Kael didn't sleep the night after the hunt.
His body ached with every movement. The strange Garmon glow had faded back into stillness under his skin, but his mind still raced with fragments of the white light—the moment of complete power—that had surged from him and annihilated the Riftling leader.
He couldn't recreate it.
No matter how hard he focused, the power wouldn't rise again.
Toran didn't seem surprised.
"It won't come when called," he said, sharpening his twin daggers against a stone. "You triggered it by instinct, under extreme pressure. To harness that kind of force, you'll need discipline. Purpose."
"I have a purpose," Kael said, voice hard. "I want to kill them. All of them. Whatever brought these monsters here."
Toran looked up, steel eyes narrowing.
"That's not enough. Rage is fire—it burns bright and fast, but it consumes everything."
Kael said nothing.
His anger had kept him alive—but it hadn't saved his family back home. It hadn't stopped the dimensional collapse that ruined his world. And it hadn't explained why he was brought to this cursed place while everyone else died.
He needed answers.
And he needed strength.
They traveled east, deeper into the broken world.
Toran called it the "Outermarch," a shattered region that once housed the largest human stronghold in this realm—Citadel Remnant. All that remained now were smoking ruins, overrun by Riftspawn nests and corrupted wind that whispered with ghostly echoes.
Kael asked what happened there.
Toran only answered: "We failed."
They traveled by dusk, moving fast and silent along the high ridgelines where the fog thinned. Kael's sword had changed—it now pulsed with a dull red glow even at rest. He could feel it humming with potential, connected to him like an extension of thought.
But the energy inside him remained quiet.
Sleeping.
On the third night, as they crossed a rusted bridge stretched over a dead river, Toran stopped cold.
His eyes scanned the darkness ahead.
"Someone's there."
Kael tensed. "Riftspawn?"
"No. Human."
Then a soft voice echoed from the shadows.
"You make too much noise for ghosts."
A figure stepped into the pale red moonlight.
She was tall, wrapped in a black half-cloak stitched from stitched bone-thread and shadowbeast hide. Her long braid shimmered with silver dye, and strange tattoos glowed faintly on her left arm—arcane symbols Kael didn't recognize.
She held a curved dagger in one hand and a longbow on her back.
"Seris Vale," she said. "Tracker of the Hollow Path."
Toran nodded once. "Didn't think you were still alive."
"Most people don't," she replied, lowering her weapon. Her eyes lingered on Kael. "He's not from this world."
"No," Toran said. "He's new."
"A Giftborn, then."
Kael frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Seris tilted her head. "You carry Garmon inside you. But not like the rest of us. It's wild. Unfiltered. You weren't mutated by the Rift… you were rebuilt by it."
Kael's stomach tightened. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"None of us did," she replied, her voice suddenly soft. "The Rift takes. It rarely gives."
They camped near the ruins of a sunken tower, surrounded by stone teeth and overgrowth. As Kael sat by the fire, Seris carved symbols into the dirt—a map made from memory.
"There's a war coming," she said, voice low. "The Sovereign is gathering the Blightlords. Each commands one of the Great Rifts. They're planning a full incursion. Not just in this world… but through the riftways. Into yours."
Kael's heart skipped. "They're going to Earth?"
"Soon," she said. "Unless we stop them."
"Then let's kill them."
Seris looked at him, her eyes strangely sad. "You don't understand. These things don't die easily. Some of them are older than time. They weren't born—they were shaped."
Toran added, "That's why we need allies. Fighters. Awakened. Anyone who still remembers what it means to resist."
Kael stared into the fire. "Then what's the plan?"
Seris drew a symbol on the map.
"This is the Rift Keep of Virelok. One of the Blightlords nests there. His name is Kaeroth the Hollow-Eyed. He commands a swarm of Riftspawn that harvest human blood to craft new monsters."
Kael's hands clenched. "And you want to take him out?"
"We want to send a message," Seris said. "That the Giftborn has arrived. That humanity isn't done fighting."
The next day, they made for Virelok.
As they traveled, Seris began training Kael in a different way than Toran had. She focused on silence, perception, movement. She taught him how to track Riftspawn by the trails they left in the energy fields. How to sense vibration in the ground, how to anticipate their erratic behavior.
She didn't talk about herself often.
But Kael learned enough.
She had once been part of a failed resistance group. Her younger sister had been devoured by a Riftspawn that took her shape and voice. Seris had killed it—but the guilt never left.
"I've learned not to trust my memories," she said. "This world twists them."
Kael didn't know what to say.
But he understood.
They were all broken, in one way or another.
Two days later, they reached the outskirts of Virelok.
The Rift Keep towered over the surrounding wasteland—a jagged spire of bone, obsidian, and twisted steel. The ground beneath it pulsed like a heartbeat, and red lightning crackled around its tip. Riftspawn patrolled the edges—bulbous beasts with arms like scythes and skulls fused with armor.
Kael crouched behind a broken statue with Seris and Toran.
"Plan?" he asked.
Seris smirked. "Distraction. Stealth. Precision."
Toran looked at Kael. "You're the distraction."
Kael blinked. "What?"
"You wanted to be strong," Toran said. "Here's your chance. Draw them out. Hold the front. We'll find the source of Kaeroth's command field and destroy it from within."
Kael swallowed.
He was terrified.
But this was why he was here.
This was his moment.
He charged in at dusk.
Kael moved like a firestorm, his blade glowing with Garmon light. The Riftspawn saw him instantly—and came running. But he didn't retreat.
He fought.
He danced between their blades, slashing tendons, severing limbs, exploding bones with bursts of white-hot light that flickered from his veins. The chaos brought more enemies—dozens.
He was overwhelmed.
He screamed—and this time, the light came without hesitation.
It surged through him, not as fire, but as a current. Controlled. Shaped.
He released it in a pulse that staggered the entire field, knocking the smaller Riftspawn backward in a radius.
Behind him, the keep began to crack.
Inside, Seris and Toran found the core.
A chamber of pulsating red flesh and bone-webs, where Kaeroth's twisted lieutenant fed blood into a growing Rift gate.
Seris didn't hesitate—her arrow flew, piercing the lieutenant's skull.
The gate faltered.
Toran threw a Riftbomb, and the core collapsed inward.
The tower shook.
Outside, Kael turned as the Riftspawn screeched in agony—their connection severed.
He dropped to his knees, blood running from his mouth, his vision blurring.
He saw a shape.
A figure in the smoke.
Not Toran. Not Seris.
But a being wrapped in void and shadow.
Its voice echoed inside his skull.
> "So you've awakened. The Rift remembers you, Kael. You were not brought here by chance. You are a fragment of something older. Something we failed to erase."
Then it vanished.
Kael collapsed either.
When he woke, the tower was gone.
Toran stood beside him, bleeding from the arm but alive.
Seris knelt on the other side, offering Kael a drink.
"You did well," she said.
Kael sat up, groaning. "What… what was that thing?"
Toran's expression darkened.
"You saw it too?"
Kael nodded.
Seris looked at him.
"That wasn't a Riftspawn," she said quietly. "That was a Warden. One of the Sovereign's messengers."
"Why did it speak to me?" Kael asked.
"Because," Toran said, "you're not just some lost survivor."
Seris added, "You're the reason the Rift isn't done yet."
Kael stared into the horizon—where the next storm brewed beyond the hills.
He didn't understand it all yet.
But he knew one thing:
He wasn't done either.