The first time Kaien hears the footsteps, he thinks it's a dream.
Dull. Heavy. Hollow. Like something walking across metal far too wide, far too empty.
But then the lights flicker.
And he realizes—he's not dreaming.
---
Requiem Division 9 is built like a coffin turned sideways. No windows. No exits that aren't locked from the outside. The only way in or out is through the secured elevator shaft ten levels above the training halls.
So when the alarm stops halfway through its second wail, something breaks inside the air.
Not metal. Not power. Something older.
Kaien stands barefoot in the corridor.
Everyone else is frozen.
The boy named Isamu — the one with the burns down his back — whispers, "They said it couldn't come here."
No one responds.
Because now they all hear it.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The steps don't rush. They don't echo like a chase.
They march.
Kaien takes one slow step back, fingers brushing against the steel wall. A low, barely-there hum starts building behind his ears — the same tone that buzzed inside him since that first day.
Only now… it isn't quiet.
It's singing.
---
A voice crackles over the intercom.
> "All units, initiate red seal protocol. Internal breach confirmed. Do not engage. I repeat—do not—"
Silence.
The lights go black.
Then red.
Then nothing.
---
Something moves past the far hallway.
Kaien doesn't see it clearly.
Just a shadow. A reflection of light that shouldn't exist. Like someone dragging a mirror through water.
Then the air shifts.
Every survivor in the corridor falls to their knees, gasping like the pressure dropped all at once.
But Kaien doesn't fall.
He stands.
Frozen.
Unblinking.
Because it's calling him again.
No words.
Just presence.
---
He walks.
He doesn't remember choosing to.
His feet just move.
Left foot. Right foot. Cold tiles under bare skin.
The others don't stop him.
They can't even move.
The doors down the hall open on their own.
And Kaien enters the dark.
---
Inside, the world is silent.
There's no breathing.
No walls.
Only a single platform of steel suspended in nothingness, lit by one beam of violet light from above.
And in the center…
It stands.
The creature.
But it's different.
Smaller.
Not the one from before.
Its form is human-sized now, hunched, twitching.
Its skin flickers like static over muscle. The head is still mirrored, but it's cracked — a jagged fracture splitting it from top to bottom.
Kaien walks until he's a meter away.
Then he stops.
---
He waits for it to speak.
It doesn't.
It lifts one hand.
And points to his chest.
Then it touches its own.
And tilts its head.
---
Kaien opens his mouth.
No sound comes out.
His lungs are heavy. His spine burns.
Then the hum inside him changes pitch.
And suddenly—
he sees it.
---
A memory that isn't his.
A field of metal towers.
Children in black uniforms.
A voice:
> "He's not supposed to survive the first drop."
"Too late. It looked at him."
"Then destroy the Gate. Now. Before he remembers."
Kaien gasps.
The world snaps back.
The creature is gone.
Only the echo of the hum remains.
And a mark glowing faintly on his chest — burned into the uniform over his heart.
A symbol he's never seen.
---
He collapses.
Not from fear.
From clarity.
He knows now.
They didn't bring him here to test him.
They brought him here to contain him.
Because the Gateborn don't kill him…
…they recognize him.
The rain comes black.
It isn't stormwater. It isn't ash. It's something in between — a dark fluid that trickles from the sky like ink spilled from a wound too high to reach.
The Gate doesn't open.
Not this time.
But the sky still bleeds.
And Requiem activates Protocol 9: Black Rain Containment.
Kaien hears the siren before the rain touches the outer wall. A low drone that vibrates in the spine rather than the ears. It starts slow. Then builds. Then cuts. Just like that.
A soldier shouts.
> "Suits on! Now! Lock all chambers. No exposure beyond two minutes!"
People rush.
Doors slam.
Systems buzz.
But Kaien doesn't move.
He stands in the barracks corridor, watching the droplets hit the reinforced glass. They don't spread. They don't evaporate. They simply remain — pulsing, like something alive.
> Some Gateborn would still attack him…
He knows this now.
The last one didn't.
But the next might.
And the terrifying truth isn't that some seek him.
It's that some don't care what he is.
---
The woman with the scar — they call her Captain Yurei — finds him minutes later.
She doesn't raise her voice. She never does.
> "Get below," she says.
Kaien doesn't argue.
But before he steps into the stairwell, he speaks.
> "It knew my name."
Yurei freezes.
Just for a second.
Then:
> "Who?"
Kaien turns to the window.
> "The one in the echo room. Before it disappeared. I didn't say anything. But it looked at me and I heard my name. In my own voice."
Silence.
Captain Yurei steps beside him. Watches the rain.
> "How many times has it happened now?"
Kaien answers without thinking.
> "Twice."
> "Then we're out of time."
---
They move him that night.
Not far — just deeper.
Level 13.
A section no one speaks about.
The walls are smoother. The air colder. The lights never flicker.
He's placed in a new room. This one isn't white. It's grey — slate and silent, padded walls, observation glass across one side. Two beds. One chair. No windows.
Kaien sits down and waits.
He doesn't ask questions anymore.
He listens.
Listens to the sound that's always there now — a thrum behind the walls, like something massive breathing deep beneath the earth.
---
His roommate arrives an hour later.
A boy. Same age. Different shape.
He's taller. Lean. Almost fragile.
His eyes are sharp — not curious, not kind. Just...watching.
Kaien nods.
The boy doesn't return it.
Instead, he speaks in a low voice that carries without effort.
> "They say you're the one the Gateborn avoid."
Kaien says nothing.
The boy steps closer.
> "Let's see how long that lasts."
---
That night, another Gateborn lands.
Not near the city.
Inside the facility.
It doesn't break the outer walls. It doesn't tear through steel or scream into the hallways.
It just appears — in Corridor Delta-2.
No explosion.
No entry.
One moment there is space.
The next, there is form.
It drips something black. Not blood. Not oil.
Something else.
And it moves with speed.
Not the slow, wandering grace of the others.
This one runs.
And it tears through three Requiem guards before the alert even sounds.
---
Kaien wakes to silence.
He feels it again — that internal pull, the sense that something has entered the world that doesn't belong.
He sits up.
His roommate is already standing, blade drawn, eyes on the door.
> "It's here," the boy says.
Kaien nods.
> "And this one's different."
---
They don't run.
They wait.
The lights go red. Then white. Then red again.
Emergency script appears across the glass wall:
> [ENTITY BREACH DETECTED IN LEVEL 13]
[ALL PERSONNEL INITIATE HALT PROTOCOL]
[DO NOT ENGAGE]
[DO NOT ENGAGE]
[DO NOT—]
Static.
---
A hiss breaks the silence.
Then the scream.
But it isn't human.
It's mocking something human.
A voice, distorted, broken, high-pitched and wrong:
> "K̶a̶i̶e̶n̶…"
His name.
Twisted.
Mocked.
Drawn out like a joke that never lands.
Kaien steps toward the door.
His roommate grabs his wrist.
> "What are you doing?"
> "It said my name."
> "Then you should be running."
Kaien pulls free.
> "No. I need to see if it knows why."
---
The hallway is a warzone.
Lights hang by their wires. The floor is cracked. Blood — real blood — streaks the walls.
The creature is at the far end.
It doesn't look like the others.
This one has no symmetry.
Its body is twisted, like three torsos trying to become one.
Hands twitch at odd angles.
Its head is a cube of blinking red symbols, spinning slowly with every breath.
It sees him.
And it charges.
No pause.
No hesitation.
It comes to kill.
---
Kaien stands still.
His pulse spikes.
His breath shortens.
His body screams to run.
But he doesn't.
Because this one doesn't recognize him.
This one doesn't stop.
---
And at the last second—
His roommate dives in.
Blade flashes.
Metal meets bone.
The creature shrieks — a broken sound of static and reverse-thunder — and crashes into the side wall.
Kaien is yanked backward.
> "Still think they all know you?" the boy hisses.
> "Some do," Kaien replies.
> "Then figure out which ones before we both die."
---
The hallway seals.
Lockdown slams across Level 13.
Two more creatures descend — through the ceiling, from the vents, like shadows made flesh.
The facility shakes.
Kaien sees Requiem soldiers finally arrive — the elite squad, the ones with the exo-frames and toxin rounds.
The Gateborn tear two of them in half before they even raise their weapons.
It's a massacre.
---
Kaien doesn't fight.
He watches.
Observes.
One creature — the third — pauses mid-lunge.
Turns.
Looks at him.
And stops.
Not out of fear.
Out of...respect?
No.
Recognition.
It backs away.
It hisses — not in anger, but something else.
Then it shoves the others aside and runs.
Runs back toward the hole it came from.
---
The battle ends an hour later.
Three Gateborn killed.
One escaped.
Thirteen Requiem dead.
Kaien untouched.
---
Captain Yurei arrives late.
Blood on her gloves.
Goggles cracked.
> "What did it say to you?" she asks.
Kaien looks at her, eyes darker than they were yesterday.
> "Not all of them know me."
She nods.
> "And some want you dead."
> "What happens now?"
She doesn't answer.
Just hands him a black band with a red mark burned into its metal.
> "You've been moved up. You're not a variable anymore."
> "What am I?"
Her voice is quiet.
> "You're a question none of us know how to answer."
There are names that don't exist in any database.
Not encrypted.
Not deleted.
Erased.
Gone like chalk beneath the tide.
Kaien learns this three days after the Black Rain Protocol breach.
Requiem Division 9 goes silent. No new missions. No drills. The upper levels remain sealed. Half the personnel in his block vanish without explanation.
Those that remain speak less. Move slower. Sleep with their boots on.
Something is coming.
And nobody wants to say what.
---
Kaien's new band — black steel marked with the red sliver — grants him access to parts of the facility others avoid.
The floors below Level 13 aren't supposed to exist.
But when he scans the band against the biometric gate in the sublevel lift, the door opens anyway.
He descends alone.
Level 21.
Storage. Archives. Quarantine.
It feels less like a bunker and more like a crypt.
---
The walls are lined with body lockers.
Not corpses.
Test subjects.
Each pod sealed in frosted glass, humming softly. Symbols carved into the metal in languages he doesn't recognize. Some pods are empty.
Some are not.
Kaien doesn't look for long.
He moves to the archive room.
A long corridor filled with nothing but silence and dust.
Every console bears the emblem of REQUIEM: PRIOR INSTANCE.
Only one console still works.
He places his hand against the surface.
It glows.
> [ACCESSING RECORD: FIRST VARIABLE]
[UNSEALED. CLASSIFIED. CLEARANCE OVERRIDDEN.]
A single file opens.
"Instance 00-1: Akari."
Kaien leans closer.
A short log plays.
---
> "Subject Akari survived six consecutive descents."
"No infection. No mutations. No death."
"The Gateborn not only ignored her... they followed her."
"They mimicked her movement."
"They reacted to her voice. She could influence their direction without touch, without speech."
"We theorized her mind resonated with the Gatefield itself."
"We believed she was the solution."
"Until she disappeared."
"Until they took her."
---
Kaien stares at the screen.
He doesn't know the name. But something in him recoils.
He reads the final note in the log.
> Subject status: UNCONFIRMED. Possibility of reincidence: 0.01%
Classification: DO NOT DUPLICATE.
But they did.
They tried.
---
A whisper slides down his spine. Not a voice — an impulse. A feeling that he is not the first, and that his survival was never random.
That maybe… the Gateborn don't all see him as one of their own.
Some may see him as an attempt to replace her.
And others…
May see him as a failure.
---
When he returns to the upper levels, the air has changed.
Sirens off.
Hallways dimmer.
No guards at the doors.
Kaien walks toward the main chamber where briefings were once held.
He hears two officers speaking beyond the half-closed steel door.
> "They should have terminated him when they had the chance."
"He's still useful. They respond to him."
"Some do. But that one… the one in the rain—it tried to erase him."
"Exactly. Not kill. Erase."
Footsteps. Silence.
Kaien walks away before they notice.
---
That night, Kaien doesn't sleep.
He lies awake in the silence, staring at the ceiling that hums with life support systems, ventilation, old echoes of forgotten data.
> "They tried to duplicate her."
Who was Akari?
Was she real?
Or a failed project?
The Gateborn don't speak. But they react.
And the more he sees them…
…the more he begins to understand.
---
They are not creatures.
They are not aliens.
They are not demons.
They are memories.
Living fragments of something too large for this world.
And he—
He is being shaped.
Every encounter, every breach, every near-death—
—it isn't random.
It's a test.
---
He sits up and stares at his own hands.
They're shaking again.
Not from fear.
From something else.
> "They mimicked her movement…"
Suddenly, he understands why the Gateborn paused when he raised his arm in the last attack.
Why one fled when he whispered a single word.
It's not a power.
It's a trigger.
One he's just beginning to unlock.
---
But before he can think more, the red lights flash again.
Not from alarm.
From summons.
The system speaks in its cold, neutral voice.
> [PREPARE FOR DESCENT: OPERATION MIRROR'S EDGE]
[REQUIEM UNIT 9 – ACTIVE DUTY]
[SELECTED: KAIEN / RIV / SHIRO / AYUMI]
[EXTRACTION BEGINS 0500.]
Kaien stands slowly.
Operation.
Not simulation.
Not observation.
Deployment.
They're sending him into the field.
---
As he steps into the lift at dawn, armored, silent, and burning inside with questions—
Kaien doesn't realize that somewhere beyond the broken line of cities to the east, a Gateborn is already waiting.
Not to kill.
Not to test.
But to speak.
And it knows his name.
They said it was a recon mission.
Low-risk. Quick extraction.
No direct contact.
They lied.
---
The transport breaks the surface at 0513.
Kaien squints through the viewport as the armored carrier rolls out of the sub-tunnel and into the ruined outer districts of Shigure Basin.
The sky is gray.
The buildings ahead are skeletal.
The wind carries no sound.
This place hasn't seen life in years.
But it isn't abandoned.
Kaien knows that now.
The Gate doesn't destroy places.
It repurposes them.
---
Requiem Unit 9 consists of four today:
Kaien, silent, observant, marked by the unknown
Riv, age 16, tactician, eyes always narrowed like he sees one second ahead
Shiro, age 17, short-tempered, heavy weapon carrier
Ayumi, 14, the medic — and the only one who still believes they're human
Each of them has seen what comes from the sky.
Each of them has killed, or watched people be killed, or wished they had been.
But Kaien is different.
He doesn't fear death.
He fears understanding.
---
> "Mission protocol is simple," Riv says, eyes fixed on the briefing pad. "In and out. Thirty minutes. Collect residual samples from the last Gatefield zone. Avoid contact."
> "That's a joke," Shiro mutters, checking his rounds. "There's always contact."
Ayumi doesn't speak. She ties her hair, straps her medkit, and breathes slow.
Kaien doesn't ask questions.
He doesn't need to.
He already feels it.
The hum.
The one that only starts when the Gateborn are near.
And it's already getting louder.
---
They disembark at 0531.
Shigure Basin is cracked into thirds. The land here didn't fall—it bent. The ground curls upward like waves frozen in mid-collapse. Towers lean at thirty-degree angles. Roads vanish into pits where buildings once stood.
Kaien leads them into the valley.
> "Stay close," Riv orders. "This place echoes."
> "From what?" Ayumi asks softly.
> "From the ones that didn't leave."
---
They reach the impact site twelve minutes in.
Black scars. Glassed earth. Ash that doesn't blow in the wind.
Kaien crouches, runs his fingers across the ground.
It's warm.
Too warm.
Even days after the Gateborn vanished.
> "It's still active," he says.
Riv stiffens.
Shiro swears. "You said it was clear."
> "It was."
> "Then why's it humming like it wants to wake up?"
Ayumi walks toward a collapsed column.
Something twitches behind it.
---
They draw weapons.
Too late.
The first one comes from above.
A Gateborn — long, spined, no face — slams into the earth behind Shiro and lashes out with a bladed limb.
He blocks it with his shoulder plate, but the force shatters his collarbone.
Kaien shouts. Ayumi pulls him back.
Riv fires point-blank into the creature's neck — but the rounds pass through, phasing into ash.
> "It's a partial!" Riv yells. "Not solid yet! You can't kill it!"
Kaien stares at the creature.
And it stares at him.
Its face — or what exists where a face should be — ripples. Shapes form.
Words begin.
> "K̷A̸I̶E̸N̴.̵.̶.̶W̷A̸S̴ ̸A̸ ̴M̴I̸S̷T̶A̸K̵E̶.̴.̷.̴.̶"
---
Then it lunges.
At him.
Not Ayumi.
Not Riv.
Not Shiro.
Kaien.
He ducks, rolls, but the claw catches his arm.
Pain blossoms white-hot.
Blood hits the air.
But he's still breathing.
Still conscious.
And the Gateborn paused
Do ...not...replace the....Origin
Kaien gasps.
Then Riv fires a flare directly into its chest.
It howls.
And vanishes into ash.
---
They don't get time to recover.
The second one is already here.
This one is different.
It does not speak.
It does not pause.
It doesn't even look at Kaien.
It just wants them all dead.
---
Kaien runs.
Riv covers him. Ayumi drags Shiro into cover.
The Gateborn crashes through debris like a predator out of myth — limbs too long, mouth sealed shut, spikes blooming from its back like dying trees.
Kaien turns to face it.
This one won't stop.
It won't hesitate.
It won't speak his name.
> Not all Gateborn see him as kin.
This one is here to erase.
---
He shouts.
Not words. Not commands.
Just raw instinct.
The hum in his chest bursts outward.
A wave.
A frequency.
The Gateborn hesitates—
Just one heartbeat—
And that's enough.
Riv pulls the trigger. The entire flare canister ignites inside the creature's gut.
Flame.
Ash.
Silence.
---
When the smoke clears, Kaien falls to his knees.
Not from pain.
From fear.
He felt it again.
That echo.
And this time… he recognized it.
Not the Gateborn.
The hum.
It matched his.
It wasn't targeting him randomly.
It was responding to the same signal.
His.
Or hers.
Akari's.
Whoever she really was.
---
Shiro is unconscious.
Ayumi is shaking.
Riv is silent.
But Kaien?
Kaien stares at the ashes and whispers one word.
> "It's not over."
---
They return to Requiem two hours later.
A medic takes Shiro.
Ayumi won't speak.
Riv files a false report.
> "Gateborn encounter: two. One kill, one partial. Zero fatalities."
Kaien knows it's a lie.
There were three.
The third one never attacked.
Never emerged.
But Kaien felt it.
Watching.
Waiting.
And the last words still ring in his head:
> "Do not replace the origin"