Darkness wasn't a void.
For me, it was a heavy, viscous liquid that tasted of iron and old secrets.
I woke up to the sound of something wet being dragged across gravel. It was a rhythmic, sickening sound—the sound of a body that no longer had the strength to resist the earth.
I didn't open my eyes. Not yet.
My internal world was a mess of screaming nerves and a cold, pulsing presence where my heart should be. The "Key" hadn't just settled into me; it had rooted itself. I could feel the black veins—the "Ketsubetsu" pathways—twitching under my skin like restless insects.
They were hungry.
I forced my eyelids open. The world was a blur of charcoal grey and flickering orange. The village—my home, or the cage I had called home—was a graveyard of smoldering timber and ash.
The sky had settled into a dull, bleeding red. The Gate had narrowed to a thin, shimmering slit in the air, like a cat's eye watching the carnage it had caused.
"He's awake."
The voice was cool, cultured, and entirely out of place amidst the stench of burnt hair and ozone.
I turned my head. The movement sent a spike of white-hot agony through my neck.
A man stood five paces away. He was draped in white enameled plate armor, etched with gold filigree that caught the dying firelight. A white cape, pristine and insulting, draped over his shoulders.
This was a Silver Wing Knight. An elite of the Valgarde Empire.
Behind him stood three other soldiers, their faces hidden behind visors. They weren't looking at the dead villagers. They were looking at me.
And next to them, pinned to the ground by a heavy boot, was Goro.
"Rai... run..." Goro choked out. His face was a mask of bruises, his lip split so deeply I could see the flash of white teeth beneath the blood.
I tried to push myself up. My arms felt like they belonged to someone else—someone much stronger and far more dangerous. The wound in my side didn't just hurt; it itched with an unnatural heat as the skin fused back together.
"Stay down, 'Awakened One'," the Knight said. He didn't draw his sword. He didn't need to. His presence alone felt like a physical weight pressing on my chest. "You've had a very long day. It's a miracle you're breathing, let alone glaring at me with such... intent."
I spat a mouthful of thick, dark blood onto the ash. "Who are you?"
"Sir Kaelen van Draken," he replied, his smile never reaching his eyes. They were a pale, predatory blue. "I am here on behalf of the Emperor to secure the... anomalies resulting from this unfortunate 'accident'."
Accident.
The word hit me harder than his boot would have. I looked at the corpses littering the shrine. I looked at the Gen girl, who was now bound in glowing, runic chains a few yards away. She was silent, her ember-colored eyes fixed on me with a desperate, silent plea.
"You opened the Gate," I whispered. It wasn't a question.
The logic of the world clicked into place. The Empire didn't just arrive at a disaster; they choreographed it.
Kaelen's smile widened, just a fraction. It was the look of a man who found a particularly clever insect.
"The Gate was a necessity, Rai Kurotsuki. Progress requires a sacrifice. The Gen possess a frequency of mana that our Empire lacks. We were simply... inviting them to share."
"By killing everyone I know?"
I felt the black veins in my arm throb. The "Ketsubetsu" wasn't just a rejection of magic anymore. It was a rejection of the reality this man represented.
"People die every day, Rai. Most die for nothing. These people? They died for the advancement of the Valgarde arcane core. They should be honored."
He stepped toward me, his armored boots crunching on the bones of a neighbor I had known since I was five.
"But you... you are the real prize. To survive a Gen collapse and resonate with a Core Fragment? That shouldn't be possible for someone with a 'Rejection' affinity. You're a glitch in the system. And the Empire hates glitches."
He drew a long, slender rapier. The steel was engraved with runes that hummed with a sickly yellow light—Seishin-kei magic. Mind and Will.
One scratch from that blade wouldn't just cut my flesh; it would shatter my mind.
"Give me the girl, and come quietly," Kaelen said. "Perhaps we'll only dissect the parts of you we don't need."
I looked at Goro. He was watching me, his eyes wide with terror. Not for himself. For me.
Then I looked at the girl. Aira. She was a monster to the world, but in that moment, she was the only thing that felt real.
The "Key" inside me hummed. A cold, mechanical pulse.
**[Threat Level: High.]**
**[External Mana Interference detected: Runic Rapier.]**
**[Proposal: Initiate Partial Causality Break.]**
*Do it,* I thought. *Break it all.*
I didn't stand up. I lunged.
It wasn't a human movement. It was a snap of kinetic energy. I covered the five paces before Kaelen could even bring his blade to a guard.
My hand, marked with those pulsing black lines, clamped onto the blade of his rapier.
The soldiers behind him gasped. You don't grab a runic blade with your bare hands. The magic should have fried my nervous system instantly.
But "Ketsubetsu" didn't care about his magic.
The yellow runes on the steel flickered. They turned grey, then black, then simply... vanished.
I wasn't just blocking the magic. I was refusing its right to exist in my space.
Kaelen's eyes finally showed something other than boredom. It was a flicker of genuine, primal fear.
"What... are you?" he hissed, trying to pull the blade back.
"The mistake you shouldn't have made," I rasped.
I twisted my hand. The reinforced Imperial steel snapped like a dry twig.
The feedback sent Kaelen stumbling back, the shockwave of his own disrupted mana shattering his breastplate's filigree.
But I wasn't done. The "Key" was pushing me, a surge of adrenaline and something darker—a hunger for the very essence of the things that tried to suppress me.
I turned toward the soldier holding Goro.
I didn't use a weapon. I punched the air.
A ripple of distorted space tore through the ash. It hit the soldier's shield—a heavy, magical bulwark meant to stop a charging bull. The shield didn't break. It disintegrated into fine, metallic sand. The man behind it was thrown thirty feet into a burning house.
"Rai! Stop!" Goro yelled, scrambling to his feet.
I didn't stop. I couldn't. My vision was swimming in a sea of red and black. I could see the flow of their lives, the weak points in their causality. I could end them all.
I reached for the girl's chains.
The runes on the chains screamed as my fingers touched them. They melted away, the magic "rejected" by my mere presence.
Aira slumped into my arms. She was cold—so cold she felt like a corpse.
"Go," she whispered, her voice a ghost in my ear. "They... they are coming."
"Who?" I asked, my voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a well.
"The Hounds," she said.
From the shadows beyond the burning village, a sound emerged. Not a human sound. It was a howl, but it had the metallic ring of a sharpening blade.
Kaelen was back on his feet, his face twisted in a mask of rage. He pulled a silver whistle from his belt and blew.
There was no sound, only a ripple in the air that made my teeth ache.
"You think this is a victory?" Kaelen spat, blood leaking from his nose. "You've just signed a death warrant for every soul within ten miles of this place. The Hounds don't stop until the 'Awakened' is consumed."
I looked at Goro. He was standing there, his rusted sword out, looking at me with a mixture of loyalty and horror. He saw what I had done to that shield. He saw the black lines crawling up my neck, nearing my jawline.
He knew I wasn't his friend anymore. Not entirely.
"Goro," I said, my voice steady for the first time. "Take the survivors. Head for the Grey Forest. Don't look back."
"What about you?" Goro asked, his voice cracking.
I looked at my hands. They were still shaking, but not from hunger.
From power.
A power that felt like a curse.
"I'm going to make sure they have a reason to stay here," I said.
I turned back to Kaelen. Behind him, the shadows were lengthening, taking shape. Four-legged shapes with glowing red eyes and bodies made of shifting smoke and steel. The Empire's "Hounds."
They were the things used to hunt down mages who went rogue. They were the end of the line.
But as I stood there, with a dying Gen girl behind me and a broken world around me, I didn't feel afraid.
I felt a cold, sharp clarity.
The Empire thought they were the masters of causality. They thought they could open Gates, harvest souls, and write the history of the world in blood.
They were wrong.
Because I was the Rejection. And I was just getting started.
"Kaelen," I called out, my voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to echo through the ruins.
The Knight paused, his hand on the hilt of a backup dagger.
"Tell your Emperor," I said, as the first of the Hounds lunged from the dark. "Tell him the 'Glitch' is coming to fix the system."
I didn't wait for an answer. I met the Hound in mid-air.
As my fist collided with its skull, the world didn't explode.
It went silent.
And in that silence, I heard a new message from the depth of my soul.
**[Causality Synchronization: 12%.]**
**[New Ability Unlocked: Void Step.]**
**[Warning: The cost of the next use is your left eye.]**
I didn't flinch. I didn't hesitate.
In this world, you don't get anything for free. And I was more than willing to pay the price to watch this Empire burn.
But as the Hound's claws neared my face, I realized something.
Kaelen wasn't looking at me anymore. He was looking at the Gen girl.
And he was smiling again.
The trap wasn't the Hounds.
The trap was the girl I was trying to save.
"No," I whispered, but it was too late.
The air behind me didn't just ripple. It shattered.
And the girl—the silent, shivering Aira—put a cold, obsidian hand through my chest.
Not to kill me.
But to take back the Key.
"I'm sorry, Rai," she whispered into my ear. "But you were never the hero. You were just the carrier."
The world turned to ice.
And for the second time that night, I felt the familiar, welcoming embrace of the dark.
Only this time, there was no hunger.
There was only the void.
And the realization that I had been betrayed by the only thing I had chosen to trust.
What happens when the Rejection itself is rejected?
I was about to find out.
If I survived the next five seconds.
The blackness surged, and then...
Silence.
The scent of ash was gone.
Replaced by the smell of expensive, clinical incense.
And the sound of a heartbeat that wasn't mine.