Shinjiru's eyes fluttered open to a light that was both soft and overwhelmingly ordinary. Sunlight filtered through thin curtains, dust motes drifting lazily in its warmth. The gentle sound of birdsong carried through the open window, accompanied by the faint chatter of neighbors beginning their day. For a moment, Shinjiru felt the oddest sensation—a tugging at the edges of his mind, like a distant song he almost remembered.
He blinked, trying to grasp the feeling, but the memory dissolved before it could take shape. It left only a hollow sense of longing, a void that he couldn't quite define. He turned his head, taking in the familiar surroundings: his modest bedroom, posters of mundane cityscapes on the walls, the desk neatly organized as his mother had left it. Nothing about this world indicated that he had survived a battle that had torn apart an entire city in another plane of existence.
Then his gaze fell upon it.
The violet shard.
It lay innocuously on his bedside table, small but pulsing faintly, almost imperceptibly, as though it were alive. Shinjiru reached out, hesitating for a moment, feeling an unexplainable warmth surge into his hand when he touched it. And yet, despite the contact, nothing—no memories, no visions of chains, Krawlers, or storm-torn skies—surfaced. He stared at it for a long moment, trying to reconcile the sensation.
"Strange…" he murmured, shrugging it off. Life, at this moment, felt ordinary, comforting even. Mundane. Safe.
Rising from his bed, he stretched, each movement oddly satisfying in its simplicity. No aches from battle, no fatigue from exertion, no remnants of hybrid essence coursing through him—he was entirely human again. He went through the motions of morning routines he barely remembered: brushing his teeth, running a hand through his hair, opening the window to let the morning air brush his face. It was a world without weight, without expectation, without the memories that had once shaped him.
Yet, beneath this ordinary exterior, something lingered. The shard pulsed softly in his pocket when he eventually tucked it away, a heartbeat that seemed to resonate faintly with his own. Instincts that no memory could teach whispered at the edges of his mind—the feel of his chains, the timing of a strike, the surge of energy in the air before it happened. They were whispers, faint and indistinct, but they hinted at a power lying dormant, patiently waiting for the right moment.
Outside, the city was alive with human bustle. Children ran across streets, a vendor called out prices from his stall, and vehicles hummed along the avenues. To any observer, Shinjiru's life had returned to the quiet normalcy of a sixteen-year-old boy. Yet in the spaces between normality—the flicker of violet in sunlight, the sudden instinct to step aside from a falling sign—there lingered the faint echo of what he had been, and what he might become.
Lunch passed quietly, uneventful in every way. Shinjiru found himself at the park, sitting on a swing, watching younger children chase one another with carefree laughter. The air was sweet with early spring blossoms. For a moment, he envied them—the simplicity of their existence, the freedom from responsibility. Then, unconsciously, he mimicked the motion of spinning chains in the air with his fingers, a habit he did not recognize. A ripple of warmth pulsed from the violet shard in his pocket, and he paused, eyes narrowing at nothing in particular, as if listening for a sound that did not exist.
Hours passed in this strange limbo between forgotten heroism and mundane life. That evening, as he prepared for sleep, he felt it again: a tug at his consciousness. Not memory, not clarity—something else. A whisper of essence, faint but undeniable, radiating from deep within him, as though part of his being remembered without knowing what it remembered. He traced the violet shard, feeling the pulse of it synchronize with the rhythm of his heartbeat.
And somewhere beyond the veil of human perception, Reijin Kurogami observed. From the indigo-gray plane that existed parallel to Shinjiru's reality, the Master of Life & Death watched silently, understanding that this boy, now fully human in body and mind, carried within him the potential to become a bridge between two worlds. The hybrid essence, woven seamlessly with Himen blood, slept quietly. One day, it would awaken—not now, not yet, but inevitably.
Shinjiru rolled onto his side, gazing at the shard one last time before closing his eyes. There was a sense of peace he could not name, a stillness that felt both empty and full. The sun sank behind the rooftops, casting long shadows across the room, and with it came a promise unspoken but understood: life would continue, ordinary and quiet on the surface, but beneath, something extraordinary waited.
For now, the boy was just Shinjiru Arakami. Just a human boy. Just a teenager returning to school, to friends, to a world that did not yet know the storms that had passed or the battles that awaited. And yet, in the subtle glow of the violet shard, in the instinctive flick of his fingers, the seed of destiny had been planted.
Somewhere in the quiet of that ordinary room, the future stirred, waiting for the day the dormant power within him would rise again.