The NullLight Rift wasn't just another anomaly. It was a wound in reality, a place where the laws of physics hesitated and the air itself tasted wrong. Takumi Hanabira had never been anywhere like it.
He stumbled across the jagged terrain with the rest of the Hunter squad. Ten of them in total: three A-ranks, three B-ranks, two C-ranks, one D-rank, and Takumi, barely seventeen, the youngest and the weakest observer. The air vibrated around him, a subtle hum that made his skin crawl. Mana currents, he guessed, but these were unlike anything he'd ever trained for. They weren't simply chaotic—they were alive, aware, pressing at the edge of his senses.
"Stay close. Eyes sharp," Ryo's voice came from ahead. The A-rank leading the team moved like a predator, confident, slicing through space as though the Rift obeyed him.
Takumi's pulse spiked. He wasn't here to fight. Not yet. He was here to observe, to take notes, to survive long enough to understand what this anomaly could do.
The ground beneath them shifted suddenly. The gravity bent in short, cruel pulses, throwing several Hunters off balance. Takumi instinctively fell to a crouch, his hands braced against the slick, crystalline rock.
And then the light flared.
It didn't begin as a scream, or a growl. There was nothing. Just a flare of red-black light that poured from a fissure in the Rift like molten shadow, searing the edges of reality itself. Takumi's stomach lurched.
The sensors on their visors went haywire. Every device blinked, died, and then went silent. The three A-ranks moved, but too late. One moment they were charging, the next, nothing.
Shigure had awakened.
He rose from the molten fissure as if sculpted from darkness, a humanoid silhouette that refused solid form. His limbs melted into shadows, his face unreadable, his posture unrelenting authority. Takumi froze in place, his stomach sinking into ice.
A B-rank hunter screamed, only to vanish instantly. Dark-red tendrils erupted from the Rift, impaling two others before they could even react. Their cries echoed through the warped zone, then abruptly ended. Silence followed, unnatural and heavy.
Takumi wanted to move. He wanted to run. But the ground beneath him rippled as if it too feared Shigure. Every instinct told him this was not survivable.
The melee A-rank charged, blade drawn. Shigure moved with fluid precision. One arm became a razor of shadow, slicing the hunter in two before he could blink.
The assassin didn't even have the luxury of a clean strike. His mind shattered from within; his body collapsed, eyes turning pitch black before he fell.
Takumi's heart pounded. The world had shrunk to a point: live or die. Every calculation, every methodical step he'd learned from the System, every training drill—useless.
The lightning hunter attempted an all-out charge, electricity flaring along his limbs, warping space as shockwaves tore the Rift's ground apart. Shigure raised a hand. A flash. The hunter's head rolled away like an afterthought.
Takumi's chest heaved. He pressed himself against the jagged rock wall, hands trembling. He wasn't ready. He wasn't strong. He was not supposed to be here.
Flames roared next. The Flame Hunter and Summoner Hunter unleashed their abilities, colossal beings and infernos that should have turned the battlefield into a furnace of hope.
Shigure didn't flinch. He walked forward, each step measured, predatory. The guardians crumbled under his grip, stone and ether shattering into nothing. Shadows writhed, tendrils erupting to pierce, crush, annihilate. Takumi's vision swam. He couldn't think. He could only watch.
One by one, the remaining Hunters fell. The D-rank tried to flee, only to be erased by the effortless force of the shadowed tendrils. Takumi's stomach turned. His mind screamed, and yet he didn't move. Something deeper, beneath the fear, held him in place.
The air shifted. Shigure's attention, for a fraction of a second, paused.
Takumi saw it: not hunger, not bloodlust, but curiosity. Recognition. Something unearthly in its gaze.
The metal pole he had grabbed during the chaos felt absurdly useless in his hands. He raised it anyway, hands shaking, breath short.
Shigure's step forward distorted space around him. Takumi's arm and leg were erased by the sheer pressure, pain distant, abstract. He didn't scream. He clenched his teeth, eyes fixed on the anomaly of molten shadow before him.
Then, a blur. The force of impact sent him crashing across the Rift's warped terrain, walls fracturing light and stone alike. His vision dimmed. Blood, debris, and mana pulses flashed across his eyes.
And then—nothing.
Darkness swallowed him.
---
When Takumi awoke, the world had shifted. His body felt… different. His limbs worked, yet every movement resonated with an unfamiliar energy. Something inside him hummed, ancient, alien yet intimately his own.
He sat up slowly, every sense alert. The Rift had collapsed behind him. The ten Hunters—gone. The devastation untraceable, his own body intact despite the impossible odds.
And then he felt it.
A presence. Not outside, not separate, but inside him. A voice, familiar yet foreign. Calm. Smug. Mocking.
"…Took you long enough to wake up, partner."
Takumi stumbled back, heart hammering. His reflection in the shattered crystalline shards across the ground didn't match him. Black sclera. Red irises glowing like embers. A crooked grin spread across the reflection's lips.
"…What are you?" he whispered.
"You. But upgraded," came the reply. "Welcome to the fun part."
Takumi's pulse spiked. He couldn't comprehend it, couldn't rationalize. Every shred of logic, training, and expectation collapsed. Shigure was inside him.
He fell to his knees, clutching his head, and the voice continued. Sarcastic. Mocking. Precise.
"You're still alive because of me," it said, like a statement of fact, not mercy. "Relax. I didn't let you die."
Takumi's hands shook, eyes darting around the crumbling Rift as if the shadows themselves would reach for him again. But nothing moved. The chaos was frozen in space, the massacre complete, silent.
It took hours for him to comprehend the change. Every nerve, every thought, every breath seemed layered with something else—a dual consciousness, a synchronization of instinct he didn't understand but could feel. Reflexes sharpened, perception stretched, awareness bleeding beyond normal limits.
The System interface on his wrist flared, dormant no longer. The aura around him registered dual mana signatures, one human, one ancient. Takumi's heart raced—not with fear, but with a strange clarity. Survival was no longer the simple choice.
He rose, testing his movements, and found that Shigure's influence subtly guided him. Every step, every breath, every blink carried a precision that wasn't entirely his.
"Don't make me regret keeping you alive," Shigure murmured inside his mind.
Takumi's pulse didn't slow for hours. The NullLight Rift behind him was gone, collapsed into a void only he and Shigure would ever understand. The ten Hunters were gone, a memory that felt both distant and painfully close.
The Vessel had been born.
The city beyond the Rift waited, oblivious to the god-sized bloodletting that had just occurred. But Takumi didn't look at it. He didn't run. He didn't cry. He stood, trembling but resolute, a boy fused with something ancient and unstoppable.
The voice of Shigure lingered, teasing, predatory, almost affectionate in a way that made Takumi shiver.
"You're mine now," it said. "And I think you'll like it."
Takumi clenched his fists, feeling the surge of power and alien precision flowing through him. He could feel it—the potential, the danger, the weight of existence pressing down and lifting him up at the same time.
For the first time in his life, he didn't feel like prey.
He felt like something more.
Something unstoppable.
And somewhere, in the shadows of the shattered Rift, Shigure grinned.
The world didn't know it yet. But it would.
The Vessel Era had begun.