Aiden stepped out of the Hunter Association facility and into the open air.
The cold hit him first. A sharp breeze cutting through his jacket, crisp and biting.
The city stretched out before him—towering buildings, neon signs flickering, the distant hum of traffic. Everything looked normal.
But it wasn't.
He stood still for a long moment, letting it sink in.
He had walked these streets before. Not as a Hunter. Not as a fighter.
As a blind man.
Every step, every curb, every shift in the air—he had learned them through memory, sound, and instinct.
Now?
Now he could see.
And it was too much.
His eyes darted between details he had never known existed.
The fine cracks running along the edges of buildings. The way the neon signs buzzed with faint electrical pulses. The way the dust hung in the air, drifting in slow, unnatural patterns.
It wasn't just sight.
His mind registered things faster than it should.
Aiden's breath hitched as he turned his head—and the world lagged behind.
The delay was small, barely noticeable, but he felt it.
Like reality itself was struggling to keep up with him.
His stomach churned.
A passing cab rolled to a stop ahead of him. Aiden wasn't looking at the driver—but he already knew the man had tensed his grip on the wheel, his foot shifting to ease into the brake seconds before it happened.
He wasn't just seeing it.
He knew it.
Aiden exhaled slowly, taking a hesitant step forward.
The city moved around him.
People walked, talked, shouted, laughed. A normal night, a normal world. Oblivious to the fact that a man who shouldn't be able to see was standing in the middle of it, trying to convince himself he still belonged here.
The Hunter Association had let him go.
But something inside him knew—
They were watching.
And worse than that?
So was something else.
Aiden wandered for hours.
Not because he had anywhere to go. Not because he had a plan.
Because he was waiting.
For what, he didn't know.
But something in his gut told him that if he just kept moving, if he just kept looking, something would happen.
He cut through side streets and back alleys, moving on instinct.
It should've felt reckless, walking without purpose. But the strange clarity in his vision made it feel… natural.
Like he was following a path already laid out before him.
Aiden stopped in a narrow alley, rubbing a hand over his face.
He was being stupid. He needed rest. He needed food. He needed—
The air shifted.
Aiden froze.
His breath hitched as something warped in the space ahead of him.
A ripple in the air, faint, almost invisible, like heat distortion.
But it wasn't heat.
It was wrong.
The space in front of him wavered, bending like glass under pressure, like something was trying to push through.
Aiden's pulse spiked.
The same feeling from the Rift crawled up his spine.
Something wasn't right.
Then—
A flicker. A glitch.
The world cracked open.
A transparent screen snapped into place in front of his vision.
[SYSTEM WARNING: CALIBRATION INCOMPLETE.]
Aiden flinched.
The text wasn't just floating in front of him—it felt burned into his skull.
It pulsed.
Glitched.
Shifted between words and something else.
[VISIONARY CODE: PARTIAL ACTIVATION.]
[SEEK THE SOURCE.]
Aiden's breath caught.
His fingers twitched at his sides, muscles locking up.
This—this wasn't the Hunter System.
It wasn't like anything he'd ever heard of.
The screen flickered.
Distorted.
Twisted in on itself.
And for the first time since leaving the Rift—
Aiden remembered the figure in the dark.
The thing that had spoken to him.
Its voice—low and hollow—rippled through his mind like an echo from something ancient.
"Wake up, Seer."
Aiden's stomach turned to ice.
He had thought it was a hallucination. A fever dream.
Something his dying brain had conjured up in the last moments of the Rift.
But now?
Now he wasn't so sure.
Aiden clenched his fists, heart hammering in his chest.
This wasn't over.
It had never been over.
Something had changed inside him.
Something that wasn't supposed to exist.