Kaien stumbled as space reknit itself around him.
One moment, Arden's solar barrage had lit the sky.
The next, he was somewhere else — a hollow space between dimensions, silent and flickering with veils of starlight.
The air here was heavy.
Not with heat or pressure.
But with meaning.
The Rift shimmered like a wound across reality — and standing beside it was the cloaked figure who had pulled him through.
Tall. Calm. Eyes like twin galaxies, shifting with constellations.
"You pulled me through a live rift," Kaien said, his tone halfway between awe and suspicion. "That should've sliced both of us into—"
"Fragments," the man finished for him. "Yes. But not when you belong here."
Kaien narrowed his gaze. "Who are you?"
The figure stepped forward and lowered his hood.
"My name is Varen. I'm a Riftborn like you… but older. Sharper. And far more hunted."
Kaien's instincts flared, but Varen didn't move. He simply extended a hand.
"You're the first naturally awakened Riftcore in centuries," Varen said. "They'll never let you live free."
"I figured that out two Corebinders ago," Kaien muttered, not taking the hand. "Why help me?"
Varen smiled faintly. "Because you're the only one who might survive what's coming."
They walked through the edge-world — a realm between the folds of space, tethered to nothing but memory and light. Varen explained in slow, careful pieces.
"The Riftcore isn't a CelestiaCore. It predates the entire system. It's not powered by divine Laws, but by fractures — gaps in order that shouldn't exist."
"Sounds unstable."
"It is. But that instability… is freedom."
Kaien absorbed the words. He could feel the Rift pulsing in his chest. Still evolving.
"Then why does the Council care so much?"
"Because Riftborn users like you — like us — can undo everything they've built. Their towers, their Laws, their Ascendant order… all of it bends to space. And space now bends to you."
Kaien stopped walking. "You keep saying us. But I've never met another Riftcore user. I thought I was one of a kind."
"You were," Varen said. "Until now."
Suddenly, the space around them rippled again. Not from Kaien.
From outside.
"They found the tear," Varen said grimly. "Council trackers. They've brought a Nullhound."
Kaien's breath caught.
A Nullhound wasn't a person — it was a thing. A monster bred to sniff out dimensional tears and hunt Rift signatures. It didn't speak. It didn't stop. It just unmade whatever it caught.
"You've fought one before?" Kaien asked.
Varen's eyes dimmed. "I lost a team doing that."
A low hum rolled through the edge-world.
The Rift itself began to constrict. Light bled inward as if a black thread was pulling it shut.
"No choice," Varen muttered. "You want to live, Kaien? Prove it."
He clapped his hands together, forming a collapsing symbol — a space glyph older than any Celestia archive.
Kaien followed instinct, mirroring the motion with his own variation.
The Rift responded. Opened not out — but down.
They dropped into the next fold.
They landed hard — somewhere cold, on a windswept cliff overlooking a storm-wracked ocean. Kaien gasped, his fingers curled with raw Riftlight.
"Where—?"
"A sanctuary," Varen replied. "One of the last. You'll train here. You'll grow stronger. Because the next time you face a Corebinder…"
He looked toward the thunder.
"They won't be coming to arrest you. They'll be coming to erase you."
Kaien Vale had escaped the Council's grip.
But he had just stepped into the storm.