The day after the tournament felt like silence trying to scream.
The arena was empty now, no cheering, no flames, no battle cries.
Just birds.
A few lazy ones nested in the high seats, watching as a lone figure wandered the ruins of the battle ring. Ki stopped at the spot where he and Andreo had clashed, where his lightning had met the moonlight.
The dust still smelled like ozone.
"Not bad," he whispered to no one in particular. "For a warm-up."
He squatted down, poking the cracked stone with a stick like a bored archaeologist. The ground was scarred with zigzag patterns where his electricity had carved through solid rock, creating a strange abstract art that only destruction could paint.
Then he sighed.
Every Myth Mark is supposed to register in the global Soul Registry, a living archive of known legends from across the pre-reset world.
You awaken your mark, your name shows up, and you get classified.
Dragon? Congratulations, here's your fire license.
Gorgon? Great, just don't look anyone in the eyes.
Bakunawa? Cool, hope you like moon venom.
But Ki?
Every time he scanned himself at three different shrines, "No Match Found."
The first shrine monk had literally thrown holy water at him thinking he was corrupted. The second had prayed for his soul while backing away slowly. The third had offered him a blessing and a refund, which was weird because Ki hadn't paid anything.
The sovereign checkpoint was worse. The crystal scanner had sparked, smoked, and then displayed a message that just said,
"ERROR: SOUL TOO SPICY."
Earlier that morning, he even tried bribing a local monk librarian with dumplings just to double-check.
Still no match.
"This isn't normal," the old monk mumbled, staring at the pulse data like it was cursed. His wrinkled fingers traced the readout multiple times, as if hoping the numbers would change through sheer willpower.
"Cool," Ki said, popping a dumplings in his mouth. The delicious paste leaked down his chin, but he didn't seem to care.
"No, not cool," the monk hissed. "Your soul's frequency is… unstable."
"Maybe I'm a shapeshifter."
"Boy. This thing looks like it was patched in by a drunk god with broken code!"
Ki blinked. "…That tracks."
The monk continued studying the data, his expression growing more disturbed by the second. "Look at this wavelength, it's not following any known pattern. It's like... like someone took a legendary soul and scrambled it through a cosmic blender."
"Sounds fun."
"And here---" The monk pointed to a section of the readout that looked like static. "This part isn't even registering as mythology. It's reading as pure void."
Ki leaned over to look. The void section was shaped vaguely like a lightning bolt, but twisted in ways that hurt to look at directly.
"Huh. That's probably fine."
The monk stared at him like he'd just casually mentioned the world was ending.
Meanwhile, far across the other side of the city, Andreo knelt at the edge of a tide cave, the Bakunawa Mark on his back softly glowing.
The serpent spoke again.
Not in words.
But in dreams.
"The world resets to hide the first lie…"
The voice was ancient and slow, like waves dragged across glass.
Andreo didn't move. His breathing matched the rhythm of the sea. Salt spray misted his face, but he remained perfectly still, as if carved from the same stone as the cave walls.
"The thunder-born boy must not reach the center."
Andreo opened his eyes.
He didn't flinch. He didn't argue.
He just sat.
Alone with a truth too heavy to share.
"He must not remember what he was."
Andreo's hand moved to his blade without conscious thought. The metal was cold against his palm, grounding him in the present moment.
Later that day, Ki returned to the inn, actually a giant watermelon carved into a hotel by a Myth Mark user with a very weird sense of architecture.
The place was absurd. The walls were red and seeded, the stairs were carved from rind, and everything smelled faintly of summer. Other guests seemed to take it in stride, but Ki still found himself running his hand along the fruit-walls with fascination.
"My friend!" Ki called out, hopping through the melon-shaped front door. "Found out something fun! Apparently I'm not real!"
Andreo looked up from polishing his blade. He was now sitting cross-legged on the floor, methodically working oil into the steel with the kind of focused precision that suggested he'd been at it for hours.
Ki dropped on the bed like a sack of lazy lightning, making the watermelon frame creak ominously.
"Seriously. I'm like a pirate song that doesn't even exist on Music App," Ki muttered.
Andreo glanced over with a raised brow. "What's Music App?"
Ki blinked at the ceiling, the corners of his mouth twitching in amusement. "A pre-reset app for music."
He said it casually, like it was just trivia. But inside, his thoughts buzzed louder than any playlist.
Right. Of course he doesn't remember.
None of them do.
Everyone around him walked and talked like this world had always been their home, as if they were born into this twisted remake. But Ki knew better. He was the only one carrying the weight of the original timeline. The world before Zero hit reset. Before everything was turned into a game of myths and marks.
"Anyway," Ki went on, flipping over and letting his head dangle off the bed like gravity could drain the memories out, "the soul scanner at the checkpoint? It literally caught on fire. Like, actual flames. Sparked and everything. The technician nearly pissed himself. Said it's never happened before."
Andreo set his sword down. "…That's dangerous, Idiot."
"What, Music App?"
"No. You."
They sat in silence for a moment.
Ki stared at the ceiling, bouncing a grape off his forehead with impressive accuracy. Each bounce made a tiny plink sound that echoed in the hollow fruit chamber.
Andreo finally said, "You're not just unregistered. You're unwritten."
Ki caught the grape in his mouth. "Is that poetic or terrifying?"
"Both."
The weight of that word, unwritten, settled between them like a physical thing. In a world where everyone's destiny was catalogued, indexed, and filed away in cosmic databases, being unwritten meant being impossible.
It meant being free.
It meant being dangerous.
"The monk said something else," Ki continued, his voice unusually serious. "He said my soul readings looked like they were edited. Like someone had gone in and deliberately scrambled the data."
"Why would someone do that?"
"Maybe to hide something."
Ki's eyes flickered with electricity for just a moment, not his usual playful sparks, but something deeper.
"Or maybe," he said quietly, "to hide someone."