The rain refused to fall.
It hung in the air like someone had hit pause on reality. Thousands of droplets floated above the ground, suspended between seconds, caught mid-descent.
Arata's breath came in short gasps. His back pressed against the cracked wall of Tenryuu Academy's west dorm tower, his sword lowered, his fingers trembling from overuse. Every nerve in his body screamed, not from pain, but from confusion—because what he was seeing didn't belong to any world he understood.
A shadow.
A shape.
It stood just beyond the line where the rain stopped falling. Roughly human. But wrong.
Its arms were too long, its body thin and stitched together like it had been broken and reassembled by someone who didn't care about symmetry. It had no eyes. No mouth. Only a glimmering crack running down the middle of its face like a half-open zipper of starlight.
"What the hell…" Reiji muttered beside him, gun trembling in his grip.
Daigo was curled on the ground, whispering to himself. "That's not real. That's not real. That's not real…"
Karin stood in front of all of them, twin daggers reversed in her grip, ready. Yuna had collapsed, breathing heavily, eyes wide in horror. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
The figure didn't move. It just stood there—watching. Waiting.
"Is it… looking at us?" Arata asked.
"No," Karin said tightly. "It's listening."
The figure twitched. A sharp, spasm-like motion that bent its body in half before it uncoiled again like a puppet on invisible strings.
Then it spoke. Not with a voice. Not with sound. But with memory.
"I remember you."
Arata's ears rang. A vision slammed into his mind—an unfamiliar battlefield, soaked in fire and blood, where a younger version of himself screamed as a tower collapsed. Yuna was falling. Karin was crying. Reiji was gone. Daigo had never been there.
The vision passed.
Reiji dropped to one knee. "I… saw it too. What the hell was that?"
"I think it showed us a different timeline," Karin said, jaw clenched. "Not the future. Not the past. A version of us that already… lost."
The creature took another step forward.
The moment its foot touched the grass, the air howled.
Wind reversed direction. Gravity tilted. The clouds spun.
Arata stepped in front of Yuna instinctively, sword raised. His mark glowed faintly through his shirt.
The creature lifted its hand.
And all around them—trees, bricks, air itself—screamed.
Not metaphorically. Literally. As if everything in the world remembered pain at the same time.
Then… silence.
The creature opened its face. Not a mouth. A portal.
And behind that rift was something else.
A sea of stars. A chasm full of mirrors. And thousands of eyes.
Watching.
Whispering.
Begging.
Daigo shrieked and covered his ears. Reiji fired off three rounds, but the bullets vanished mid-air. Karin darted forward to intercept, but her body froze mid-leap, suspended.
Time fractured.
Yuna rose to her feet—on her own. Her eyes glowed blue. Glyphs spun around her wrists like bracelets of ancient code.
The Legion recognized her.
"Host recognized. Primary channel open. Transfer initiated."
Arata's mark flared.
His sword melted.
Not physically—but transformed. It became something else. A blade of white flame, burning with words in a language he didn't know but somehow understood.
Oblivion. Judgment. Restoration.
He grabbed it, ignoring the searing heat.
"Don't touch her!" he shouted, charging the creature.
But before he could reach it, the figure stepped into the air.
And vanished.
The world snapped back.
Rain hit the ground all at once. A flood of noise. Leaves shook. Air screamed.
Yuna collapsed.
Arata caught her, barely. Her pulse was erratic.
Karin landed beside him, panting.
"That thing… wasn't part of this world," she said.
"No," Reiji muttered. "It was part of something bigger."
They turned to Daigo.
He stood up—on his own.
Still shaking. But he looked straight at Arata.
"It wasn't just a monster," Daigo whispered. "It was a messenger."
Karin stiffened. "What message?"
Reiji cocked his revolver. "You better not say 'we're already dead' or something."
Daigo shook his head.
"It said… something's waking up."
Arata looked at the sky.
The moon had cracked.
A jagged scar ran across its surface.
And from that scar… a scream echoed.
Not sound. Not energy. Something deeper. Like the moon itself remembered being alive.
Then everything went dark.
A voice echoed from the sky.
"The first star burned alone. But the last star falls together."