The sky had sealed itself shut, yet Rael could still feel the echo of the creature's gaze like claws dragging down his spine. Even now, long after the rift vanished, the air trembled faintly as if reality itself feared what had just peered through.
Rael wiped the sweat from his brow and sheathed the silver blade, its glow dimming reluctantly as if disappointed the battle had ended.
He needed to move.
He needed answers.
The ruins lay silent around him, but their silence felt alive the way a forest quiets before a predator descends. Each shattered pillar, each cracked stone held stories older than memory. And somewhere beneath all this ash… was his truth.
Rael inhaled deeply and began walking.
The wind carried whispers not voices, not words, but something like echoes of thoughts once spoken. It was impossible to tell if they were real or just his fraying mind grasping at ghosts.
The same faint hum from earlier returned, vibrating through the ground like a heartbeat that didn't belong to the earth.
The coffin… the voice… the chained woman.
His steps slowed.
Was she… someone he had once known? Someone he had once sworn to protect? The way the voice trembled in sorrow, pleading for him not accusing, not furious why would someone beg like that?
"Why did you abandon me…?"
Rael clenched his jaw.
He didn't remember.He couldn't remember.
But the ache in his chest refused to fade.
A sudden crack sounded behind him.
He spun, drawing the blade instantly.
A shadow darted between broken archways.
He dashed forward.
The ruins stretched into a long stone corridor. The faint figure slipped around a corner, moving with inhuman fluidity. Rael followed, breath steady, blade ready.
He turned the corner
And froze.
It wasn't a monster.
It wasn't a hunter.
It was a boy.
Thin, ragged, barely older than twelve. Ash smeared across his face. Eyes wide with terror. His clothes were torn as if he had crawled through half the world to get here.
When the boy saw Rael's blade, he raised trembling hands.
"D-don't hurt me…"
Rael lowered his weapon slightly but kept his guard up."How did you get here?"
The boy shook his head violently. "I I just woke up in this place. I don't know where I am. Monsters came out of the walls. I ran. I hid." His voice cracked. "I thought I was the only one left."
Rael's grip tightened.
A human? Here? In this realm?
Impossible… unless…
Unless the mirror gate had dragged others through.
"What's your name?" Rael asked.
"Kael," he whispered. "Who… who are you?"
Rael hesitated. Not because he lacked an answer but because the answer was changing.
Finally, he said, "Rael."
The boy flinched. "R-Rael? The same Rael… they're searching for?"
Rael stiffened.
"Who?" he demanded.
Kael took a shaky step back. "T-the hunters. The ones with the masks. They said if they find you, they'll chain you again."
Rael's blood went cold.
"Chain… me?"
Kael nodded fearfully. "They said the Predator must never awaken."
The earth rumbled violently, cutting their conversation short. Stones cracked from the ceiling. Something massive was moving beneath the ruins closer than before.
Kael screamed as the ground split open beside them.
Rael grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back as a clawed hand erupted from the crack long, skeletal, dripping with black ichor. A creature pulled itself out, shrieking silently with a gaping jawless mouth.
One of the hunters.
Not from the rift this time
From underground.
Rael shoved Kael behind him.
"Run that way," he barked.
Kael hesitated. "What about you?"
"I'll catch up."
The boy fled.
Rael stepped forward, eyes burning silver as the creature lunged. His blade flashed, slicing through its arm. The severed limb dissolved into smoke, but the creature hardly flinched.
It twisted, forming a spear-like limb, thrusting it at him.
Rael ducked, rolled, then slashed upward. The blade hummed a deeper resonance this time as if answering the creature's nature. The strike tore through its chest, splitting it in half. The creature shrieked in a soundless rage, its body dispersing into black mist.
Rael stood still, listening.
Silence.
But beneath it…Another tremor.Another heartbeat.Another echo.
If Kael was telling the truth, then Rael wasn't just being hunted.
He was being remembered.
He jogged in the direction the boy had fled.The ruins opened into a long corridor illuminated by faint blue light. At the end of it, Kael stood staring upward, petrified.
Rael slowed.
"What is it?" he asked.
Kael pointed at the far wall.
Rael stepped closer
And felt his stomach clench.
The entire wall was covered in carvings.Hundreds, maybe thousands of them.
And every carving…
Was of him.
His face.His eyes.The silver blade.The chains wrapped around his arms.A throne of bones behind him.A woman kneeling at his side head lowered.
Words in an ancient script glowed faintly beneath the largest carving.
Kael whispered, "They called you the Ashen Predator… the one who hunts the hunters."
Rael's heart pounded."No. I don't remember any of this."
Kael looked at him with something between awe and terror."But they do."
The tremor in the ground intensified again.The wall carvings flickered with light one by one until every depiction of Rael glowed an intense, ghostly silver.
Rael felt a pulse in his chest.The same pulse as the coffin.The same pulse as the creature beyond the rift.
Kael tugged his sleeve."Rael… something's waking up."
He didn't respond. He couldn't.
Because the largest carving the one where Rael sat on the throne began to move.
The stone eyes glowed red.
Then a voice, female, sorrowful, familiar echoed through the chamber.
"Rael… you promised you would return."
Rael's blood turned to ice.
Kael stumbled back, terrified."W-what was that?!"
Rael didn't speak.
Because the voice wasn't coming from the wall.
It was coming from inside his mind.
The carvings began to crack.Dust fell.Light exploded from the fractures.
Rael grabbed Kael and pulled him back just as the entire wall shattered outward revealing a dark passage behind it, as if the temple itself had torn open its chest.
From inside that passage…
A faint heartbeat echoed.
Slow.Heavy.Unyielding.
Rael's grip on the blade tightened.
Whatever he had forgotten, whatever he had abandoned
It was waiting for him in that darkness.
And this time…
He couldn't run.