Where time held no meaning, where space was nothing more than a word, and where worldly concerns held no weight, there existed The Entity.
There was no light here, but no darkness either, only an infinite, flat plane of pure potential, a space outside of any known geometry. Floating before the Entity was what mortals misunderstood as destiny: a massive, glass-like curtain, woven with billions upon billions of glowing, digital threads.
It was the Reality Code.
With a gesture akin to deleting a faulty line of code in a program, the Entity reached into the mesh. It searched for a fragment that might be more interesting than the last.
"Subject _-_-_-- this will be the one" the Entity's voice echoed. It wasn't a sound, but a direct alteration of reality itself.
The Entity held a small, shimmering fragment between its thin, luminous fingers. It vibrated uncontrollably, an incomplete form waiting to be shaped. With a calculated pulse, the Entity cast the fragment down into the abyss of the third dimension.
"Become what I am" it whispered, watching as the fragment pierced the veil into the material world. "So that I may become what I am."
Tokyo, Present Day
Kami stared at his hands.
He was sitting on the subway, surrounded by the dull roar of the tracks and the harsh glare of flickering neon signs. For the blink of an eye, just a fraction of a second, he'd felt as if the world had turned flat. As if the entire carriage, the tired faces of the commuters, and the massive steel walls were nothing but a cheap drawing on a piece of paper.
A stabbing pain shot through his temples. "Ah, fuck" he thought. He blinked hard. Everything was back to normal.
But when he looked at his phone, he froze. The display lit up in a brilliant, glowing blue, even though he hadn't received a notification. In the middle of the lock screen, in a font that looked like liquid gold searing itself into the glass, were words that shouldn't have been there:
[SYSTEM LOG: INITIALIZATION SUCCESSFUL]
[SKILL UNLOCKED: 3-D]
[A-RANK ABILITY]
"What the...?" Kami muttered. He tried to turn the phone off, but the text remained. Even a hard reset didn't work. The glowing gold lettering stayed burnt into the screen.
In that moment, he noticed the man at the end of the carriage. He wore a long black coat and dark sunglasses, paired with black denim-like trousers and leather shoes. He stared at Kami without blinking. It wasn't just the stare that sent a shiver down Kami's spine, it was the shadow. Even though the light came directly from the ceiling, with a lamp almost directly over the man's head, his shadow stretched across the entire floor of the subway like a black crack, inching slowly toward Kami.
Kami tried to stand up, but his body wouldn't move.
A hand reached out from the stranger's shadow near Kami's leg and gripped him tight. That same hand was missing from the stranger standing there.
Kami couldn't wrap his mind around what was happening, but he knew he had to get away. His wish was granted instantly, before he knew it, something tore him through the subway window and slammed him onto the floor of the next station.
"I didn't think I'd find another one here" the stranger spoke, his deep voice distorted.
The train pulled away, leaving Kami and the stranger alone on the platform.
"Damn it, who are you?!" Kami screamed at him. He tried to pull out a knife from his pocket, but couldn't really grab it.
"Don't play dumb. You know what's at stake and what we're capable of, so fight back, Number 3."
Kami didn't understand who this stranger was, what he wanted, what "Number 3" meant, or what was even happening.
"Are you kidding me, or do you really not know?" the stranger asked again in that uncomfortably distorted voice.
"I-I have no idea what's going on, honestly!" Kami's heart hammered against his ribs.
With a heavy, raspy sigh, the stranger turned away from Kami.
"No fun this way. Find out what's happening to this world, boy, and you'll come looking for me on your own," the stranger said, his voice so jarring it gave Kami an unbearable headache.
With a sound like wind howling between skyscrapers, the stranger vanished into his own shadow, which then merged into the shadow of a nearby bench and vanished.
When Kami looked at the knife he had tried to pull from his jacket pocket earlier, he saw that it was now nothing more than an image on his jacket, like a flat sticker.
"Did I do that? What the hell is actually going on here??"