Raiden hadn't slept. Not really.
He didn't go home that night. Didn't check his messages. The streets were silent now, but they felt louder than ever—every flickering streetlamp hummed like it was alive, every crack in the pavement whispered his name.
And the voice… the voice hadn't stopped.
"You felt it, didn't you?" it murmured. "The moment you let go. The freedom."
He kept walking. He didn't know where to. His hands were still stained with dried blood—not his, he reminded himself, but he wasn't exactly sure how he knew that. The memories were fragmented, like a broken film reel, skipping frames and looping the worst parts.
That room.
The chains.
The altar.
The blood.
The whisper.
Something had awakened in him that night, something old and buried and hungry. He wasn't just hearing the voice now—he could feel it, coiled in the pit of his stomach like a second heart.
That Morning
The sun rose, indifferent to the storm brewing inside him. Raiden stood in front of a mirror at an abandoned train station restroom, staring at himself like he was meeting a stranger.
His reflection blinked half a second out of sync.
Then it smiled.
He stumbled back, knocking over the rusted sink, heart thundering.
"We're not alone anymore," the voice chuckled. "Isn't that what you wanted? To be seen? To be understood?"
Later that day, it happened. His first incident.
Three gang punks tried to corner him in the alley behind a liquor store. Same type that used to shove him into lockers, spit in his bag, laugh when they saw him cry.
Only this time, something cracked.
He didn't feel fear.
He felt... nothing.
One of them shoved him hard. Raiden didn't flinch. His head snapped to the side, then slowly rolled back to face the guy—eyes completely empty.
And then everything changed.
The shadows behind him moved.
Coiled around him like a living cloak. Writhing tendrils. For a split second, the alley was engulfed in an unnatural darkness—and when it passed, two of the punks were on the ground, convulsing, screaming. Eyes wide, but seeing nothing. Like their minds had been shredded.
The third one ran.
Raiden didn't chase him.
He just stood there, staring at his own hands as they trembled with a cold, buzzing energy. His breathing was slow. Calm. Controlled.
"Do you see it now?" the voice whispered. "We're becoming something greater."
Raiden smiled.
A twitch.
A shiver.
And deep down, a dangerous thought bloomed like a black rose:
I liked that.
He stared at the ceiling of the abandoned building, the dim glow of city lights leaking through shattered windows. The voice had gone quiet again—but its silence was worse. It lingered like breath on the back of his neck, like something crouched just behind him in the dark.
The blood on his hands had dried hours ago, but he hadn't wiped it off.
Some part of him didn't want to.
Something had shifted. He felt lighter. Not in the way people meant when they talked about letting go of burdens. No—this was different.
It was the lightness of someone who had finally stopped pretending.
The mask was gone.
He wasn't okay. He wasn't broken.
He was becoming.
Later That Night
Raiden sat at the edge of the crumbling overpass, legs dangling over the highway far below. Cars hissed by, their lights smearing like watercolors in his unfocused vision. He didn't blink. Didn't move. Just stared.
He hadn't even noticed the blood on his shoes until it dried.
"You're starting to see how fragile they are," the voice cooed. "These people. Their minds. Their bodies. All paper-thin."
He didn't argue. He didn't scream. The fear that once kept him tethered to his humanity was silent now. Numb. The silence was... freeing.
A sudden laugh escaped his lips.
It started as a breath, a chuckle, but quickly twisted into something too loud, too off—a raw, uneven sound that echoed across the concrete like a warning. Something inside him buckled under the weight of it. It didn't even feel like his laughter anymore.
Raiden covered his mouth, shoulders trembling.
Was he crying?
Laughing?
Both?
He didn't know. Didn't care.
Industrial Shadows
The city was darker than usual. Streetlights flickered erratically, and the moon hid behind thick clouds like it didn't want to witness what the night was becoming.
Raiden wandered.
His feet led him into the industrial district—abandoned factories, storage yards, fences bent like old bones. A place where no one looked. No one listened.
Which is why the screaming stopped so quickly.
Raiden turned a corner and found two men dragging a girl behind a stack of metal containers. She looked no older than thirteen—bruised, terrified, muffled by a torn strip of cloth.
He should've called the cops. He should've yelled. Run in. Done something human.
But he just stood there.
Watching.
The voice stirred.
"You want to help her?" it asked gently. "Then let go."
Something in his chest cracked open—something vast, ancient, starless.
The men didn't even see him coming.
And when it was over—when the alley was silent except for the girl's broken sobs—Raiden stood over what remained of the two. He didn't remember moving. Didn't remember attacking.
But he remembered what it felt like.
The rush.
Like every cell in his body had lit up.
Like he was home.
The girl crawled away from him in horror, and that's when it hit him.
She was more afraid of him than she'd been of them.
And that made him smile.
Back at the Mirror
That same cracked train station mirror. He returned to it like a shrine.
His reflection no longer mirrored his movements. Its smile was wide, unblinking, stretched too far across the face.
Raiden leaned close.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
The mirror grinned. "You already know. You just haven't accepted it yet."
His eyes darted over the fractured glass, catching glimpses of himself from strange angles. Each shard showed something slightly different—one smiling, one crying, one screaming in rage.
And one...
...one wasn't human at all.
He didn't flinch.
He touched the mirror.
And for a heartbeat, it felt warm—like it was pulsing beneath his fingertips.
He stared at himself one last time.
"I'm not afraid of you anymore."
The reflection blinked.
"You will be."