You know what's funny about dying?
It's not the pain. You get used to pain when you're a Hunter. After your hundredth broken bone, your fiftieth near-death experience, pain just becomes background noise—like traffic outside your window or the hum of a refrigerator. You learn to compartmentalize it, file it away in some distant corner of your brain where it can scream all it wants without affecting your ability to function.
No, the pain isn't what gets you.
It's the realization. That split second when your brain catches up to what your body already knows. That moment when you understand, with absolute crystal clarity, that this is it. This is how your story ends. Not in glory, not surrounded by loved ones, not peacefully in your sleep as an old man who lived a full life.
Right here. Right now. In the worst way possible.
That's what gets you.
I had that realization standing in the ruins of what used to be Tokyo's Shibuya district, staring up at the SSS-Rank Gate that hung in the sky like a wound torn into reality itself. The Gate pulsed with crimson light—the kind of red that made you think of arterial blood, of warning signs, of stop signs that nobody was going to obey because we were already past the point of stopping.
We'd been fighting for eight hours straight.
Eight. Hours.
My sword arm felt like someone had replaced the muscles with lead weights. My mana reserves were running on fumes—maybe thirty percent if I was lucky, probably less. The crimson coat I wore, the one with the Crimson Vanguard insignia emblazoned across the back, was torn in so many places it barely qualified as clothing anymore. More like decorative rags held together by dried blood and stubborn pride.
But we were close. So damn close.
"Ryu! Formations holding!"
That was Kaito. My best friend. My rival. The cocky bastard with the wind blades who'd saved my life more times than I could count and never let me forget it. He stood to my left, his twin swords glowing with that ethereal green light that meant he was running on the same fumes I was. His usual shit-eating grin was gone, replaced by the kind of thousand-yard stare you only get after watching too many people die in too short a time.
I glanced at him—really looked at him—and thought about all the times we'd argued about stupid things. About whose technique was better. About which of us would hit S-Rank first. About whether pineapple belonged on pizza. (It didn't. Kaito was objectively wrong about that.)
Funny how those arguments seemed important at the time.
"Copy that," I said, my voice hoarse from shouting orders and breathing in ash-thick air. "Yuki, status on the sealing team?"
"Seventy-eight percent charged." Yuki's voice came through my earpiece, cold and analytical as always. The Ice Princess, they called her. Not because she was cruel—she wasn't—but because she had this way of looking at chaos and reducing it to numbers and probabilities. It was one of the things I loved about her, even if I'd never said it out loud. "We need four more minutes, Ryu. Can you hold?"
Four minutes.
I tightened my grip on Akasha, my legendary A-Rank blade. The sword thrummed in my hand, its enchantments resonating with what little mana I had left. Four minutes to keep the monsters from overrunning our position. Four minutes to prevent this Gate from becoming a full Break—the kind that would consume all of Tokyo and everyone in it. Ten million lives hanging on four minutes.
"I've held Gates for hours," I said, injecting confidence I didn't entirely feel into my voice. "Four minutes is nothing."
It was a lie, of course. But sometimes lying is what leaders do. Sometimes you have to fake certainty when you're drowning in doubt, because the people counting on you need to believe that someone knows what they're doing. Even if that someone is just as terrified as they are.
"Targets incoming!" Mira's voice, usually so bubbly and cheerful, was tight with panic. "Three—no, five Catastrophe-Class entities detected! They're converging on the core position!"
My stomach dropped.
Catastrophe-Class. The designation reserved for monsters that required a full S-Rank party—six to eight elite Hunters working in perfect coordination—just to have a chance at taking down. We had five of them coming at once, and most of our heavy hitters were already down. Dead or dying or too injured to fight.
This was it. This was the moment where the mission went from "difficult" to "probably impossible."
I turned to look at Akira Kurogane. My guild master. The man who'd recruited me when I was sixteen years old and nobody else believed a hot-headed kid with anger issues could amount to anything. He'd trained me, mentored me, become the father figure I'd lost when my actual father died in a Gate Break ten years ago.
He stood about twenty meters back with the other guild officers, his silver hair catching the Gate's crimson light in a way that made him look almost ethereal. Distinguished. Like some warrior saint from an old painting.
"Master Akira," I called out. "I need you and the officers up front. We can't hold five Catastrophe-Class alone."
For a moment—just the briefest fraction of a second—something flickered across Akira's weathered face. Something that made my combat instincts, honed by six years of fighting monsters, suddenly scream danger.
But then he smiled. That warm, reassuring smile he always gave me before difficult missions. The smile that said everything would be okay because we were in this together.
"Of course, Ryu," he said. "We're right behind you."
That was the first lie.
Looking back, I should have known. Should have seen it. All the signs were there—the way the other officers positioned themselves, the subtle shift in their stances, the fact that nobody was drawing their weapons. But I was exhausted and running on fumes and so focused on the monsters emerging from the Gate that I didn't see the real threat until it was too late.
The Catastrophe-Class entities came out of the crimson mist like something from a nightmare that had learned to hate.
The first was massive—a Death Titan, they called these things. Fifty meters of bone and shadow welded together into something that shouldn't be able to exist but did anyway, because the Gates didn't care about what should or shouldn't be. Each step it took cracked the earth beneath it like glass.
The second and third were twin serpents made of living flame. They coiled through the air with a grace that would have been beautiful if they weren't, you know, trying to kill us. Their scales reflected the Gate's light like molten rubies.
The fourth was wrong in a way that hurt to look at directly. A mass of tentacles and too many eyes, with reality itself seeming to bend and distort around its form. Like someone had taken the concept of "monster" and filtered it through a fever dream designed by someone who hated geometry.
The fifth...
The fifth wore my face.
I'm not talking metaphorically here. This thing—this Mimic-type Catastrophe-Class entity—had somehow copied my appearance. But wrong. All wrong. My face stretched across a skull that was too large. My eyes replicated hundreds of times across its body like some kind of sick parody. My voice echoing from a mouth that split its head in half horizontally.
"Ryu... Takahashi..." it whispered, and the sound made something primal in my hindbrain want to curl up and hide. "The one... who will... devour... you..."
"Some kind of Mimic-type!" Kaito shouted, and I could hear the barely-controlled panic in his voice. Because Mimics were bad news. The kind of bad news that usually showed up in SS-Rank Gates, not—
Wait.
My mind caught on something. A memory. Intelligence reports I'd read years ago about an SS-Rank Mimic that had appeared during the Night of Black Stars incident. An event that happened three years from now in the timeline. A monster that shouldn't exist yet.
Why is it here? How is it here? The timeline shouldn't—
"RYU! MOVE!"
Kaito's scream snapped me back to the present just in time to see the Death Titan's fist descending toward me like a meteor.
I activated Crimson Acceleration—my signature skill, the one I'd developed after two years of brutal training and more failures than I could count. The world slowed to a crawl. Not stopped, just... sluggish. Like someone had turned reality's playback speed down to 0.25x.
My body moved on pure instinct, following patterns I'd drilled into muscle memory through six years of constant combat. Sidestep. Angle. Flow. The Death Titan's fist came down and cratered the earth where I'd been standing a fraction of a second earlier. The shockwave still caught me, tore past me like a physical wall of force, but I was already moving to the next safe zone.
"Kaito, left flank!" I shouted, my mind shifting into combat mode—that strange state where emotions shut down and everything becomes tactical. "Keep the serpents busy! Yuki, redirect barriers to—"
"Ryu."
Akira's voice cut through the chaos. Calm. Steady. Too calm. The kind of calm that made my combat instincts start screaming again.
"Fall back. The officers will handle this."
I glanced back at him. The guild officers—twelve of them, all A-Rank or higher—were standing in formation behind Akira. But they weren't moving forward. Weren't drawing weapons. Weren't doing anything except... watching.
Just watching.
"Master, what are you—"
"You've done well, Ryu." Akira's expression was still calm. Still composed. But his eyes... his eyes were cold. Calculating. Like he was looking at an object instead of a person. "Better than I expected, honestly. You've exceeded every projection we had for you."
Projection. That was an odd word choice.
"We?" The question came out barely above a whisper.
"The Crimson Vanguard thanks you for your service," Akira said, and then he raised his hand. I felt it immediately—the distinct sensation of a skill activating. Mana gathering, condensing, focusing. But not aimed at the monsters.
Aimed at me.
"Your power, your potential, your very existence..." Akira continued, and something in his tone reminded me of a scientist discussing a successful experiment. "All of it will serve a greater purpose."
"BOSS, BEHIND YOU!"
Mira's scream came too late.
I spun around, but my body—already exhausted, already running on fumes—was too slow. One of the guild officers, Tanaka, the man who'd taught me advanced barrier techniques, had somehow crossed the distance without me noticing. His hand pressed against my back, and I felt it immediately.
Void Siphon.
It hit me like ice water injected directly into my veins. My mana reserves, that precious thirty percent I'd been nursing, plummeted. Thirty to twenty. Twenty to ten. Ten to five. The drain was so rapid, so violent, that my knees buckled.
Akasha slipped from my suddenly nerveless fingers, the legendary blade clattering against broken concrete.
"Void Siphon," Tanaka said, and he actually sounded apologetic. Like he was sorry about this. Like this was just an unfortunate necessity. "Sorry, kid. Orders are orders."
My vision swam. Consciousness tried to flee. I grabbed onto it with everything I had, forced myself to stay present, stay aware, because I needed to understand this. Needed to know why.
"What..." I gasped, struggling just to form words. "Why..."
"The Cataclysm requires a sacrifice," Akira explained. He was walking toward me now, taking his time, because what was I going to do? I could barely stand. "A nexus point of power to anchor the ritual. An S-Rank Hunter at the peak of their potential, killed at the exact moment of a Gate's collapse. Your death will give us the key to controlling the Gates themselves."
The words made sense individually. But strung together like that, they formed something so insane, so monumentally wrong, that my brain rejected it at first.
"You're..." I forced the words out. "You're insane..."
"I won't let you—" Kaito's voice, full of fury and wind-blade violence.
"Sleep," one of the officers said casually.
Kaito collapsed mid-sentence, victim to some kind of psychic attack he never saw coming. My best friend crumpled like a puppet with cut strings, his twin swords clattering beside him.
"Kaito!" I tried to move toward him, tried to do something, anything. But my body was done taking orders from me. The Void Siphon was still active, still draining, pulling not just mana but life force itself.
"Ryu..."
That was Yuki's voice. Quiet. Resigned. I looked back and saw her on her knees, ice chains wrapped around her wrists. The Ice Princess, who could freeze entire city blocks, bound and helpless.
When had they grabbed her? How long had this been planned?
"I'm sorry," she said, and tears were running down her face, cutting tracks through the ash and blood. "I tried to warn you. They threatened my family. I had to—"
"She's been feeding us information for months," Akira confirmed, his tone conversational. Like we were discussing the weather instead of betrayal and murder. "A useful pawn. But pawns are disposable."
He snapped his fingers.
One of the officers raised a gun—an actual gun, because sometimes the oldest weapons are the most effective—and pointed it at Yuki's head.
"NO!"
I screamed it. Poured everything I had left into that word. Forced my broken, drained body to move. My hand stretched toward her, reaching across impossible distance, because if I could just touch her, just grab her, maybe I could—
The gunshot was so loud it seemed to swallow all other sound.
For a moment, the entire battlefield went quiet. Even the monsters seemed to pause, as if paying respect to something sacred being destroyed.
Yuki's body crumpled. Blood pooled beneath her, spreading across broken concrete in patterns that looked almost artistic. Her ice-blue eyes, the ones that had looked at me with such warmth despite their coldness, went vacant. Empty.
The last thing I saw in her expression was relief.
Relief that it was finally over. That she didn't have to lie anymore. That she didn't have to live with the guilt of her betrayal.
Something inside me shattered.
Not my body. That was already broken. Not my mana. That was already gone. Something deeper. Something fundamental. The part of me that believed in justice, in heroism, in the inherent goodness of the world.
That part died with Yuki.
"AKIRA!"
My voice didn't sound human anymore. It was pure rage distilled into sound, primal and raw and absolutely futile. "I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL—"
The Death Titan's fist came down.
This time, I couldn't dodge.
Pain isn't really the right word for what I felt next.
Pain implies something temporary. Something that will eventually end. What I experienced was more like... existence becoming agony. Like every atom of my being was screaming in unison, a choir of suffering singing a song that had no end.
My body was crushed. Broken. Scattered across the battlefield like shattered glass. Bones that used to hold me upright were now just fragments mixed with rubble. Organs that used to keep me alive were now just pulp. My sword arm—the one I'd trained for years to perfect—was somewhere twenty meters away, still holding a piece of Akasha's hilt.
I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Could only feel.
And I could see.
Through failing vision, growing darker by the second, I watched Akira and his officers retreat through a portal. Just... leaving. Walking away like this was a job completed, a task checked off a list. No drama. No monologuing about their grand plans. Just professional execution and extraction.
I watched the monsters tear apart what was left of our raid party. Watched them consume the bodies of Hunters who'd fought beside me for years. Friends. Comrades. People with families waiting at home.
I watched one of the flame serpents find Kaito's unconscious body. Watched it coil around him. Watched the flames spread.
I couldn't even scream a warning.
I watched Mira try to crawl away, one leg clearly broken, dragging herself toward some imagined safety. Watched one of the tentacle monster's appendages pierce her chest. Watched her mouth form my name, though no sound came out.
Everyone I'd tried to protect. Everyone I'd failed.
And through it all, one thought cut through the agony with crystal clarity:
Hana.
My little sister. Thirteen years old. Waiting at home. Believing her big brother was a hero. Believing I'd come back like I always did. Believing the world was a place where heroes won and monsters lost.
She'd be alone now. Alone when the Cataclysm came in eight years. Alone when the world ended.
I tried to form her name with lips that no longer worked. Tried to apologize to her with lungs that were just meat and blood.
I'm sorry, Hana. I'm so sorry. I tried. I really tried.
Darkness consumed me then. Not all at once, but in creeping increments. Like someone was slowly turning down the brightness on reality itself.
This is it, I thought. This is how Ryu Takahashi's story ends. Not as a hero. Not as anything. Just another corpse in another failed Gate raid. Another statistic. Another name on a memorial wall that nobody will remember in ten years.
The darkness was complete now. Absolute. The kind of black that doesn't exist in nature because even the darkest nights have stars.
I floated in that darkness for what felt like eternity and no time at all. No body. No pain. Just... existing. Or not existing. It was hard to tell the difference.
Then—
Light.
Not the gentle light of a sunrise or the warm light of a lamp. This was searing, blinding, impossible light that stabbed into my non-existent eyes and made me want to scream with non-existent lungs.
And a voice. Ancient beyond measure. Neither male nor female. Vast and terrible and amused.
"Do you wish to try again?"
The question echoed through the void, through me, through everything and nothing.
Yes, I thought. Or screamed. Or prayed. I wasn't sure anymore. YES. GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE. I'LL CHANGE EVERYTHING. I'LL SAVE THEM ALL. I'LL MAKE THEM PAY.
"Very well," the voice said, and I could hear the smile in it. "But power requires sacrifice. To change fate, you must become something neither human nor monster. You must walk a path that leads to places darker than death. Will you pay this price?"
ANYTHING. I'LL PAY ANYTHING. JUST LET ME GO BACK.
"Then rise, Void Sovereign. Rise and rewrite this broken world. But remember—every choice has a cost. Every power demands tribute. And at the end of this path lies a truth that may break you more thoroughly than any betrayal."
I didn't care about warnings. Didn't care about costs or truths or anything except one simple fact:
They killed my friends. They killed my family. They killed my world.
And I was going to make them pay for every second of it.
"So be it," the voice said, and the amusement in it grew stronger. "Welcome back, Ryu Takahashi. Welcome back to the game."
The light exploded—
I gasped awake like a drowning man breaking the surface.
My hands flew to my chest, searching for the wound that had killed me. For the crushed bones and ruptured organs and all the damage that should have left me a corpse on a battlefield.
Nothing.
My chest was whole. Intact. Moving with each panicked breath.
I was in a bed. My bed. A bed that shouldn't exist because it had been destroyed five years ago when the apartment building was hit during the Tokyo Gate Break of 2021.
I stumbled out of bed—actually stumbled, because my body wasn't responding right. Too light. Too weak. Too young.
The mirror.
I staggered to the bathroom, nearly tripping over my own feet, and stared at my reflection in the mirror above the sink.
Sixteen years old.
The face staring back at me was my face, but younger. So much younger. No scar bisecting my left eyebrow. No burn marks along my neck. No tiny lines around my eyes from years of squinting at Gates and battlefields.
Just... me. Young me. Pre-betrayal me.
My hands gripped the edge of the sink hard enough to make my knuckles white. Hard enough that I could feel the porcelain digging into my palms, grounding me, telling me this was real.
This was happening.
I'd gone back. Somehow, impossibly, I'd regressed. Ten years into the past. Back to the day before everything started.
And in the corner of my vision, translucent text appeared like something out of a video game:
[VOID SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
Name: Ryu Takahashi
Level: 1
Class: Void Sovereign (Locked - Awakening Required)
HP: 100/100
MP: 15/15 (Base Unawakened)
Corruption: 0%
Primary Objective: Prevent the Cataclysm
Time Remaining: 10 Years, 7 Days, 3 Hours
Welcome back, Regressor.
The world's fate now rests in your hands.
Choose wisely.
I stared at the system interface. Then at my reflection. Then back at the interface.
Ten years. I had ten years to change everything. To save everyone. To make the bastards who betrayed me pay for what they did—what they would do.
A smile spread across my face. Not my old confident grin. Something darker. Something cold and sharp and hungry.
"Let's try this again," I whispered to my reflection. "And this time, I'm playing by my own rules."
Outside my window, the sun was rising over Tokyo. Painting the city in shades of gold and red that reminded me too much of blood and fire and Gates.
Tomorrow, I would awaken as a Hunter for the "first time."
Tomorrow, my legend would begin again.
But tonight—right now, in this moment—Ryu Takahashi, the Crimson Prodigy, the betrayed hero of a future that hadn't happened yet, died in that Gate.
What woke up in this bed was something new.
Something that had learned the hardest lesson reality could teach:
Trust no one. Fear nothing. And when the world tries to break you, break it first.
The Void Sovereign had awakened.
And heaven help anyone who stood in my way.
[END OF CHAPTER 1: THE CRIMSON END]