Ginah opened the front door.
The apartment was dark, save for the pale blue glow of the TV casting shifting shadows across the walls.
She paused in the doorway, stunned.
Nathan was on the couch, face down, limbs draped like dead weight over the cushions. His hoodie was half-burnt, jeans torn and scorched. His body reeked of smoke, ash, and something else—heat, like he'd walked through a wildfire and never truly left it behind.
Her heart lurched.
She stepped in quietly, closing the door with a gentle click. She didn't want to wake him, not yet. Not until she understood.
The television caught her eye. She turned the volume up—just a bit.
"We're live now with breaking footage—"
The reporter's voice was shaking. Not with fear, but awe.
"A man is seen moving through the flames—look there! That blur—he's carrying what looks like an entire family! That's the third group in under a minute—hold on, we're getting the aerial feed—"
The screen shifted to helicopter footage.
The building was a pyre. Entire levels caved in, fire blooming like a living thing.
And then—him.
A figure streaked through the inferno, his white segmented cape flaring like a pair of metal wings. The camera barely kept up. He blurred forward, dodging falling debris, flame, and explosions, moving like the fire knew not to touch him.
"...Ninety lives saved in under two minutes," the anchor whispered. "And now—wait, he's heading for the arsonist—he's not slowing down—"
The screen froze for a moment on the confrontation. Ginah recognized the posture instantly. That silent fury. That precision. That was Nathan.
She turned toward the couch again.
He hadn't moved. Still face down, chest rising in slow, shallow breaths. One of his hands twitched slightly, as if dreaming—or reliving the battle.
She took a few careful steps toward him, then sat quietly beside the couch. For a moment, she just looked at him.
The weight on his back was invisible, but crushing.
He saved lives tonight. Probably changed fates.
And yet—he was alone here. Ash-covered. Sleepless.
Still burning.
The footage continued to roll. The screen now showed a sharp zoom-in—captured from a drone circling above the blaze.
Nathaniel hovered high above the inferno, cape segments flared out behind him like a pair of weathered wings. He raised one hand, fingers splayed wide, arm trembling from the sheer power coursing through it.
Then—he brought it down.
A single downward swat.
The air around his palm rippled, then cracked.
A blast of high-speed force tore downward—not in flame, not in energy—but in pressure. It was the kind of strike that ripped the air itself open, displacing everything in its path. The result wasn't just violence—it was physics reacting in real time.
Ginah stared, expression locked.
There was no direct combustion, no explosive shockwave. Instead, the moment the wave passed—
The pressure vanished.
A sharp vacuum effect pulled the oxygen from the center of the blaze. For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.
Then the atmosphere collapsed back in.
Winds howled down, screaming through alleyways and streets like the crash of a sky hammer. The fire didn't burn out—it snuffed. Three pulses followed, each exact, timed, spaced by his own breathing.
And for a second—
The civilians lifted.
Light as leaves. Three feet into the air, weightless and unharmed, caught in the breath of a dying storm.
When the winds died down, they landed without so much as a scrape.
Nathaniel descended in the silence that followed, landing with a crunch of scorched asphalt and ember-swept calm. He stood in the epicentre of it all—one arm still faintly glowing from the effort, smoke curling off his shoulder.
Ginah didn't speak. She didn't need to.
He didn't just learn to burn.He learned how to undo it fast and on a large scale.
And that was something most Knights—hell, most people—never figured out.
She stood frozen, eyes fixed on the screen as Nathaniel disappeared into the shadows of the cityscape. The quiet hum of the television barely filled the silence in the room.
Then, instinctively, her eyes shifted.
A soft viridian glow bled into her irises.
The world around her faded into layers of filtered overlays—her innate scanning augment activating without command. Data streamed silently before her, drawn from distant environmental traces and subtle uratsu echoes.
She focused on his signature.
And there it was.
His uratsu pathways—once dormant, stunted by artificial suppression—now pulsed with clarity. Not overflowing, not unstable. Just... complete.
Path efficiency: 100% operational.
That shouldn't be possible.
Two weeks ago, his network was barely functioning at baseline Neo-human standards. No history of catalyst events. No prior signs of stress-induced evolution.
And now?
He was functioning like a reinforced mid-tier Knight—at least. Maybe more.
She blinked the interface away.
Her mind raced.
What triggered this? A battle? A near-death spike? Or something else entirely?
None of it added up. He wasn't supposed to develop like this. Not this fast.
Not without help.
Her lips thinned, unease twisting in her gut.
He wasn't just recovering. He was advancing—too smoothly, too efficiently, like a system activating from a deeper design.
But what design?
And who built it?
Arete and Sung sat sprawled across the wide velvet couch of the Bergschrund family living room, the soft hum of classical instrumentation drifting from unseen speakers. Their idle conversation wove between laughter and sharp-eyed jabs, golden eyes locking with scarlet under the warm amber glow of the chandeliers.
The camera—or the reader's eye—pans.
Above the mantel, framed in minimalist brushed silver, hung a photo. The image looked ordinary at first: two men standing side by side, both towering in stature and cloaked in radiant high-tech battle armour. One was unmistakable—Nautak Bergschrund, founder of the Illumine Guild, his iconic golden hair falling to his shoulders like polished thread, eyes just as luminescent. His smile was calm, proud. A hand clutched a chilled bottle of champagne.
Beside him stood a younger man—his dark brown skin contrasted sharply against the pristine white of his suit. Neon orange, slitted eyes stared out from under thick lashes, the only windows into his identity. He too held a bottle, his mouth tilted into a smirk half hidden by a short, shallow beard.
But his face was obscured, almost deliberately.
A towering potted plant, long since overgrown, cast thick green shadows over the upper half of his features. From this angle, his identity was nothing more than suggestion—a mystery deliberately kept.
Arete glanced up at it for a moment between words, pausing only slightly.
She didn't have to say anything.
Both of them knew exactly who stood beside her father in that picture. And why no one else could.
Later that night, Arete sat alone in her office, lights low, the glow from the screen painting soft gold across her face. She'd been reviewing old footage — missions archived under restricted access. Noirwraith surveillance files. It was mostly fractured, some of it corrupted from the biome surge events.
She slowed a frame.
The Noirwraith stood at the edge of a burning district, black hood up, glowing amber eyes peering into the blaze.
But just for a second—
Just one frame.
His face glitched.
No—not glitched.
Overlayed.
For a fraction of a second, the Noirwraith's features shimmered. The image shifted—just slightly—but enough. A jawline. A slitted gaze. The shape of a mouth that didn't belong to Arc. Not him. But someone who looked like him.
Someone she'd seen once. Long ago.
The screen stilled. Her breath hitched.
Akhuta.
She blinked hard. Replayed the clip.
It was gone.
Just Arc. Hood up. Flames in his eyes.
She leaned back slowly, the sense of déjà vu curling like cold mist along her spine. Her hand hovered over the pause key as her golden eyes narrowed, focusing again.
"No…" she whispered, barely audible. But it didn't sound certain. Not even to her.
Some ghosts didn't need a name to haunt you.
Alyssa sipped her coffee lazily as she prepped for morning drills at HQ. Her fingers scrolled absently through headlines on her tablet, catching up on reports that didn't concern her—until one did.
"Newly Instated Knight Takes Down Serial Arsonist"
She nearly scrolled past it, but paused.
There was a photo.
A young man, battered, bleeding, but unmistakably calm, pushing a criminal into the arms of awaiting officers. His silver eyes stared directly into the lens. The caption tagged him as Nathaniel Alderman, Squad Four.
The cup slipped from her hand.
It didn't shatter—just clinked against the table as her fingers froze mid-air. The blood drained from her face. Her chest tightened, lungs fighting to expand as if the air itself had turned to ash.
Her hands trembled.
No.
It wasn't just the face.
It was the memory—overlayed.
Silver eyes, but once… they had burned red—patterned, intricate rings rotating endlessly within his gaze. Concentric circles of vermilion, layered with geometric malice.
The robe—ash-white, divine in its fold, regal in silhouette.
His hand—casually running through his hair, just before the sky shattered.
A pillar of light.Dark scarlet energy. Black sparks.The sound of pressure collapsing.
She remembered it.
The clouds had parted, not from wind—but from fear. From power.
He emerged—Shrouded in malevolence, godlike in presence. His body altered.
Two forearms, each jointed at the elbow, rotating with impossible flexibility.
Four hands, two thumbs each, capable of crushing dimensions.
The Axate.
Akumo.
Her heart thundered against her chest. Panic bloomed behind her ribs. Her eyes burned—glowing purple, the shape of an Enso manifesting on her forehead like an ouroboros set alight. Her breathing turned rapid. Erratic.
What was he doing here?
Not Akumo. Not again. Not after what he'd done.
She could still see it—the land scarred, craters formed by mere gestures. The Twelve Masked Beasts had once been the pinnacle of destructive force.
And yet he, with a fraction of his power, had unmade them.
Alyssa remembered dying.Not metaphorically—truly. She had felt her soul tear.
Each of the twelve orbs floated around his back, symbols etched onto them—each a concept. Each a law. They glowed with immutable force, orbiting like dying stars, whispering ruin.
She clenched her hands.
"No," she whispered to herself. "That was a cycle ago. That thing… is gone. Dead."
But her eyes lingered on the article again.
And yet... there he was.
Smiling.