The first tremor reached Eiren at dawn.Helena felt it before she heard it — a subtle distortion in the air, as though the world itself had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale. Her reflection in the window stretched thin, the edges of her face blurring like wet ink.Then the sound came.A low, rolling moan that seemed to travel through stone and water alike.Lira burst into the room moments later, cloak half-tied, eyes wide.“Did you feel that?”Helena nodded slowly. “It’s the south.”“How can you know?”Helena turned toward the sea. The horizon shimmered, bending light the way heat bends distance. Beneath the surface, faint flashes of silver pulsed like veins.“I can feel them,” she said. “All of them. Every reflection that ever whispered my name.”Lira’s face paled. “Then Caldra’s gone.”“No,” Helena murmured. “Not gone. Remembered too hard.”By noon, the sea had risen.It wasn’t water anymore. Not truly. It moved like liquid glass — viscous, heavy, humming softly as it spread inlan

Five Years After Andrew’s ExileThe rain had just stopped when a black car without a license plate halted in front of the tall building bearing the AZ Corp logo. The usually bright lobby lights were dim now, guarded only by two half-asleep security men. No one could have guessed that the man stepping out of that car was someone who should have long been regarded as a legend—or more precisely, a ghost.The echo of his footsteps resounded across the wet floor.A long gray coat draped over his frame, streaks of silver lined his hair, and his eyes... no longer belonged to the Andrew they once knew. Those eyes were deeper, colder—like someone who had seen too much of the world to ever be human again.“Good evening,” he said flatly.“I’d like to enter. I’m Andrew.”The guards exchanged glances. One of them almost laughed at the absurd claim, but something in Andrew’s presence froze that laughter in his throat.The face they saw in old photographs still hung on the lobby wall—the man said to

On the upper floor of AZ Tower, Darius was holding an emergency meeting with the remaining board members. Panic-stricken faces filled the room; news of Andrew’s appearance had spread far faster than they expected.But Darius simply sat back, staring at the projector screen displaying the image of a man in a white lab coat.“Calm down,” he said flatly. “Karel already knows. He even thinks this is interesting. He said the experiment would be more perfect if the ‘original source’ returned.”One of the board members swallowed hard. “But if Andrew still has real influence… our stocks could plummet—”“If Andrew wants a war,” Darius cut in, “we have an army.”He looked at the screen, a thin smile forming. “And that army is not made of ordinary men.”Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, Andrew sat in a small roadside coffee shop. The place was nearly empty; only the sound of an old radio and the scent of freshly brewed black coffee filled the air.Miriam sat across from him, carrying a s

Rain swallowed the city that night, turning every street into a river of reflections. Somewhere high above those drowned lights, on the rooftop of an abandoned residential tower, a man stood under the storm—unmoving, unbothered.Noir.Rain slid down his face like he wasn’t part of the world it touched. His eyes, black and empty, stared far into the distance—toward the industrial outskirts where the Blue Serpent’s aura still lingered faintly.A voice crackled into his ear.“Unit IX, report. Are you in position?”Noir didn’t answer immediately. He raised his hand, observing how droplets avoided his palm at the last second, diverted by the strange ripple of energy that wrapped around him.“Don’t call me Unit IX,” he finally replied, voice cold.“What should we call you then?” the voice asked.“Call me what I am.”He closed his hand, crushing the air itself.“The Shadow.”Static. Then silence. Even the storm seemed to pause—waiting for its new master.Andrew sat in the dim back room of hi

Dawn broke over Surabaya with a pale, sickly light—as if the sun itself were uneasy. Andrew stood on the rooftop of the safehouse, leaning on the rusted railing as he watched the city wake beneath a gray horizon.The pulse inside his chest was getting worse.Black Sapphire throbbed like a wounded creature, flickering in irregular beats. The pain wasn’t sharp—it was deep, gnawing, like something inside him was slowly draining.He closed his eyes.Every time his heart beat, he felt a second heartbeat echoing somewhere else.Noir.Andrew’s shadow was growing stronger.And it terrified him more than he wanted to admit.Footsteps approached behind him.Jiro stood there, bruised but determined, the faint glow of Golden Fang still simmering behind his pupils.“You didn’t sleep,” Jiro said.“Couldn’t,” Andrew replied.“Because of him?”Andrew nodded.Jiro stepped beside him, gripping the railing.“I can sense something strange too. Like a pull… toward the south.”“That’s the next relic,” Andr