- Kaia's Perspective -
Kaia didn't believe in fate.
Fate was a lullaby sung by dying elders — a tale spun by the broken to explain why the stars no longer answered. She had seen too much. Heard too many names carved into frost-covered stone. If the gods were watching, they watched with closed eyes and cold hands.
But when he said his name — when the outsider whispered those two syllables, soft as snowfall — something shifted.
"I think… I'm Rei."
The air changed.
She didn't show it.
Didn't blink.
Didn't move.
But beneath the stillness, beneath the armor of frost and fury, her breath caught.
Rei.
It meant nothing in the old tongue.
Not beastkin. Not elvish. Not druvan or seared in the sands of Solheim.
It was foreign — and yet… it felt real.
Not a number.
Not a curse.
Not a brand.
A name. His name.
And names, real names, were power.
Her ears twitched, betraying the silence she wore like a second skin.
She remembered the night he first arrived — half-conscious, limbs shaking, a ghost wrapped in chains. She had dismissed him as another failed summoning, another meat offering tossed into Blackstone's depths.
But the mark had pulsed.
The Void had stirred.
And his shadow had twitched — like it remembered something the man did not.
Now he was claiming a name.
Rei.
The mark on his chest seemed to throb in response — not as a brand, but as a seal. A truth buried and unearthed.
Her own name had once been a flame.
Kaia of the Frostfang Clan.
Daughter of Nhal'Tara.
Chosen of the ridge-winds.
Last to speak the Old Oaths beneath the World Tree.
Now?
She was Eighty-Nine. A scar with legs.
But he… he said his name like he was stealing it back from whatever stole it first. And somehow, that gave her something she hated: hope.
Hope was poison here.
It festered.
It made you soft before the blade fell.
She turned away, burying the heat rising in her throat.
But the feeling lingered.
Not because of the name.
Because of what came after.
"Whatever comes… we face it together."
He hadn't said it like a vow.
Not like a promise.
But as something already true —
A truth that had simply been waiting for breath.
That was the moment she understood.
He wasn't just Riftborn.
He was the Riftborn.
The one who carried the Void not as a curse… but as a calling.
And if the legends whispered beneath the World Tree were true —
If the Void truly chose its bearer across lifetimes,
if the hunger between worlds could bond instead of devour…
Then perhaps the Void didn't mark him to be feared.
It marked him to be followed.
And maybe, just maybe…
She wouldn't have to fight fate alone.