If Siven wanted him dead, he would die. If someone like him even noticed Adrian as a threat it would be over.
No drama. No duel. Just an ending.
"Then I can't be a threat yet."
He slowed the bike as he turned toward the residential districts, shadows stretching longer than they should've in the golden light.
"Stay quiet. Stay useful. Stay alive."
He wasn't the type to delude himself with fantasies of power. The Law of Contradiction had already taught him the cost of belief.
So he would do what liars did best hide inside truth.
The city drifted past him in streaks of gold and glass. The sun still high, still pinned to the sky painted every building with the same false glow. There were no shadows. No shift in warmth. No passage of time. Just light, stretched like a sheet over everything.
He passed shuttered stores, halted trains, news screens looping stale headlines. Everyone was pretending it was fine.
But everyone also knew.
The president hadn't given them comfort. He had given them obedience.
Adrian turned off the main road and let the engine settle into a quiet hum as he approached his house.
He parked neatly at the curb. Dismounted. His coat hung still in the golden breeze, and his reflection didn't show in the windows.
He stepped through the front door without a sound.
The moment the door closed behind him, he felt it tension. The house wasn't quiet in the peaceful sense. It was silent like a held breath.
The living room lights were on. The television was off. No music. No idle conversation. Just stillness.
His family was all gathered.
Mira sat on the couch, her hands wrapped around a mug of untouched tea. Lira curled against her side, blanket pulled tight. Tessa leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a shadow in her gaze. Harold sat near the window, unreadable.
They all looked up when he entered.
"You're home," Mira said, softly.
"I am," Adrian replied. His voice was calm. Measured. He slipped off his shoes at the entry.
"You were out for hours," Tessa said. "While the sun stayed exactly where it was."
"I was verifying something," Adrian said as he stepped into the living room. "I needed to see how far it went."
"How far what went?" Lira asked. Her voice cracked a little.
Adrian didn't answer immediately. He sat in the armchair and took a breath.
"The sun hasn't moved in nearly fourteen hours," Tessa said sharply. "That's not a glitch. That's not 'unusual light.' That's a break in the world."
"I know," Adrian said quietly.
"Then tell us," Mira said. "You work in a Realizer-run hospital. If something's happening, we deserve to know."
Adrian looked at each of them his mother's worry, Lira's fear, Harold's silence, Tessa's demand for truth.
He nodded.
"Fine."
He set his hands on his knees, posture relaxed.
"The event is Law-level," he said. "Temporal, possibly metaphysical. It's not a natural occurrence, and it's not mechanical. We're dealing with something structural."
"In plain language," Tessa said.
"It's not the sun," Adrian said. "It's reality that's stuck."
Mira slowly lowered her mug. "And the government?"
"Siven made his move," Adrian said. "He appeared in the sky above every region. Not a recording. A live projection, mapped into the atmosphere."
"He said it was under control," Lira whispered.
"It isn't," Adrian said. "But it is contained for now."
Tessa's voice was quiet, but sharp. "You believe him?"
"I believe he could erase the sun and bring it back. And I believe he did it to make a point, not to reassure us."
Mira's lips parted slightly. "Why would he do that?"
"To remind us that it doesn't belong to us anymore," Adrian said. "That if there was a Law of Darkness, it's not in public hands now. He's telling us the world runs because he says it does."
The room went silent again.
Lira's fingers tightened in her blanket. "So what do we do?"
"We wait," Adrian said. "And we don't attract attention."
Mira's brow creased. "Attention?"
"If someone's manipulating Laws this openly," Adrian said, "then everyone else Realizer or not is either watching, hiding, or preparing. The smartest thing we can do is nothing."
Tessa looked unconvinced. "And how long do we wait before nothing turns into a mistake?"
Adrian met her eyes. "We wait until someone like me gives the word."
She flinched at that. The implication. The admission.
"I'm not trying to prosecute," Tessa said. "But we deserve to know what we're living through."
"You are living through a moment," Adrian said, softly. "One moment, stretched longer than it should be. And yes, it's terrifying. But the second we start pulling apart every thread—"
He snapped his fingers once.
"—we risk unraveling more our live"
They all fell silent.
Harold finally spoke. "If something changes, you'll tell us?"
Adrian turned to him. "Yes."
"You'll warn us before anyone else?"
"Yes."
Even Tessa couldn't argue with the way he said it.
Mira's voice was quieter now. "You'll keep us safe?"
"I already am."
There was nothing grand in the way he said it. No arrogance. Just certainty.
Lira slowly let her shoulders fall. "Okay."
"Thank you," Mira whispered, voice cracking.
Tessa leaned back against the wall, arms still crossed, but she didn't speak again.
Adrian stood.
"I'm going to rest," he said. "You should too. We'll need clarity tomorrow."
And without waiting for a reply, he climbed the stairs.
He didn't exhale until he reached the top.
The light from the hallway window poured in golden and unchanging.
The sun still hadn't moved.
And somewhere beneath that light, Malrick Siven still watched the world like it belonged to him.
"Not yet," Adrian thought. "But eventually, I'll rise too. And when I do… I won't turn the sun off. I'll change the rules that built it."
He opened the door to his bedroom.
And paused.
The air inside was wrong.
Too cold.
Too still.
A weight settled on his chest as he stepped forward and black mist curled up from beneath the bed.
The light in the hallway didn't prepare him.
Adrian stepped into his bedroom and froze.
Mist.
A dense, creeping haze filled the room. It coiled along the floor like it had risen from somewhere deep beneath the house. Not smoke. Not fog. Something thicker. Older. It moved with no light to catch it, no shadow to outline its shape. Just presence.
The lamps were on. The room was well-lit. But the mist didn't care. It slid through the brightness as if none of it mattered.
And the smell...
Not rot. Not decay. But the memory of those things. Cold metal. Ash. Open earth.
This is death aura.
His eyes adjusted immediately not physically, but as a Realizer. His vision refined itself, highlighting the aura with instinctual clarity.
The mist wasn't natural.
It was Hollow Grave aligned.
His breathing slowed as he scanned the room.
There beneath the bed. The mist was strongest there. Denser. Focused.
He crouched and peered underneath.
And there it was.
The shoebox. Ordinary. Forgotten. The one he'd stored the Lost Echo in without a second thought.
Now, it pulsed.
Black mist bled softly from beneath the plastic lid, trailing along the floor in silent spirals. Not aggressively. Not violently.
Just... constantly.
He reached beneath the bed and pulled the box out slowly, careful not to disrupt the aura.
The closer it got to him, the heavier the air became. Not physically spiritually. Like the atmosphere had been rewritten.
And then
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Would you like to inspect the artifact?
Adrian stared at the prompt for a long second.
His hand hovered over the box, lips parting slightly.
"…What the fuck," he muttered.
The shoebox has become an artifact.
The mist curled softly between his fingers not touching him, but aware.
I left the Lost Echo inside a shoebox for two weeks.
No wards. No bindings. No vacuum seal or lock.
Just a standard cardboard box with a blue plastic lid. Tucked under my bed like a spare pair of winter shoes.
And now it's mutated.
It sounds absurd when I say it aloud and I haven't even said it aloud yet. Just repeating it internally like a absurd lies.
I bound a fragment of a Rank 7 Realizer's soul. I stuffed it inside a civilian-grade container and forgot about it while I got a haircut and tried on new shirts.
And now the box breathes.
Not metaphorically. Not in the poetic way a haunted house breathes. This thing inhales. Exhales. It curls mist into the room as if it has lungs and memory.
What did I expect?
It was a Lost Echo. A piece of someone who walked the Law of Death to its seventh step. It wasn't a tool. It wasn't an item. It was a presence broken, yes, but not lifeless. Still capable of influence. Still trying to define itself.
And I gave it nothing.
No purpose. No shape. Just space.
A blank room and silence. For two weeks.
And in return, it did exactly what Realizers do. It adapted.
It reshaped the only thing it could reach. The only object dumb enough to sit still for it.
The shoebox.
The fucking shoebox.
Not a weapon. Not a blade. Not a staff. Just paper and plastic and disuse. That was enough. Death doesn't need permission. It only needs proximity.
I didn't forge an artifact.
I let one happen.
And now I'm standing in a room where the shadows are gone, and the light is wrong, and there's a cursed object humming softly from inside my desk drawer because I didn't store an Echo in the scripture when I should have.