Kayden walked home with his hands deep in his pockets, eyes locked on the cracked pavement as his footsteps echoed in broken rhythm. The evening breeze brushed past him, cold and impatient, like it carried warnings he couldn't understand.
His mind wouldn't stop replaying the same thought:
If the Architect launches everything he has, what will happen to this world…?
Buildings collapsing. Streets burning. People screaming.
He could feel it — a disaster waiting to explode.
He exhaled hard.
"Motherfucker… this city has no idea what's coming."
He didn't mean it in anger.
He meant it in fear.
But when he reached his street, something shifted.
The air got heavier — like the world was holding its breath.
Kayden paused.
His house stood quietly at the end of the road. Too quiet. No light on in the living room. No sound of his foster father snoring on the couch. Not even the usual hum of the fridge heard from outside.
He swallowed once. "Okay… weird."
Still, he walked in.
The moment the door closed behind him, the atmosphere changed again.
A subtle pressure crawled up his spine, cold and invisible, like something was standing behind him already.
Kayden didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
Didn't look back.
"…you're here again, aren't you?"
No answer — not a voice, not a whisper.
But the room reacted.
The overhead bulb flickered violently.
A chair leg scraped the floor without being touched.
A drawer slid open with a sharp wooden creak.
Kayden's heartbeat spiked.
"What the hell do you want from me…?"
Still nothing.
But the presence grew thicker, almost suffocating.
Like a shadow taking form even though nothing could be seen.
And then the pressure hit him.
His mind flashed — violently.
Images he couldn't control slammed into him like a storm:
A burning sky.
A collapsing kingdom.
The ground breaking apart.
Screams swallowed by darkness.
And a woman with amber eyes — the same eyes he had glimpsed in himself — reaching out desperately before everything went white.
Kayden gasped and stumbled into the wall, grabbing it for balance.
"What… what the fuck was that—?!"
His breathing was shaky, uneven.
He wiped sweat off his temple.
Then—
Something stepped closer.
He didn't hear footsteps, but he felt them — the floor vibrating lightly, like someone heavy and ancient was walking through a world not built for them.
Kayden's hands balled into fists.
"Show yourself… I'm not scared of you."
That was a lie.
He was terrified.
But fear only made him angry.
The shadows in the corner of the room stretched unnaturally.
As if something invisible brushed against them.
Kayden flinched. "Motherf— okay yeah, that's creepy as hell."
Then it happened.
A cold whisper slid directly into his mind.
"Soon."
Kayden froze.
Every hair on his body stood up, his breath catching in his throat.
The word echoed again — not as sound, but as meaning.
SOON.
"Soon what?!" Kayden yelled. "Hey! Don't just drop creepy-ass one-word threats and disappear like some discount horror movie villain!"
But the presence didn't respond.
It simply… faded.
Gone without walking away.
Gone without a trace.
And yet Kayden still felt watched.
He leaned on the wall, breathing hard.
"What… the hell are you? And why the hell are you following me?"
----
Meanwhile, miles away, the Architect stood in the center of his control room, screens casting sharp blue light across his glasses. His workers scrambled around him, typing aggressively.
The footage of Kayden was on every monitor.
A technician rushed forward.
"Sir! We found something. A timestamp from before Jex's confrontation!"
The Architect's eyes sharpened instantly.
"Show me."
The footage played:
Kayden stepping out of his house at night, holding a trash bag.
He walked to the bin.
Dropped it in.
Then turned back inside.
The Architect leaned closer.
But something was off.
"Pause," he snapped.
The image froze.
Kayden's body was still facing his house, but his eyes— they were not.
They were looking to the side, like he sensed someone approaching.
"Zoom."
The worker did so.
Kayden's expression wasn't casual.
It was tense. Alert. Almost scared.
He reacted to something the camera hadn't detected.
The Architect swallowed.
"…why did he turn like that?"
"We don't know, sir," the worker stammered. "There's no signal. Nothing on our sensors. Nothing on the audio. It's… blank."
The Architect didn't like this.
Not at all.
"Play the next moment."
The footage shifted — and suddenly Kayden was dozens of streets away, appearing near the alley where Jex ambushed Naze.
No transition.
Just a cut.
The Architect slammed his fist on the table.
"What the— Where's the part where he left the house?!"
"S-sir, the data is corrupted—"
"Everything is corrupted with that boy!" the Architect barked. "Every time he interacts with something, the cameras glitch! The drones fail! The systems break!"
A sickening realization crawled up his spine.
"It wasn't him," he whispered.
"He wasn't alone."
The room went silent.
A worker hesitantly asked, "Sir… what do you think is happening?"
The Architect stared at the frozen screen.
Kayden's body language.
The sudden cut.
The sensory blackout.
Something — someone — was near him.
Something they couldn't track.
The same thing that destroyed his drone weeks ago.
The same thing that erased evidence.
A shadow with no signal.
A presence with no form.
A signature with no record.
"No," the Architect whispered, backing away slightly.
"It's impossible. Nothing is untraceable. Nothing is invisible to us."
But his voice shook.
And for the first time since he began this project—
He looked scared.
---
Kayden was still breathing hard, gripping the counter as he tried to steady himself.
Sweat cooled on his forehead, and the room felt wrong.
Everything felt tilted, like reality wasn't sitting right.
Then something else happened.
A glass cup on the table began vibrating lightly.
Kayden didn't touch it.
His chest tightened.
"Oh, come on— again?!"
The cup vibrated harder.
Then—
CRACK.
It split down the middle.
Kayden stared in disbelief. "Are you kidding me right now?"
He looked down at his own hands… and felt it.
That same overwhelming pressure inside him, rising like boiling water.
He felt strong, but not in a good way.
Like something inside him was waking up without his permission.
His reflection in the microwave door flickered.
For a fraction of a second — just half a heartbeat — his eyes flashed amber.
Kayden shoved himself away from the counter.
"No. Nope. I'm not doing this 'mysterious chosen one awakening' bullshit right now. I just fought a lightning crackhead yesterday."
He paced back and forth, trying to calm down.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Breathing—
And then he heard it.
A soft echo inside his mind.
Not words.
A sensation.
Like the Unseen hadn't fully left.
Like it was watching him from inches away.
Kayden clenched his teeth.
"I swear to God, if you're still here—"
A faint pulse traveled through the house — a low vibration he felt in his bones.
Kayden stopped dead.
"…You are still here."
--
Back at the facility, alarms suddenly flashed across every monitor.
Systems glitched.
Lights flickered.
A worker yelled, "Sir! There's an energy spike coming from the boy's location!"
"Kayden?" the Architect asked.
"Yes, sir! A massive surge!"
"Show me!"
The enhanced footage loaded.
The destroyed drone's recording — the one that had been too corrupted to use — flickered on the screen.
For a second, the picture was clear.
Kayden.
Standing outside that day.
And behind him—
A tall, humanoid silhouette.
Shadow-like but not made of darkness.
More like it was made of absence — like the camera couldn't understand what it was seeing.
A shape without features.
A void shaped like a person.
The workers froze.
The Architect's heart nearly stopped.
"Wh… what… what the hell is that…?"
No one answered.
Because no one had seen anything like it before.
Then the footage corrupted again — static swallowing the image.
The Architect stumbled back from the screen.
"This thing… this thing destroyed my drone?"
Silence.
"Why didn't the sensors detect it?" he demanded.
"Why can't we follow it? Why can't we see its energy?!"
A trembling worker whispered,
"Sir… because whatever it is… it doesn't have energy. It's like it isn't part of our world."
The Architect's face drained pale.
"It was behind him… this whole time."
He swallowed hard.
"You're telling me… something unseen… something unrecordable… is following the boy?"
No one spoke.
The Architect whispered with trembling lips:
"
"…what the hell are we dealing with ?"