattened, claws retreating as if struck by an invisible blade.
Shinichi's body convulsed.
His wounds didn't heal—but the pain became muffled, distant, like echoes in a cavern.
A pressure radiated outward from him, pulsing through the clearing like ripples on a pond.
Ground cracked.
Leaves blackened.
Light bent.
The creatures snarled and skittered back, their shapes flickering.
And then everything went still.
Silence swallowed the clearing.
Shinichi lay there, trembling, face slick with sweat and blood. His breaths came shallow and fast. There was no warmth where the hollow power had risen—only a cavernous emptiness, a cold void where everything should have been solid.
No one moved.
Not even the wind.
And then—
A single voice echoed through the forest.
Not from any of the creatures.
Not from Shinichi.
It came from above.
Slow. Heavy. Ancient.
"Who dares call upon hollow energy?"
Shinichi's eyes shot open.
He didn't know the voice. Didn't recognize its source. But something in him stirred—a flicker, like a memory drowning in deep water, trying to break the surface.
His vision was still clouded, but he saw figures emerging from the trees.
Tall shapes. Humanoid, but elongated—like shadows stretched thin over bone. Their bodies flickered with the same hollow aura that had surged from him.
The voice spoke again.
"Child of the forsaken throne…"
Shinichi blinked.
Throne?
His heart skipped.
Another memory—a fragment—flashed behind his eyelids.
A great hall of stone. Echoing voices. A crown resting on a pedestal of light. Someone—something—bowing before him.
And then laughter—divine and terrible.
"Your words… your defiance… you have awakened forces you cannot comprehend."
The voice came from one of the tall figures now standing directly in front of him. Its face was obscured by shadow, but its presence pressed down like a weight.
Shinichi tried to speak.
Tried to form a word.
Tried to breathe.
His chest tightened.
He couldn't remember anything—except his name, and the pain. Everything else was gone.
The hollow energy that had surged out of him faded slowly, leaving behind a chill that gnawed at his bones. The creatures that had attacked earlier now stood still, like statues carved from night.
The figure before him tilted its head, eyes glowing dimly.
"You have power," it said. Its voice was soft—almost curious—but with an undercurrent of something like threat. "Power lost. Power awakened. Power… feared."
Shinichi felt his empty chest ache at those words—lost, forgotten, feared.
What did they mean?
He didn't know.
All he knew was fear. And that voice.
The figure reached out a hand—long, slender, tipped with nails like obsidian.
"Rise," it said.
Shinichi tried to comply.
Tried to sit up.
Tried to speak.
But his limbs wouldn't obey.
He was still broken.
Still weak.
Still alone.
And then the figure spoke again—low, deliberate, echoing through the trees like distant thunder:
"You have returned, Shinichi of the Fallen Line."
The name hit him like a blow to the chest.
His mind reeled.
His pulse quickened.
Something deep inside him stirred once more—like wings beating in a cage.
And before he could catch his breath, the sky tore open.
A sound like cracked stone rumbled through the forest.
Light—sharp, white, and blazing—pierced the canopy above.
The ground beneath him trembled.
Roots snapped. Trees groaned.
The ancient voice from the heavens boomed:
"Return what was stolen… or be unmade."
Shinichi's heart stopped.
The air shattered.
And everything went black.