Kepler

Deep beneath Academy High, where the dimensional rift's reality hummed with warped gravity and threads of arcane instability, an enormous command center pulsed quietly with red lights.

The security vault, housing the most advanced monitoring systems on Earth, hummed with magic-tech synergy.

Here, sitting before ten massive holographic screens arranged in a semicircle, was an old man—thin, cloaked in a deep azure robe etched with shifting runes that whispered secrets to those attuned to magic.

His silver beard reached his chest, braided and clasped in sapphire.

His name was Archmagister Kepler, one of the last SS-Class national heroes of the United Nations Heroic Registry, known to many simply as the "Chrono-Savant."

His eyes were tired but sharp, scrutinizing every recorded footage from months prior—feeds that captured the disappearances of multiple S-Class heroes:

Voltage Queen, Gaian Warlock, Phantom Fist, Iron Widow, and more.

They were seen walking into various unstable dimensional rifts, supposedly for reconnaissance or suppression missions. But there was something strange about each video—something he hadn't noticed before.

In every clip… someone stood beside them.

At first, the identity was obscured by environmental noise—glitches, flares of divine light, distortion fields.

However, Kepler's magic-enhanced analysis slowly decrypted the footage frame by frame.

"…Radiant Man…" he whispered under his breath, a tremble creeping into his usually firm tone.

"Could it be him?"

The golden silhouette, tall and broad-shouldered, with flowing blonde hair and radiant armor—there was no mistaking it.

Kepler leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard with a look of dread.

"Impossible… Radiant Man vanished months ago. He was declared Missing In Action. And yet, here… he's in every single footage. Every single one. Accompanying them… yet he's the only one who ever came back always."

He tapped a sigil on the console, the screens whirling to new data: magic signature logs, eyewitness reports, energy fluctuations from portal signatures.

"He never filed any return documentation… and still—he's now living back on Earth?" Kepler's eyes widened further. "There's no record of him ever exiting those rifts. Then how… how did he return?"

The longer he stared, the worse the knot in his gut became.

"What are you hiding, old friend?" Kepler muttered, pushing away from the desk.

He began pacing around the chamber, mumbling to himself, as magical glyphs floated around him, comparing timelines, calculating trajectory overlaps.

"Could it be…? No, Radiant Man was one of us… he was the paragon. The ideal. He led the charge to seal the Leviathan Gate. He was the hope when the cosmic tides broke. But… then again…"

His face turned pale as he replayed a still image.

Phantom Fist, an unshakable warlord in close combat, reaching out… screaming, mouth wide in horror—right as a radiant figure turned away.

Right as a golden hand seemed to push her into the swirling void.

"No…" Kepler took a step back. "You—did you…?"

And then… it happened.

Without warning, a violent shudder ran through the room.

The air cracked like glass—no, space itself fractured.

A rift burst into existence behind him, silent as death and faster than a blink. It didn't roar or glow.

It simply was.

A round disk of spatial inversion, edged in pulsing blue. Kepler turned too late.

"Wh—!"

Before he could raise a single finger or cast a single sigil, the rift expanded and swallowed him whole.

Gone.

The chamber went still, the holographic screens flickering uncertainly in his absence.

Inside the rift, Kepler's body twisted through the violent spiraling maelstrom of colorless void and inverted sound.

His thoughts raced as quickly as the endless storm swallowing him.

He couldn't scream—there was no sound here, only the force of raw dimensional unraveling.

"What kind of magic is this? This isn't one of our rifts—this is layered… no, folded. A second dimensional shell!"

He forced himself upright mid-void, spinning and stabilizing himself using gravitational magic.

His body was old, but his mind was still that of a genius combat mage.

After what felt like eternity, he was unceremoniously dumped into a dark, subterranean cavern that radiated divine power.

He landed hard, but rolled to his feet with a groan, gripping his staff.

It was shaped like a serpent biting its own tail, the middle housing a rotating gyroscope of floating runes.

A chill crawled down his spine.

A man floated at the center of the chamber, arms folded, feet not touching the ground.

Tall. Muscular. Beautiful. Regal. Radiant.

"…Radiant Man…" Kepler breathed, leveling his staff.

There was a moment of silence before Kepler asked, "…What are you doing here?"

He didn't answer.

Kepler's heart pounded. "What is this place? What is going on? Are you—are you the one responsible for the missing S-Class Heroes?!"

No response.

"You were with every single one of them! You disappeared for months—returned without a single report! You never went through any gate to Earth! Your signature never reappeared! There's no residual dimensional magic trailing you, which means you never left! You've been here! This whole time!"

Still silence.

Kepler raised his staff, the tip glowing with divine blue magic. "You led them to their deaths, didn't you?"

Radiant Man slowly opened his eyes.

They glowed with golden light, and in that instant, Kepler saw something—something alien and wrong behind those irises.

While catching his breath, he took a step back.

Radiant Man smiled faintly and said, "I am."

The old mage's breath hitched.

The confirmation was casual.

Cold.

Not even a whisper of remorse.

He took a step back. "Why?" His voice cracked. "Why, you monster?"

But Radiant Man's expression didn't change. "You are not worthy of knowing anything, worm."

And then he moved.

He didn't fly. He simply appeared in front of Kepler with a golden flash.

A punch aimed for Kepler's heart—

But the old mage's instincts were sharp. He shouted a word of power, and a blast of kinetic shielding flung him backward, preventing his heart from being ruptured instantly.

"Teleport! Vector Rebound!"

He reappeared twenty feet away and fired a bolt of dimensional fire at Radiant Man.

The golden figure batted it aside with a flick of his hand.

"Gravity Crush!" Kepler roared, collapsing the space around Radiant Man with a spell designed to fold reality and erase matter—but the golden figure simply flexed and broke the magic with raw force.

Kepler grimaced. "He's… he's beyond Class S now!"

In the past, he believed he could best a lot of human but this time, he realized Radiant Man was hiding his true nature.

Radiant Man blinked forward again—no spells, no artifacts, just speed.

Another punch, this time grazing Kepler's ribs.

The old man coughed blood and spun backward, creating a sphere of temporal dilation.

"Chrono Cage!"

Time around Radiant Man slowed—just a second.

Kepler used it.

He raised his staff and cast five layered protective barriers: Lunar Wall, Nullspace Dome, Arcane Citadel, Mirror Rebound, and finally, his masterpiece—

"Eternity Bastion!" he shouted, a shimmering egg of celestial fractal runes encompassing him.

It was his greatest defense.

Not even S-Class spellbreakers could pierce it in ten minutes.

But as he panted behind his barrier, blood on his lips, he stared at Radiant Man—still floating, calm, arms still crossed, watching.

And then Radiant Man raised a single hand… and cracked his knuckles.

Kepler paled.

He knew… this wasn't a fight he could win.

Not alone. Not anymore.

But he must win!

He didn't have a choice.