Chapter 26: Whispers from the Void

Darkness stirred.

Not around Kairo—but within him.

He woke in a cold sweat beneath a collapsed marble arch, the ruins of the battlefield now eerily still. The pendant in his hand shimmered faintly with residual mana, reacting to something unseen.

“Was that… her?” he whispered.

But no name came to mind. No memory followed. Just the ache of absence.

A low hum echoed through the ruin, not quite sound—more like a presence. Kairo stood, trembling. His shadow elongated unnaturally behind him.

"You sought power to defy fate," a voice rasped, "but what is power… without memory?"

Kairo spun, drawing his blade. The air warped—something stepped through the crack in reality itself.

It was not a demon. Not a god. But a being older—faceless, shifting like mist, cloaked in nothingness.

“I offer truth,” it said, “but truth demands suffering.”

“Then I’ll endure it,” Kairo said, voice steady despite the fear in his bones.

The being grinned—without a mouth.

“So be it.”

It plunged a spectral hand into Kairo’s chest. Agony bloomed. Visions flooded his mind—fragments of a girl laughing beneath cherry trees, of a city ablaze, of a boy promising vengeance with tears in his eyes.

And then—stillness.

Kairo dropped to his knees. Breathing hard. Eyes wide.

“I remember… her name.”

He looked up.

“And now I remember why I must destroy this world.”