The backlash came quietly.
No warning. No surge. No dramatic failure of wards.
It arrived in the early hours of the morning, when Kurogane was half-awake and dreaming of nothing at all.
His breath caught.
Not sharply—subtly. As if the air had decided it was no longer willing to enter his lungs at the usual pace.
Kurogane sat up in bed, confused.
Then the pressure hit.
It wasn't pain in the way fire hurt. It wasn't the tearing violence of earth or the crushing pull of water. This was density—a sudden, overwhelming heaviness inside his chest, as if something intangible had gained mass.
His vision dimmed at the edges.
"K—Raishin…" he tried to call.
No sound came out.
The lightning inside him did not lash out.
It folded.
Inward.
Kurogane slid off the bed, knees striking the floor. His hands clawed at the stone, fingers trembling as his body tried to remember how to exist without relying on something else to respond for it.
Each heartbeat echoed too loudly.
Too far apart.
This is it, he thought dimly. This is what he meant.
The door burst open.
Raishin was there instantly, as if he had been standing outside waiting for permission from fate.
"Kurogane." Calm. Grounded. Absolute. "Do not fight it."
Kurogane wanted to scream that he wasn't fighting—that he couldn't even find it.
Raishin knelt, pressing two fingers gently against Kurogane's sternum.
"Tell me where it hurts," he said.
Kurogane shook his head weakly. "It doesn't… it's not—"
"Pain isn't the signal," Raishin said. "Orientation is."
Raishin closed his eyes.
He slowed his breathing deliberately, exaggerated each inhale and exhale until the rhythm forced itself into the room.
"Lightning aligned to a structure it shouldn't have recognized," Raishin said quietly. "Now it's correcting."
Kurogane's body convulsed as something inside shifted again—precise, surgical, merciless.
A thin trickle of blood ran from his nose.
Raishin caught it with a cloth, unfazed. "Look at me."
Kurogane forced his eyes open.
"You are not losing control," Raishin said firmly. "You are losing priority."
The words cut through the fog.
Priority.
Not dominance. Not obedience.
Hierarchy.
"It thinks…" Kurogane gasped, "…something else comes first."
"Yes," Raishin said. "The pattern. The crowd. The remembered structure."
Raishin placed his palm flat against Kurogane's back.
"Now listen carefully," he said. "This part is never written down. You cannot suppress this. You cannot redirect it."
Kurogane's fingers curled weakly. "Then what do I—"
"You endure," Raishin said. "Without asking it to explain itself."
Raishin grounded—not the lightning, but the moment. He pressed awareness into weight, into presence, into simple facts.
You are here.You are alive.You are human.
Slowly, agonizingly, the compression eased.
Not undone.
Accepted.
Kurogane collapsed forward, coughing, air finally tearing back into his lungs.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
"You felt it," Raishin said eventually.
"Yes," Kurogane whispered. "It wasn't angry."
Raishin's jaw tightened. "That's what makes it lethal."
Footsteps approached hurriedly.
Mizuki entered, followed by Raien. One glance at Kurogane's condition was enough.
"So it begins," Mizuki said quietly.
"This was provoked," Raishin snapped. "By the Concord's field."
"Yes," Mizuki agreed. "And now it belongs to you."
Raien crouched beside Kurogane. "Can you stand?"
Kurogane nodded shakily, with more pride than confidence.
As he rose, something did not move with him—a faint internal resistance, like an invisible brace that hadn't existed before.
He froze.
Raishin felt it too.
"…You're altered," Raishin said.
Kurogane swallowed. "Is it permanent?"
Raishin hesitated.
"Yes," he said. "But not fatal."
"Yet," Mizuki added.
Kurogane looked down at his hands.
They didn't spark.
They didn't hum.
But when he clenched them, something answered—not lightning itself, but a readiness shaped by memory instead of instinct.
"That wasn't punishment," Kurogane said slowly.
Raishin met his gaze.
"No," he said. "That was interest."
Silence filled the room.
Outside, Asterra slept peacefully under artificial calm.
And somewhere beyond sight and record, something that had once endured the same correction felt a distant resonance—and knew the cycle had moved forward.