Pain is a dishonest teacher.
It tells you that you've reached your limit, then laughs when it finds a new way to stretch you.
I woke up hanging upside down.
My ankles were lashed to a thick, moss-covered branch of a weeping willow. My hair brushed against the surface of a black pond that didn't reflect the moon. It was still night, but the air here was different—thick with the scent of damp rot and old, stagnant magic.
The hole in my shoulder had closed, replaced by a jagged, star-shaped scar that looked like it had been branded onto my soul.
"Awake? Good. You were starting to drool into my reservoir."
I swung my head. Shiden Ragnor was sitting on a nearby stump, whittling a piece of bone with a dagger that hummed with the vibration of a hornet's nest. His massive gourd sat at his feet.
"Let... me... down," I croaked.
"No," Shiden said, not looking up from his carving. "The blood needs to stay in your head. It's the only part of you that's still mostly human. The rest of you is turning into a very expensive piece of charcoal."
I looked at my arms. The obsidian scales had hardened. They weren't just on my skin anymore; they were fused with my muscles. When I flexed, I didn't feel the pull of fiber; I felt the grinding of tectonic plates.
"Where is Aira?"
"The doll is in the hut," Shiden gestured with his chin toward a sagging shack of mud and wood. "She's not dead. But she's not there either. You did a real number on her, kid. You didn't just break the Empire's leash; you snapped the neck of her consciousness."
The weight of it hit me harder than the gravity pulling at my brain. My "Rejection" had worked too well. I had wanted to free her, and instead, I had emptied her.
"I can fix it," I said, though I didn't know how.
Shiden finally looked up. His eyes weren't just grey; they were lightning-scarred. There was no pity in them. Only a weary, dangerous curiosity.
"With what? Your 'No' magic? You can't build a house by refusing to have a floor, Rai. You've spent twenty-three years rejecting the world because the world rejected you first. It's a pathetic, circular logic."
He stood up, the sheer size of him blocking out the dim starlight.
"The Empire uses Inga—Causality—to build empires. They take a cause and force an effect. You? You are a hole in the fabric. A void. But a void that doesn't know how to do anything but swallow is just a grave."
"I don't need a lecture from a drunk who hides in the woods," I spat, my anger flickering in my chest like a dying ember.
Shiden moved.
I didn't see him step. I didn't see him swing.
One moment he was at the stump. The next, his fist was buried in my stomach.
I didn't swing back. My body hit the tree trunk with a sound like a hammer hitting a drum. The ropes snapped. I fell into the black water, gasping for air that felt like liquid lead.
I crawled out of the pond, coughing up silt.
"Hit me again," I whispered, pushing myself to my knees. "It's the only thing I can still feel."
"That's the problem," Shiden said, standing over me. "You're addicted to the struggle. You think that because you're suffering, you're making progress. You're not. You're just a dying dog biting his own tail."
He kicked his gourd toward me.
"Drink."
I grabbed the gourd. It was heavy, vibrating with a low, thrumming energy. I pulled the stopper and took a long swig.
I expected the burn of alcohol. Instead, it was like swallowing a thunderstorm.
The liquid didn't go down my throat. It exploded in my chest, rushing into the black veins. The "Ketsubetsu" pathways screamed. The obsidian scales on my arms glowed with a violent, white light.
**[External Catalyst Detected: Lightning-Infused Inga.]**
**[Conflict initiated: Rejection vs. Conductivity.]**
**[System Warning: Host vessel is at 94% heat capacity.]**
"The 'Key' inside you is a lock for a reason," Shiden's voice sounded muffled, as if I were underwater. "It's there to keep you from becoming a monster. But if you want to save that girl, you have to learn to let the world *in* before you reject it. You have to understand the cause before you deny the effect."
I roared. The pain was beyond anything the Empire had put me through. It felt like my blood was being replaced by molten copper.
I saw the strings again.
But they weren't the gold strings of the Empire or the silver strings of the Gen.
They were the grey strings of the forest. The breath of the trees. The slow, heavy pulse of the earth. The frantic heartbeat of a rabbit hiding in the brush.
I reached out, my hand trembling, and touched a single blade of grass.
I didn't reject it.
I felt the water inside the stem. I felt the struggle for light. I felt the inevitable decay.
And then, I said "No."
Not to the grass. But to its death.
The blade of grass, which had been yellowing and dry, suddenly turned a vibrant, impossible green. It didn't grow; it *returned*.
**[Causality Synchronization: 28%.]**
**[New Concept Learned: Retroactive Rejection (Partial).]**
The white light faded. I slumped onto the mud, the gourd falling from my hands. I was shivering, my skin steaming in the cool night air.
"Better," Shiden said, picking up his gourd and taking a drink himself. "You stopped being a hole for a second and became a bridge. A very shaky, ugly bridge, but a bridge nonetheless."
He looked toward the hut.
"The girl's soul is scattered. It's not in the abyss; it's caught in the static you left behind. To bring her back, you'll need to find the pieces in the places where she lived. Her memories. Her pain."
"She's from the Gen world," I said, my voice finally steady. "I can't go there."
"You won't have to," Shiden said, his face darkening. "The Empire didn't just open a Gate in your village. They dragged pieces of her world into ours. They call them 'Mirror Pockets'. Fragments of reality where the Gen laws still apply."
He stepped closer, his shadow looming over me once more.
"There's one three miles from here. In the heart of the Grey Forest. It's guarded by a 'Sentinel'—a Gen soldier that didn't just die when the Gate closed. It evolved."
I stood up. My legs were shaky, but the obsidian scales felt lighter. More like armor, less like a cage.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Shiden turned away, looking toward the distant lights of Astra.
"Because that Sentinel has something I want. An old blade. My blade. The Empire took it from me when they 'retired' me. If you bring it back, I'll teach you how to use that hole in your chest to do more than just survive."
"And if I die?"
Shiden laughed, a dry, hollow sound.
"Then I'll use your charcoal body as a footstool. It's more than you were worth yesterday."
I didn't say goodbye. I walked toward the hut first.
I pushed the door open. Aira was lying on a bed of dry leaves. Her silver hair was dull, her skin almost translucent. She looked like a statue made of salt.
I sat beside her and touched her forehead.
She didn't move. But for a fleeting second, the black veins on my hand pulsed, and I felt a faint, distant echo.
A memory of a silver forest. And the sound of a bell.
"I'm coming for you," I whispered.
I stood up and walked out into the forest.
The Grey Forest didn't welcome me. The trees seemed to lean in, their branches like skeletal fingers reaching for the black marks on my skin.
I walked for an hour, my one eye scanning the dark.
Then, the air changed.
The scent of damp earth vanished, replaced by the smell of ozone and frozen lilies.
The trees ahead weren't wood. They were crystal—jagged, translucent pillars that hummed with a low, mournful vibration.
I had reached the Mirror Pocket.
In the center of the clearing stood a figure. It was ten feet tall, draped in armor that looked like frozen smoke. It had no face, only a single, vertical slit of burning blue light.
In its hand was a massive, broken claymore. Shiden's blade.
**[Threat Level: Calamity.]**
**[Entity Identified: Gen Sentinel - The Memory Eater.]**
The Sentinel turned. The blue light in its head flared.
"The... Carrier..." it rasped, its voice a thousand glass shards grinding together. "You... carry... the void."
It raised the claymore. The air around the blade distorted, reality itself buckling under the weight of the weapon.
I didn't draw a sword. I didn't have one.
I raised my obsidian hand.
"I carry a lot of things," I said. "And right now, I'm rejecting your permission to stand in my way."
The Sentinel lunged.
The ground beneath me didn't just crack; it vanished.
But as I fell into the engagement, I realized something.
The Sentinel wasn't attacking my body.
It was attacking my sense of hearing.
**[Payment Requested: Auditory Sense.]**
**[Accept? Y/N]**
I didn't hesitate.
*I've heard enough lies from this world,* I thought.
The world went silent.
The roar of the Sentinel, the humming of the crystals, even the sound of my own heartbeat—gone.
In the absolute silence, I saw the blue light of the Sentinel's head. It wasn't just an eye.
It was a fragment of Aira's soul.
And the battle for the Rejection's humanity had just moved to a place where words had no meaning.
I charged.
In the silence, my "No" was the only thing that made a sound.
And it was deafening.
***
In the depths of the Mirror Pocket, a single grey string snapped.
In Shiden's hut, Aira's finger twitched.
And in the city of Astra, Tomas Velin looked at his watch.
"The second price has been paid," he murmured. "He's moving faster than expected. Perhaps I should prepare the third."
He looked at a jar on his desk. Inside was a human eye.
Rai's left eye.
It was blinking.