The world remembered through glyphs.
Not as stories passed down by mouths that could lie,but as seals written directly into reality.
Every glyph was a record.Every technique, a truth the world agreed to obey.
So when those records were burned, scratched out, and sealed away—the damage did not end with the dead.
History itself began to fracture.
Kuroku sat beneath the surface like a scar that refused to heal.
An underground city of broken towers and crooked bridges, drowned in smoke and neon glyph-light. Illegal sigils flickered above ramshackle stalls. Bootleg seals pulsed with unstable power. Nothing here was sanctioned. Nothing here was forgotten.
That was why Rai Embermane survived here.
He stood in a narrow alley, heat clinging to the air around him like a second skin. Ember-red locs fell wild around his face. Freckles dusted his bronze-toned cheeks like ash that never quite washed away.
Three bounty hunters blocked his path.
Their armor didn't match. Their confidence did.
"You've been glyphcasting without a license," one of them sneered."That flame of yours ain't sanctioned."
Rai grinned, sharp canines flashing.
"Didn't realize fire needed a permission slip."
They reached for weapons.For proper seals.For rules.
Rai clapped his hands together.
The sound cracked through the alley.
His fingers snapped into a jagged sign—instinctual, imperfect, alive. The air between his palms warped as heat bent reality itself.
A glyph ignited.
Cracked. Unstable. Burning like molten script that barely held its shape.
Flames burst from his back, flaring wide and wild. Neon signs flickered overhead, reacting like frightened animals.
One hunter stumbled back.
"That glyph— it's unstable!"
Rai lunged.
Fire followed him like a comet.
"Let me show you what unlicensed really looks like."
The glyph fractured midair, forming a jagged jaw of flame. It snapped shut around the nearest hunter's arm.
The scream came a heartbeat later.
Rai dragged him forward with a flick of his wrist, fire eating through armor and strength alike.
"My fire doesn't burn clean," Rai said lightly.
Steam rose from scorched flesh.
"It eats."
The other two panicked.
One rushed a defense chain.The other drew a weapon etched with emergency seals.
"Break the glyph— now!"
Rai surged forward, heat tightening around him—
And the fire died.
Not from force.
From absence.
A thin black line cut cleanly through the space between his hands. The glyph sputtered. The flaming jaw collapsed into ash.
The hunter fell, gasping.
Rai froze.
Then turned.
A figure stood at the far end of the alley, half-swallowed by shadow.
Nox Sairen.
Still. Calm. Obsidian aura flickering faintly with indigo light. One hand raised, fingers barely moved.
A micro-sign.
The remaining hunters didn't hesitate.
They ran.
Nox's voice was quiet and precise.
"We're not here to kill them."
"They started it," Rai snarled.
"We're already outlaws," Nox replied."Do you want the High Sealers on us this early?"
Rai shook the embers from his hands, scowling.
"You never let me finish my sentences."
"That's because yours usually end in explosions."
Rai smirked.
"…Exactly."
They moved deeper into Kuroku.
People watched them pass with careful eyes. Storm-watching eyes.
Rai shoved his hands into his pockets.
"So what? We just roll over every time someone wants a piece of me?"
"Every flare you throw paints a bigger target," Nox said.
"Good," Rai replied. "I'm done hiding."
They turned a corner.
The wall stopped him cold.
A massive slab of stone covered in erased clan sigils. Burned marks. Scratched names. Entire bloodlines reduced to scars.
"They wiped them out," Rai muttered."Like they never existed."
"That's the point," Nox said quietly."No glyph. No history."
Rai clenched his jaw.
"Then I'll burn them back."
"No," Nox said."Uncover. There's a difference."
They climbed to the rooftops.
Kuroku spread beneath them, glowing red and restless.
Rai leaned against the edge, flames curling faintly around his shoulders.
"You really think hiding makes us free?"
"Survival isn't freedom," Nox replied."But truth might be."
Rai grinned, sharp and reckless.
"Then keep up."
Far below, cloaked elders gathered around a massive glyph wheel.
Nine seals glowed.
One space lay cracked and empty.
A diagram hovered above the wheel—Rai's body sketched in unstable fragments.
"The Eleventh Glyph stirs again," one elder whispered.
"If he finds it," another said,"we lose control of history."
A final voice cut through the chamber, cold and absolute.
"Then erase him.Like the others."
Back on the rooftop, Rai stared out over the city.
"I'm not trying to save this world," he said."I'm just burning my way to the truth."
Behind him, Nox's shadow stretched long.
"And I'll erase you," Nox said quietly,"if you go too far."
Nine seals remained intact.
One was missing.
And the world had begun to remember.