06 / 04 / 2019 - Daito, Prefecture Osaka, Japan.
12 PM, The Apartment.
"I'm home!"
"We're home!"
Thud.
Hand dropping from the door handle behind him, Akane leaned limply against the wall. He lifted his head, turning his gaze toward the silent apartment.
It was entirely different from the hustle and bustle of the streets. The moment the door closed, they were greeted by absolute silence.
It felt as though their earlier liveliness had been nothing more than a burst of bubbles — a fleeting mirage.
A fresh, earthy smell prickled his nose, flushed red from the outdoor chill against his otherwise pale skin.
The interior air was slightly warm, exuding a faint sweet hint of citrus. Out of the corner of his eye, Ayato slipped past him without a word, placing his outdoor shoes neatly into the cabinet.
Flicking his gaze back, he closed his eyes for a few moments to gather himself. The house was entirely quiet — but at this point, Akane couldn't bring himself to care about the silence or about his twin.
Shaking his head faintly, Akane turned into the corridor. It was somewhat dim, offering a partial view of the empty living room ahead. Tranquil. It seemed nobody else was home.
"Huhhhh…"
Exhaling a long, weary breath, he lowered himself stiffly to take off his own shoes, tucking them away. He was utterly spent.
Even with the time he had spent trying to recuperate the previous day, nothing could truly erase this kind of pain. There was no choice — he had brought this upon himself.
Straightening with a silent wince, he walked toward the stairs. Ayato had already gone up ahead, disappearing without a sound. Again, he didn't mind.
Blinking against the sharp slant of light cutting through the upper hallway, he passed Ayato's closed door and reached his own room.
The moment he stepped inside, his carefully maintained facade wore down.
His breath quickened into shallow gasps, cold sweat sliding down his face as his movements grew desperate and hasty. His head throbbed in violent sync with the rest of his body.
He closed the door behind him slowly, gently — letting the handle slide back into place with a quiet click — before his body swayed heavily toward his desk.
Thump.
He let the strap of the school bag slide down his left shoulder, dropping it carelessly.
Immediately, his right hand flew to the stiff collar of his Gakuran jacket, tearing it open to reveal the stark white dress shirt beneath — now heavily stained with fresh, blooming crimson.
Hanging his head low, he gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached — enduring the pain in silence — peeling the tight black jacket from his shoulders like a layer of dead skin.
It was an agonisingly slow process. With a final, weak flick of his wrist, he tossed the uniform onto the desk, draping it over his bag to hide it from view.
A violent shiver racked his back and front as the cool dry air of the bedroom hit his bare skin through the damp fabric of his shirt.
He let out a heavy white breath, his knees trembling as he took two unsteady steps toward the bed and dropped down.
Lying sideways, his gaze grew blurry and distant. His eyelids slowly fluttered shut as his breathing finally began to smooth out.
In stark, brutal contrast to the colourful patterns of his bedsheets, the white cotton of his shirt remained stained with dark-red patches, spreading outward like a garden of blooming flowers.
…
2 hours later.
"Huuuupp…"
Sucking in air as he gasped hard, his eyes slowly opened. His head was empty and vacuous, echoing in a silent pulse — the pain had eased, he thought. In this dreamless nap, some functions of his body had recovered too.
Clarity came back to his senses fast; with it, a silent assessment. And yet, he still didn't want to move an inch, blinking, frozen, facing the dim room. Light fell from the window onto the desk.
'It hurts…'
It meant he didn't want to do anything at all.
Voicing his thoughts — even then, the regeneration, albeit slow, was still ongoing. Trying to move his body, his gaze moved to his fingers, which were now twitching.
"Ahhh…"
Lips parted as a dry groan escaped from his throat. His lips were white and pale, lacking nutrition; never had he felt this weak all over — even in Khtonres — feeling the rust and jolt in his joints.
Still, bit by bit, he closed his lips; under his gaze, his fingers and left arm slowly moved to prop his stiffly pressed right arm. Trying on his own, he sat up and leaned against the wall.
Head pressed to the wall, parting his lips and letting out a white mist. How much time had passed? He didn't know — gazing at the ceiling, knowing only that silence still reigned.
'They are still outside?'
Well, the corner of his mouth upturned, his eyes hazy and bright — good for them, he guessed. His mind drifted in soliloquy. There were so many things to do, but recovery was first, no?
Since he had nothing to do at this point, he thought of a long-delayed matter that would certainly come to pass in the days ahead — or perhaps sooner.
'There are many delayed matters that I have put at the back of my mind for a month.'
Thinking, he let his hands lie limp at his sides and shifted to a slightly more comfortable position. Eyes narrowed in thought — first things first.
'Dragon.'
Slowly closing his eyes, swimming and digging into his mind to pull up the knowledge of that day — inserted without his knowledge or awareness — reminding him of something, no?
His lips moving as he read the structured knowledge, delivered in the same way it had arrived; even at this, another wave of shudder — an instinct of fear of the unknown nibbling at him.
…
A Dragon begins formless.
Not shapeless — formless. The distinction matters. A Hatchling carries the full ontological weight of dragonhood compressed into potential. What it lacks is not essence but expression.
The first gift. The Hatchling's particle-to-vessel projection is fluid, unbound by fixed biology such as wings, scales, claws, breath — all configurations available, none yet chosen. The body learns what the will demands.
This is not mere shapeshifting. It is self-authorship. The Hatchling edits its own genes, optimises structure against environmental pressures, adapts vessel to purpose. Form follows function. The Dragon decides what it is by deciding what it needs.
The second gift. Before the Hatchling's first breath, it is already connected — not to other Dragons, but to dragonhood itself. Shared memory space, a racial library encoded into reality's fabric.
Here reside templates: the ancestral dragon form, elemental affinities, flight mechanics, and territorial instincts. The Hatchling does not learn to fly — it remembers how Dragons have always flown. It does not discover fire — it inherits the knowledge of a million exhalations before its own.
Access is limited, read-only for now. The young cannot yet contribute; they can only retrieve. But even this fragment is profound: the Hatchling is never alone. Isolated, yes. Individual, absolutely. But connected to every Dragon that came before through invisible threads of shared configuration.
…
"Looking at it again, I think I get why Interpretation of Souls is kind of useless…"
Having opened his eyes, his head low and unfocused as he mumbled — part of his mind speechless after reviewing the abilities of his dragon self. What was this? The corner of his eyes twitched.
Wasn't it overpowered? Mulling it over once again, his eyes narrowed at the thought — but no, no, there was a trap here. Reading it once more, though the description was grand and beautiful in prospect…
'The actual capability itself will be limited by what we have, no?'
In fact, all the dragon's traits still adhered to the most basic logical expression — meaning there was no sudden power-up without a price, or at least a built-up progression.
Taking his fight with the unknown man — a Priest in Khtonres — as an example: to beat him, he had been consuming himself, using leftover energy he had eaten, stored, and then burst into use for one minute.
That one minute was also a limited body modification done unconsciously at the time — and even then, he had managed to overpower the situation at the price of his own death.
Well, his eyebrows relaxed as his eyes lifted once again. After all of this, the ability seemed less extraordinary. Clicking his tongue — the one he hadn't tried that day was [Lower Archive], but perhaps it was also limited in what he could access.
But… lifting his head and shaking it faintly, he leaned his body to the right, facing the head of the bed — where the golden pouch given by the old man rested.
"All in all, it seems clear that [Formlessness] requires energy intake consumed by the vessel or body itself."
After taking the pouch, he leaned back against the wall, stretching his legs. He opened it casually, peering inside with one eye — all the items were intact, much to his relief.
Feeling lighter and with a half-smile, he placed the pouch on his lap and let his right hand draw out a book from the small opening.
For a moment, his expression seemed uncertain. Why was this so heavy again? Then — muscles straining, even with his newly strengthened body — he struggled for a while until the thick book came into view.
Thump.
"Hisss…."
He let the book go as it crashed into his lap — groaning under the impact as it landed right above him, sending another wave of pain. Yeah, this confirmed it; he was weak now.
"Hahhhh…"
Letting out a sigh — perhaps he was stuck like this for now. His right hand lay limp on the ground, blood seeping through the bandage once more, blooming over the dark region in fresh red.
Whatever — his gaze returned to the thick brown-covered book on his lap, probably fifty to thirty centimetres wide. His left hand set the pouch on the bed, then reached to trace the surface of the book.
Ancient as it was, reflected in his crimson-ashen gaze was a surface of engravings — an anvil and hammer. Upon contact, it was dusty, the cover uneven; perhaps the cover itself had been engraved by hand.
He brushed it lightly, fingers grasping the edge of the cover, and opened it.
His nose twitched at a musty smell and a faint sweet scent he couldn't identify — and on the first page, a language of runes and an illustration.
Pausing, he dug into his memory, looking at the page; his lips parted slightly, and a reading of runes came out, even a little stuttered.
…
A long time ago.
An ancient dwarf migrated from mountain to mountain, their journey through various realms.
For them, forging was to be accompanied by acute assessment and framework — not by rough hands relying on instinct.
To this end, they travelled, met many and lost many — a nomadic people devoted to knowledge and learning the ways of the world as another approach to forging.
And that's when we landed on the shore of the vast blue sea. On our way — exclamation and horror — as we stumbled upon an unusual, perhaps alien sight that would change our fate.
Various fish and creatures were dead, their corpses — hundreds, thousands — bringing an awful smell to the shore.
And on the faraway Blaivurr, the head of us pointed out to the seas. An indescribable sight, or even worse — it hit us; some of us vomited, some tore at their own skin.
A sight of darkness that tainted the sky, an abomination — like the wrath of the Allfather, no! It wasn't even worthy of that pristine, righteous anger to manifest as such a malevolent entity.
…
Five dwarves on the shore, wearing pristine robes, were pointing at the sea — as Akane flicked his eye to the depiction, his eyes stung at looking upon it directly.
'It seems that what I saw that day was just a severely weakened version, huh?'
Eyes winced as if struggling to open, the crashing waves sounding faintly in his ears — resisting the corruption that suddenly appeared in his mind. Even if it was dead, the influence was still there. What was this?
The image on the page was a mass of darkness, travelling across the surface of the sea, writhing and using the skin of the dead as a cover, constantly whispering evil in ears.
Shaking his head to clear the image of that entity, he continued reading. The sound of yellowed pages resounded in the room — the words straight and to the point, albeit often straying into other directions along the way.
Basically, the Scholars had discovered a part of a malevolent entity that had suddenly appeared in the Sea of Ægir. Due to its immense characteristics, the dwarves associated it with divinity.
But then again, who had malevolent attributes in this world? Neither it seemed — as it was so alien, something the dwarves had never encountered, so they notified the mountain dwarves.
They then consulted humans, who delivered the matter to the gods. But the god — the Allfather — was silent about it. Perhaps Fraiigilar had doubted whether their message ever reached those ears, but it was confirmed: they were tasked.
Build a city and imprison it.
Later, dwarves sent their prisoners and wardens underground to build a city to imprison it — named Khtonres, and Azngur as a means of travel between the two. To prevent any dissatisfaction or failure.
Alvisgraanir and the Primus Machinery Card were granted to both the warden and the prisoners as a check and balance. Both the First Terminal and the Machinery Card controlled the whole of Khtonres.
Pausing in his reading, he took in the Sea of Red now depicted on the page — sketched. His fingers touched the soft material, and he remembered it fresh, like yesterday — a Pillar, or Graburg.
Focusing on it, his gaze seemed to deepen; it was not the first time he had seen it — a blueprint. The corner of his lips upturned. It was unimaginable. Flipping the page — as he had expected.
'Old man, it's just…'
He had lost the words, his eyebrows drawn together as his eyes narrowed. Reminded of that day, beneath the huge corpse of the wyrm — the old man had no will left for living, perhaps.
His grip tightened as his head hung low. In truth, the old man had gambled everything on that day; as he had said, he had nothing left to lose — the last bit of dignity collapsing as he realised there was nothing more he could do.
Family, friends, and people — all lost that day. In truth, he had no right to live; all he lived for was to record everything and pray that someone would come, to take the legacy or find these books, to tell them that there had once been a city called Khtonres down there.
Living is a sin, yes… rest assured then, old man — this legacy of yours won't be left unused. I'll promise it.
Letting out a sigh and lifting his head. Facing the ceiling — in the end, all his suspicions about the old man had been for nothing, no? The old man had adhered to his ideal to the very end, betting everything on him.
Though he had won in the end and survived, it left a bitter taste. Licking his dry lips — it also couldn't be said that the old man had done it out of kindness and compassion. Each for their own, he guessed.
He shook his head, contemplating — now, he had no capacity to do anything exhausting, much less attempt [Formlessness] or [Lower Archive], or he would be spent entirely.
And as he was immersed in his own world—
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Jolted awake from his reverie, he lowered his gaze to the door across from him. Confused — were they back? Closing the book with a thud, brushing it aside, his lips parted as he was about to ask who it was.
The door opened by itself, and against his will, his eyes widened — he could only watch, and guess who it was; sure enough, the answer was revealed.
His head tilted in confusion as he stopped for a brief moment, wanting to move to the edge of the bed. Through the narrow gap in the door, a petite figure slipped inside, then closed it quickly behind her.
Pale porcelain skin and a slender facial structure. Her gaze upon him was expressionless — her eyes large, slightly upturned, with a soft glassy shade of blue, like the colour of the sky.
Silver strands of long silver-white bangs drifted across her small nose, the rest of her hair cascading like a silk sheet past her shoulders, anchored at the crown by a prominent dark black ribbon bow.
Her small lips were pressed into a quiet, reserved line as she gazed at him — the soft profile expressionless, its usually bright gaze dim and flickering. She leaned against the back of the door.
Wearing a soft-cream oversized cardigan over a cotton blouse with a rounded collar in solid white, and a plaid skirt extending to her calf in navy blue — the profiling was done from his side.
Now resuming his confusion…
"Irina…?"