The following morning.
Academy Courtyard – Departure Gate.
Wind carried the scent of steel and rain.
Kairos stood near the transport node, a swirling obsidian disc embedded into the courtyard's floor, flanked by guards bearing black cloaks. His crimson hair was pulled back, revealing sharp cheekbones, a jaw tensed with worry. His eyes, storm-gray and hungry, scanned the horizon beyond the Academy's walls.
Selene approached, adjusting the blade strapped to her hip. "You're really going?"
"I have to. If they're still alive, my family will be on the far side of the inner city."
She didn't stop him. She only stepped close and fastened a crimson ribbon to his wrist. "Then take a piece of the Academy with you."
A whisper-soft wind stirred.
Then the node activated.
And Kairos was gone.
---
Sector Delta – Edge of the Glassed Zone.
Four hours later.
The devastation grew thicker with each mile.
Once proud towers now slouched under their own weight. Windows like empty eyes. Streets twisted and devoured by nature's return and the slow, eerie spread of what the survivors called the rot.
Kairos stepped cautiously, senses sharp. He wore a hood now, hiding the fire in his hair, hiding the mark that had begun to glow faintly beneath his collarbone—three crimson lines shaped like a sigil.
He followed the old signs. Marks his father had left behind in the event of another collapse.
Then he found it.
A bunker door, sealed in rust and dried blood.
He knocked.
Silence.
Then a voice—hoarse, familiar. "...Kai?"
The door creaked open. And there they were.
His mother, thinner but alive. His younger sister, her eyes too old for her years. And three others he didn't recognize—survivors, wounded and wary.
They embraced in silence.
But it didn't last.
Not two hours later, they came.
Wretches—humanoid shells, twisted by the rot and powered by residual aether. Once human, now something else.
The battle was swift, but brutal.
Kairos fought like a demon, glyphs igniting his limbs as his blade sang across corrupted flesh. Each strike bore the weight of fury and desperation.
One lunged at his sister.
He moved faster than thought, cleaving it cleanly.
But not before its blood hit his sigil.
And something inside him awakened.
---
An hour later.
The bunker was quiet.
His family was safe. For now.
But Kairos stood outside, staring at his palm.
The blood hadn't washed off. It burned.
Then he saw it—runes, new and foreign, etching into his skin like a second language of the soul.
He wasn't just an Initiate anymore.
The world wanted to break him.
But instead, it had given him a choice:
Become the harbinger.
Or become the blade that ended him.
---
Back at the Academy, Selene stared out her window, the ribbon she gave him fluttering against a distant wind.
And far below the foundation stones of the school, something old stirred. Watching. Smiling.