The night after the Fracture.
The fire crackled low, its embers flickering like forgotten stars against the snow-veiled dusk.
Rei sat hunched beside it, knees drawn to his chest, the tattered cloak doing little to shield him from the cold that clung like breath to skin. Across from him, Kaia crouched near the flame, poking a stick through the ash with practiced calm, but her eyes — those golden, hunter's eyes — were watching him.
They hadn't spoken since the shadows fled.
Not when the trees had screamed.Not when the Rift tore open the sky — a fracture no larger than a wound, yet deep enough to whisper across time.
Not when Rei's mark had pulsed — not with pain, but with hunger.
And not when the darkness came for him,drawn not by fear… but by recognition.
Rei's hands were still trembling. Quietly. Subtly. But Kaia noticed.
"You've seen things like that before?"
Her voice broke the stillness like a thread pulled taut.
Rei blinked. Then shook his head.
"No," he murmured. "Not really."
He looked into the flames, seeing not fire — but screens.RPG maps. Dark forests rendered in pixels.A protagonist fighting against a system. A world. A god.
"There were games like this. Stories." He exhaled, soft steam blooming into the night. "Back in my world, people dream of these things. We play them. Escape into them."
Kaia tilted her head, ears twitching slightly.
"Games?"
"Mm," he nodded. "Worlds where you're the hero. You rise. You fall. Magic. Monsters. Kingdoms at war. But no matter how dark things got, there was always… some control. You could reset. Try again."
He paused.
"But this… This isn't like that."
Kaia's eyes narrowed gently, not in judgment — but understanding. She waited.
Rei's hand drifted to his chest, to the faint, glowing mark beneath fabric and scar. The Rift still whispered through it — like wind through a broken window. A sound that didn't belong. A door that never fully closed.
"Back home," he continued, "no shadows tried to kill me. No void whispered my name. No frostbitten forest clawed at my thoughts."
A beat passed.
"Back home, I wasn't important enough to be haunted."
Kaia stirred the fire once more, letting the sparks dance between them.
"And now?" she asked.
Rei looked up at her. The firelight softened the sharpness in her features, casting gold along the white strands of her hair, the pale curve of her cheek. But in her eyes, he saw not warmth… but storm.
"I don't know why I'm here," he said. "I don't know what the Rift wants. Or why it chose me. If it even chose at all."
Another breath. This one slower. Barely held together.
"I didn't ask for this."
Kaia rose then, brushing snow from her knees, and stepped around the fire to sit beside him. Close. Not touching. But close enough that her presence grounded the storm.
"You think I asked for it?" she said. "The burning of the Grove. The mark they carved into my back. My name turned to ash."
She didn't wait for an answer. Didn't need one.
"Sometimes," she said, "the world doesn't ask. It just gives. And what it gives, it can take just as fast."
Silence again. And then—
"But even if you don't know why you're here… even if the Rift calls and the shadows come…"
She turned to him. And for the first time in a long while, there was no mask on her face. No armor. Just a girl born of winter and firelight, staring at a boy born of shadows and stars.
"I'll walk beside you. Through frost. Through silence. Through every dark thing that hungers for that mark."
Rei met her gaze.
And something in him — something tight and ancient and afraid — began to loosen.
"…Thank you," he whispered.
She shrugged, looking back to the fire. "Don't thank me yet. We've still got miles to go."
**
Elsewhere…
In a chamber of crystal and silence.Where the light came not from flame, but from memory.
The Seers stood in their circle — seven of them, robed in white veined with violet threads, their hoods drawn, their faces unseen. In the center, a pool of silver glass rippled, not with water, but will.
A flicker. A tremble. A scent.
A voice — low and coiled like a snake's breath — broke the hush.
"A Fracture."
Another responded, this one older. Quieter."It stirred. And with it, the mark of the Void."
A third laughed — soft and cruel.
"He remembers faster."
The glass pool shimmered — and within it, they saw flickers of motion. A shadowed forest. A fire. A boy with violet eyes marked by something older than death. And beside him, the tiger girl. The survivor.
"Let them run," said the voice again."Let them believe they are free."
The oldest among them spoke last.
"The Rift calls to its kin. And the kin always answer."
A pulse of light flashed through the glass, like an eye opening.
And the Order began to rejoice.