---
"Restrain him!"
The chamber erupted into chaos. Armed enforcers burst through hidden doors, clad in obsidian armor and wielding stun-lances crackling with suppressive magic. Raven's mind reeled, heart pounding against his ribs. The mark on his hand pulsed again — not in pain this time, but with hunger.
They surrounded him. Five. No, six of them.
"Down on your knees! Hands where we can see them!"
But Raven couldn't move. The world around him blurred. The cracked crystal core above him trembled — then shattered with a screech like a dying god, shards flying in every direction. A force exploded outward from Raven's chest. Not a blast. Not magic.
Something older.
Something wrong.
The enforcers screamed as their armor caved in, weapons torn from their hands. The air grew cold, soaked in pressure thick enough to choke.
And then—it stopped.
Raven stood alone in the epicenter of the devastation, untouched. Around him, the enforcers writhed on the ground, disarmed and disoriented. The rune on his hand slowly dimmed, withdrawing its power.
He looked down at his hands.
"What am I?"
---
They didn't let him walk free after that. Of course not.
The next thing he remembered was a cold metal chair bolted to the floor and iron rings shackling his wrists. The interrogation room was dark, the only light coming from a crystalline orb hanging above.
Across from him sat a woman draped in deep crimson robes, her face hidden behind a mask of silver. Her voice, calm and unnervingly gentle, echoed in the chamber.
"You activated a forbidden artifact. You survived a Class-S backlash. You destabilized a reinforced crystal core with your presence alone."
Raven stayed silent. His pulse hadn't calmed.
"You're not human anymore," she continued. "At least… not just human."
He stared at her. "Then what am I?"
She tilted her head.
"That is what we intend to find out."
Another voice cut through the darkness — colder, sharper, and unmistakably artificial.
"No. He's already marked. The Abyss chose him. That makes him a threat."
From the shadows stepped a figure unlike the others. Tall, mechanical, more machine than man. Its eyes glowed blue behind a skeletal mask, and cables snaked into its spine like leashes. A Proxy. An enforcer of the Overseers.
"He must be blacklisted," the Proxy said. "Erase his records. Seal his identification. From this moment forward… Raven Nocturne does not exist."
The woman in red hesitated. "He's only a child."
The Proxy turned to her. "He's a vessel."
Then it turned to Raven, lowering its voice.
"Pray the Abyss sleeps, boy. Because if it ever wakes inside you… we will end you."
---
They released him.
Not with freedom, but with erasure.
His student records were gone. His access revoked. No one remembered him — not even Aria. When he returned home, it was as if he'd never lived there. His room was empty, his belongings cleared out.
Even the cube was gone.
But the mark on his hand remained. And the whispers had returned.
Louder. Closer.
That night, Raven stood atop the academy walls, staring at the neon-bathed ruins beyond the city's barrier — the forbidden zones where the old world's secrets slept beneath stone and ash.
The Abyss had chosen him.
Now, he had to choose back.
---