The void collapsed like burning paper. Light tore through the blackness in thin, bleeding ribbons – and Kairo fell.
He didn't hit the ground so much as fade into it. One moment, endless dark; the next, he stood in a rain-drenched alley. The air smelled of iron and dust. Neon lights flickered weakly overhead, and a single sign buzzed in the distance – "ST. KARETH'S ACADEMY", half-broken, hanging by its wires.
Kairo's pulse throbbed in his ears. He knew this place. The Academy wasn't supposed to look like this – it was supposed to be sterile, white, and endless. But here it was twisted, melted together with memories of the world of Amaranth. A ruined hybrid of both worlds.
"Where am I?" he whispered. His voice echoed down the empty street.
Then came the answer – faint laughter, playful down the empty street.
Then came the answer – faint laughter, playful, familiar.
Kairo turned, and his breath caught. A boy stood under a flickering streetlight, maybe ten years old. Hollow eyes. Black uniform. A fractured glass crown hovering above his head. Kairo's younger self.
"You still don't get it," the boy said, his voice calm but eerie. "This isn't the first tiem you've been here."
Kairo's hands curled into fists. "You're not real."
The boy tilted his head. "Neither are you."
The words hit like a blade. Kairo lunged forward – but his hand passed through the boy like mist. When the boy looked up again, his eyes weren't his own anymore. They shimmered gold. The Tyrant King's voice came through his child-self.
Each time you die, I rewrite the script," he said softly. "You fight, you fall, you dream of peace – and then you wake up here. This alley. This rain. Over and over again." Kairo fell to his knees, gripping his head. "No…I broke the cycle. I killed you."
The Tyrant King's laughter rippled through the rain. "You killed an illusion. I am the hand that writes illusions."
The sky cracked open above him – and from it, he saw faint shapes falling like snow. Memories. Fragments of Reika's laughter, Taro's grin, his team standing in the burning ruins. Every piece of them disintegrating before reaching the ground.
Kairo screamed. The sound was raw and human – a cry that shattered the glass under his knees.
Then the rain stopped. The street melted into light again, and suddenly – he was back in the Custodian lab. Rows of glass pods lined the walls; each filled with shadowy figures – hundreds of children just like him.
On the far side of the room, a voice muttered through a static-filled speaker:
"Subject 01's neutral pattern fracturing…begin memory reconstruction."
Kairo staggered to one of the pods. Inside floated a familiar face – Taro, but younger, his eyes empty, tubes threaded into his skin. He stumbled to the next pod. Reika, frozen mid-breath, her expression peaceful, like she was dreaming.
The realisation slammed into him – none of them had ever escaped. They were all part of it. The experiments. The reincarnations. The cycle.
Kairo slammed his fist against the glass, voice breaking. "NO! I saw you live! I saw you smile!"
Then the sound of footsteps echoed behind him – light, quick, real.
"Kairo!"
He spun around. Reika and Taro stood in the doorway, drenched, pale, trembling.
"Please tell me this isn't real," Reika whispered, her eyes wide. "We…we found you inside the Rift. But the world's collapsing around us. "It's like time's eating itself."
Taro swallowed hard, his usual grin nowhere to be seen. "We don't even know if we're actually here or if this is your brain playing movies."
Kairo stared, silent. For the first time, he didn't know whether to cry or laugh.
He took one step forward – and his hand passed through Reika's shoulder like smoke.
Reika gasped. "Kairo…?"
"I think…" His voice shook. "You're echoes. Just fragments."
Taro frowned. "Man, that's… actually kinda depressing. If I'm not real, does that mean I can stop paying rent?"
Reika smacked his arm, half-crying, half-laughing – her voice breaking from exhaustion. "Taro, not now!"
But that tiny spark – that bit of stupid humour in the middle of the apocalypse – made Kairo's chest ache.
He stepped back, staring at them both. "Even if you're echoes," he said, softly, "you're the only light I have left."
The Tyrant King's voice rolled through the lab like thunder.
"Then hold on to your ghosts, boy. The descent has only begun."
The world shattered again – and Kairo fell once more, this time into a deeper abyss, where even memory had no shape.