The hunt begins.

Music for chapter: blink-182 - Adam's Song

The morning after the trials felt a bit subdued, like everyone was still a bit out of it after the grueling weeks.

Aullie dragged himself through the courtyard, every step reminding him of yesterday's beating. His ribs throbbed where Ryota had landed a hit. Queenie and Shinku padded beside him, the formers tail twitching with irritation. She'd gotten splattered with mud when some idiot sent a training dummy flying, and apparently that was somehow his fault.

"Come on, Queenie. You can't stay mad forever."

She flicked an ear but didn't look at him.

Aullie just rolled his eyes and continued on without another comment.

The note was waiting in his bag, folded small and tucked behind his spare uniform. His stomach dropped when he read it.

Below the archive. Shrine. Come alone.

No name, but he knew the handwriting. Of course he did, it was the same as when he was asked to go to the abandoned shrine.

****

Training that afternoon felt like going through the motions. Everyone showed up, everyone sat in their usual spots, but the energy just wasn't there. Even Koizumi seemed out of it.

"Today we're covering demonic corruption," Koizumi announced, his voice flatter than usual, which was saying something because this guy was the embodiment of apathy. He waved his hand, and spectral diagrams flickered to life above his desk. "Pay attention. This isn't theory anymore."

The images were worse than anything they'd seen before. Twisted forms that might have once been human. Things with too many eyes, or mouths where mouths shouldn't be.

"They're learning ways to counter us that don't just rely on brute force," Koizumi continued, pointing to a diagram showing coordinated attack patterns. "Forming units. Copying our tactics. The corrupted beasts we faced last year? May as well be child's play compared to what's coming."

Usually someone would crack a joke by now. Make some stupid comment to break the tension. But the room stayed dead silent. Even the class clowns stared at those diagrams like they were seeing their own futures written out in spectral light.

Out on the field, everyone was going through the motions of summon drills, but just like earlier, the energy felt forced. Like they were all trying too hard to pretend everything was normal after the latest Demon studies class.

Aullie worked with Shinku and Queenie, their coordination definitely sharper since the trials. Queenie flowed between shadows like water, appearing behind targets with that absurd precision she'd developed. Her Darkness Meld was getting scary good.

But she still wouldn't go near the muddy training pit…

She sat on her haunches, staring at the mud like it had personally offended her ancestors, then gave Aullie a look that could have frozen fire. Her tail flicked once - a very clear "absolutely not."

"Oh, come on," Aullie muttered. "It's just dirt."

Queenie's nose wrinkled in disgust before she hopped gracefully onto a clean rock, sitting like a tiny empress surveying her kingdom.

"If she gets mud on her paw, I'm filing a formal complaint," Shinku called from the bench where he was sprawled in the shade, not even pretending to participate.

"I thought you were supposed to be training too," Aullie shot back, ducking under a swinging dummy arm.

"I'm providing moral support. And commentary." Shinku waved a paw lazily. "Besides, someone needs to document her majesty's descent into full diva mode."

"She's always been dramatic," Aullie said, rolling into a strike. He signaled Queenie, who vanished into his shadow with obvious relief at avoiding the ground.

"Yeah, but this is next level. Yesterday she made me carry her over a puddle."

Across the field, Haru was having his own problems. Wood kept belching lava in short, angry bursts, turning patches of grass into smoking craters.

"Wood, seriously, we talked about this!" Haru yelped, jumping back as another burst nearly caught his boots. "Indoor voice!"

The beaver-like beast just growled, steam rising around him like he was personally offended by the concept of restraint.

"Maybe if you didn't keep flinching, he'd calm down," Aki called out, launching herself into the air with a controlled blast from her feet. She cracked her fire whip across a line of dummies, flames slicing clean through. "Fear makes them jumpy."

"Easy for you to say," Haru muttered, brushing soot off his pants. "Your familiar doesn't have lava for spit."

Aki landed in a crouch and immediately sprang back up. "Yea just fire, muuuch better. But I also don't coddle mine!"

"I'm not coddling"

"You're coddling."

"She's right," Sora said quietly, appearing beside them in a shimmer of displaced air. Her space cardinal, Saki, perched on her shoulder like liquid silver. "You're treating him like he's fragile."

"Says the girl who talks to her bird like it's made of glass," Haru shot back.

"Saki's delicate. There's a difference." Sora's voice was perfectly calm, but there was an edge to it. "Blink left."

Saki vanished with a ripple and reappeared on her other shoulder. Sora moved with the bird, blade slicing through air in movements so precise they looked rehearsed.

"Show-off," Aki muttered, but there was respect in her voice.

"Just efficient." Sora vanished again, reappearing behind a dummy that fell apart in two neat pieces.

"Okay, that was definitely showing off," Haru admitted.

"Haru just thinks everyone is showing off because he's having a bad day," Shinku observed from his bench.

Aullie just snorted and went back to training.

The weird thing was, they were all getting better. Faster. Their teamwork was tighter than it had ever been. But underneath all the banter and the improvement, there was this current of tension nobody wanted to acknowledge. Like they were all waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And honestly? Aullie was getting tired of waiting.

That evening, Aullie found himself on the dorm rooftop again. He hadn't planned it, but somehow his feet had carried him up here while his mind was elsewhere. The sun was setting behind the mountains, it was a picturesque scene.

He wasn't surprised when Sora appeared beside him. She had this way of showing up exactly when he needed her most, even when he was trying to convince himself he didn't.

"Hey," she said quietly, settling down next to him.

"Hey."

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching the light fade. Her braid caught the last rays of sunlight, and he had to force himself not to stare.

"You're doing it again," she said eventually.

"Doing what?"

"That thing where you pretend everything's fine while you're clearly falling apart." Her voice was gentle, but there was worry threaded through it. "I can practically hear you thinking from over here."

He let out a short laugh that didn't sound like him at all. "Sorry. I'm not great company lately."

"That's not what I meant." She shifted closer, just a little, her shoulder almost touching his. "I meant you don't have to carry everything by yourself. Whatever's going on, you don't have to protect me from it."

The words hit harder than they should have. He looked down at his hands, not trusting himself to meet her eyes. "You don't understand. If something happened to you because of me"

"Aullie." She turned toward him, tucking one leg under herself. "Look at me."

He did, and immediately regretted it. Her eyes were so concerned, so full of something he didn't dare name.

"I see you, okay? I see how you flinch when you think no one's watching. How you go quiet when things get too real. I see you trying to push me away because you think it'll keep me safe." Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "But I'm not going anywhere. I can't just stand by and watch you hurt yourself trying to protect everyone else."

His chest felt tight. "Sora..."

"I know you think you're doing the right thing. I know you think keeping me at arm's length is somehow noble or whatever." She reached out like she was going to touch his hand, then stopped herself. "But it's not helping anyone. It's just making us both miserable."

"I'm shit at this," he admitted, the words coming out rougher than he intended. "I don't know how to... I've never had someone…I.." He stopped himself before he could finish that thought.

"Someone you what?" she asked softly.

He shook his head. "Someone I couldn't bear to lose."

The silence stretched between them, heavy with everything they weren't saying.

"You're not going to lose me," she said finally. "Not if I have anything to say about it. But you might drive me crazy if you keep trying to make decisions for both of us."

Despite everything, he smiled. A real one this time. "I'm sorry. I just... I don't know what I'm doing."

"Join the club." She smiled back, and it was like the sun coming out from behind clouds. "But that doesn't mean we stop trying, right?"

He nodded, not trusting his voice. Her hand was resting on the roof between them, close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. All he had to do was move his hand a few inches and

"Thank you," he said instead. "For not giving up on me."

"Never," she said simply.

They sat there as the stars began to appear, her hand still close to his, both of them too in their own heads to close that final distance. But for now, this was enough. The promise that maybe, eventually, they'd figure out how to stop pretending to be blind of what they both already knew.

After curfew, with the campus wrapped in artificial sleep, Aullie moved through shadows that seemed eager to swallow him whole.

The lower halls felt different in the dark. Ancient stone cold against his fingertips as he traced the walls, following corridors that felt like they shouldn't exist but did anyway.

Shinku padded ahead without a sound, his void-black form nearly invisible even to Aullie's eyes. When the cat stopped, it was sudden enough to make Aullie's skin crawl.

"Here," Shinku whispered, staring at an archway carved with runes that hurt to look at directly. "I... I remember this place. But I've never been here before."

"What do you mean?"

"The memory isn't mine." Shinku's voice carried an edge of something close to fear. "It's like someone reached into my head and left it there."

The sealed corridor beyond the archway opened at Aullie's touch. Of course it did.

The shrine beneath Kirin Academy wasn't anything like the simple meditation chambers upstairs. This was older than the school, older than the city above. Older than things that should be forgotten.

Void runes crawled across the walls like living things, pulsing with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. Or maybe his heart was matching theirs. At the center of the vast space sat an obsidian sarcophagus, wrapped in chains that glowed with seals he didn't recognize but somehow understood.

The thing inside was trying to get out.

When the reaper-figure materialized from the darkness, Aullie didn't even blink. He'd been expecting this conversation for days now.

You came back.

The voice didn't come through his ears. It bypassed them entirely, settling directly into his thoughts like poison in water.

"Didn't have much choice, did I?" Aullie kept his voice level, but his hands were shaking. "What is this place?"

My cell. Your legacy. The world's last warning.

The silence that followed had weight to it, pressing down like the air before a storm.

They know now,

the figure continued, and something in its tone made Aullie's blood run cold.

The demons. The others. They can smell the weakness in my chains. They feel me stirring.

"Why are you telling me this?"

Because you opened the first gate. And because the next one is calling your name.

Aullie stepped closer to the sarcophagus despite every instinct screaming at him to run. The claw marks scoring its surface looked fresh. "What gate?"

Another is coming. Not me, not yet. Something new. Something hungry.

The figure's form flickered like a dying flame.

You must seek it out before others find it, but only where the barriers are thin. Where reality bleeds.

"Where?"

The Aether world championship.

The words hit Aullie like a physical blow. "Isn't that just a worldwide school tournament. Students showing off for scouts."

No. The voice carried the weight of certainty. It is the crucible. The testing ground. Beneath all their ceremony and spectacle, the real battles are fought. The barriers between worlds grow thin when so much power gathers in one place.

Aullie's mouth went dry. "How long do I have?"

Not long enough. Go. Find what calls to you before they find you first. And remember this…

The figure began to fade, melting back into shadows that seemed reluctant to let it go.

…not everyone at those trials will be human.

The shrine fell silent, leaving Aullie alone with the sound of his own breathing and the steady pulse of those damned runes. Above him, the Academy slept on, blissfully unaware that something ancient was stirring in its foundations.

Something that knew his name.

When Aullie finally climbed back to the surface, the world had gone cold. Frost glazed the grass like broken shards, and his breath hung in the air like cigarette smoke.

Shinku pressed close to his leg, fur bristling. The cat's silence was louder than any scream.

They walked back through the empty campus without speaking. What was there to say? That something fundamental had shifted tonight? That the air itself tasted different now, metallic, electric, like the moment before lightning strikes?

Above them, it felt like the stars watched with indifferent eyes.

****

Miles away, in a fortress that time had tried to forget, the Commanders gathered around a table carved from human bone. The cold fire in their brazier cast shadows that moved wrong, stretching and writhing across walls that seemed to secrete black ichor.

"The seal stirs," the first one said, its voice like grinding stone. Its face was a ruin of scar tissue and exposed bone, beautiful in the way that catastrophes are beautiful.

"The heir walks among them." The second drummed claws against the table. "Ignorant. Unguarded. Ripe."

They turned as one toward the portal that hung in the center of the room, a wound in reality that pulsed. The darkness beyond was absolute.

"Dispatch the Watchers," the third commanded, and its words carried the weight of inevitability. "The boy must not reach the Trials intact. If he does..."

The portal shuddered. Something vast and patient stirred in its depths.

Two crimson eyes opened in the darkness, ancient, alien, and utterly without mercy. They fixed on the space where Aullie had been standing, hundreds of miles away, and the temperature in the fortress dropped another ten degrees.

Then the eyes closed.

The portal went still.

But in the silence that followed, something like laughter echoed through dimensions that had no names.

The hunt begins.