The license was barely a day old in Kaen's hands when the world turned sharp again.
Zaban's sky cracked open that night — not from a storm, but from whispers.
Killua was the first to hear it. Trained assassin instincts bristled before his senses even understood why.
"Do you feel that?" he muttered.
Kaen nodded.
They stood on the hotel rooftop, staring into the dusk.
"It's like… the air's afraid."
⸻
An explosion tore through the hotel lobby.
Walls buckled. Glass shattered.
Smoke billowed upward like a phantom trying to escape its coffin.
Kaen didn't even flinch.
His body moved before his mind finished catching up — down the stairwell, three steps at a time, aura alive.
Kurapika was already drawing his chains.
Leorio yelled, "We JUST got certified! Can we have one day off!?"
And then came the scream.
A voice without a throat.
"Kaen of the Mind Palace."
"The World Design Tribunal rejects your existence."
"You will be unmade."
⸻
They stepped from the smoke like shadows peeled from the edge of a dream.
The Hushed Ones.
Faceless figures in glassy-black suits, blank masks cracked down the middle like empty skulls.
Each one radiated Nen not like people… but like concepts.
They didn't walk.
They simply appeared.
"Emergency combat class: S-level conceptual hunters," Kurapika said, wide-eyed.
"They're not part of the Hunter Association."
"They're outside the world order."
Kaen stepped forward.
"Good," he said. "I've always wanted to see what was beyond the map."
⸻
One of the Hushed Ones raised a hand.
"Reality is sacred. You will not bend it."
Another whispered:
"Imagination is deviation. Correction must be absolute."
Kaen tilted his head.
"You afraid of dreams?"
They responded by firing.
Not bullets.
Not Nen blasts.
Edits.
Visual slashes in the air — like someone was dragging scissors through existence itself.
Kaen dodged the first one. It sliced a lamp in half — not physically, but in context.
The lamp flickered… then simply vanished. As if it had never been invented.
"They're erasing objects from memory!"
Killua yelled, flipping to the side.
One of the slashes grazed his arm — but there was no blood.
Instead, he gasped.
"I forgot how to breathe for a second!"
⸻
Kaen stopped retreating.
He stepped into the center of the ruined lobby.
The Hushed Ones closed in.
And Kaen whispered:
"Mind Palace…"
His aura trembled.
Reality paused.
"Sub-Temple: The Archive of the Impossible."
FLASH.
The world shifted.
Colors inverted.
Time hiccuped.
Kaen stood in a chamber built from stone and dream.
Scrolls and blueprints spiraled overhead — floating blueprints of imaginary inventions.
And there, at the center, he reached toward a symbol burning in the air.
New Ability Manifested: "Dream Manuscript – The Law That Isn't."
A scroll of pure thought unraveled before him, its text blank—waiting for belief.
Kaen wrote.
"I exist beyond edit. My dreams cannot be redacted."
⸻
Back in the hotel…
The Mind Palace aura pulsed outward.
One of the Hushed Ones sliced at Kaen with a memory-erasing strike — meant to unwrite his ability itself.
Didn't work.
The edit fizzled. Like trying to erase fire with fog.
Kaen walked forward, slowly.
"You want the world to stay small."
"I want it to grow teeth."
He struck.
Not with fists.
With belief.
His aura surged into the shape of a lance — made entirely from imagined resistance.
He drove it through the chest of one of the Hushed Ones.
It didn't bleed.
It shattered.
Like a lie exposed.
⸻
The others hesitated.
Kaen's voice echoed, not from his mouth, but through their memory.
"I am not fiction."
"I am the truth you tried to bury."
⸻
Kurapika's chains snared another, binding it to an oath of reality it couldn't fulfill.
Leorio punched one across the face, breaking its mask — and inside was nothing but void.
Killua flashed through the air, electricity crackling through a scream.
Together, the four didn't just defend—
They erased the erasers.
Until only Kaen remained, staring down the last Hushed One.
It tried to retreat.
Kaen reached out—
"Mind Palace: The Dream Lock."
Chains of golden light lashed from the sky.
"You don't get to flee the future."
He closed his fist.
And ended it.
⸻
Silence.
Smoke cleared.
The hotel lobby was in ruins.
But outside…
The world had not been unmade.
Dreams still breathed.
And Kaen stood beneath the stars, holding the Hunter License in one hand — and the blank Dream Manuscript in the other.
Kurapika exhaled. "That wasn't an assassination. That was an ideological purge."
Leorio muttered, "Someone wants him gone because he's not just a Hunter…"
"He's a possibility."
Kaen looked at them all.
Grinned.
"Then let's give the world more possibilities."
⸻
To be continued in Chapter 20 – Kaen's Choice: The Path of Wonders