The darkness inside the garage was not merely the absence of light; it was a physical weight. It pressed against Yuki's chest, filling his lungs with the scent of rusted iron and stagnant oil. He lay on a cold concrete slab in the deepest recesses of the structure, his breathing so shallow that he seemed more like a corpse than a living man.
But inside his mind, there was a hurricane.
The Void of the Past
For a Void-Walker, silence is an enemy. In the silence, the voices of the past scream the loudest.
Yuki closed his eyes, and immediately, the gray walls of the garage vanished. He was no longer a hunter of monsters. He was fourteen again. He could feel the weight of his first smartphone in his hand—a symbol of freedom that would eventually become his shackle. He remembered the glow of the screen at 2:00 AM, the digital heartbeat of a notification that changed everything.
Kinzuko.
The name felt like a shard of glass in his throat. He remembered the early days—the shared love for anime, the playlists of songs that seemed to echo his own soul, and the terrifying, exhilarating rush of a first crush. He had been a child, innocent and foolish, believing that a person on the other side of a screen could be his entire world.
Then, the memories turned jagged.
He saw the faces of the seven boys in the school restroom. He felt the sting of the two slaps across his face—the first time his pride had been shattered. He remembered the cold realization that he had been betrayed by the one person he trusted. He had been beaten until his ribs sang with pain, and yet, like a pathetic fool, he had hidden his wounds from his mother. He had protected the very girl who was orchestrating his downfall.
And then came the final strike. The Sunday that ended his world.
"You're too poor. I can't be with someone like you."
The words echoed in the void of his mind, vibrating with the same frequency as the energy that had torn the fabric of reality. That was the moment. That was the night in the park where his grief had surpassed the limits of the human heart.
It was that very rage, that absolute agony of being discarded like trash, that had accidentally shattered the wall of Universe 3. It was that scream of a broken boy that allowed Alya to enter his mind and permitted the ancient villains to descend upon Earth.
Every drop of blood spilled on this planet, every ruined city, and the death of his own mother—it all traced back to that one rejection.
The Breach
BOOM!
The sound of screeching metal tore Yuki back to the present. The heavy titanium shutter of the garage, which he had welded shut with his own energy, was being peeled back like a tin can.
The Elite Void-Stalkers had found them.
Yuki didn't move at first. His gray eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. He felt a twisted sense of justice. Let them come, he thought. Let them take her. Let the world end exactly where the betrayal began.
Outside the inner office, near the mangled entrance, Kinzuko let out a strangled scream. She was huddled against a stack of tires, her tactical mask discarded, her face pale with a terror that no amount of hacking skills could solve.
A Void-Stalker, a three-meter tall nightmare of bone-armor and violet eyes, lunged through the gap in the door. Its claws, sharp enough to slice through tank plating, were inches from her throat.
Yuki's mind screamed for her to die. But his body… his body had a different agenda.
Before the monster's claw could connect, a gray blur ignited in the darkness.
Yuki didn't think. He didn't plan. His "Cold Evolution" took over. He appeared between Kinzuko and the beast, his hand moving faster than the human eye could track. He caught the monster's wrist. The sound of bone snapping echoed through the garage like a gunshot.
With a guttural growl, Yuki drove his elbow into the creature's sternum. The bone-armor shattered into a thousand violet shards. The monster didn't even have time to shriek before it disintegrated into ash.
Yuki stood there, his back to Kinzuko, his shoulders heaving. His knuckles were bleeding, the red mixing with the violet ichor of the beast.
"Why?" Kinzuko whispered, her voice trembling. "You said… you said I should die. Why did you save me?"
Yuki didn't turn around. His voice was a low, dangerous rumble.
"Be quiet. If you want to die, do it somewhere else. Do not do it in front of me. I cannot stand to see my first and true love perish before my eyes, even if I hate the soul inside that body."
The Hacker's Revelation
Kinzuko stared at his back, a strange mix of guilt and calculation crossing her features. She realized then that the boy she had played like a fiddle was gone. In his place stood a god of destruction.
"Yuki," she said, her voice regaining some of its professional edge. "I didn't just leave you because of the money. Not entirely."
Yuki stiffened. "Do not lie to me again."
"I'm a Dark Web hacker, Yuki. A high-level one," she blurted out. "Two years ago, I started seeing things—data packets that shouldn't exist. Signs of an invasion from a different frequency. I sold your data because I was being hunted by people who knew I was watching the Rifts. I needed the money to buy protection, to buy this."
She reached into her tactical bag and pulled out a pair of metallic boots. They didn't look like anything made on Earth. They were sleek, humming with a faint blue luminescence, and covered in runes that Yuki recognized from Universe 12.
"These are Void-Runner Boots," she said. "I stole them from a secret research facility funded by the Dark Web's elite. They are ghost-tech. They don't belong to this dimension."
Suddenly, Alya's voice echoed in Yuki's mind, sharp and urgent.
"Yuki! She's telling the truth about the tech. Those boots are tuned to the Void. If you wear them, I can synchronize your neural pathways with the stabilizers. Your speed will increase by 10x your current maximum. We can escape the swarm."
Kinzuko looked at the mangled door. More monsters were pouring in. The garage was being surrounded by hundreds of Elites.
"I know about the Ancient Villains, Yuki," she continued, her eyes pleading. "The ones who have claimed Earth as their territory. If you save me, if you take me to your sanctuary, I can use my hacking skills to track their cores. I can help you liquidate them. I know I betrayed you, but right now, I am the only asset you have that can provide intelligence."
Yuki turned slowly. He looked at the boots, then at the girl who had broken his heart.
"One more betrayal, Kinzuko," Yuki said, his eyes glowing with a faint, predatory gray light. "And I will personally feed you to the Void. I am not taking you back because I forgive you. I am taking you because you are a tool I can use to finish this war."
The 10x Evolution
The garage roof began to cave in under the weight of the monsters above. Yuki snatched the boots from her hands and slid them on. They tightened around his calves automatically, the blue light surging into his veins.
The sensation was like being injected with liquid lightning.
"Hold on," Yuki commanded.
He didn't wait for her answer. He grabbed Kinzuko, throwing her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
BOOM!
The entire front of the garage exploded outward as Yuki moved. To the monsters, it looked like a bomb had gone off. To Yuki, the world had slowed down.
With the 10x speed boost from the Void-Runner Boots, the falling debris seemed to hang in mid-air. He stepped on a falling brick, propelled himself off a crumbling pillar, and shot out into the street.
He was a gray streak of lightning. The Elite Stalkers tried to lunge, but they were clawing at shadows. Yuki moved through the ruins of the Red District at a pace that defied the laws of physics. Each step he took cracked the pavement beneath him, sending shockwaves through the air.
Kinzuko clung to his back, her eyes squeezed shut as the wind whipped past them at supersonic speeds.
"Where… where did you get this strength?" she shouted over the roar of the wind.
"In the place where you left me," Yuki replied, his voice carried away by the gale. "In the dark."
As they tore through the forest toward the sanctuary, the sun began to peek over the horizon, casting a bloody red light over the ruined world. Yuki didn't stop. He didn't tire. He ran with the weight of his past on his back and the fire of the future in his boots.
The cave was in sight. The vault door, the Blue Core of Alya, and the survivors he had sworn to protect were waiting. But as he ran, one thought remained burned into his mind.
The girl who sold my soul is now the only one who can help me save it.