The air over Tokyo didn't feel like Earth anymore.
It felt thinner, stretched—like reality itself had flinched.
Lightning still danced on the skyline, but it didn't crash. It hung, frozen for seconds at a time, suspended in threads of fractured space.
The Riftblade had done more than kill a construct.
It had announced a domain shift.
And the world had listened.
Minwoo stood at the edge of the guild hall's highest roof, cloak torn, wind clawing at his shoulders, Riftblade stabbed into the stone beside him. Below, the city shimmered—alive, unaware, unready.
He was no longer hiding in shadow.
He was the shadow now.And it moved when he said so.
Behind him, Lira approached quietly.
No tension. No blade drawn this time.
"You realize," she said, "you're not just holding that thing anymore. It's building you."
Minwoo nodded, not turning.
"I can feel things I couldn't before. Lines in the air. Echoes in silence. Every step I take, the Rift... responds."
Lira stared out at the horizon. "You're syncing with it."
"No," he said softly. "I'm commanding it."
Suddenly—motion. From below.
Kinro burst through the upper door, rain steaming off his armor.
"We've got contact. Three Rift Tears opened downtown—simultaneously. Aether constructs, big ones. Powered by something we haven't seen before."
Minwoo blinked once.
"They're testing our reach."
Kinro frowned. "What's the play?"
Minwoo turned. Voice calm. Cold.
"Full strike. No containment. We don't send scouts."
He reached out—not physically, but through the Rift.
A vertical scar tore open beside him, rippling red and black.
His clones stepped out. Eight of them. All silent. All armed.
"We arrive in shadows. We leave nothing behind."
Downtown, Twenty Minutes Later
The first construct never saw the blade.
It was a tower-sized obsidian engine beast, half-machine, half-flesh, its limbs pulsing with rune energy. It roared once—then collapsed as all eight Minwoo echoes tore through its core in perfect synchrony.
Lira blinked onto its falling form, riding it down like a surfboard. As it crumbled, she leapt—twisting midair, twin blades spinning in a blur of slashes, cutting through three Riftborn specters mid-phase.
Jin dropped in from above, charging a bolt of plasma so hot it distorted the color of the buildings. He fired once—and the second Rift Tear imploded with a low whump.
The street cracked. Civilians ran screaming.
But Minwoo didn't move fast.
He walked.
Straight into the mouth of the third Tear.
Inside: cold.
A throne room built of code and bone. Artificial. Ancient.
Sitting on the throne was something wrong—a humanoid shape made of smoke, chained to the walls with bindings of time-stamped glyphs.
It lifted its head.
"You're not like the others."
Minwoo didn't flinch.
"I'm not here to be like them."
The being hissed, warping the air.
"You think this weapon gives you rule over the Rift?"
"No," Minwoo said. "The Rift isn't a kingdom. It's a battlefield."
He stepped forward. His voice sharpened.
"And I'm its general."
He lifted the Riftblade.
The walls screamed.
Outside, on the streets
The third Rift Tear collapsed in on itself—spiraling down like a black hole being corked. The buildings stopped humming. The constructs disintegrated.
Kinro lowered his blade.
Lira looked up.
Jin exhaled.
A moment of silence.
Then, all around them—dozens of street-level civilians began to rise from cover, staring at the center of the city.
At Minwoo.
Who stepped calmly from the Rift, cloak fluttering behind him, blade still warm from its last command.
And all at once—
The sky over Tokyo parted.
And above them, high in the clouds, a symbol burned into the air:
A single crown made of broken daggers.
The mark of the Riftborn Commander.
Far across the world
The masked seer dropped to her knees. The obelisks behind her dimmed.
She whispered to her acolytes:
"He's done it. He's claimed not just the blade—but the right to lead. The others will come now. The old ones. The dissenters. The forgotten kings."
She looked up, eyes wide with something between awe and fear.
"The war won't begin."
A pause.
"It just did."