It didn't roar.
It didn't scream.
The Riftborn entity hovering above Tenryuu Academy simply existed, and that was enough to make the world bend around it.
Buildings buckled from the pressure. Trees split down the middle. The air itself was burning — not with fire, but with something worse. Something wrong.
Arata couldn't move.
Not because he was afraid — though he was — but because the thing's finger was still aimed at him. Not metaphorically. Him, Arata Kurogane. Fifteen years old. Failing history. Occasional vending machine vandal. Apparently, chosen host of some cosmic nightmare.
And it had spoken.
> "Return what was stolen… or be consumed."
He didn't even know what that meant.
But his scar knew.
The spiral sun in his palm was glowing so brightly now it was casting shadows. His entire arm trembled, the heat bleeding into his shoulder. The others backed away instinctively, but not far.
Not far enough.
Yuna was the first to move.
She drew and fired in one motion — an obsidian arrow glowing with sealing glyphs.
The arrow struck the creature's eye.
Or rather, it tried to.
The arrow stopped inches from its surface, frozen in the air, then turned to dust.
Reiji blinked. "Okay. New plan."
"Fall back!" Yuna shouted. "Level Four formation—get the second-years out of here!"
Alarms screeched. Magical shields snapped into place around the tower.
Karin raised her hands and whispered a chant, blood swirling around her like smoke. Runes pulsed down her arms. The air thickened.
Daigo screamed.
His spirit fox lunged in front of him, snarling — its body glowing with unstable spectral energy.
"It's inside!" Daigo shrieked. "It's in my head again!"
Then the Riftborn moved.
It didn't fly.
It folded the space between it and the tower — like crumpling a paper map — and was suddenly inches above them.
Dozens of black tendrils surged downward.
Arata reacted on instinct.
He raised his hand.
And the world shattered.
---
The explosion wasn't fire or sound — it was absence.
The moment his palm faced the Riftborn, a pulse of absolute darkness erupted outward. Everything within five meters vanished — no light, no matter, just nothing.
The tendrils disintegrated mid-strike.
The creature recoiled.
Everyone stared at him.
"What the hell was that?" Reiji whispered.
Arata didn't answer.
Because something had changed.
He could hear it now.
A voice, deep and ancient, whispering beneath his heartbeat.
> "You opened it again…"
His knees buckled. Yuna caught him before he hit the ground.
"What did you do?" she hissed.
"I—I don't know," Arata gasped. "It felt like—like the scar just... opened."
"You unleashed something," Karin said, eyes wide. "Something that should've stayed sealed."
The Riftborn screamed.
Not out loud — inside their heads. A sonic burst of emotion, rage, grief, recognition.
And then—
It spoke again.
> "The Legion stirs."
The Rift above the tower widened.
And something else began to crawl through.
---
It was not like the first.
It had no form.
It was more like... static, leaking from reality. A slithering shadow made of fragmented sound and flickering images.
And it was coming for Arata.
"Run!" Yuna shouted.
Reiji grabbed Daigo and pulled him toward the stairwell. Karin followed, dragging Arata with her. The tower's wards collapsed one by one, exploding in sparks and red sigils.
They reached the lower platform — the emergency telecaster ring.
"Ten seconds to cast!" Reiji shouted. "Hold it off!"
Yuna fired two more arrows — one sealed in ice, the other cursed fire. Neither touched it.
Arata turned back toward the creature.
The scar in his hand was vibrating like a struck bell.
The thing hissed into his mind.
> "You are the gate. You are the grave."
"Shut up!" Arata shouted.
Then — without thinking — he pressed his palm to the telecaster's glyph core.
It overloaded.
Magic circuits flared.
Everyone screamed—
And they vanished.
---
They reappeared in the Academy's lower district — miles away.
Collapsed, gasping, smoking from the jump.
Reiji rolled to his feet. "Everyone alive?"
Karin was clutching her head. "I think… the backlash tore something inside the arcane circuit. The caster stone's destroyed."
"We can't jump again," Yuna said grimly.
They all turned to Arata.
He was unconscious. But the scar on his hand still glowed.
And he was smiling.
Daigo whimpered. "Why is he smiling?"
Reiji knelt down. "Because something inside him woke up. And it liked what it saw."
---
One hour later.
The sky stopped bleeding.
The Rift sealed itself.
Tenryuu Academy was left in ruins. Hundreds injured. Twelve missing. Three dead.
But the strangest thing?
There was no body.
The Riftborn was gone.
Completely.
And so was…
Arata.
---
Far below the surface — deeper than any vault or dungeon — a forgotten chamber opened for the first time in a thousand years.
Inside floated a coffin made of obsidian.
Within it?
A boy.
Arata Kurogane.
Eyes wide open.
But glowing black.
As if someone — or something — had taken his place.
> "You shouldn't have broken the seal, little vessel," said a voice behind the glass.
"Now... the Legion remembers."