Chapter 33: The Halfborn Truth

Ren returned from the vision, breath shallow, heart heavy. The sky had darkened since he'd sat beneath the shrine, but the weight on his shoulders made it feel like night had swallowed the world.

His father wasn't dead.

He wasn't fully human.

And neither was Ren.

He looked down at his hands, fingers trembling. The void stirred within him, not violently, but like a pulse syncing to his breath. Not separate anymore.

A part of him.

Kaede found him still kneeling at the shrine, staring into the earth.

"Ren?" she asked cautiously.

He looked up slowly. "He's alive. My father."

Kaede froze. "What?"

"He's trapped… not just in the void, but by it. Because he was never just a man. He was made to contain it. And I—"

She knelt beside him. "You don't have to say it."

"I do." He exhaled. "I'm not completely human, Kaede. I don't think I ever was."

Silence stretched between them.

Then Kaede placed her hand gently on his shoulder. "You're still Ren. That's all that matters to me."

He almost broke then. Almost let the tears fall.

But he couldn't—not yet.

"There's something else," he whispered. "Something the void showed me before the vision ended."

Kaede leaned closer.

"There's another seal. Deeper than the heartroot. Stronger than anything I've ever felt. And it's cracking."

Kaede's expression darkened. "Another break?"

"No," Ren said. "A release. Something is waking up beneath everything. And if it gets out…"

He stood, strength returning to his voice.

"Then even the void will seem merciful by comparison."

Kaede nodded slowly. "Then we stop it. Together."

Ren turned toward the horizon.

"I was chosen because I survived."

His eyes glowed faintly in the dusk.

"But now I have to become what no one's ever been."

And the world, sensing what stirred beneath it, began to tremble.