The world didn't break with a sound.
It cracked in silence—inside him.
Kai stood in the heart of the old city, where even ghosts refused to linger. Towering ruins loomed like forgotten titans, their jagged edges kissing a sky that pulsed dark red. His fingers trembled—not from fear, but from the unbearable stillness clawing at his core.
Something inside him had splintered.
A hum throbbed beneath his skin. Not pain. Not power. Something... older.
Memories surged, uninvited—
Laughter that wasn't his.
Blood that didn't spill on any battlefield.
Eyes. Eyes that watched him burn.
Kai clutched his chest, staggering back against rusted steel. The fractured sigil branded on his back began to glow faintly—ashen white veins crawling across his skin.
"You're not breaking," a voice whispered in his mind. "You're becoming."
Elsewhere, Shin paused. He stood atop a collapsed freeway, wind biting through his torn coat. His eyes narrowed toward the city's heart.
"Kai..." he muttered.
Back in the ruins, Kai dropped to his knees. The ground trembled—a soft quake, like the world exhaling.
Then came the scream.
Not from his mouth.
From the sky.
A black fissure tore through the clouds. Lightless. Endless. A wound above the city.
And in its wake, a single word etched itself into Kai's mind:
"Warden."
His eyes flared open—one silver, one deep obsidian.
He rose.
And the world noticed.
To be continued...