Life is full of chances. That's what people say. But most of it is random. No one chooses the circumstances of their birth, the qualities they inherit, or the cards they are dealt.
Some are born with advantages. Others with burdens. Sometimes what benefits you becomes something others fear. What one person calls a gift, another calls a curse. Opinions form quickly, and those opinions decide your place in society. They shape your reputation, even among your own family.
And in a world like ours, where abilities and augmentations define worth, that judgment only cuts deeper.
I was a special case.
I am Oliver Narite.
I was born with a power people called predatory. Villainous. A call to the dark.
At first it was only pressure, something building inside my skull like a storm waiting to break. Then the voices began. Slow. Distant. Almost gentle.
The shadows followed soon after.
They gathered behind me, around me, under my bed and along the walls. No matter where I went, they were there. Sleep became impossible. Most nights I wondered if I had already lost my mind, trapped inside a world of endless night.
The whispers grew clearer with time.
I began to understand what they were.
Not words. Not exactly.
They were thoughts. Feelings people tried to hide. The things they buried beneath smiles and polite conversation.
Which was why I noticed the way my mother looked at my father.
Resentment.
And dear old dad looked at me with doubt.
I could see it. Not metaphorically. Literally.
Their Uratsu moved in patterns, like wavelengths shifting and distorting. The fluctuations were unstable, sharp, dishonest. Strong emotional distortion always meant the same thing.
Deceit.
I felt the argument before I heard it.
Downstairs their breathing changed rhythm. Intent thickened the air until it pressed against my skin.
Then my mother screamed.
The shockwave of Uratsu rippled through the house as she hurled my father through a wall. When I reached the stairs I saw her standing there, eyes wide with fury, realizing he had discovered her affairs.
My father's Uratsu flared in defense.
She was strong. A B-rank hunter with a simple but effective augment.
My father was only a businessman.
Or so people believed.
He cursed through the pain and drove a fist into her side. The impact stunned her. Blood gathered at her lip as she stared at him in disbelief.
The man was skilled with Uratsu moulding. He had to be. Most of the wares he sold required it to function.
That was the night I learned two things.
People hide more darkness than they admit.
And mine could see all of it.
Dad held his own.
He deflected her blows with desperate precision, slipping past strikes that should have shattered bone. He already knew how this would end. In cases like this, strength did not matter. Appearances did.
She was stronger. A B-rank hunter.
He was the breadwinner.
But bruises on her skin and the right accusations would put him in a cell. And with her connections, low-level associates and men she had clearly entertained before, the narrative would write itself.
False allegations.
Injuries to prove it.
Dad was finished.
And then the world changed.
Everything felt… malleable.
The floor beneath me dissolved into inky blackness, and I sank without falling. The house, the screams, the violence above — all of it became distant.
Below me was a void.
In it, fluctuating shapes pulsed. Dips of pure white bled into dull yellows and violent reds. I did not know how I understood them.
But I did.
They were emotional constructs. Intent. Regret. Rage. Deceit.
I looked up.
Through the dark, I saw my mother holding my father in a chokehold.
I stepped behind her.
In that space, I did not move physically. I moved through shadow.
My arms wrapped around her reflection the same way she held him. Shadowy tendrils coiled around her and dragged her downward with me.
She did not scream.
Down there, beneath her, was a strange light in her shape — a cast, like a silhouette cut from the floor. A negative of her being.
Above it hung her current self, colored in anger and ego and impulse.
I reached.
I grabbed the darker mass. The warped version. The one saturated in resentment and selfish hunger.
And I swapped them.
The construct of her original shape took color.
The other lost it.
When I rose back through the floor, I dropped her in front of my father.
She gasped.
Safe to say, my mother was different.
Her hair seemed darker. There was a faint, permanent outline around her eyes, as if shadow clung to her. But more than that — her presence had shifted.
She clung to my father from that day on.
She beat one of her previous lovers half to death.
She cooked. Cleaned. Tried. In ways she never had before.
Even the food tasted different. Like effort had weight.
My father was distant, cautious, but he tolerated the change. The benefits outweighed the questions.
She was remorseful.
Genuinely.
And that was what unsettled me.
Because I did not know what I had done.
Had I fixed her?
Broken her?
I ignored the feeling.
It felt like I had done something good.
And that was enough.
At my current level, I could move anywhere within a three-kilometre radius through shadow. Distance meant little inside the dark. I thought it was easy.
Some jackass bullying a kid at school?
Simple. Pull him down. Swap a layer.
But it wasn't as clean as I first believed.
Isolating specific qualities was difficult. People don't just have "anger" or "cruelty" neatly packaged. Traits overlap. They bleed into one another. Desire tangles with insecurity. Ego fuses with fear.
Once, behind a dingy bar, I dragged some loudmouth into the dark and tried to adjust his aggression.
I grabbed the wrong thread.
When I brought him back, something fundamental had shifted. His attraction patterns were altered along with his hostility. He staggered out confused, reacting to impulses that weren't his baseline.
When I reversed it, he was mortified.
Not because of what he felt.
But because it hadn't been his choice.
That was when I started to understand the real problem.
Duration.
Energy cost.
And precision.
Behavioral shifts were easier to maintain if I fed off their own Uratsu to fuel the conversion. Their energy sustained the altered construct. But deeper changes required more of my own reserves — and the strain was noticeable.
The longer I held a modification, the more unstable the shadow-cast became.
People are not single-layered beings.
They are systems.
And I was performing surgery in the dark.
Dad was fine with it at first.
He ignored what I could do. Or maybe he chose not to look too closely. Mother treated him better than she ever had. She was attentive. Loyal. Soft where she used to be sharp.
And he cared for me.
Even knowing I wasn't his biological son.
I made his rivals kinder too. Business competitors who once tried to undercut him suddenly became cooperative. Negotiations smoothed out. Old grudges dissolved.
Life improved.
Too easily.
When I turned sixteen, I noticed something strange.
It started small.
A shadowed outline around the eyes.
Hair slightly darker than before.
A faint shift in demeanor.
Then I saw it everywhere.
Half the town carried the same subtle alterations. The same signature. The same residue of shadow clinging to them like an afterimage.
At first I told myself it was coincidence.
But I knew my own work.
The swaps I made weren't isolated events. They left impressions. The "cast" I pulled from the void wasn't always perfectly returned. Something of the dark remained anchored in them.
People began to notice.
Online forums filled with posts about a "cosmetic phenomenon." Before-and-after photos. Threads speculating about contaminated water, airborne compounds, illegal augment testing.
Conspiracy theorists claimed it was a low-level government operation.
Mass behavioral conditioning.
Genetic recalibration.
No one suspected a sixteen-year-old boy.
But I did know.
And eventually, so did they.
The crackdown came quietly.
The Association had caught wind of behavioral anomalies. Statistical irregularities. A spike in "corrected" social conflicts. Reduced crime rates paired with unexplained cosmetic shifts.
They dispatched a Knight.
Marione Kaina.
A psychic.
I was fucked.
Not some rookie. Not an inspector.
A well-known operative.
The information trail traced back to a local politician I had adjusted. I didn't rewrite him entirely. Just nudged him — made him slightly more charitable so he'd maintain public favor and stay in the good graces of his donors.
Apparently, that subtle shift triggered a deeper audit.
Patterns.
Financial behavior changes.
Voting inconsistencies.
Psychological variance.
They noticed.
And they sent her.
An E.V.A pilot on top of it.
Combat wasn't even an option. Even if I could drag her into the dark, psychics were different. Their internal landscapes were fortified. Structured. They understood cognition and identity in ways normal people didn't.
And besides—
What was the point?
I hadn't killed anyone.
I hadn't exploited anyone.
I didn't take money.
I didn't blackmail.
I fixed people.
At least that's what I told myself.
And in six months, I was done.
I never figured out exactly how she narrowed it down.
I was careful. I reduced activity. I stopped large-scale adjustments. I even limited my range work to empty hours of the night.
Didn't matter.
She caught the pattern.
It happened in a park.
Secluded. Early evening. I was alone, sitting cross-legged near the treeline, training my Uratsu control. Reducing leakage. Practicing precision threads instead of full-cast swaps.
That's when she stepped into range.
I didn't see her at first.
But she felt different.
Most people's Uratsu fluctuates like static — chaotic, emotional noise layered over instinct.
Hers was structured.
Streamlined.
Disciplined.
And then I felt it.
She didn't sense me directly.
She sensed the stream.
The influence.
Even when dormant, my ability leaves a faint current in the air, like humidity after rain. When I thread someone's shadow, it creates a subtle directional pull in the surrounding field.
I cut my output immediately.
Clamped down.
But she had already caught the tail end of it.
Her head tilted slightly.
Not confused.
Certain.
"You're the anomaly," she said.
No accusation. No anger.
Just confirmation.
I considered pulling her down.
Dragging her into the void before she could react.
But psychic types are different. Their internal constructs are layered, reinforced. Entering her mindscape blind would be suicide.
And worse—
She was calm.
No fear spike. No defensive flare.
Just controlled curiosity.
For the first time since I was seven, I felt something unfamiliar.
Not guilt.
Not shame.
Not even fear.
Small.
There was a faint hint of lilac in my eyes.
In my veins.
In the air around me.
And then there was a hand around my throat.
She lifted me off the ground effortlessly. Her suit glowed in segmented lines along the arms and collar, controlled pulses of energy feeding into reinforced musculature.
Only six E.V.A-class Knights existed.
She was one of them.
My body was hijacked.
Motor control overridden through psychic intrusion.
I could feel the pressure inside my skull — not brute force, but precise neural interception. She wasn't overpowering me.
She was rerouting me.
And yet—
My power was still mine.
The ones I had turned… I could still feel them. Threads anchored across the city. Dozens. Maybe more.
I pulled inward.
Into my own mind.
Shadows bled outward instinctively, writhing tendrils crawling up her leg. They tried to latch.
For a split second they made contact.
Then her suit flared.
The shadows disintegrated.
Psychic reinforcement layered over kinetic shielding. Clean. Efficient.
But not all of it was direct.
A hidden strand slipped away unnoticed, snaking along the underside of a nearby bench.
She had incomplete files.
The Association only labeled my ability A-rate.
They didn't know the range.
They didn't know the anchors.
They didn't know that I didn't need line of sight.
I vanished.
Minutes later, I reappeared inside a moving black SUV.
Rear seat.
Behind one of my turned drivers.
The vehicle was already in motion.
A safe zone. A mobile extraction.
Except—
I still couldn't move.
My muscles refused to obey.
A gust of wind hit the side of the vehicle.
The air pressure shifted unnaturally.
I turned my head slowly.
She stood outside the tinted window.
Running alongside the SUV.
Uncaring eyes glowing deep lilac.
She didn't look strained.
She looked bored.
The driver's arm jerked unnaturally.
Hijacked.
The door unlocked.
Opened mid-motion.
She reached in, grabbed me by the collar, and ripped me out of the moving vehicle like luggage.
The asphalt blurred beneath us.
I tried to thread the dark again,
And felt her mind waiting for it.
Smothering it.
She struck once.
Precise.
Controlled.
Everything went black.
I woke up in a cell.
Cold floor. White lights. Power dampeners wrapped around my wrists and spine like parasites.
The trial was private.
No media.
No public record.
Seven years.
Behavioral manipulation. Civil interference. Cognitive tampering.
They paid my dad off to keep everything quiet. A compensation package disguised as a settlement grant. Non-disclosure agreements stacked thicker than case files.
He still came to see me.
Not often.
But enough.
He never asked what I really did.
I never told him.
Containment was… scuffed.
They underestimated how much of my power was internal architecture rather than external output. The dampeners suppressed projection, range extension, and active swaps.
But they couldn't stop me from thinking.
From mapping.
From refining theory.
After the first year, I got bored.
After the second, dangerously bored.
You can only replay the structure of your own mind so many times before you start experimenting on it.
Then one day, the door opened without warning.
A man stepped in.
He wore a visor with thin orange slits glowing across it. Not decorative — functional. His limbs were mechanical from shoulder to fingertip, sleek prosthetics humming faintly with contained energy.
He walked like someone who had lost things and kept moving anyway.
He threw a folded set of clothes at me.
They hit my chest.
"Get up, kid."
His voice was calm. Controlled. Not sympathetic.
"Name's Erementaru Hayate."
A pause.
"I'm giving you a second chance."
The dampeners powered down with a low mechanical click.
"Put those on."
I stared at him.
"You're not here to lecture me?"
Hayate adjusted the cuff on one of his mechanical wrists. The servos whirred softly.
"No."
He stepped closer.
"Those changes of yours?"
A pause.
"They were permanent."
My stomach tightened.
"We're keeping that quiet. Got it?"
So they knew.
Not behavioral drift.
Not temporary edits.
Permanent structural swaps.
He continued, voice level.
"You're not using that facet again."
I said nothing.
"You will operate under restriction protocol. Support only."
He began counting on metal fingers.
"Storage."
"Repositioning."
"Shadow transit."
"Containment assistance."
"No identity reconstruction. No personality alteration. No structural swaps."
His visor tilted slightly toward me.
"You're support now."
I exhaled slowly.
Support.
After rewriting a town.
"You got that after a year of bargaining," he added. "Don't make me regret it."
A flicker of irritation sparked in me.
"And if I don't agree?"
The room pressure shifted subtly.
Hayate didn't raise his voice.
"Don't try that shit on me."
A faint hum built in his prosthetics.
"I'm friends with Kaina."
He let that settle.
"I learned a few things from her."
Psychic countermeasures.
Layered cognition defense.
Possibly severance techniques.
He wasn't bluffing.
He wasn't afraid.
And that bothered me more than the cell ever had.
Hayate studied me for a long moment before speaking again.
"You're the deciding factor."
I frowned.
"Your ability maintains the change. Without your continued existence, without your anchor in the system, the alterations destabilize."
So that was it.
I wasn't just the cause.
I was the keystone.
"They remain altered because you remain active," he continued. "If you die, or if your power collapses, there's a cascade risk."
Half the town.
Permanent shadow outlines. Darkened hair. Personality recalibration.
A cosmetic shift for structural behavioral smoothing.
He shrugged lightly.
"Considering the benefits? Crime reduction. Economic stability. Lower domestic violence rates."
A pause.
"That's a good price to pay."
I didn't know whether to feel proud or disturbed.
"And don't worry about your accommodations," he added. "The Grandmaster and the Empress are keeping tabs on you."
That got my attention.
Two of the highest authorities in the Association hierarchy.
Monitoring me.
Not imprisoning me.
Monitoring.
"You're a useful asset," Hayate said simply. "Which means you're not rotting in a cell."
He turned toward the door.
"You're joining me on a personal project."
The door slid open.
"Welcome to Squad 4."
The words landed heavier than the sentence length suggested.
Seven years.
Reduced to two.
Two years of dampeners. White walls. Isolation.
Goodbye confinement.
Hello freedom.
Hello biome hunting.
Hello coworkers who had no idea what I was truly capable of.
I stood, flexing fingers that hadn't felt unrestrained power in years.
Support role.
Mobility.
Storage.
Repositioning.
No structural swaps.
I smiled faintly.
We would see how long that restriction lasted.