Kaito stirred in his sleep, the sweat on his forehead cold despite the warmth in the room. Darkness pressed around him, thick and absoluteuntil a dim, flickering light emerged in the distance.
He stepped forward. The ground beneath him didn't feel like groundit pulsed like a heartbeat, alive and hollow.
Then he saw him.
Renn Takashi, shackled to a jagged black pillar. His once-composed face was bruised and bloodied, his usually clear, aloof eyes glazed with pain. Chains of ethereal windtwisted and corruptedwrapped around his limbs, draining his strength.
Figures in cloaks stood in the shadows, whispering. He couldn't hear them, but every sound dug into his mind like shards of glass. Kaito tried to run, to scream, but the dream stilled him like stone. He could only watch.
"Help… him…" Kaito's voice echoed, even though his mouth didn't move.
Renn turned his head slowly, locking eyes with Kaito. In that instant, Kaito saw something he had never seen in Renn beforefear.
"They're… not done," Renn gasped. "He's coming… for you, Kaito…"
Suddenly, a blinding surge of dark wind blasted toward Kaito, and he screamed
He woke up.
Gasping. Eyes wide. Sweat drenching his body. The dream faded, but Renn's voice lingered like a ghost:
"He's coming… for you."
Kaito had awakened before dawn.
His breath was shallow, his heart pounding a rhythm that refused to slow. Though the morning light bled softly through the windowpanes, the images of his dream still clung to the edges of his mind like frost refusing to melt.
He sat in silence.
No words came only the ghostly echo of a scream that had never left his lips. The scream of a boy shackled to a pillar, not by metal, but by winds twisted into chains — chains that hissed with voices too ancient to understand.
And at the center of that vision… Renn.
"He's coming… for you, Kaito…"
Renn Takashi. The calm. The unreadable. The boy wrapped in an air of detached mystery. Kaito had always thought of him as untouchable the kind of person whose silence was stronger than most people's power.
But now… Kaito wasn't so sure.
He stepped into the school courtyard later that morning, his eyes scanning the crowd. And there he was standing beneath the cherry-blossom tree at the edge of the courtyard, hair gently rustling in the breeze, eyes closed as if listening to a song no one else could hear.
The wind around him was not normal.
It danced too carefully. It hesitated near his skin. It moved like it feared waking something buried deep within him.
Kaito approached, slowly, unsure of what to say. The dream still weighed heavily on his chest.
"Renn," he said softly.
The boy didn't open his eyes, but his voice was calm. "Couldn't sleep either?"
"…No."
A long pause. Then, as if sensing Kaito's struggle to speak, Renn opened his eyes. There was no surprise in them. No confusion.
Only a subtle pain he tried too hard to hide.
"You saw it," Renn whispered.
Kaito froze. "Saw what?"
Renn turned, the wind parting around his figure like reverent servants. "The past," he said simply. "A piece of it, at least. You should forget it."
"I can't," Kaito said. "Who were they? Those people—what did they do to you?"
Renn's smile was small, tired. "They are the reason I don't close my eyes too long. The reason I keep my Venin shackled."
"You're strong," Kaito said. "You can fight them."
"I'm not afraid of them," Renn said, his voice a cold hush. "I'm afraid of who I'd become if I didn't hold myself back."
And then, the wind around him began to stir — not violently, but with the warning of a storm that had once leveled nations.
Kaito didn't ask further. He didn't need to.
He knew one thing now: Renn Takashi was not a boy of the present. He was a relic of something forgotten… and something still hunting him.
Taru stepped forward, out of the shadows.
His footsteps were light, yet they echoed like thunder in the silent corridor.
Renn and Kaito turned sharply Kaito's eyes widening in surprise.
"Taru?"
The younger twin looked up, his white eyes calm as always, but a rare intensity flickered behind them like a storm quietly building behind placid skies.
"I wasn't following you," Taru said, voice low but steady. "Not at first."
Kaito blinked. "Then why ?"
Taru reached into his coat and pulled out a folded letter worn, aged, and sealed with the old insignia of the Phoenix Division, the elite branch of the Vanguard. Akira's seal.
"I found this… in the bag Father packed. The one with the Venin-forged weapons."
He looked down at the paper, then back at Kaito and Renn.
"It was hidden beneath the lining. Sealed. Almost like… he didn't want us to find it yet."
Kaito's throat tightened. "What does it say?"
Taru hesitated. His fingers trembled slightly just slightly as he unfolded the letter.
He took a breath, then read aloud:
"If you are reading this, then I'm no longer with you. This letter was not meant for both of you, but for you, Taru. There is something I kept hidden. Not because I did not love you, but because I could not bear the weight of your pain added to my own."
"You were not born in our home. You were born during war. Your parents my dearest friends entrusted you to me before they were killed. But they were not the only ones captured that day."
"Your sister… your true sister… was taken alive."
The words hung heavy in the air, each syllable dropping like lead.
Taru's voice wavered for the first time in years. "I don't know who she is. Or where. But if Father hid this for so long… then it must matter now."
Silence stretched across the corridor. Only the rustle of the letter remained, and the faint hum of Venin flowing dormant beneath their skin.
Renn turned away slightly, expression unreadable.
Kaito placed a hand on Taru's shoulder, voice hushed. "We'll find her. No matter what. You're not alone in this."
Taru met his brother's gaze. "And neither are you. If you're walking into danger, then I'm walking too. For Father. For our mother. For everyone we've lost."
For a moment, the three stood united not as students, not as boys but as warriors drawn by fate into a shadow far greater than themselves.
They didn't know what awaited them beyond the walls of the school… but the path had already begun.
Taru sat on the stone ledge beneath the moonlight, the letter from Akira still clutched in his hand.
But there was more.
Folded behind the parchment was a second, smaller page faded, almost brittle, as though time itself had been trying to erase it.
His breath caught in his throat as he opened it, the ink nearly vanished but still legible enough to decipher the name etched at the top in sharp, hurried strokes.
"Her name is Ayaka."
Kaito approached, brows furrowed. "What's that?"
Taru didn't answer at first. He read the next few lines in silence, then whispered:
"She's… my sister."
Kaito blinked. "You mean?"
Taru nodded. "Ayaka. The daughter of my real parents. She was alive when they died. Akira he wrote that she was taken by a faction from within the old Order. Not because of who she was… but because of what she was."
His voice became low, almost a whisper caught on the wind.
"She was born with a rare Venin… one that hadn't surfaced in over two centuries."
Kaito's eyes widened. "A bloodline ability?"
"No. Something deeper. She wasn't just using Venin. She was it."
Renn, silent until now, finally spoke. "Living Venin?"
Taru nodded slowly. "They called her the Conduit. A vessel capable of amplifying other people's Venin just by being near them. At the age of three, she absorbed a full-grown man's awakened Venin by accident. He never recovered."
The weight of those words sank deep into the silence between them.
Kaito clenched his fists. "So they took her to use her…"
"To weaponize her," Taru finished. "She's not just missing. She's imprisoned. Somewhere."
Renn folded his arms, gaze cold. "Then if we're chasing after my vengeance… we're chasing your sister too."
Taru stood. His aura shimmered faintly red flickers of flame entangled with arcs of crackling blue lightning.
He wasn't just the calm one anymore.
He was focused.
"If she's alive… I'll find her. And if they're using her powers to build something… they'll see what happens when you steal light from a storm."
The ancient bell tolled twice midnight.
The academy lay silent beneath a violet sky, shrouded in mist. The grand dormitories, once filled with muffled chatter and shifting dreams, were now tombs of quiet. Not even the crickets dared to stir.
Inside a low-roofed storage annex behind the west tower, a single lantern flickered.
Kaito stood at the center, arms crossed, firelight dancing in his eyes.
"If we're doing this… we vanish. Not even our friends can know."
Renn leaned against the far wall, arms folded, ever the calm specter. His silver-white hair glimmered in the light like a blade unsheathed.
"We leave no aura trail. No Venin leaks. No sounds. We're ghosts tonight."
Taru, kneeling beside a satchel stuffed with food, small weapons, and the letter from Akira, quietly zipped it shut. His long, blue hair brushed against his cheek, his eyes calm but glowing with resolve.
"I slipped a forged requisition letter into Miss Mizuki's file. Says we've been transferred for external training. It'll delay them by at least three days."
Renn raised an eyebrow. "Forged?"
Taru glanced up. "I had Erika help me. She's scary smart when you give her soda."
Kaito chuckled dryly, but the weight in his chest didn't lift.
"If anyone catches on, they'll stop us."
"They won't," Taru said. "By the time morning light touches this tower, we'll be gone."
Kaito walked to the window and stared at the academy grounds.
"What about Kobito? Himari? Rei? They'll wonder…"
Renn cut him off. "Then they'll wonder. But if we fail this mission, they won't have a school to wonder in."
"Agreed," Taru said. "They're safer not knowing."
Silence.
Kaito turned to face themhis two closest allies, bound now not by shared classes or dormitories, but by fire, vengeance, and blood ties old and new.
"Then we move tonight."
"East exit," Renn said. "Old courtyard gate is broken. No patrols since the sports festival ended."
"Then that's our way out," Kaito nodded. "Let's not look back."
They stepped into the night like shadows torn from the moonlightthree figures moving under cloaks, past stone walls, slipping through the garden where Kobito once stood in silence.
Past the sparring grounds where Shouta once clashed with Taru.
Past the fountain where Kaito once stared at his reflection, unsure of what power slumbered inside.
And as they reached the broken courtyard gate, Renn paused.
He looked up at the star-swept sky and whispered to himself:
"They took everything from me once. They won't take again."
They vanished into the fog.
Unseen.
Unheard.
Unforgiven.
The trio moved swiftly through the forest beyond the academy's eastern boundary moonlight threading between tree limbs like fragile silver webs. Their footsteps fell in synchronized silence, save for the occasional rustle of leaves and the whisper of the wind, which always seemed to stir more strongly when Renn was tense.
"We're an hour away from civilization,"renn murmured. "The nearest town is Waka-no-Mura, just off the cliffs. It has a Seeker's Archive my father used it once to track an outlaw Venin."
Kaito, still quiet, nodded. His fingers tightened around the strap of his pack.
"And you think there might be records… about your sister?" Renn asked gently, his tone surprisingly soft.
Taru slowed a bit, his white eyes reflecting the moonlight. "If she had rare powers, someone would've noticed. Someone would've written about it. I need to know who took her. Why."
Kaito clenched his fists. "We'll find her."
But behind his words was a silent fire. Why had Akira never told him? Why had his mother died without revealing the truth? Questions spun in his mind like a storm, but before he could voice them
A branch snapped.
Not theirs.
All three halted. Renn immediately raised his hand, his eyes narrowing.
"We're not alone."
From the darkness ahead, six figures emerged, cloaked in deep gray. Each bore a crescent sigil three talons spiraling into a hollow circle.
Taru's breath caught. "That's them… Hollow Gale."
Kaito instinctively reached for his short blade.
The lead figure stepped forward. He removed his hood—his face gaunt, his eyes like cracked stone. Scars traced his jaw, and his hair was white like snowstorm ash.
Renn's body stiffened.
"togaki…"
The figure smiled cruelly.
"Little brother."
Kaito's heart sank. This… this was Renn's brother?
Renn didn't move, didn't blink. "I told myself I'd kill you the next time we met."
"You can try," the man replied, voice venomous with amusement. "But I wonder… do you still scream the same way?"
Taru stepped forward, but Renn held a hand out.
"This is my fight."
Kaito frowned. "You sure?"
"If I fall, then it was never my destiny to rise."
Without warning, the two clashed. Not Venin only steel and fist and years of buried agony. Renn moved like the wind, almost too fast to track. His brother blocked with frightening precision, matching him blow for blow.
Every strike was personal.
Every dodge, a memory.
Every punch, a scar reborn.
Kaito and Taru could do nothing but watch.
But as the two fought, the remaining Hollow Gale members closed in.
You take two,Taru said to Kaito, pulling out his twin training rods crackling faintly with suppressed sparks. "I'll take the rest."
They didn't wait.
The night exploded in motion clashes, fists, parries. But it was Renn's fight that stole the world.
His brother struck him in the ribs, sent him crashing into a tree. Blood streaked Renn's mouth, but he stood again.
"You remember what you did to me," he whispered.
"I remember teaching you strength," his brother replied.
"No," Renn said. "You taught me cruelty. This… is mine now."
And for the first time, Kaito saw itnot just the cold, cool boy who sat in class with distant eyes. But the broken soldier beneath. A boy forged in the flames of torment.
And he stood tall.
Renn struck back with all the rage of a caged storm.
And the Hollow Gale began to fall back.
The forest was burning with tension, but no fire touched its leaves.
Kaito struck the last Hollow Gale member with a brutal uppercut, sending the man staggering back, his jaw bloodied and dislocated. Taru, panting but composed, stood beside him—his rods faintly glowing, their sparks flickering like dying embers.
Renn had his brother on his knees.
"Still think I'm the scared little boy you locked in the cellar" Renn asked, breathing heavily.
His brother chuckled, blood dripping from his chin. "No… you've grown. That's why I'm leaving you alive. Because next time… you'll come looking for me."
"Don't couunt on leaving next time," Renn said coldly.
With a flick of his finger, Renn released a gust of wind not powerful enough to kill, but enough to send his brother tumbling backward. The others scrambled to him, retreating into the trees without another word, disappearing like smoke on water.
Silence returned.
Only the heaving of breath, the rustling of disturbed leaves, and the quiet thrum of barely-contained Venin filled the air.
Kaito dropped to his knees, exhausted. "What was that?"
Taru answered between breaths. "Hollow Gale. They took my sister. I know it now… They didn't come for you, Renn. Not just you."
Renn looked up, cold sweat running down his neck. "They're watching more than we thought."
"Then we don't go back," Kaito said firmly, standing again. His eyes, though tired, glowed with determination. "We push forward. Find them. And find her."
The three stood side by side, bruised, battared—but unshaken.
The forest behind them whispered of danger.
But the path ahead shimmered with resolve.
And far off in the distance…
a single mountain stood, black against the stars
with answers buried in its heart.