Silence is not the absence of sound.
In the Mirror Pocket, silence was a physical entity. It was a thick, suffocating velvet that wrapped around my head, pressing against my eardrums until they felt ready to burst.
I couldn't hear my own breathing. I couldn't hear the crunch of crystal beneath my boots.
I was a ghost in a mute world.
**[Auditory Sense: Extinguished.]**
**[Causality Synchronization: 31%.]**
**[Notice: Neural pathways are rerouting. Visual processing enhanced by 40%.]**
The Sentinel lunged.
Without sound, its movement was even more terrifying. The massive figure of smoke and steel drifted across the clearing like a nightmare, the broken claymore leaving a trail of distorted, blurred reality in its wake.
I saw the vibration before I felt it. The air around the blade rippled in visible waves, distorting the crystalline trees.
I leaned back. The blade passed an inch from my chest. Even without hearing, I felt the "No" in the air—the way the Sentinel's magic tried to overwrite the space I occupied.
The creature didn't stop. It spun, the claymore coming back in a horizontal arc designed to bisect me.
I didn't dodge this time.
I raised my right arm, the one encrusted with the thickest obsidian scales. I didn't try to block the steel. I tried to block the logic of the strike.
*I refuse the impact,* I thought.
The claymore hit my forearm.
In a world with sound, there would have been a thunderclap. Here, there was only a flash of violet light. The Sentinel's blade stopped dead, its kinetic energy drained into the black veins of my arm.
The shockwave traveled up my arm and straight into my chest.
**[Warning: Internal Vibration Critical.]**
**[System Logic: A void cannot be shattered, but it can be filled.]**
The Sentinel's faceless head tilted. The blue slit of light pulsed.
"Memories..."
The word didn't enter my ears. It appeared as a stain on my vision, a psychic residue etched onto my retina.
"Give... me... the boy... who... loved... the sun."
A wave of cold energy erupted from the Sentinel. It wasn't a physical attack. It was a colonial invasion of my mind.
Suddenly, I wasn't in the forest.
I was six years old. My mother was handing me a piece of warm bread. I could see the steam rising from it. I could see the smile on her face—a smile I had forgotten.
*No,* I thought, a spike of panic hitting my heart. *Not this.*
The Sentinel was a Memory Eater. It didn't want my blood. It wanted the things that made me Rai Kurotsuki. It wanted to hollow me out so that the "Key" could be harvested without resistance.
The scene changed. I was ten. I was running through the rain with Goro. We were laughing. The sound was gone, but the feeling was there—the weightless joy of a child who didn't know he was cursed.
The black veins on my arm began to recede. The obsidian scales softened.
As my memories were consumed, my "Rejection" was weakening.
The void was being filled with the very thing it was meant to protect.
*You want them?* I roared in the theater of my silent mind. *You want the memories of a ghost?*
I reached out with my left hand—the one that still felt mostly human. I grabbed the Sentinel by its smoky throat.
*I reject the past!*
It was a lie. A beautiful, agonizing lie.
I didn't want to let go. I wanted to stay in that kitchen with my mother. I wanted to keep running in the rain with Goro.
But if I kept them, I would die. And if I died, Aira would remain a hollow doll.
*I refuse to be defined by what I've lost!*
I pushed the "Ketsubetsu" through my fingertips.
The effect was instantaneous. The psychic bridge between the Sentinel and my mind didn't just break; it inverted.
I didn't lose my memories. I forced the Sentinel to experience the "Rejection" of my entire life.
Every moment of hunger. Every sneer from a village elder. Every cold night spent sleeping in the dirt. Every second of being told I was a mistake.
I poured twenty-three years of concentrated, distilled spite into the creature's soul.
The Sentinel's blue light flickered violently. It tried to pull away, but my obsidian scales had grown hooks, anchoring me to its smoky armor.
The crystal trees around us began to shatter, unable to withstand the emotional gravity of the exchange.
"Too... much... empty..." the Sentinel's voice stained my vision one last time.
**[Causality Synchronization: 35%.]**
**[Hidden Trigger Met: The Void's Hunger.]**
**[Action: Consuming the Memory Eater.]**
A black vortex opened at the center of my chest, right where Aira's seal was. It wasn't my magic. It was the "Key" reacting to the Sentinel's essence.
The Sentinel didn't vanish. It was dragged into me.
The ten-foot creature of smoke and steel was compressed into a single point of absolute darkness and sucked into the seal on my heart.
The silence deepened.
I fell to my knees, gasping for air I couldn't hear myself take. My chest felt like it had been hollowed out with a hot spoon.
In the center of the clearing, the only thing left was the broken claymore.
It lay in the dirt, its steel grey and unremarkable now that the Sentinel was gone.
But as I looked at it, I saw something else.
A small, shimmering orb of gold light was hovering just above the hilt.
Aira's soul fragment.
I reached out, my hand trembling. The obsidian scales had returned, thicker now, creeping up toward my neck. I looked like a monster.
The gold orb drifted toward me. It didn't shy away. It touched my palm and vanished into my skin.
A sudden, sharp image flashed in my mind.
Aira, standing in a field of white flowers. She was looking at a man whose face was blurred.
"The Key is not a weapon," the man said. "It is a choice. If you find him, tell him that the door only opens from the inside."
The image faded.
I gripped the hilt of the broken claymore. It was heavy—inhumanly heavy.
**[Object Identified: The Ragnor Fang (Broken).]**
**[Property: Weight of the Fallen.]**
**[Notice: You do not possess the strength to wield this weapon.]**
"Watch me," I whispered.
I didn't use my muscles. I used my Rejection.
*I refuse to be crushed by this weight.*
The sword became light as a feather.
I stood up, the massive blade resting easily on my shoulder. I turned and began the walk back through the crystal forest.
The Mirror Pocket was collapsing. The crystal trees were turning back into rotting wood. The scent of ozone was being replaced by the familiar, heavy smell of the Grey Forest.
I couldn't hear the forest, but I could feel it watching me.
The predators that had hovered on the edges of my vision earlier were gone. They knew.
A new king of the void was walking through their halls.
***
It took me two hours to find the hut.
Shiden was exactly where I had left him, sitting on the stump, drinking from his gourd. He didn't look surprised to see me. He didn't even look impressed.
He just looked at the sword on my shoulder.
He stood up, his massive frame casting a shadow that seemed to stretch across the entire clearing. He walked over to me and held out his hand.
I handed him the blade.
The moment his fingers touched the hilt, the sword groaned. A surge of grey lightning erupted from the steel, arcing across Shiden's arms. He didn't flinch. He gripped it with a ferocity that made the air hum.
"You found it," he said. I saw his lips move, but the words were just vibrations in the air.
He looked at me, his eyes lingering on the black scales on my neck.
"And you paid the price. You can't hear me, can you, kid?"
I shook my head.
Shiden reached into his gourd and pulled out a small, dried leaf. He walked over to me and pressed it against my forehead.
Suddenly, a voice echoed in my skull. It wasn't a sound; it was a thought-transfer.
*Can you hear this, you half-blind idiot?*
*Yes,* I thought back. *Stop calling me an idiot.*
*You survived the Memory Eater. That means you've started to understand that the void isn't just a place to hide. It's a place to eat.*
Shiden swung the broken claymore. The air split with a visible shockwave.
*You brought me my blade. Now, I'll keep my word. But training with me won't be like your little fight in the crystals. I won't attack your memories, Rai. I'll attack your existence.*
He pointed toward the hut.
*The girl. The fragment you found... it wasn't enough to wake her. It was just a map. To fix her, you need to go to the Astra Dominion's heart. The Grand Archives.*
*I just escaped that place,* I thought, my anger rising. *Why would I go back?*
*Because that's where they keep the 'Song of the Gen',* Shiden's mental voice was grim. *The Empire didn't just brainwash her. They overwrote her soul's frequency with Imperial music. You need the original score to reset her.*
He took a long swig from his gourd.
*But you're not ready. If you go now, Kaelen will turn you into a coat rack. You need to learn how to turn that 'Rejection' into a 'Dominion'.*
*How long?* I asked.
*Until you can stop my blade without using your hands.*
Shiden stepped back and raised the claymore.
*Start by trying to stay alive for the next ten seconds.*
He lunged.
I didn't have my hearing to warn me of his speed. I didn't have my sense of taste to tell me the air was thickening with mana.
I only had my one eye. And the cold, growing hunger in my chest.
As the grey lightning neared my face, I realized something.
Shiden wasn't teaching me to be a warrior.
He was teaching me to be an end-point.
The final stop for all causality.
I raised my obsidian hand, and for the first time, I didn't feel like I was fighting the world.
I felt like I was waiting for it to realize it had already lost.
**[Causality Synchronization: 38%.]**
**[Warning: The Third Price is approaching.]**
**[The price of the next evolution: Your ability to dream.]**
I didn't care. Dreams were just memories of things that never happened.
I had enough of those.
I stepped into the lightning.
***
Miles away, in the Astra Dominion, Kaelen van Draken sat in a tub of medicinal salts.
His face was a mask of bandages, but his eyes were clear.
"The Hounds failed," he said to the man standing in the corner.
Tomas Velin didn't look up from his ledger. "The Hounds didn't fail, Kaelen. They were simply outmatched by a superior logic. Rai Kurotsuki is no longer a human with a quirk. He is a growing singularity."
"I want the girl back," Kaelen hissed.
"You'll have her," Tomas said, finally looking up. "He's coming back for the Song. It's the only way to save her. And when he does, we won't use Hounds."
He pulled a golden key from his pocket.
"We'll use the 'First Hero'."
Kaelen's eyes widened. "He's still alive?"
"In a box," Tomas smiled. "But for Rai... I think we'll let him out."
The golden key turned in the air, and somewhere deep beneath the city, a heavy, ancient heart began to beat.
Slowly.
Hungrily.
The hunt was no longer about a girl or a key.
It was about who would survive the collision of two different ends of the world.
And in the Grey Forest, the boy who couldn't hear began to scream in a voice that shook the stars.