The rain hadn't stopped, but the storm had changed.
The sky trembled with leftover energy — the echo of something ancient.
Kai arrived seconds after Fenrir's shadow faded.
The courtyard was a ruin.
Cracks webbed across the ground, the air still heavy with residual pressure. Raven lay motionless, Noah slumped beside her, both unconscious.
Kai's eyes narrowed. "What… happened here?"
He crouched, pressing his palm to the soaked ground. The residual mana almost burned through his glove. "Not aura… something deeper. Primordial."
His headset crackled. Volt's voice.
> "Kai, sensors just went off the charts! Massive dark surge from your location!"
Kai rose slowly. His eyes caught faint red and black trails stretching into the fog. Footprints.
"Two survivors. They're heading east."
He didn't hesitate.
A shimmer of energy rippled across his body — the mark of his awakened ability.
Flash Circuit — a burst-step technique letting him move at impossible speed by chaining micro-teleports along magnetic fields.
Lightning danced across the wet street as Kai blurred into the storm.
---
The Pursuit
Corvin and Marek staggered through the alleyways, both bleeding, both half-delirious.
Corvin spat blood into the gutter. "We underestimated that kid. He wasn't supposed to exist."
Marek's arm glowed with a curse seal, barely holding his flesh together. "Forget him. We need to report to the contractor before—"
He froze. The rain behind them vanished.
Silence.
Then—
> CRACK!
A bolt of light sliced between them, exploding against the wall. Sparks danced in the air, forming into a figure.
Kai stepped out of the smoke, coat whipping in the wind, eyes like sharpened glass.
"Leaving already?"
Corvin cursed under his breath. "Tch—Aetherion's dog."
Marek raised his cursed chains defensively. "We don't have time for this!"
Kai smiled faintly. "Then make it quick."
---
Fight Sequence
Corvin moved first — blood lances darted like spears. Kai sidestepped, the projectiles whistling past.
He flicked a disc-shaped device into the air; it burst into arcs of electricity that disrupted Corvin's control field.
Marek lunged with cursed chains, the sigils flaring. Kai vanished—
and reappeared behind him.
A single strike to the neck — non-lethal but brutal. Marek stumbled forward, gasping.
Corvin snarled and unleashed everything — a storm of crimson blades raining from the sky. Kai spun, weaving through them like light through glass. His last step cracked the street open as he appeared right before Corvin, hand raised.
> "You spilled enough blood tonight."
A flash — white and deafening — and Corvin and marek they escaped .
Kai exhaled slowly. The light faded around him.
He looked down at the assassins, then up at the storm still brooding above the city.
His expression darkened.
> "That power… Noah, what have you become?"
He tapped his comm.
> "Volt, the attackers they ran . Tell Asher he was right—something ancient woke up tonight and I am going to chase attackers."
The rain returned — quiet, steady, cleansing the ruins.
In the distance, the faint echo of a wolf's howl rolled through the city, carried on the wind.
---
Rain hissed on broken glass. Fenrir's echo still vibrated in the clouds when Kai's earpiece crackled with emergency static.
> Asher: "Target's power just spiked—north sector. Noah's signal's gone."
Kai: "Copy. I'll clean up the leftovers."
He slid the VR headset down, the world tinting to electric blue.
A lollipop clicked between his teeth; its sugar light reflected on his grin.
> "Virtuality… Boot."
The sky pixelated.
Reality peeled apart into ribbons of light. Raindrops froze mid-air, becoming cubes of data that shimmered like tiny monitors.
---
Phase One – The Switch
Corvin and Marek landed on a half-collapsed street. They staggered, trying to catch breath and sense direction.
Then the street blinked—the asphalt dissolved into a grid.
Skyscrapers stretched upward like vertical code columns.
Neon rivers replaced the gutters.
> "Welcome to my server," Kai's voice purred through the storm. "Boss room unlocked."
Marek flared curse sigils, but they sputtered, infected with static.
Corvin's blood armor turned grainy, pixels flickering at its edges.
> "He's rewriting the laws," Marek hissed.
"Then we kill the coder," Corvin spat.
They leapt.
Kai appeared ten metres above them, standing on nothing—just a glowing blue disk that followed his feet. With a flick, he spawned twin digital katanas, blade trails rippling like water.
The fight detonated in mid-air.
Corvin's blood claws met Kai's light blades—each impact flashed like camera shutters. The sound was thunder crossed with typing keys. Below, code-waves rippled across the street every time they struck.
Marek circled, hurling curses that twisted into spectral hands.
Kai parried one, let another grab his arm—and reprogrammed it.
The curse hand reversed direction, slamming Marek through a wall of data bricks.
> "Rule #1," Kai said, tone casual. "Everything you throw here becomes mine."
---
Phase Two – Reality Drift
Corvin roared, releasing a crimson pulse that ripped half the simulation apart. Streets glitched, flickering between real city and digital void.
Kai staggered back—smiling wider.
> "Finally! Someone's pressing the start button."
He snapped his fingers.
A massive clock-tower materialised, gears turning in slow motion.
Gravity inverted; the assassins were suddenly standing sideways on its walls.
Corvin adapted first, sprinting along the tower and hurling serrated blood spears. Kai dodged by wall-running upside-down, dragging glowing after-images like holographic ghosts.
Marek used the moment to cast a Cursed Mirror, multiplying himself into six. The copies swarmed with black sigil blades.
Kai twirled a hand. Six portals unfolded behind him—each birthing a virtual beast: a hawk of code, a serpent of light, two drones, a panther, and a humanoid bot armed with a scythe.
They clashed mid-air in a chaos of color—blood red, curse black, neon cyan.
Below, the ground kept breaking and reforming. Cars floated like debris in a sea of data. Every heartbeat rewrote the environment.
---
Phase Three – System Overclock
Kai's visor beeped—system strain at 92%.
He exhaled, bit down on the lollipop until it cracked.
> "Guess I'll cheat."
He raised one hand, palm up.
Code spiralled around him, forming a ring of floating screens.
Each screen displayed a different version of him—smiling, serious, tired.
They all spoke in unison:
> "Override accepted. Virtual Reality Protocol Ω."
The world exploded into light.
Now there wasn't one Kai—there were hundreds, each slightly different: one carrying a sniper made of light, one wielding a shield, another casting energy threads from his fingertips.
Corvin and Marek froze as the army of KAI-avatars surrounded them.
> "Multiplayer mode," the real Kai said. "Hope your ping's good."
All the clones moved at once.
Corvin spun a vortex of blood to block—but the pressure shattered it.
Marek screamed an incantation, summoning a cursed circle that swallowed ten clones, only for twenty more to emerge through the cracks.
The night became a blur of impacts—kicks, slashes, digital rounds, curse detonations.
When the light finally dimmed, the assassins were on their knees, armor dissolving into smoke. Their auras flickered like dying torches.
Kai stood in front of them, visor cracked, breathing hard.
Rain phased back into droplets, hissing as it hit the cooling street.
> "Simulation complete."
"Error count… zero."
He snapped his fingers; the last fragments of the Virtual World disintegrated into blue motes. The assassins fell through a temporary gate of light—teleported kilometres away, dumped unconscious in a desert of data sand.
---
Aftermath
Kai pulled the headset up.
The night was silent except for rain tapping metal.
He popped a new lollipop, gaze sliding toward the hospital lights where Noah and Raven were taken.
> "You just had to wake up like a legend, didn't you, Commander…"
He walked into the rain, neon reflections chasing his steps, his voice fading into static.
> "Virtuality — log out."
The hospital smelled like antiseptic and rain.
Night pressed against the windows, city lights bleeding through the blinds in fractured lines. The rhythmic beep of heart monitors was the only sound—steady, fragile, alive.
Raven lay unconscious in the next bed, wrapped in gauze and shadow. Even with her hood gone, there was still something unreadable about her—like she refused to look weak even in sleep. The machines around her hummed, tracking a pulse that had come too close to stopping.
Noah sat beside her, bandaged and pale, his gaze fixed on the floor. His knuckles were raw. His breath shallow. The wolf was gone, but its echo still growled inside his veins.
Fenrir.
The name burned behind his eyelids every time he blinked.
He didn't remember the full fight—only fragments. Raven's scream. Blood. Then darkness and teeth. When he woke, the courtyard was gone, reduced to rubble. The assassins had vanished. And Raven was barely breathing.
Now, the quiet pressed harder than any enemy could.
The door slid open with a lazy hiss.
"Damn," a familiar voice drawled. "You make one hell of a mess, rookie."
Kai leaned against the doorframe, headphones slung around his neck, VR visor hanging loose on his forehead. A half-eaten lollipop stuck between his teeth as he sauntered in like he owned the place.
Noah didn't look up. "If you're here to gloat, don't."
Kai raised an eyebrow, stepping closer. "Gloat? Nah. I was just wondering how a so-called unawakened ex-commander managed to summon a mythic wolf that turned two ranked assassins into trauma cases."
He plucked the lollipop from his mouth, spinning it between his fingers. "You really don't do 'ordinary,' do you?"
Noah's lips tightened. "I didn't summon it on purpose."
"Uh-huh," Kai said, sitting on the edge of the next bed. "Sure. Just accidentally unleashed a legend that breaks spatial readings and made Aetherion's sensors scream for mercy. Happens all the time."
Noah shot him a look. "You're enjoying this."
Kai smirked. "Maybe a little. You should've seen Asher's face when the readings came in—looked like someone kicked his calm right out the window."
He leaned forward, eyes glinting with amusement. "You, my friend, are officially a walking red flag."
Noah exhaled through his nose. "Tell Asher I'm not interested in being his project."
"Oh, he knows," Kai said, popping the lollipop back in. "But he also knows something woke up inside you—and pretending it didn't won't make it go away."
Noah didn't respond. His gaze drifted toward Raven again. She looked smaller now, fragile beneath the white sheets. He clenched his fists.
Kai's teasing grin faded a little. "She'll live," he said, voice softening. "Tougher than she looks. She just pushed too far against two freaks who fight like nightmares."
Noah finally looked at him. "Why were they after me?"
Kai shrugged. "Same reason most people get hunted these days—fear, money, power. You were a name on someone's list. Ex-military, unregistered, off-grid… perfect target for a test run."
His eyes narrowed slightly. "But those two—Corvin and Marek—they weren't freelancing. Someone big sent them."
Silence thickened between them.
Kai's voice dropped low, serious now. "Asher's digging. Until he finds out who, you don't go anywhere alone. You got that?"
Noah nodded once, slow. "And Fenrir?"
Kai smirked again. "Oh, that? He's your new pet now. Try not to let him eat the furniture."
Noah shot him a flat look. "You're hilarious."
"I try." Kai stood, stretching lazily. "Get some rest, rookie. The world's starting to notice you. And trust me—when it does, you're gonna wish you'd stayed boring."
He turned to leave, then paused at the doorway. His tone softened—just slightly.
"For what it's worth… what you did back there—saving her, surviving that—it wasn't luck."
Noah blinked. "Then what?"
Kai's smirk returned, faint but real. "Instinct."
The door slid shut behind him, leaving Noah alone again with the soft hum of machines and Raven's steady breathing.
Outside, the rain hadn't stopped.
Inside, something inside him refused to sleep.
Fenrir's echo stirred beneath his skin—restless, waiting.
And for the first time, Noah wondered if the beast had saved him…
or if it had just been waiting to wake.
---
The hospital room smelled faintly of antiseptic, but now it was quiet—too quiet. The rain outside had softened to a drizzle, pattering gently against the windows.
Noah sat in the chair by her bed, eyes fixed on Raven's face. Her breathing was steady now, but she looked pale, fragile. Every line of her body screamed exhaustion, every faint twitch reminded him how close she had been to death.
He swallowed hard, jaw tight. He didn't know why he stayed. He wasn't supposed to care. Not about anyone. Not after… everything.
The door creaked, and a small shadow shifted on the bed. Her eyelids fluttered.
Raven's voice was hoarse, weak, but sharp. "Took you long enough to sit still."
Noah blinked. "I… I wasn't sure if you'd—"
"Almost died," she finished for him, eyes half-lidded but still holding that edge. "Yeah. Thanks for… not letting that happen."
He shifted uncomfortably, unused to gratitude, unused to admitting he even cared. "Don't mention it."
She smirked faintly, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Funny. You say that like it's heroic, but you're the one who looked like you might break before me."
Noah's fingers clenched the chair arm. "I wasn't…" His words caught. He swallowed. "I didn't know what I… I didn't know what I had inside me."
Raven tilted her head, studying him with a cautious gaze. "You mean Fenrir?"
He nodded, jaw tight. "I… I didn't know. I don't even know how to control it yet."
She let out a soft laugh, barely above a whisper. "Control? That thing almost killed two assassins and scared the hell out of me. You call that not knowing what's inside you?"
Noah looked down, feeling the weight of her words. She was right. He had let something ancient, dangerous, untamed loose. And it had saved her. But it had almost destroyed everything else around them.
"I… I didn't want to hurt you," he muttered.
Raven's eyes softened, just slightly. She reached a trembling hand toward him. "You didn't. That's the thing. You saved me. And if you hadn't… I don't even want to think about that."
For a long moment, the room was silent. Two warriors who had spent their lives hiding behind control, training, and discipline, now faced something new: vulnerability.
Noah finally reached out, hovering his hand above hers. He didn't touch. He couldn't. Not yet. But he wanted to.
"You're… stubborn," he said finally, voice low.
"And you're an idiot," she replied with a faint smirk. "You think you're just a kid, but you… you're something else. Dangerous. Terrifying. And… I guess… thanks."
Noah exhaled slowly, a tension leaving him that he hadn't realized he was holding. "You'll be okay?"
Her smirk returned, stronger this time, teasing but honest. "Better than you think. But don't think this lets you off the hook. You've got a lot to learn… rookie."
He frowned. "Yeah, well… you don't exactly make it easy either."
She chuckled softly, eyes flicking toward the window. "Life doesn't make it easy. Neither do Awakened powers. But… maybe that's why I like working with you."
Noah's throat went dry. He looked away, letting the silence stretch. He wasn't ready to understand whatever that meant yet—but he knew one thing: he wouldn't let her die. Not ever.
For the first time since Fenrir had awakened, Noah allowed himself to feel something other than anger or survival. Something quieter, steadier.
Trust.
It was fragile. Raw. But it was there.
And maybe… that was enough.
---