The moment the Riftblade struck air, the world held its breath.
Minwoo stood in the training chamber, shadows pooling at his feet like ink poured across the stone. The sword in his hand was no longer just a weapon—it was an extension of will, a relic of memory, and something more ancient than either. It pulsed in rhythm with a heartbeat that no longer belonged to him alone.
He had not just claimed it.
He had woken it.
And that act had been noticed.
Above, rain fell in a fine mist, a shivering drizzle barely clinging to the rooftops of the Shadow Fang guild house. Thunder rolled distant now, not in retreat—but in quiet recognition of something greater. Inside the walls, the guild stirred.
Lira was the first to reach him.
She said nothing at first. Just stared at the Riftblade, her fingers twitching near her hilts, instinctively calculating escape paths and counters even as her breath caught in her chest.
"You shouldn't be standing," she said eventually.
"I'm not," Minwoo replied. "Something else is standing with me."
Her brows furrowed. "That's not poetic. That's dangerous."
Minwoo didn't answer. He couldn't explain it—what it felt like. The weight wasn't heavy, but it was vast. A presence wrapped around him, not malevolent, but immense. Like standing inside a tidal wave that had chosen not to crush you—yet.
He could feel it now: the Riftblade watching through him. Not commanding. Waiting.
Testing.
The guild alarm cracked through the quiet—two low tolls from the ward-bell.
Intrusion.
They moved in sync—Minwoo, Lira, Kinro, Jin, others. Down the hall, across the balcony, past the war map, out to the rain-slick stone courtyard.
Lightning lit the world in flashes.
And there they were.
Four figures, walking side-by-side toward the guild's broken ward line. The one in the center drifted above the ground, cloak of shadows flowing behind them like the hem of a deeper night. The others moved like predators—silent, confident, sure.
"Who the hell are they?" Kinro growled.
Minwoo stepped forward.
He didn't know how, but he recognized them.
Not as people.
As prophecy.
The central figure stopped ten paces out, voice like oil poured on cold stone.
"Riftborn," she said. "You wear a crown forged in rupture. Do you even understand what it means to hold that blade?"
Minwoo said nothing.
Lira's grip tightened on her hilts. "Say your names."
The woman ignored her. She looked only at Minwoo.
"The moment you touched the Crownblade," she said, "you lit a beacon the rulers buried beneath ten thousand years of silence. We felt it. Across oceans. Across time."
She raised one finger.
"The Scour Ascendant answers that call."
The ground behind her cracked.
Something monstrous clawed its way up—a colossus of bone, chain, and whispering shadow. Its face was a mask of violet runes. Its hands were scythes.
It wasn't summoned. It had been called home.
Lira moved. Kinro drew his blade.
Minwoo didn't.
He just let go.
And the Riftblade took over.
He crossed the courtyard in one heartbeat. The blade sang through the air—not with wind, but with memory. The bone colossus swung, but Minwoo was already behind it. One slash, and the thing staggered—its form shivering with static, as if it couldn't process being touched by something older than it.
The Riftblade whispered again.
Minwoo's mana split.
Four.
Then eight.
Then twelve.
Shadows peeled off of him like afterimages made real. Echoes of his motion, of his wrath. Each one bearing spectral Riftblades. Each one acting before he thought. They weren't clones. They weren't illusions.
They were consequences.
He stepped into the air—and so did all of them.
Together, they fell upon the bone-beast in a synchronized blur of blade arcs, each strike folding space slightly, carving slits of red-black light through reality. When the dust cleared, the construct was gone—reduced to ash and vapor, unmade not by force, but by rejection.
The Riftblade would not allow lesser things to stand.
Across the ruined battlefield, the woman didn't flinch.
"You move like one of the Old Guard," she said. "You kill like them. But you're not of them."
She lowered her hood.
Her face was etched with runes—old ones, highborn ones. Her eyes were pure white.
"Which means you're unstable. Unfinished. And very, very dangerous."
She didn't attack.
She just vanished, unraveling into mist—along with her three companions.
Minwoo exhaled.
Lira stepped beside him.
"We need to talk," she said.
But even as the words left her mouth, Minwoo turned—eyes glowing faint violet now, voice barely above a whisper.
"They weren't the threat."
Far away, in the Cradle of Silence
Beneath a continent carved from ruin, ancient machines flickered to life.
And in a sealed chamber no one had entered for centuries, a single sigil ignited in red:Riftborn Active. Crownblade Claimed. Lineage Reawakened.
A voice—mechanical, divine, monstrous—spoke two words in a forgotten tongue:
"Begin purge."
And somewhere, beyond even the Rift—
An ancient ruler opened eyes it had kept shut for eons.
And smiled.