Caleb kept his distance as they moved through the twisted undergrowth. The air was heavy, buzzing faintly with Riftenergy, like invisible threads humming against his skin. Gorrin was up ahead, hacking away at the hanging vines with that same chipped blade he'd used since they met.
Caleb's mind wasn't on the terrain.
Everything Gorrin had said the night before kept replaying in his head.
Awakened. Acolyte. Blut. Tyrants. Riftgate Classes.
It all sounded like a completely different world—a deeper layer of the one he'd thought he understood.
He quietly muttered under his breath, "How come no one ever told me any of this?"
He'd been tested, scanned, and eventually dismissed as talentless by the Hero Union back home. No one mentioned the Blut. No one mentioned that a Riftgate could pull you in and that killing something called a Tyrant would give you a soul-marked power system.
Was everyone ignorant? Or were there those who knew and kept silent?
His fingers curled a little tighter around the Riftbone.
Then, there was the matter of Lys.
He still couldn't fully explain it.
That day—that fight—he had been pushed beyond his limits. He remembered the blood, the fury, and that terrifying clarity. It had felt like something opened inside him. Not just his Riftart awakening, but something deeper.
A whisper of control over energy he had never understood.
He had shaped a barrier. Then a blade. Then armor. None of it perfect, but it had come to him like instinct.
"Gorrin," he called out.
The older man slowed, turned halfway, and grunted. "What?"
Caleb fell into step beside him. "How do you know so much about the Blut? About Riftgates and Tyrants? You talk like someone who's been through all this before."
Gorrin paused, silent for a beat too long.
"Because I have."
Caleb tilted his head. "But you said not everyone who survives a Riftgate learns this stuff. Some never Awaken. Some don't even know what the Blut is."
Gorrin started walking again. "I knew before the Rift took me."
Caleb blinked. "How?"
Gorrin sighed, irritated, as if the air itself had asked him.
"Because I come from a family of Riftborns," he said at last. "Real ones. Not government-issued hero trainees. Not Union-licensed goons. My parents, my siblings... all of them had the Rift in their bloodline. We trained differently. We were prepared."
Caleb stared, stunned.
He'd never even imagined that Riftborn families existed. The Hero Union always portrayed abilities as spontaneous gifts—you either awakened or you didn't. The idea that someone could inherit the Rift?
It changed everything.
"So... you knew the risks? You knew about the Gates, the Tyrants, the Blut?"
"Some of it. Enough," Gorrin muttered. "But knowing doesn't mean you're immune."
Caleb waited for him to elaborate.
But Gorrin didn't.
There was a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. Regret? Guilt?
Whatever it was, it locked his jaw shut.
Caleb sensed that pushing wouldn't work.
So instead, he walked in silence, letting the sound of their footsteps and the far-off howls of Rift monsters fill the space between them.
He knew this wasn't the last time he would ask. And he knew that eventually, Gorrin would talk.
But not yet.
For now, he had his own mysteries to unravel.
Like how to master the energy that now burned inside him.
And why it felt like something—or someone—was watching him every time he used it.