"Who… is that?"
Before me stood a lone silhouette near the edge of a cliff, motionless beneath the pouring rain. Thunder roared across the sky as heavy clouds swallowed the sun, casting the world in a dim, somber light.
"…?"
The figure slowly turned their head toward me.
Their lips moved, whispering something I couldn't understand. It sounded distorted—like a broken transmission drowned in static, preventing their words from ever reaching me.
".h...d...r.?"
What are you saying?... Is what I wanted to ask but for some reason the sound of my voice wouldn't come out.
Stranger still, I couldn't move.
My body refused to respond, as if I had been trapped inside it, forced to remain still while everything unfolded before me.
The rain continued to fall. Thunder echoed through the sky and the silhouette kept speaking. Yet no matter how long I stared… their appearance never became clearer.
They remained nothing more than a shadow.
Then, suddenly, my body began to move on its own. My arm slowly lifted, raising a sword toward the figure standing before me. Yet even as the blade pointed in their direction, I could feel the hesitation in my hands.
Why?
Why was I hesitating? I didn't understand. I didn't know who this person was, nor why my body was acting without my will. And yet, deep within me, something resisted the act of striking them down. My grip tightened around the weapon, but my heart wavered.
Because somehow, this person meant something to me. I didn't know what they were to me, whether a friend or an enemy, but one thing was certain: they were not a stranger. Somehow, in a way I could not understand, they mattered.
For some reason, even without seeing their face, I could tell… they were smiling. It wasn't a warm smile, but a chilling one—something that sent a sharp pang of pain through my chest.
The distorted voice reached me again, warped by that same static, yet there was something within it that felt almost… reassuring. Beneath the broken sound was a faint trace of sadness.
Then my vision began to twist. No... it wasn't just my sight. The world itself was distorting. I looked around as everything slowly crumbled, the surroundings dissolving into drifting dust.
Before it was all gone, I turned back to the silhouette one last time.
"Till we meet again."
And just before my vision faded completely, for reasons I couldn't explain… their final words were suddenly clear.
[You have "AWAKEN"]