“Kai.”Her voice was soft,too soft.He froze at the threshold of the ruins, eyes locked on the figure kneeling beside the black-glass pool. She wasn’t a memory.She was real.Her silver-white robes shimmered like faded starlight. Her hair was shorter than he remembered. And her eyes,gray, distant, detached,looked through him like he was a story someone else had told her.He took one step forward.Then another.“…It’s me,” he said, voice barely more than breath. “Kai.”No flicker.No warmth.No recognition.Just silence.She looked at him like he was a dream she wasn’t sure she wanted to remember.He knelt beside her, trembling, heart pounding against his ribs. His hand hovered inches from her shoulder, terrified it would pass right through.“I used to wait by the door,” he said, forcing the words through his throat. “Every night after the fire. I thought maybe… maybe you’d survived. That you’d find a way back to me.”Her lips parted slightly. A breath. Nothing more.Then,“…The door,”

The sky hadn’t stopped bleeding since Jin vanished.Kai stood rooted in the academy courtyard, breath sharp, chest rising and falling like he’d just outrun the end of the world. Soulbrand hummed in his palm, the blade still pulsing from the energy that had clashed with Jin’s corrupted flame. His knuckles were white from gripping it too tightly.Jin’s final words still echoed in his mind.“Join me, or watch your world burn.”Was that a threat or a prophecy?Behind him, Seria leaned against a pillar, one hand pressed to her ribs where her robes were still scorched. Her face was pale, but her voice steady. “It’s not over. That… wasn’t even the worst of him.”“He’s not Jin anymore,” Kai muttered. “Not really.”“Then who is he?”Kai didn’t answer. Because deep down, he was starting to wonder the same thing about himself.By dawn, the city of Ironvale was no longer Ironvale.It was a graveyard gasping through fire and ash.Blacksteel Academy had gone into lockdown, but the walls couldn’t ke