"Still dreaming, Riftborn?"
The voice slithered from behind the stars.
It wasn't a sound.
It was a knowing.
A presence that coiled beneath the skin like breath in winter — ancient, amused, cruel. The kind of voice that didn't speak to your ears, but to your marrow.
He stood in a sea of black that bled violet — veins of Riftlight carved through the dark like cracks in a dying world.
He was barefoot.
Naked.
Not in body — but in self.
A dream.
A memory.
Or maybe a reminder.
"You wander again," the voice whispered. "To when you were still… someone."
A shadow shifted before him — no face, only horns.
The Void rippled.
Then it shattered.
Tokyo. Omori Station. Evening.
"I'm home…"
He stepped off the train with a breath caught between relief and weariness. The doors closed behind him with a pneumatic sigh, leaving him in the warm electric hum of the platform. The sky was dark, painted in violet smog and neon blush.
His jacket smelled like cheap ramen and printer toner.
Suit crumpled.
Tie askew.
The daily grind.
Another day of mindless clicks and muted bows. Another evening hoping his PC wouldn't crash before he saved his latest RPG session.
"I just wanna get home, log in, grind a bit… maybe try that new dungeon event."
He tugged the strap of his worn laptop bag and trudged toward the street. A Lawson convenience store stood like a beacon against the shadowed alleyways.
His stomach growled.
"…Curry bread."
He stepped inside. Fluorescent lights. Idle chime. He paid in exact change, nodding to the cashier without meeting her eyes. The door chimed behind him as he stepped out, tearing into the plastic packaging as the steam hit his face.
Crunch.
Savory.
Warm.
A pause in the storm.
Then—
A sound.
Not from the city.
Not from the world.
A low hum that made the air pulse.
A tug in his stomach.
Pressure behind his eyes.
He dropped the bread.
Darkness cracked.
Heat roared.
Pain — no, unraveling.
He fell. Not to the ground. But inward.
Skin peeled from soul. Names from memory. Faces from feeling.
Screams. Not his. Not human.
And then…
Silence.
He woke in chains.
The wagon creaked beneath him.
Iron groaned with every rut on the road.
Dust caked his throat.
The sky burned above with twin suns that glared like gods without mercy.
He moved — instinctively — and the shackles yanked him back.
His wrists were raw.
His tongue thick with blood and silence.
Dozens sat around him.
Slaves.
Not people.
Not anymore.
They had no names here — only weight.
Only weariness.
Even the guards said nothing.
The desert stretched like punishment, as if the land itself rejected life. No breeze. No clouds. Only the wheeze of wagon wheels and the rasp of chains sliding against sun-scorched wood.
He sat still. Legs drawn up. Shoulders slumped. His head leaned back against splintered planks.
He didn't know how long he had been there.
Didn't know where "there" even was.
Didn't remember being brought.
Hell… he didn't remember much at all.
Just pieces.
Flickers.
Blue light on a monitor.
A fantasy map.
A sword that glowed.
Train humming to the platform.
A plastic wrapper.
Curry bread.
Warm. Simple. Gone.
Now all he tasted was rust.
And then — fire.
Not burning.
Becoming.
He remembered eyes chanting in a red chamber.
A circle.
Symbols painted in blood.
Heat that boiled from inside out.
Like hands reaching into his core and twisting until he screamed — and even then, the scream felt borrowed.
Now… here.
In this hell that had no horizon.
The sun glared down like an executioner.
The chains held him like a lover.
And beside him, something moved.
He turned — slowly.
A girl.
No. Not a girl.
A beastkin.
Cat ears twitched above snow-white hair that shimmered with silver streaks like scars of moonlight.
Her eyes — gold, sharp — glared forward with the silence of a blade unsheathed but not swung.
Her body was coiled.
Not broken.
Not bowed.
Coiled.
She didn't look at him directly, but she knew.
Had known since the first night — when they woke under the same sky, bleeding and confused, and she refused to speak.
He had felt her eyes. Watching. Waiting.
Not afraid.
Suspicious.
She could sense it.
The thing beneath his skin.
The mark etched in his chest that pulsed when he dreamed.
That whispered when the fires went out.
He hadn't shown it to anyone.
But he felt it.
At night, when his breath shook and memory grew teeth…
It reminded him that he was not one of them.
That whatever he was before…
He was less now.
Or more.
That night, the wagons stopped.
Ruins loomed in the dusk — a collapsed tower, bones of old stone, sunken half into sand. The guards shouted. Whips cracked.
The slaves were pulled out and chained to standing stones, remnants of a place that once knew magic and now knew only memory.
He slumped near the edge.
Away from the fire.
His shoulders ached. His wrists bled.
But his eyes wandered.
He stared at the ruin — the broken spire, the cracked steps, the way the wind howled through hollow stone like a forgotten prayer.
It felt familiar.
Like something buried inside him had built this place.
Or died in it.
"You're not from here."
The voice cut the silence like steel drawn from snow.
He flinched.
Turned.
The beastkin stood, arms folded, eyes fixed on him. Her tail swayed slowly, like a pendulum measuring his life in heartbeats.
"You don't smell right," she said.
Her voice was low. Cold. Honest.
"Not human. Not beast. Something else."
He didn't answer.
Didn't know how.
"I don't remember who I am," he managed.
She stepped closer. Her shadow brushed his feet.
"That's a lie."
"I swear—"
"Lies stink worse than piss."
He looked down.
The mark on his chest — hidden beneath scorched cloth — pulsed.
Like it had heard her.
Like it agreed.
"I'm not your enemy," he whispered. "I don't even know where the hell I am."
She tilted her head.
The fire behind her cracked softly.
"You're in chains," she said. "That's all that matters."
There was no pity in her voice.
Only certainty.
"I don't even know your name," he rasped.
But she was already walking away.
She sat near the flame. Her profile lit by dancing embers.
Hair wild. Eyes distant.
He watched her.
Didn't know why her words had cut deeper than the whip.
Maybe because they were the first that felt real.
And in the far distance, beyond dunes and dusk—
Blackstone Keep rose.
A scar against the horizon.
A place where fire forged monsters.
And where Rei's true journey — the Riftborn's journey — would begin.