BRUAAASH!!
…
blub… blub blub…
The space was cold. Dark below, faintly bright above—washed in a dim blue light.
Seawater swallowed sound, time, memory, and the pulse of life that should still have been so small for a nameless child.
The body of a boy—thin, dressed in a plain black T-shirt—fell through the surface like a doll released carelessly from the sky. There was no attempt to hold his breath. No scream.
Only stillness… as if the body was already too tired to resist the world.
A gentle yet majestic voice began to speak within the silence:
"Humanity… will never surpass the infinite through a single number alone. Form is a state… and reason… is the meaning behind why the world still questions itself."
The voice paused, like a distant, delicate echo. Then—
"Yet love and sacrifice… are the primary reasons they continue to walk forward even now."
The boy sank deeper. The light above him faded.His hair drifted like black fragments in the water.
Then—
BRUAAASH!!
A small sound shattered the surface.
Two small hands followed, plunging into the sea.
One wore a gold-and-crimson bracelet.
The other bore a ring shaped like bluish-gray rose petals.
Hands that had once reached for him—too late, always too late—before the world decided their fate.
"And in the end… the world answered their prayers with death."
The fading glow dissolved—the scene shifting into fragments of footsteps crossing sunlight behind shadows.
Tap… Tap… Tap…
Italy, early 1990s.
.
.
A wide alley, always crowded with passing people, shouting vendors, and cigarette smoke drifting through the midday air.
"Shadows… will always watch over every human sin. And death… is the name given to those who own them."
The perspective slowly lifted from the ground, rising to shoulder height.
It revealed an elderly, wealthy man walking calmly—a neat suit, a round hat, a silver beard, a satisfied expression. A gold necklace with an antique watch swayed with each step, a suitcase held in his right hand.
That confidence seemed alive, as though it had never once demanded repentance from him.
High above the rooftops, within the shadows, someone watched. Wrapped in a cloak, face unseen, breath barely there—a single figure who carried judgment for those whose sins were tied to death.
Without a sound, the figure descended from the roof and followed the old man, dissolving into the crowd like part of the air itself.
The voice returned—now… in judgment:
"Among humanity… there are still those who walk in silence. Those who understand that law does not always descend from the heavens,but is born from humanity itself."
"And the will of that law… has already become his."
Seconds continued to pass.
The old man turned into a narrower, deeper alley. Quiet. Yet warm—for one reason that would soon lead him to the path of truth.
But the presence of the shadow made him aware—there were other footsteps.
He turned.
There was no one there.
But when he faced forward again—
Someone was already standing before him.
A cloaked figure.
Still.
Unyielding.
The air itself seemed to freeze as the presence surfaced.
"W-who are you—"
The cloaked figure spoke, voice flat, like a verdict decided long before this day.
"One who lives without bearing anything… will always let others die in his place. Your existence… is the reason I am here."
One step closer.
"I did not come to introduce myself. The reason I stand before you is to take the fate born from your greatest sin—that of a human who reduced other humans into tools of restraint."
A slender dagger emerged from his left palm—not drawn, but formed, as though shaped from shadow itself.
In a single swift motion—
A thin crimson thread burst across the old man's neck.
He collapsed.
His gold watch slipped free and struck the ground.
TENG!
The sound of a massive clock echoed, though no great clock stood there.
"Time moves within every second… recording all that humanity never dares to speak. And today… the world has witnessed the first step of a silence that will lead to truth."
The cloaked figure picked up the suitcase and walked deeper into the darker alley.
The view closed in on the gold watch lying on the ground—so close that nothing remained but the ticking of the hands within it.
And the hands—stopped, precisely at twelve noon.
Then—
TICK.
The first second moved.
—
A flash exploded into the scene.
A narrow study, cramped yet filled with expensive objects—a stone fireplace, a polished wooden desk, heavy red curtains that allowed only a thin blade of light from outside.
And there, three important men had gathered.
One sat—the leader, his face aged yet brimming with arrogance; the other two stood beside him, bearing the rigid air of high-ranking military envoys.
At the center of the desk lay an engraved golden suitcase. Its contents were not money… but Tyrak's secret documents—now stolen by 'the shadow.'
The leader slammed both palms onto the desk—BAM!—sending the ink on the documents trembling. His breath was heavy. His eyes burned red with fury.
"He killed our envoy…"
"…and took everything inside that suitcase."
He rose slowly, his body shaking as he restrained emotions on the verge of eruption.
"Listen carefully. That shadow is not an ordinary thief. He is… a remnant of something that should have gone extinct long ago."
The envoys exchanged glances, tense.
The leader leaned forward, his voice rising, thunderous.
"Find him. Chase him down to the roots of his bloodline. If necessary—burn the villages that hide him. I don't care how many lives are lost."
He struck the table again.
"What he stole… was not merely secrets. It is the foundation of our future."
His breath halted for a moment. Then, in a low voice that cut like a blade:
"Erase their bloodline. Before that shadow… grows into a catastrophe."
TICK.
The hand appeared again.
Second 2.
TICK.
Darkness.
Then slowly, a dim blue glow from oil torches emerged—inside an ancient underground chamber filled with old carvings and faint symbols resembling the first runes of law.
Four figures stood in a circle. All were cloaked, their faces hidden behind masks shaped like an owl, a wolf, a raven, and a stag—each marking a different family line descended from the ancestral assassins.
At the center, the secret documents from the old man's suitcase were spread across a stone table. The papers trembled, as if carrying something far darker than mere political information.
The figure wearing the wolf mask—the eldest ancestral leader—spoke in a hoarse yet calm voice:
"Tyrak's power… they are no longer just a corporation."
The owl-masked figure nodded, their voice echoing through the narrow chamber:
"They seek to build a single consciousness that watches over the entire world. One will… one command."
The documents revealed the early designs of a Global AI—still a raw blueprint, yet already radiating something ominous.
The raven-masked figure tapped the stone table softly, unease heavy in the gesture:
"If the entire world surrenders its freedom to a single machine… then our spies will die, and shadows will have nowhere left to exist."
The stag-masked figure stared deeply into the blueprint, as if witnessing a collapsing future:
"And if this plan succeeds… our descendants will never live freely. Not a single one of them."
The wolf leader raised his head. His tone fell into a declaration that pierced the space itself:
"We… we cannot stop them now. It is too late."
Silence followed.
Then he slowly closed the documents, his cloak stirring in the underground wind.
"But we can plant a warning. One bloodline… one child who will carry the key to defy the future they are building."
The raven-masked figure asked, softly yet sharply:
"Who?"
The leader answered, his voice almost prophetic:
"The shadow who stole this suitcase… he is the beginning. And his blood… will become the end of Tyrak's will."
Silence hung heavy.
TICK.
The clock hand appeared once more—stepping into the next second.
Second 3.
A flash erupted without warning, like fragments of memory stolen from the future.
A black sky filled with metallic drones shaped like obsidian shards; they fell like a meteor shower—exploding, igniting the entire valley in hellish orange light.
On the ground, two forces clashed:
Tyrak's black-armored troops—precise, mechanical, cold—against the hazy ranks of the ancestral assassins, moving through smoke, fast, indistinct.
There were no human screams, only—
Flashes of blades, blue energy bursts from Tyrak's weapons, the earth shattering like cracked glass.
Then, a majestic voice—slow, flowing, as if speaking from behind the curtain of reality itself:
"War does not begin with hatred… but with the fear of losing the world one wishes to preserve."
"And humanity always chooses to destroy something… before accepting that it cannot control it."
The light of war dimmed.
TICK.
Second 4.
Another flash struck as fast as light.
Bodies lay scattered across a barren plain:
Assassins and Tyrak soldiers alike had fallen, leaving only dusk's shadows upon their final faces. One Tyrak soldier still crawled while clutching his helmet; a young assassin staggered, blood seeping from beneath his mask—both struggling to stand.
The vision compressed, focusing on their trembling hands, each reaching for a weapon… only to collapse again.
The majestic voice spoke once more, now heavy with sorrow:
"In the law of nature… there is no side that is right or wrong."
"There are only those who fall first… and those who fall later."
"But every death… still rewrites the world."
Slowly, white light erased the battlefield.
TICK.
The clock hand moved to the fifth second.
White light flared suddenly—sharp, cold, like prying open the eyelids of a world forced to stare at a future it never chose.
Beneath it, a city spread out. A city that once breathed as a human civilization, yet now pulsed like a colossal machine.
Glass-layered magnetic rails floated through the air; towers of black steel rose with shapes too perfect to be born of ordinary human hands; and every corner swarmed with drones circling like flocks of soulless metal birds.
On the streets, people moved with identical steps—rhythmic, uniform, as if their consciousness had been synchronized to a single pattern dictated from above. Silent vehicles glided past without sound, reflecting the glow of holographic lights that projected advertisements filled with manufactured smiles.
Across massive screens suspended high above the city, the Tyrak emblem rotated slowly—like an unblinking eye that never stopped watching.
And as the vision pierced through the heart of the city, pulsing like the core of a colossal reactor, the majestic voice descended with a tone that nearly resembled a verdict.
"When humanity stops choosing its own future… another force will write it in their name."
The vision shifted. Corporations ruling governments. Ranks of soldiers armed with Aetherial technology. Other cities bowing beneath Tyrak's network.
"And when the world comes to believe that this is progress…"
A pause.
As if the world itself were holding its breath.
"…that is when everything changes, with no path back."
The city's light slowly shattered into gray silhouettes—a portrait of a world that had been steered, infiltrated, and guided toward something even the people living within it no longer understood.
TICK.
Second 6.
White light struck again—harsher, more sterile, like a flash from a colossal surgical lamp.
A laboratory spread out before the eye: vast as the belly of a warship, filled with stasis tanks containing gently rippling blue fluid. Machines of inhuman design stood like technological totems; cables twisted like black roots, siphoning energy from every direction.
At its center stood a scientist. His hair was disheveled, his lab coat scorched in places, and his eyes shone with a madness no longer concealed by reason.
He worked on a test subject—or perhaps, something resembling a body. Numerous mechanical blades moved around him, assembling something that should never have been assembled.
The majestic voice descended again, heavy—like a historical record sealed shut from the future.
"And in the hands of those who never regarded humans as human… the first experiment was born—one that severed the boundary between body, data, and will."
Electric sparks erupted. Machine shadows parted. A silhouette rose—slow, heavy, suspended between life and fabrication.
"This… is the world before its awakening begins."
Then—the vision died out like the final light at the end of an age.
The last sparks from the machine faded, as if the massive laboratory were drawing a long breath before sinking back into the darkness of its secrets.
Amid drifting cold vapor, the silhouette of the newly risen experiment stood rigid and silent—a shadow without a name, yet already carrying consequences for every living thing in the world.
The majestic voice closed the vision, its tone like history carving the beginning of something far greater:
"And from these hidden chambers… the direction of the future is quietly shifted. Not by fate, but by the hands of those who believe they can surpass fate itself."
The light vanished.
Darkness swallowed everything.
And—
TICK.
It fell like the hammer of destiny.
Second 7.
Druuumm—
Prraasshh—
Thunder rolled across the sky like the jaws of a giant holding back its scream. Rain poured down mercilessly over a hidden graveyard—ancient ground known only to the guardians of shadow.
Two gravestones stood side by side, lashed by rain, cold and dim—yet they felt like two pillars supporting the small world of a child.
A seven-year-old boy stood between them. His black cloak was heavy with water, his shoulders small, his body trembling. His hands were clenched so tightly his knuckles had gone pale—as if he were gripping the remnants of a world just stolen from him.
He was crying. Silently. Deeply. Without sound. Only his shoulders quivered, only the occasional suppressed sob broke free when lightning split the sky.
The majestic voice spoke in a low tone, as though gently stroking a future yet unborn:
"This is what the world feels like when it takes too much from someone who is still too young to understand the meaning of loss."
Seconds passed. The perspective slowly closed in on the boy—on his face soaked by rain and tears.
He still looked down.
His gaze was fixed on the wet earth before the two gravestones. Unmoving. Not drawing a deep breath. Only stillness… as if time itself had stopped to give him space to collapse.
But then—slowly.
Very slowly.
His head lifted.
Just a little at first, hesitant. Then higher… and higher… until his eyes finally stared straight ahead, toward a place where no one stood—except those now forced to witness the birth of resolve.
Those eyes—once dim and soaked—changed.
A faint red glow ignited behind his irises, thin yet unmistakable, like embers brushed by the wind. His gaze sharpened, narrow and keen, and strangely… no longer the gaze of a seven-year-old child.
His expression shifted.
His lips trembled, but not from crying—rather from something growing inside him. Something larger than words. Something far too heavy for a child so small, and yet somehow… he bore it.
And then—beneath the rain, amid the rolling thunder—he opened his mouth.
The voice was small, hoarse, yet piercingly clear. Like a vow planted directly into the foundation of the world.
He drew a breath, his stare honing itself like a blade forged from quiet fury.
"I'm ready now… and this time, it's my turn."
The majestic voice only whispered:
"With a single sentence… the world, too… shifted."
Druuumm—
Druuumm—
The child's shadow did not dissolve in the falling rain. And the universe… returned to waiting for the next moment.
***