The aftermath of a Rift event was always the same: chaos first, then questions.
Emergency services arrived eleven minutes after the Rift closed. By that time, Kael had dragged himself to the park's edge, cleaned off the worst of the Orc blood with a water fountain (which, miraculously, still worked), and stuffed his bent knife into his backpack where no one could see it.
He sat on a bench and pretended to be a traumatized civilian. It wasn't hard. He looked the part.
Around him, the city was discovering what the System really meant. News helicopters circled the park's crater. Social media was already exploding with shaky footage of Orcs, of the Rift, of the blue System screens that everyone was still trying to understand.
Kael ignored all of it. He was focused on the small notification blinking in the corner of his vision.
[Shadow Step (Rare) — Rank: D]
Active Skill | Mana Cost: 15
Become one with shadows, moving instantaneously up to 5 meters.
Cooldown: 8 seconds.
Shadow Step. His first skill in this life, and it was the same skill he'd started with in his previous one. The System was cruel, but apparently it had a sense of poetry.
In his first life, Shadow Step had evolved through seven stages, eventually becoming [Sovereign of Shadows] — an SSS-Rank skill that let him fold space itself. But that was a decade away. Right now, it was a short-range blink with a long cooldown.
Still. It was something.
The Hunters Association didn't exist yet — not officially. In the first timeline, it had taken three weeks to form after the Awakening. But Kael knew that certain people were already moving behind the scenes. People who'd been preparing for something like this.
One of them found him two hours later.
"You. On the bench. Don't move." A woman's voice, sharp and professional, cut through the crowd noise.
Kael looked up.
The woman was tall, dark-haired, and dressed in a black coat that screamed "government but trying not to look like government." Behind her stood two men in tactical gear who were very clearly not trying to hide what they were.
In his first life, Kael had met Director Han Soo-min three years after the Awakening, when she'd already built the Association into a global powerhouse. Right now, she was still a military intelligence officer who'd just been handed the most important assignment in human history.
"The park's surveillance cameras were destroyed in the explosion. But a traffic camera on the adjacent street caught something interesting. A young man running INTO the Rift zone while everyone else ran away. A young man who, by our best reconstruction, spent approximately four minutes alone with thirty C-Rank monsters. And survived." Han crossed her arms.
She pulled up a tablet showing a grainy image of Kael entering the park.
"Care to explain how an F-Rank civilian with no combat training solo-cleared a C-Rank Rift on the first day of the Awakening?"
Kael had prepared for this. Not the specific conversation — this hadn't happened in his first timeline because the first Rift had been E-Rank and nobody had cared about who cleared it — but the general concept of being questioned about things he shouldn't know.
"I got lucky. The propane tank was right there. Any idiot could have—" He shrugged.
"An idiot wouldn't have known to target the Warchief's sub-mandibular artery. An idiot wouldn't have kited thirty monsters into a kill zone with the precision of a trained tactician. And an idiot certainly wouldn't have the calmest heart rate I've ever seen on someone who just survived a near-death experience."
She tapped something on her tablet. The two tactical agents shifted their stances slightly — not threatening, but ready.
"So I'll ask again. Who are you, Kael Ashford?"
Before Kael could answer, a new presence entered the conversation.
"He's nobody special. Just someone who reads too much."
The voice came from behind them. A young woman leaned against a lamppost, arms crossed, watching the exchange with the kind of amused disinterest that only came from either genuine apathy or perfect acting.
Kael's heart stuttered.
Sera Voss. Age 24. Information broker. The woman who would become the most connected person in the post-Awakening world.
The woman who would die in five years because Kael had been too slow.
She looked different — younger, obviously, and without the network of thin scars she'd eventually earn. Her silver-white hair was shorter, her gray eyes sharper, and she carried herself with the coiled energy of someone who hadn't yet learned that the world was trying to kill her.
But the intelligence in her gaze was exactly the same. The way she'd already cataloged every detail of the scene — Kael, Han, the agents, the exits — was pure Sera.
"And you are?" Han turned, frowning.
"Someone who was also in the park. I saw the whole thing. He's telling the truth — it was mostly the propane. Very dramatic. Very lucky."
She was lying. Kael could tell because he'd spent two years working with her in his first life and knew every one of her tells. She hadn't been in the park. She was here because she'd been monitoring military communications and heard about the anomaly.
The question was: why was she covering for him?
Han studied Sera for a long moment, then returned her attention to Kael.
"We'll be in touch, Mr. Ashford. The world is changing, and people with your... luck... tend to become very important."
She left with her agents. The crowd swallowed them in seconds.
Sera didn't leave. She pushed off the lamppost and walked toward Kael with the easy, dangerous grace of a predator that had just spotted something interesting.
"So. You want to tell me how you really killed those Orcs?" She sat on the bench next to him.
"You just told the nice military lady it was propane."
"I told her a useful story. I'm asking you for the real one."
Kael studied her face. In five years, this woman would build an intelligence network that spanned three continents. She would become his most trusted ally, the person he relied on when every other source of information failed. She would also be betrayed by her own guild and killed in a back alley in Berlin.
He could change that. All of it. Starting now.
"Buy me coffee and I'll tell you a story. A really long one." He stood up and offered his hand.
Sera looked at his hand, then at his face, then at the destruction behind them.
"Make it interesting." She shook it.
[End of Chapter 4]
Next Chapter: Kael tells Sera exactly enough truth to be dangerous. Meanwhile, the System has a surprise for Awakening Day — one that never happened in the first timeline.