The Registry building looked smaller in person.
Kaito stood across the street from it, watching people flow in and out of the tall glass doors like water through a drain. It wasn't grand—no marble, no guards, no dramatic music—but there was a weight to it. Not in the structure, but in the people.
Everyone walking through those doors had something he didn't.
Proof.
System scans. Core signatures. Badges clipped to their collars. Confidence in their step.
Kaito had a hoodie with a loose drawstring, sneakers with worn soles, and a chest that still hummed with something he couldn't name.
He kept his head down and crossed the street.
The front lobby smelled like disinfectant and vending machine coffee. The walls buzzed with quiet digital boards displaying appointment numbers and field updates:
[ RIFT #41-2B: UNDER CONTROL ][ TIER 2 ZONE OPEN TO LICENSED PARTIES ONLY ][ REMINDER: SYSTEM FRAUD IS A CLASS 2 OFFENSE ]
The receptionist didn't look up when he stepped in.
Kaito took a seat by the window and opened the old notebook he'd brought—mostly blank pages and two printed pamphlets Mari had sent Aiko months ago.
He flipped through one.
"Becoming a System User: What You Need to Know"
Most of it was obvious. You awaken. The system recognizes you. You get tested. You register. Then, if approved, you're free to join a guild or go freelance—assuming you don't die in your first week.
He'd already skipped step one.
Or… something had skipped it for him.
The HUD hadn't changed much since yesterday.
[ SYSTEM CORE CALIBRATION: 10% ][ NO CORE SIGNATURE DETECTED ][ STATUS: HOLLOW ]
[ DUNGEON AFFINITY: TRACE DETECTED ][ ACCESS TIER: UNREGISTERED ]
When he left the Registry two hours later, he hadn't talked to anyone.
But he'd learned one thing: unregistered users couldn't access rifts officially, but unclaimed rifts—new, unmonitored tears—still opened from time to time in rural districts.
If you found one before the scans caught it…
You could slip inside.
No questions. No paperwork. No rules.
Just danger and whatever was waiting on the other side.
That night, Kaito sat on the roof of the apartment building, legs dangling over the edge.
The sky was smeared with thin clouds, moonlight bleeding through in pale streaks.
Aiko had gone to sleep early.
Their mom hadn't come home yet.
He stared up for a long time, wondering how far a rift could see if it had eyes.
Then, quietly, he pulled out the burner phone he'd bought earlier that week and opened one of the forums he'd bookmarked.
[ UNCLAIMED ZONE SIGHTINGS – THREAD 822 ]
"Near Kiso Valley. Scans are late again.""Whole area smells like static and ozone.""Saw trees bending toward something—no visible tear though.""No guilds there yet. 2.5hr by train from Nagano."
"No core pulse."
(New comment)"Feels empty. Like it's calling for something to fill it."
Kaito didn't post.
He just stared at that last comment.
No core pulse.
It felt like someone was describing him.
Somewhere else in the city, Naoya Kirishima stood in a quiet library archive, flipping through sealed breach files.
His eyes were red. His shirt wrinkled. His tablet buzzed with alerts from his supervisor, none of which he opened.
He had found something strange in Exit 3's logs. The anomaly flagged as "hollow" hadn't been purged like the others. Instead, the data had been redirected—pushed into an unlinked system path, like a bypass route created mid-crash.
That kind of reroute didn't happen naturally.
And it didn't happen without authorization.
He stared at the routing code. One string stood out.
AEON.PROXY.BIOMATCH.00X-NULL
AEON Corp.
Someone at the private contractor level had buried this.
And he was going to find out why.
Back at the apartment, Kaito lay in bed with the lights off, arm across his eyes.
He wasn't asleep.
Wasn't awake, really.
Just drifting.
The whispers were back again.
Not voices exactly—just sounds that felt like they had intention.
Like wind curling around syllables.
He pressed the pillow tighter to his face.
Then, just as he started to drift again, the system lit up—slow and silent, like a screen flickering on in the dark.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: ABILITY TRACE DETECTED ][ CATEGORY: UNKNOWN // PASSIVE // BINDING TYPE ]
[ AWAKENED TRACE: "THREADSENSE" ]
[ STATUS: UNSTABLE // EXPERIMENTAL ]
[ APPLY Y/N? ]
Kaito sat up.
The HUD pulsed faintly at the edge of his sight.
A choice.
Not forced.
Just offered.
He didn't even think.
Yes.
The moment he said it—without saying anything at all—something shifted in his hands. His fingertips tingled. The hairs on his arms prickled like they were standing at attention.
He looked at the ceiling, and for the briefest instant—
He saw something move above it.
Not light. Not shadow.
Just… a thin silver thread, running through the air like a spider's line.
Gone in a blink.
He breathed out slowly.
Then whispered to himself, "What the hell is happening to me?"
He didn't expect an answer.
And none came.
But the silence afterward felt… less empty.