"I am from the future."
"You are what now?"
The words hung in the mountain air like a challenge to reality itself.
Tenshou blinked hard, wondering if the thin atmosphere was playing tricks on his hearing.
Up here, where the clouds scraped against jagged peaks and the wind carried nothing but silence, his master's voice should've been crystal clear.
But those words? They made absolutely no sense.
Atop the highest peak of the Ryukaku mountain range, two figures stood against the endless expanse of sky.
The setting sun painted the world in shades of amber and crimson, casting long shadows across the rocky terrain that stretched as far as the eye could see.
It should've been peaceful—hell, it should've been the perfect place for whatever important conversation his master had summoned him for.
Instead, Tenshou felt like he'd stepped into some bizarre fever dream.
The man in front of him kept his back turned, weathered hands clasped behind him as he gazed toward the horizon.
Master Gekko looked every bit his eighty-something years—silver hair flowing past his shoulders, deep lines carved by decades of training and battle, shoulders slightly hunched from age.
The simple gray robes he wore fluttered in the mountain breeze, making him look almost ethereal against the dramatic backdrop.
Behind him stood Tenshou, twenty-two years old and still trying to process what he'd just heard.
His dark hair whipped around his face as another gust of wind swept across the peak, but he barely noticed.
His lean but powerful frame remained perfectly balanced despite the rocky, uneven ground beneath his feet—a testament to the years of brutal training that had shaped him into what he'd become.
What everyone now called him.
Shinra Tenshou. The recently crowned king of martial arts. The youngest person in recorded history to claim that title.
Just three months ago, he'd faced the final challenger in the World Martial Arts Tournament. Master Ryu, a seventy-year-old legend who'd never lost a single fight in forty years of competition.
The entire martial arts world had gathered to witness what many expected to be Tenshou's humbling defeat.
Instead, they'd watched him dismantle a living legend in under two minutes.
Since then, dojos from every corner of the globe had sent their masters to challenge him.
Underground fighters, military combatants, even monks from hidden monasteries—they all came seeking to prove that his victory was a fluke.
They all left defeated.
But none of that mattered right now. Right now, his master—the man who'd taken in a scrawny, angry orphaned fifteen-year-old and forged him into the world's strongest fighter—was apparently having some kind of mental breakdown.
The old man still hadn't turned around. His voice carried the same calm, measured tone he'd used during their most intense training sessions.
"I am from the future, Tenshou. Well, at least an alternate one."
Tenshou's eye twitched.
He'd climbed this mountain expecting some profound wisdom about his recent victories, maybe advice about the responsibilities that came with his new title.
Instead, he was getting... this.
Confusion painted itself across his features as he tried to make sense of the situation.
His master had always been eccentric—hell, the old guy lived like a hermit on this mountain and trained using methods that bordered on insane.
But what is this?
Then realization struck him like a physical blow.
"Master, are you drunk?" Tenshou's voice cracked slightly as he asked the question.
"Or have you been watching too much of my anime collection?!"
He'd left his entire media collection at the small cabin where they'd lived during his training years.
Maybe the isolation had finally gotten to the old man. Maybe all those sci-fi series had scrambled his brain.
"What are you saying? How can you be from some alternative future reality?"
Tenshou threw his hands up in exasperation, his voice rising with each word.
"You sound crazy, old man."
The wind seemed to mock him as it carried his words across the empty peaks.
He scratched his head, black hair falling across his eyes as he tried to figure out how to handle this situation.
Should he call someone? Was there even cell service up here?
Master Gekko let out a long, weary sigh that seemed to carry the weight of decades. Then, slowly, he turned to face his student.
Tenshou opened his mouth to say something—maybe an apology for calling him crazy, because despite everything, he loved the old bastard like a father.
The words were right there on his tongue when the world suddenly shifted.
His master vanished.
Not moved quickly. Not stepped to the side. Vanished. As if he'd never been there at all.
*Swoosh!*
The sound of displaced air was the only evidence that something had happened.
"What?!" Tenshou's voice echoed off the mountain walls, confusion and alarm mixing in equal measure.
*Tap!*
A single finger touched the back of his neck, light as a butterfly's landing but somehow carrying an electric jolt of awareness.
Every instinct Tenshou had developed through years of combat training screamed at him to move.
His body responded before his mind could catch up, muscles coiling and releasing as he spun into a devastating back kick that could shatter concrete.
His foot cut through empty air.
But that wasn't the impossible part.
The impossible part was seeing his master—somehow, impossibly—standing balanced perfectly on the tip of his still-extended leg.
The old man's weight felt like nothing, as if he were made of mist and memory rather than flesh and bone.
Master Gekko stood there with casual ease, arms crossed, looking down at his student with an expression that might've been amused if not for the gravity in his ancient eyes.
Tenshou's eyes bulged.
His leg trembled—not from the weight, but from the sheer impossibility of what he was seeing.
He'd seen his master move before, had witnessed speed and technique that defied conventional understanding.
But this?
This was something else entirely.
In the blink of an eye, Master Gekko disappeared again.
Before Tenshou could even begin to process what was happening, iron-strong hands pressed down on his shoulders from behind.
The grip wasn't painful, but it was absolute. Every muscle in Tenshou's body locked up as if his master's touch had somehow severed the connections between his brain and his limbs.
He couldn't move. Couldn't even twitch.
The king of martial arts, the man who'd never met an opponent he couldn't defeat, was completely and utterly helpless.
"What the hell was that?"
The words tumbled out of him in a rush, his voice higher than he'd like to admit.
"Are you really my master? Am I dreaming or something?"
His heart hammered against his ribs like a caged bird.
This had to be a dream. Or maybe he'd fallen during the climb and hit his head.
Because the alternative—that his elderly master had just displayed abilities that violated everything Tenshou thought he knew about martial arts—was too much to accept.
Master Gekko's hands remained on his shoulders, keeping him perfectly still. When the old man spoke again, his voice carried a weight that seemed to press down on the entire mountain.
"Tenshou, I don't have much time." Each word was measured, deliberate, carved from stone.
"My old enemy has chased me through the rivers of time. This world will soon undergo a change, and your fate if you remain here is death!"
Nani?!