The world doesn't shout when something is wrong.
It whispers.
Ren almost misses it.
The market is loud in the way ordinary places always are—metal carts scraping the floor, voices overlapping, a vendor laughing too hard at his own joke. The coliseum sits beyond the water like it always has, massive and patient, a monument everyone pretends not to feel watching them back.
Ren pretends too.
He's counting change when the air tightens around his chest.
Not pain. Not fear.
Pressure.
DANGER.
The word doesn't sound like a voice. It lands in him, heavy and certain, like gravity suddenly remembering its job. Ren freezes for half a second longer than anyone would notice. He exhales, slow and controlled, grounding himself.
Nothing happens.
No alarms. No screams. No cracks in the sky.
He tells himself it's nothing.
Then the shelves blur, just for a blink, and the hum beneath the world deepens.
IMMEDIATE DANGER.
Ren's hand clenches hard enough to bend the basket wire. He doesn't hesitate this time. He leaves the groceries behind and walks out, pace steady, heart racing beneath calm skin.
Rina didn't answer. She always answers.
The door to their home is open.
Ren stops breathing.
The air inside feels wrong—thick, charged, as if the room is holding its breath. Light bends unnaturally, shadows stretching where they shouldn't. Symbols ripple along the walls and vanish like memories trying to surface.
Rina stands in the center of the room.
She looks unharmed.
She looks confused.
The energy around her crackles faintly, responding to her heartbeat instead of the other way around.
"Ren?" she says, relief and uncertainty tangled in one word.
He takes a step toward her—
—and something steps out of the distortion behind her.
Raze doesn't rush. He doesn't posture. He looks at Rina the way a man looks at proof he's been right all along.
Ren moves in front of her without thinking.
"Get away from her."
Raze smiles, small and knowing.
"You felt it too," he says. "Didn't you?"
He attacks.
Not wild. Not cruel. Precise.
Ren's body moves before his mind finishes the thought. Thin, nearly invisible lines snap into existence from his hands, tensioned and exact, anchoring to walls, ceiling, floor. They don't cut—they control, redirecting force, stealing momentum, turning violence into geometry.
Ren fights like someone buying time, not trying to win.
Raze breaks through anyway.
The impact throws Ren into the wall hard enough to rattle the house. Something cracks—wood,_toggle, maybe bone. Rina stumbles, the energy around her surging violently in response.
"Ren!" she gasps.
He pushes himself up, blood warm on his lip, vision steady despite the pain.
Raze doesn't even look impressed.
"This world was built wrong," he says, stepping toward Rina. "And she's part of the fix."
Ren lunges.
Too slow.
Raze reaches out—
—and something inside Rina snaps.
She laughs.
It's soft at first. Almost embarrassed. Then louder. Sharper. The sound echoes wrong, like it's coming from somewhere deeper than her chest.
Then it stops.
Silence crashes into the room.
Rina tilts her head, smiling gently, eyes unfocused. The air freezes around her, not cold, just still.
"Light…" she whispers.
Ren tries to move.
He can't.
"Align."
The word doesn't explode. It asserts itself.
Power floods the room—not chaotic, not wild—but absolute. Raze is hurled back like he no longer weighs anything. The walls scream as reality folds and tears. Ren shields his face, every instinct screaming that whatever Rina is touching now is far beyond either of them.
For a moment, she isn't just Rina.
She's watching herself.
Then her body gives out.
The light vanishes. She collapses.
Before Raze can rise, the air fractures again.
A presence steps through—calm, radiant, immovable.
Azen.
He doesn't rush. He doesn't threaten. He simply stands, and the chaos obeys.
"That's enough," he says.
Raze retreats, eyes dark with promise. "This changes nothing."
He disappears.
Azen turns to the twins, his gaze lingering on Ren's trembling hands and the fading glow around Rina.
"You're not enrolled," he says quietly.
Ren looks up, anger and fear mixing for the first time.
"Enrolled where?"
Azen glances toward the distant coliseum.
"This isn't a school," he replies. "It's for fighters."
High above the city, unseen, a shadow folds into itself.
A voice watches through time itself.
"My child… you know why we are here."
The presence fades.
Ren kneels beside his sister, pressing his forehead to hers, relief crashing through him like a wave.
The warning hadn't been about the world.
It had been about them.
And whatever is coming next…
is coming back.