Airi hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from her chest. For a moment, she lay still, dazed, surrounded by darkness that pulsed like a living thing. The fractured space she had fallen through was gone; above her, only a jagged smear of light remained, shrinking, sealing, erasing the only path back.
"No… wait!" She pushed herself up, reaching toward it, but the tear closed with a silent snap. Her hand grasped only air. Cold, stale, stinging air.
Airi staggered to her feet. The ground beneath her was smooth stone, faintly warm, etched with lines that glowed like cooling embers. They formed circles within circles, symbols she had never seen yet somehow felt she should recognize.
Her pulse hammered. "Where am I?" she whispered.
A soft breath answered her. Not wind. Not movement. A breath. As if the darkness itself exhaled.
Airi spun. "Who's there?"
The air trembled. Something shifted behind her, too quiet to be footsteps, too deliberate to be chance. She backed away until her spine pressed against the stone wall she hadn't noticed before.
Then a voice—low, distorted, almost human—reverberated through the chamber.
"You weren't supposed to arrive yet."
Airi's throat tightened. She had heard that tone before, echoing through the fracture… watching her from the edges of her nightmares since the artifact awakened.
"You…" she whispered. "I know you."
A faint glow bloomed ahead of her, illuminating tall pillars carved with spiraling marks. Between them, a silhouette emerged—slender, cloaked, its face obscured by shifting shadow. But its eyes… faint silver rings glimmered where eyes should be.
The same rings she had seen in the visions.
"Incomplete," the figure murmured, tilting its head. "Your awakening should not have progressed this fast."
Airi forced her breath steady. "Tell me who you are."
The figure lifted a hand, and the symbols on the floor brightened in response. "Names are anchors. Dangerous things to give freely."
Airi stepped back. "What do you want from me?"
"You were chosen," the voice said. "Long before you understood what that meant."
Chosen. The word dug into her like a hook.
"I don't want this," she said, voice trembling. "Whatever it is—take it back."
The figure stilled. "You think it can be undone?"
A faint ripple of cold brushed her skin, like a hand she couldn't see.
"You opened the fracture. You called us. You set the cycle in motion again."
"That wasn't me!" Airi snapped. "It was an accident. The artifact—"
"Responded to you," the figure finished. "It answers only to its bearer."
Airi's stomach dropped. "Bearer?"
The figure stepped closer, and the shadows clinging to it writhed like smoke. "Look at your hands."
She hesitated, then lifted them. A faint shimmer ran beneath her skin—thread‑thin lines of pale gold, branching like veins but glowing.
"No…" She rubbed at them, panicked, but the light only brightened.
"It has begun," the figure murmured. "Your bond is forming."
Airi's breath quickened. "Why me?"
"Because you survived the call," it answered simply. "Most do not."
Airi's legs weakened, but she forced herself to stand tall. "Tell me how to get out of here."
The figure turned slightly, as if listening to something she could not hear. "Leaving is… possible. But the path is not kind to the unprepared. And time is thinning."
"Then show me," Airi said. "I'm not staying here."
The figure extended its hand—not to offer help, but to draw a line in the air. Light bled from the motion, forming a vertical slit that quivered like liquid metal. A doorway.
"Through here, your world still reaches for you," it said. "But when you cross, the binding will deepen."
Airi swallowed. "Meaning what?"
"You will no longer be able to pretend you are ordinary."
The doorway pulsed, and she felt a tug deep in her chest, as if something on the other side recognized her.
The figure retreated into shadow. "Choose quickly. The fracture closes soon."
Airi hesitated only a moment. Then she ran.
She plunged through the shimmering threshold—light swallowing her whole.
The last thing she heard was the figure's whisper following her:
"You cannot flee what you are becoming."