Kaibetsu had always felt still. Safe. Its stone walls and mountain winds made it a place where warriors rested, not where nightmares were born.
But tonight, something felt wrong.
Akuzai, Aditya, Abhishek, and Anuj gathered at the ancient observatory temple—one of the last places untouched by the Unwritten's reach. The wind outside howled like it remembered a name no one dared recall.
"Tell me again what you saw," Abhishek asked, arms crossed.
Akuzai stood before the glowing Chrono Bloom shard he had carried from Aoritsu. Its petals had cracked open again—without reason, without time.
"I didn't see it," Akuzai said quietly. "I felt it. A voice. It didn't speak like a man. It moved like a wound in thought."
"Prophetic," Aditya muttered. "We're fighting wind now?"
"No," Anuj said, staring into the shard. "We're fighting something that doesn't want to be remembered."
He placed both palms on the Bloom, and his kinetic aura pulsed softly.
Suddenly, the shard bled a black light.
It wasn't normal darkness—it was absence. No sound. No color. Just pressure.
And then, a whisper—
> "Veyrix..."
The air snapped inward. The torches blew out.
Aditya stepped back instinctively. "What the hell was that?"
Anuj fell to one knee, panting. "That was a name. One not recorded in any timeline. Something erased itself from history… but left a scar behind."
Abhishek knelt beside him. "You said it like you recognized it."
"I don't," Anuj whispered. "But my soul did."
Akuzai stared at the shard, now pulsing with a cold, unnatural rhythm.
> Veyrix.
The name vibrated through him. Not like an enemy—but like a force. A command. A god that didn't ask to be worshipped, only obeyed.
Aditya slammed his fist against the wall. "I knew this peace was a lie. Rivan wasn't the end—he was the beginning."
"Veyrix isn't like Rivan," Akuzai said slowly. "Rivan wanted to rewrite time. But this... thing... wants to unwrite everything."
Anuj added, "Not just people. Not worlds. It's trying to erase possibility itself."
A silence fell over the room.
And then, for the first time in years, Kaien Arashi—Akuzai's father—spoke with quiet steel.
"I've heard that name before."
Everyone turned.
"In the deepest section of the Rift Archives," he said, voice low, "there's a forbidden record. An entity predating even the Chronomancer. A concept—given form. A being made of lost choices."
Akuzai's mother, Miyako, entered with quiet footsteps. "You were too young to remember, Akuzai. But when you were born, there was a solar fracture. The elders said something stirred that day."
"Veyrix," Kaien whispered. "The Shadow That Unmade Light."
The fire in Akuzai's chest stirred.
Not anger.
Purpose.
He turned to the others. "If he erased himself from history, then he's not afraid of us remembering him. He's afraid of us becoming more than memory."
Abhishek nodded slowly. "Then we write him back into it. Force the world to remember what he tried to erase."
Aditya smirked. "For once, I agree with the brain."
Anuj stood, still pale. "But if we do this… if we face Veyrix… we're leaving the edge of fate behind. There's no going back."
Akuzai looked out the temple window, where the stars blinked nervously above the world.
"I wasn't planning to."
---
Veyrix had a name now.
And names have power.
But so do the ones who dare to say them out loud.