> Narrator:
"In countless realities, four shadows stand against the end.
A blade forged in silence. A mind cloaked in arcane. A bow loosed from the unseen. A sentinel born of dusk.
Their timelines-different. Their enemy-one. The Demon Lord, a being that exists beyond time."
[Visuals: Each Shadow fights the Demon Lord in their own realm. Parallel timelines flicker between them.]
Narrator:
"These echoes ripple through time... all converging toward a singular fate."
The rain whispered against the leaves.
Ryu opened his eyes beneath a blood-orange sky. Trees loomed overhead, gnarled like fingers frozen mid-reach. His breath steamed in the cold air, chest rising, falling. No name echoed in his thoughts-only silence. Emptiness.
No memory. No purpose.
He sat up, body aching, clothes torn. On his chest, something pulsed faintly beneath the skin-a mark shaped like a spiral sun.
He didn't know why, but it hurt.
Leaves rustled behind him. Ryu turned fast, instinct overriding confusion. A girl stepped from the trees, brown cloak fluttering around her small frame. Pale hair. Sharp violet eyes.
"Don't move," she said, her hand hovering over a dagger on her hip.
"I wasn't," Ryu muttered.
She paused, then relaxed. "You're not... dangerous. Yet."
"Who are you?" he asked.
She knelt beside him, examining the mark on his chest with a flicker of recognition-but said nothing about it. "My name's Yui. I found you here yesterday. You've been unconscious."
"And you stayed?"
"I don't leave people behind."
Ryu wanted to believe that. Her voice was kind, even gentle. But her eyes... distant. Guarded. Like she was measuring him.
He stared at his hand. It trembled slightly, not from cold-but from the void inside.
"I don't remember anything."
"I figured." She stood. "Come. I'll take you somewhere safe."
"Why you ganna help me?"
Yui didn't answer immediately. Her eyes lingered on the spiraling sigil on his chest. "Because you're not ready to be alone."
But something in her tone felt wrong. Not false... just incomplete.
Ryu followed, but a question throbbed louder than the pain in his head.
Was she really the first person he'd met... or the first person assigned to find him?