Two years had passed after that day The field was already dead when they arrived.
Gray stalks of ash-flowers rose from the soil like petrified veins, reaching skyward toward clouds that hadn't shifted in months. The wind had no sound. No birds. No machines.
And no civilians.
Not anymore.
> "Area clear," came Riv's voice in Kaien's earpiece. "But I don't like it. Nothing this clean is ever clean."
Kaien crouched beside a half-sunken road sign and unsheathed one of his twin blades. The steel was hand-forged, curved slightly, blackened to absorb reflection. No engraving. No decoration.
Just death.
The kind he now dealt in.
---
Two years had changed him.
He was taller now — lean, scarred, silent as a shadow. His eyes were sharper, no longer just watching but dissecting. His steps didn't make a sound.
He didn't wear standard Requiem gear anymore.
He wore the variant jacket — stitched with red threading across the back, denoting special units. But even among them, Kaien stood apart.
Because Kaien didn't fight for command.
He fought to understand.
And to survive the Gateborn that still hunted him.
---
The mission was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance sweep.
Zone 9. Former agricultural district. Coordinates flagged for anomalous Gatefield pulses.
No visuals.
No survivors.
Kaien, Riv, and a new recruit named Mika were sent to check it.
It had been quiet.
For exactly thirteen minutes.
---
> "Contact, west field," Mika's voice snapped through the comms. "It's fast—!"
The sound cut out.
Kaien didn't flinch.
He ran.
No hesitation.
His boots hit the cracked soil in a blur. His cloak flared behind him, then tucked close as he drew both blades.
Twin arcs of black steel sang in his hands.
A year ago, he barely knew how to hold a knife.
Now, he moved like he was born to sever.
---
The creature was already on her.
A Gateborn.
Low-bodied. Six legs. A mouth that wasn't a mouth — just a hole split open across its neck, lined with rows of bone saws that spun without sound.
Kaien didn't speak.
He struck.
The first blade slid beneath its jaw.
The second buried itself between two shoulder joints, twisted, and sliced through.
The creature shuddered.
But didn't fall.
It whipped around.
Kaien ducked, rolled, and drove both blades into its core as it lunged.
Black ash sprayed the air.
Mika hit the ground behind him, blood trailing from her arm.
Kaien yanked his weapons free, spun once, and cleaved the creature in half.
It evaporated like ink dissolving in water.
---
Silence returned.
Kaien stood still.
His blades dripped with black soot.
He exhaled slowly.
> "You alright?" he asked without turning.
> "Y-yeah," Mika rasped. "I didn't even see it until—how did you…?"
She stopped.
Because Kaien hadn't moved since.
His posture was rigid.
His eyes… weren't on her.
They were locked on something just beyond the horizon.
Another Gateborn.
But this one wasn't moving.
It was just… watching.
---
> "Riv," Kaien whispered. "We've got another."
> "Visual?"
> "Barely. Seventy meters. Not attacking. Just… standing there."
> "Type?"
Kaien narrowed his eyes.
> "Too smooth. Humanoid. No visible weapons. Looks like it's waiting."
Riv's voice dropped low.
> "Return. Now."
> "No."
> "Kaien—"
> "It's not moving. I want to know why."
---
He approached alone.
Mika stayed behind, clutching her wound.
The creature didn't react.
It stood upright, cloaked in pale bone-white armor. Thin lines of gold etched across its chest. Its face was blank — no eyes, no mouth.
Yet Kaien felt something.
The hum.
Not in his ears.
In his bones.
It was matching him again.
But this time…
He felt resistance.
The resonance wasn't welcoming. It wasn't warning him.
It was pushing him back.
Like a repelling force that recognized him—
—but refused him.
---
> "What are you?" Kaien whispered.
The creature lifted its arm.
And pointed a single, jointed finger toward Kaien's heart.
Then, for the first time, it spoke:
> "I̴n̶t̵r̸u̷d̸e̶r̴.̶"
Then it vanished.
---
Not phased.
Not fled.
Just gone.
Kaien's heartbeat finally returned to normal.
His grip on the blades loosened.
But the word lingered.
> Intruder.
It didn't call him Variable.
Didn't try to kill him.
It rejected him.
Like he didn't belong.
Even among the ones he was supposed to echo.
---
Back at base, he didn't report the last sighting.
Riv knew.
But he didn't push.
That night, Kaien stood before the old mirror in the barracks. Shirt off. Bandaged arm from a graze during the scuffle.
He stared at the faint mark over his chest — the sigil that appeared years ago when the Gateborn touched him.
It was fading now.
Not entirely.
But weakening.
As if the bond itself… were decaying.
And somewhere in the cold distance of the earth, something ancient was waking.
Something that once recognized Kaien—
—and now sees him as unworthy.
The first body was found inside a sealed pod.
Unbroken. Unopened.
The man's eyes were wide. His lips curled in shock.
But his skin—
—it was drained white as parchment.
Like something had peeled the warmth out of him without leaving a mark.
Kaien stared at the cadaver in silence as the Requiem morticians unzipped the bag.
Riv stepped beside him, holding a manifest.
> "Name's Hayato Kumiji. Survived the Hollowgate breach three years ago. Retired last month."
Kaien tilted his head.
> "I remember him. Quiet. Good instincts."
> "Exactly. He made it out. Just like you. Just like me."
Kaien narrowed his eyes.
> "Then who killed him?"
Riv didn't respond.
Because two more had died that week.
Same pattern.
Same condition.
Same history.
They all survived a Gateborn attack… once.
And now, they were being hunted.
---
At first, Requiem Command treated it as coincidence.
But Kaien didn't.
Because he had seen it in the mirror.
The way his mark faded.
Like the Gateborn were pulling back.
Like they were cleaning their slate.
And now, it seemed they were doing more than that.
They were erasing witnesses.
---
He stood in the ruins of Facility Nine-A, one of the oldest recovery centers in the region.
The site was abandoned years ago, but still left standing as a memorial.
Kaien arrived alone.
No weapons.
Just a single field recorder and the blade at his back.
He wasn't here to fight.
He was here to listen.
---
The wind was quiet.
Too quiet.
No birds.
No static.
Even the hum in his bones had gone dull.
> It's here already, he thought.
He walked the central hallway, past collapsed beds and shadow-stained floors.
He passed a cracked mirror.
His reflection didn't look back.
He stopped.
Turned.
Nothing behind him.
But the mirror still held two silhouettes.
His—
—and one more.
---
He spun around.
Steel in hand.
And saw it.
Not moving.
Not charging.
Just waiting.
A Gateborn.
This one unlike the others.
It wore no armor.
Its limbs were smooth and gleaming.
Its head had no face—just a porcelain surface with a single slit down the center like a silent mouth.
Kaien stepped forward.
> "Why are you killing them?"
The Gateborn didn't answer.
It simply turned.
And pointed to the walls.
Where names had been written.
Dozens.
All scratched with fingernails.
All former survivors.
All dead.
Except one.
Kaien's own name… was scratched halfway in.
Unfinished.
---
Then it lunged.
Fast.
Faster than anything he'd fought since.
Kaien barely blocked in time.
The impact slammed him back into concrete, ribs cracking on impact.
He rolled, spun, slashed.
Steel met air.
The Gateborn moved without form — like a flickering flame made solid only when it struck.
Kaien bled from his arm.
His brow.
But he stayed standing.
> "You don't want to kill just anyone," he rasped.
"You want to kill the ones who walked away."
The Gateborn hissed.
A sound like air escaping a tomb.
Then it spoke — a whisper only Kaien could hear.
> "T̸h̶e̶ ̴o̷l̴d̶ ̷s̴y̴s̷t̶e̶m̸ ̶i̶s̷ ̵f̷a̵l̷l̷i̴n̵g̶.̵ ̴R̵e̶s̷o̸n̷a̷n̴c̶e̴ ̶m̸u̵s̴t̴ ̸b̶e̷ ̴r̵e̶s̸e̵t̴.̶"
---
Kaien didn't understand.
But he didn't need to.
Because the next blow came like lightning.
And this time—he wasn't fast enough.
The blade sliced into his shoulder.
Blood poured.
He screamed.
But didn't fall.
He countered.
With one arm barely functioning, he flipped the second blade in reverse and jammed it under the Gateborn's arm as it tried to retreat.
It shrieked.
A real sound.
High. Piercing. Agonized.
And for the first time—it bled.
Not black.
But silver.
---
The creature stumbled back.
Tried to phase out.
But Kaien followed.
Slashed across its midsection with everything he had left.
It didn't die.
It escaped.
Into shadow.
But not before dropping something.
A single splinter of its armor.
Smooth. Cold. Carved with strange ridges—
—and a symbol Kaien had seen only once.
In the archives.
On the file marked:
"Akari – Instance 00-1."
---
Back at base, Riv found him half-conscious.
Covered in blood.
Wounds deep.
Eyes wild.
But alive.
Again.
Another survivor.
> "You saw it again," Riv muttered. "Didn't you?"
Kaien didn't respond.
He just held out the shard.
Riv stared.
> "You're not just one of them, are you?"
Kaien finally spoke.
> "No. I think I'm one of us."
> "Then why do they want you dead?"
Kaien's voice was cold.
> "Because I remember. And they don't like that
The shard shouldn't exist.
Not in the human world.
Not in the Gateborn plane.
It was something in between.
Kaien knew that the moment he touched it.
---
He hadn't slept in three days.
Not from fear.
But because the shard wouldn't let him.
It pulsed when he closed his eyes.
Buzzed softly beneath his skin like static from another world.
Sometimes, he swore he saw flashes of light—
—a corridor made of mirrors.
—a voice crying out.
—a girl standing at the center of a field with silver blood running down her arms.
He knew her name, even before the memory told him:
Akari.
---
He stood now at the entrance to the Deep Vault, Requiem's forbidden archive chamber buried forty floors below the surface.
No guards.
No light.
Just a panel, coded to voices long since silenced.
Kaien placed the shard against it.
The door hissed open.
---
Dust greeted him like breath from a sealed tomb.
The air tasted old.
The walls buzzed faintly — not from machines, but from memory.
And down the far end of the hall, he saw her.
Not Akari.
A projection.
Flickering.
A recording long degraded.
---
> "Subject 00-1: Akari. Age 13.
Gate Resonance test #6 — complete failure. Attempted interface with Entity Theta ended in collapse.
Subject survived. No physical damage. Mental response... anomalous."
Kaien stepped closer.
Akari's image stood in silence.
Hair white as salt. Eyes blank.
Then her mouth moved.
The audio warped.
But three words rang clear:
> "We are them."
---
Kaien stepped back.
His breath caught.
The projection shifted again.
Another file. Date: three years before Kaien's birth.
> "Requiem Protocol Zero: Replication Attempt."
A scientist's voice.
Male. Cold.
> "The entity Akari was never supposed to exist. She wasn't made. She wasn't born. She was chosen by the field."
> "We don't understand why. But it responded to her. She bent the Gateborn like shadows follow flame."
> "So we tried again."
> "We tried… with him."
The file ends.
Kaien is left staring at static.
---
> They replicated her.
> And that means… I'm not just a Variable.
> I'm a reflection.
---
He clutches the shard tighter.
And suddenly—
—he sees.
Not just visions.
A memory that's not his.
A broken hallway. Requiem scientists screaming.
Akari chained to a chair. Gateborn swirling behind a glass wall.
She says something.
The glass shatters.
And the Gateborn don't attack her.
They kneel.
---
Kaien drops the shard.
His hand smokes.
The floor beneath it trembles.
The room — silent for decades — begins to hum with layered frequencies.
One of the vault walls shifts.
Opens.
And inside—
—a second pod.
Empty.
But not abandoned.
It holds only a nameplate:
> KAIEN – 00-7
"Designed Variable."
---
He stares at it for a long time.
Not in confusion.
In acceptance.
He was never just lucky.
Never a prodigy.
Never simply "different."
He was built.
Crafted.
Not to lead.
Not to fight.
But to replace something they lost.
Something they couldn't control.
And now that he was beginning to remember…
The Gateborn wanted him dead.
---
Kaien took the shard and walked out of the vault.
He didn't report it.
Didn't ask for Riv's help.
Didn't tell Ayumi.
Because now he understood—
this wasn't about missions.
Or Gateborn breaches.
Or Requiem orders.
This was about a war of memory.
And Kaien was the last thing standing between what the Gateborn remember…
…and what Requiem wants the world to forget.
---
That night, he went to the rooftop.
Wind cold. Sky black.
He stared into the clouds above the eastern ruins.
And for a second—
A flash.
Not lightning.
A ripple.
The outline of a figure stepping out of the sky.
A Gateborn.
But this one…
It looked human.
It looked like her.
White hair.
Silver eyes.
A wound across the palm.
Akari.
She looked straight at him.
And mouthed one word.
> "Awaken."
Then she vanished.
---
Kaien said nothing for hours.
Just stood there.
Until the hum in his body began to rise again.
Not in pain.
Not in fear.
But in recognition.
They monitored him for days.
Ever since Kaien returned from the vault, the Requiem scans picked up irregular spikes in his vitals — fluctuations in pulse, core temperature, neural frequency, and something they called "resonant drift."
They ran every test.
Got no answers.
Kaien told them nothing.
Because what stirred inside him could not be measured by human machines.
It didn't begin with fear.
It didn't even begin with pain.
It began with the silence.
---
His heartbeat no longer followed natural rhythm.
It echoed.
Like a signal bouncing between two distant points — one in his chest, and one beyond the world.
And late at night, as he lay in the med-chamber beneath observation, he would hear it:
Voices.
Not whispers.
Not dreams.
But voices speaking words not meant for human tongues.
> "V̶a̴r̷i̵a̷b̷l̵e̷.̶ ̴N̸o̷t̵ ̷y̵e̸t̷ ̷s̶t̴a̸b̷l̵e̴.̶.̸.̷.̵ ̸N̶o̷t̷ ̶h̵e̷r̸.̶.̵.̵.̶B̶u̶t̴ ̶n̵o̶ ̸l̶o̸n̸g̶e̴r̵ ̸h̷i̶m̶."̶
And then silence again.
But every night, the same thing returned:
The dream.
---
He stands beneath a sky that is bleeding.
Not raining.
Bleeding.
The clouds peel like flesh. From them fall Gateborn not in battle — but on their knees.
And above them, a figure descending slowly through the torn sky.
Akari.
But her eyes are no longer silver.
They are obsidian.
Endless. Unreadable.
And she speaks.
> "You must wake up before they kill what's left of you."
> "They'll break your blade…"
> "...but your name is deeper than steel."
---
Kaien gasped awake on the seventh night.
Sweat coated his skin. But not from heat.
From ice.
His core temperature had dropped to sub-zero levels. The med scanners shorted out. His pulse was gone for three full minutes.
Then returned.
Slower.
Sharper.
Like something ancient had replaced it.
---
He tried to stand.
His knees shook.
The mirror across the room rippled.
Not cracked.
Rippled.
He walked to it.
Touched the glass.
And for the first time—
His reflection didn't follow.
It stared back.
Expression blank.
But its eyes were not his.
They were hers.
---
A voice echoed behind him.
Not real.
Not hallucination.
> "You're waking up. But the others will see you as contaminated."
Kaien turned.
The room was empty.
Yet the walls trembled faintly.
He looked at his palm.
Where the mark once was.
Now, new lines had appeared.
Shaped like a fractured circle, cut in seven points.
He traced them slowly.
The mark pulsed.
And something inside him broke open.
---
Suddenly, he saw it.
Not the room.
Not the base.
The Gate.
From inside.
Not as a barrier, but as a memory.
He saw machines built from flesh.
He saw voices stitched into skin.
He saw children like him, half-made, half-born.
And at the center — a girl chained to a black star.
Akari.
But she looked right at him.
> "Kaien. If you awaken fully before they are ready—"
> "—they will bury you."
---
He snapped back.
The room around him had cracked.
Hairline fractures in metal walls.
The air was filled with a sharp hum — not from Requiem systems.
But from him.
The lights went black.
Then red.
Sirens flared.
And Kaien stood in the dark, breathing slow.
For the first time in his life—
He wasn't afraid of what was inside him.
He was afraid of what they might do to stop it.
---
The next morning, Riv came to see him.
Paused in the doorway.
> "You're not the same."
Kaien didn't deny it.
> "You saw something."
> "I remembered something."
> "What?"
Kaien looked at his reflection in the black screen behind Riv.
> "That I'm not just a copy. I'm the one they built to overwrite her."
> "Akari?"
Kaien nodded.
> "But I'm not her. I don't resonate like she did. I'm something else."
> "Then what are you?"
Kaien closed his eyes.
The hum rose again.
And in the glass—
—a shadow moved behind him.
Not his.
Not Riv's.
Something older.
Watching.
Waiting.
They called it a test.
They said it was to "evaluate anomaly stability."
They said it was protocol — standard for all operatives exposed to high-level resonance spikes.
But Kaien knew the truth.
It wasn't a test.
It was a trap.
---
The arena wasn't built for training.
It was built for containment.
Fortress-level alloy, 40-meter radius, with six-meter-high walls surrounded by twelve Class-A electromagnetic anchors.
Operatives watched from above — medics, scientists, Requiem elites.
And at the center of it all:
Kaien.
Alone.
No armor.
No allies.
Only his twin blades, now marked with strange filaments — black veins pulsing faintly like living wire.
---
> "Do you understand the rules, Variable 00-7?" came the voice of Director Hagusa over the loudspeaker.
Kaien didn't look up.
> "Yes."
> "Your task is to subdue or eliminate the entity we're about to release. If you lose control of your resonance, you will be neutralized."
Kaien smirked faintly.
> "You mean executed."
Silence followed.
Then:
> "Begin."
---
The Gate opened.
Not the true Gate.
But a tethered breach — one of the controlled rifts that Requiem used for experiments.
From it stepped the Gateborn.
But this one was different.
It wasn't monstrous.
It wasn't malformed.
It was perfectly human.
White coat.
Bare feet.
Hair like ink, drifting as if underwater.
Eyes closed.
Male.
Young.
But the hum around him shattered glass on the upper floors.
---
Kaien's eyes widened.
He didn't recognize the entity—
—but it recognized him.
Its eyes opened.
Pale gold.
And it smiled.
> "So you're the replacement."
Kaien tensed.
> "Who are you?"
> "Once? I was 00-2."
A pause.
> "They called me Sorei."
---
Gasps rippled through the audience above.
Commanders whispered to one another.
Kaien's fingers tightened around his blades.
> Another Variable.
> One that survived.
> And was locked away.
---
Sorei raised a hand.
Didn't attack.
He simply pointed at Kaien's chest.
> "You don't know what you are yet. That's the difference between us."
> "You embraced the memories. I buried them."
Then the hum spiked.
And the fight began.
---
Kaien dashed forward.
Blades out.
Sorei didn't move.
Until Kaien's steel was inches from his neck—
—and then he vanished.
Reappeared behind Kaien mid-air, his fingers slicing across Kaien's back like razors of force.
Kaien hit the ground, rolled, struck back — a wide arc.
Sorei stopped the blade with one hand.
> "Your resonance is unstable. Still human. Still hesitating."
Kaien gritted his teeth.
> "I'm not trying to be human."
> "Then what are you trying to be?"
> "Free."
---
With a roar, Kaien unleashed the hum from his core.
This time, it responded.
The mark on his chest flared.
The filaments on his blades glowed.
And for a moment—
Time stuttered.
Sorei faltered.
Kaien moved faster than he should have.
Struck three times — one at the side, one at the shoulder, one at the throat.
Sorei blurred backward, stunned.
Blood trickled from his neck.
Silver.
---
> "So… the awakening's begun after all," Sorei said softly.
He smiled.
Not with hatred.
With relief.
> "Good. That means you'll survive what comes next."
Kaien lowered his blades.
> "What comes next?"
Sorei looked up at the Requiem officials behind the glass.
> "They lied to us. You and me. All of us. Even her."
> "Akari?"
> "She woke up too early. They broke her. Tried to shut her down. Failed."
> "She's alive?"
> "She's changing. And when she returns… we'll have to choose."
> "Choose what?"
Sorei stepped forward.
Tore open his shirt.
Revealing the same fractured mark Kaien bore—
—but his had a slash through the center.
> "Whether we break with the Gate… or let it become us."
---
At that moment—
The breach behind Sorei collapsed.
A second entity began to force its way through.
Not human.
Not stable.
A malformed Gateborn — uncontrolled, breaking tether.
The alarms screamed.
Guards panicked.
Sorei looked to Kaien one last time.
> "This isn't your fight yet. Not today."
And he turned—
—ran straight into the Gateborn's path.
Vanished in light.
---
Kaien stood still as the room pulsed with the last waves of resonance.
He wasn't shaken.
He was decided.
He turned to the glass.
To the watching commanders.
And raised one blood-slicked blade.
> "You lied about what I was."
> "You tried to chain me like you did them."
> "Next time, I'm not stepping into your arena."
He walked out.
And no one stopped him.
Not even the ones who had the order to kill him.
Because in that moment—
They knew they couldn't.