The air was heavy with something Kai couldn't name—like grief that hadn't yet happened.
He stood alone beneath the remnants of the skybridge, fingers twitching, heart pacing faster than his breath. Since the blast, the city hadn't made a sound… but in his mind, it screamed.
He could feel it.
A pulse beneath his skin.
A flicker in his peripheral.
A voice he didn't recognize, whispering his own name like a threat and a prayer.
"Kai…"
He spun. No one.
The others—Ryuu, Shin—they were elsewhere. Yet Kai felt eyes. He felt watched. Or worse… remembered.
Memories he didn't own clawed at his skull. Faces he never met. A fire in the pit of his chest.
Why does it hurt when I breathe?
He knelt, gripping his temples, the world spinning.
Then—
A flash. A soundless scream.
A glimpse of something ancient in a mirror of smoke.
And just like that, it was gone.
But the fracture remained.