Tokyo didn't scream when it died.
It whispered.
A flickering bulb.
A snapped shoelace.
A match struck in silence.
And then came the fire.
Yūma Kaito stood beneath a collapsing sky, smoke curling like serpents between bookshelves. He wasn't supposed to be here — the university library had closed hours ago. But something had drawn him back. That book. The one that didn't belong. No barcode. No title. Just a spine stitched in crimson thread, warm to the touch, as if it still breathed.
The flames were roaring now. Wooden beams above cracked and fell like thunder. The sprinkler system failed, as if the building itself had given up on being saved.
But Yūma didn't run.
He stepped deeper into the inferno, eyes locked on the book, lying open like a mouth gasping for air. Its pages were blank — except for one line:
"You are not forgotten."
He didn't understand. He reached forward.
And the world ended.
He didn't wake in a hospital.
He woke falling — through endless clouds of ink, each droplet a memory not his own. He saw flashes: a battlefield drowned in saltwater; a woman screaming his name from the edge of a broken tower; a blade that wrote instead of cutting.
He hit the ground softly, as if the world had caught him in reverence.
Aetherion.
He stood in a place that could not exist — a city made of spiraling libraries, floating spires of stone and parchment. The air tasted of old paper and static.
A voice rang out behind him. Cold. Echoing.
"You've returned... Vael'Ryn."
He turned. A man cloaked in darkness stood beneath a shattered moon, eyes glowing like inkfire.
"I'm not Vael'Ryn," Yūma said.
"Not yet," the man replied. "But the Oath has already begun."
The mark burned into his chest like a brand: a symbol of a quill piercing an eye.
His Eidolon stirred.
And with it, came the pain — a thousand lives pressing against his mind like screaming ghosts.
He fell to his knees.
"I remember… dying."
The man only smiled, stepping back into the shadows.
"Then you're ready to live."