Rei woke up to rain.
Not the soft kind. Not distant. This rain was loud, heavy, drumming against broken concrete and shattered glass like it was trying to wash the city clean by force.
He lay still for a moment, staring at the gray sky above him.
It felt wrong to wake up.
The last thing he remembered was white infinity collapsing, systems screaming, and a choice that should not have existed. He remembered holding Aira's hand as reality fell apart around them.
Now he was here.
Breathing.
Alive.
Rei pushed himself up slowly. His body ached in unfamiliar ways, not injured but strained, like every part of him had been rewritten and was still adjusting.
The mark on his chest was dark.
Not gone.
Dormant.
That scared him more than if it had been burning.
"Aira," he said hoarsely.
"I'm here."
Her voice came instantly from his left. He turned and saw her kneeling beside him, soaked from the rain, hair plastered to her face, eyes locked on him like she hadn't looked away once.
Relief hit him so hard his chest tightened.
"You didn't disappear," she said. Her voice shook despite her attempt to keep it steady.
Rei let out a weak laugh. "Guess the world didn't win."
She punched his shoulder lightly, then pulled him into a tight hug. For a second, Rei forgot everything else. Gods. Systems. Iterations. All of it faded.
Until the rain stopped.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
Rei felt it before he heard anything.
Silence fell like a curtain.
Aira pulled back slowly. "Rei," she whispered. "That wasn't normal."
Zeke's voice cut in from nearby. "None of this is."
Rei looked around.
They were in the ruins of what looked like an old transit terminal. Concrete pillars cracked and half collapsed. Trains frozen on warped tracks like abandoned toys. Emergency lights flickered weakly, struggling to stay alive.
Kai sat against a pillar, breathing hard, lightning crawling nervously over his fingers. Suki stood nearby, arms crossed, fire dim but present. Rena was farther away, staring into the darkness of a collapsed tunnel.
"All present," Zeke said. "No missing pieces."
"Yet," Suki muttered.
Rei stood fully now. The rain had vanished, but the ground remained wet, puddles reflecting warped images of the ceiling above.
Something was wrong with the reflections.
Rei crouched beside a puddle and stared into it.
His reflection lagged.
He moved his hand.
The reflection followed half a second late.
Aira noticed. "Rei… that's not normal."
Rena finally turned toward them. Her face was pale in a way Rei hadn't seen before.
"We didn't come back to the same layer," she said quietly.
Kai frowned. "What does that mean in non nightmare language?"
Rena swallowed. "It means the rewrite worked. But it wasn't clean."
Zeke scowled. "Define clean."
Rena gestured around them. "This world is real. But it's… overlapping."
Rei straightened. "Overlapping with what?"
Rena met his eyes. "With futures that shouldn't exist anymore."
The terminal lights flickered violently.
A low hum filled the air.
Then a voice spoke.
Not everywhere.
From the speakers.
"Attention citizens."
Static crackled.
"This is an emergency broadcast. Please remain calm."
Suki snorted. "That's never a good sign."
The voice continued.
"Reality stabilization efforts are ongoing. Please report any temporal inconsistencies, duplicate sightings, or memory displacement to local authorities."
Kai blinked. "Did it just casually say memory displacement?"
Rei felt cold creep down his spine.
That meant the system wasn't gone.
It was adapting.
The screens mounted along the terminal walls flickered on. Each showed the same symbol Rei had seen before.
But altered.
Cracked.
Like it had been damaged but not destroyed.
A new message appeared beneath it.
ITERATION FAILED.
MANUAL OVERRIDE IN EFFECT.
Aira grabbed Rei's arm. "Manual override means someone's controlling it."
Rei already knew who.
"Azeroth," he said.
The name felt heavier than before.
Zeke clenched his fists. "Then he's still out there."
"Yes," Rei said. "And now he's improvising."
The ground trembled faintly.
Not violently.
Like something massive shifting its weight far away.
Suki's flames flared instinctively. "Please tell me that's not another system thing."
Rena shook her head slowly. "No. That's worse."
She looked at Rei. "That's the world reacting to uncertainty."
Kai frowned. "The world does that?"
"It does when it doesn't know what comes next," Rena replied.
Rei closed his eyes briefly.
He could feel it now.
Threads.
Possibilities.
Not visions. Not futures.
Pressure.
Like the world itself was waiting for instructions.
When he opened his eyes, the mark flickered faintly for the first time since waking.
Aira noticed instantly. "Rei, your mark—"
"I know," he said. "It's not asleep."
Zeke stepped closer. "Then what is it doing?"
Rei hesitated. "Listening."
A sudden crash echoed from the far end of the terminal.
Everyone turned.
From the collapsed tunnel, something stepped into the light.
At first glance, it looked human.
Young. Maybe Rei's age.
Wearing torn clothes soaked with rain that no longer existed.
But its eyes were wrong.
They reflected scenes that weren't there. Burning streets. Frozen skies. Endless white voids.
Multiple futures.
Simultaneously.
Kai whispered, "That thing is… glitching."
The boy took a step forward.
Then another.
Each step left afterimages behind, like reality hadn't decided which version of him to keep.
"Riftborn," the boy said.
His voice echoed strangely, layered with others.
"You broke the sequence."
Rei felt his heart pound.
"You're not a system," Rei said. "And you're not human."
The boy smiled sadly. "I was human. In three iterations."
Aira's breath caught. "What are you now?"
The boy tilted his head. "A remainder."
Zeke growled. "I don't like leftovers."
The remainder laughed softly. "Neither does the world."
The air thickened.
Rei felt pressure against his thoughts again, not forceful but probing.
"You chose an undefined future," the remainder said. "That creates instability."
Rei stepped forward. "Then we'll deal with it."
The remainder shook his head. "You don't understand. Undefined futures attract things."
Suki narrowed her eyes. "Things like what?"
The boy's smile faded.
"Like authors."
Silence hit harder than any explosion.
Kai blinked. "Did he just say authors?"
Rena stiffened. "That's not a metaphor."
Rei felt something deep inside him tighten.
"What do you mean?" Rei asked.
The remainder looked past him, upward, like he was staring through layers of reality.
"When systems fail and gods hesitate," he said, "something else intervenes."
The lights in the terminal exploded.
Darkness swallowed them.
For a heartbeat, Rei felt nothing.
Then the mark ignited.
Not white.
Not silver.
Something new.
Color flooded back violently.
They weren't in the terminal anymore.
They stood on a vast plane of shifting text.
Words formed the ground beneath their feet. Sentences rearranged themselves constantly, rewriting the surface.
Aira gasped. "This place…"
"Is not physical," Rena finished. "It's narrative."
Suki stared at the moving words beneath her boots. "I officially hate this place."
The remainder stood at the center, now fully stable.
"You have reached the layer beneath fate," he said. "Where outcomes are decided."
Zeke clenched his jaw. "So what. We fight it?"
The remainder looked at Rei.
"No," he said. "You choose."
Rei felt the weight of every eye on him.
"What happens if I don't?" Rei asked.
The remainder's eyes darkened.
"Then someone else will."
The words beneath Rei's feet rearranged themselves.
One sentence rose above the rest, glowing faintly.
THE RIFTBORN MUST END.
Aira grabbed Rei's hand. "No."
Rei stared at the sentence.
Then he smiled.
"That's the problem," he said calmly. "You still think this is your story."
The ground trembled.
The sentence cracked.
Somewhere far beyond this layer, something noticed.
Not a system.
Not a god.
Not even Azeroth.
Something older.
And it was amused.
The words beneath them began to change.
Not reacting.
Responding.
Rei felt it clearly now.
The future wasn't waiting anymore.
It was watching him back.