The rain had stopped.
Smoke curled from the ruins of the apartment complex—once filled with laughter and sharp steel, now nothing but ash and silence.
Neon dusk reflected off shattered glass like crystallized tears.
Metro Nyos held its breath.
Matt Salurga stood barefoot in the rubble, bleeding and changed.
Reborn by ruin.
His legs trembled.
His lungs burned.
But his hand—
Would not release the hilt.
It pulsed in his grip. Ancient metal, etched in runes. It didn't feel like a weapon.
It felt like a scar.
"Draw it."
Not his voice.
The blade's.
The Void's.
The air trembled.
Space cracked.
Something stepped through.
A phantom—molten black armor, half-machine, half-nightmare—emerged in silence.
Its hollow mask revealed nothing, but behind the eyes burned collapsing stars.
> Designation: GODHUNT UNIT. Imperial Class.
A pigeon fluttered past—then vaporized mid-air.
Ash took its place.
The phantom lunged.
Matt's instincts screamed.
He gripped the hilt—
And the sword answered.
It wasn't drawn.
It was born.
Shadowfire erupted midair, forging itself into black steel—
The Shadowsidian Blade.
Their clash shattered the silence.
Sparks screamed.
Metal cried.
Matt was thrown into a rusted car. Bones cracked. Vision blurred.
But the blade never wavered.
> Let go, it whispered.
Matt's pupils bled ink.
Time slowed.
Color drained.
The Phantom slashed—
But Matt moved like memory.
> Void Sync: Triggered.
His body flowed with forgotten grace.
A thousand battles echoed in each strike.
He spun.
The blade sang.
And in one clean stroke—
The phantom dissolved into static and dust.
Silence reclaimed the street.
Matt dropped to one knee.
The blade pulsed—hungry.
"What… am I?"
Light swirled before him.
A figure formed—
A woman of light and sorrow.
Amiya.
"Matt… you found the blade."
He staggered back.
"You're… real?"
"A fragment. A tether. A piece of my soul left behind."
He remembered mourning her—then forgetting her.
But now—
He remembered.
"There's no time," Amiya said. "Beneath this ruin lies your beginning. You must return."
The sky cracked.
A rift tore open above.
From it, shadows poured.
> "They'll know I reached you," she whispered. "I wasn't meant to awaken… not until your second fall."
She touched his forehead.
> Memory Surge: Initiated.
Agony.
A world on fire.
Children screaming.
A house burning.
A mother's final prayer.
A father's last stand.
A blade buried with him.
A name erased.
A command whispered by Monshin—the paladin who condemned him.
Matt gasped.
The vision ended.
Amiya's light flickered.
"Go. Before they erase it again."
Stone cracked.
Earth split.
He didn't scream.
He remembered.
He fell.
And as he fell—
Memory rose.
A younger Matt.
Small hands clutched a broken toy sword. Dust on his cheeks. Eyes full of hope.
Amiya knelt beside him in a forgotten temple. Her armor cracked. Her smile unbroken.
She reached out—not as a soldier, but as a sister.
"Someday, you'll be stronger than all of us."
"Even the gods?"
"Especially the gods."
Outside, the sky was burning.
Screams echoed through the valley.
She gave him something—
A pendant.
The same one now pulsing against his chest.
"Promise me something," she said.
"Anything."
"When they break you… don't break back. Burn."
He took the pendant.
Now—
Falling through fire, through time, through memory—
He opened his fist.
The pendant glowed faintly.
He had never let go.
Downward he fell.
Toward what was buried.
Toward war.
Toward truth.
He was never just a child.
He was the blade.