Era: 2049.12 – Original Line | Location: CAUSA, Fractal Zone-0 | Status: Initial Activation
They say power changes a man.
But that's a lie.
This power… it revealed me.
When I signed, I expected weapons, gadgets, lofty speeches.
Instead, they led me into an empty room.
No walls. Just... white.
A suspended void. Silent.
And then a voice. Not a human voice.
Something older. Vaster.
> "You have accepted. The thread is cast."
I felt a pull.
Like something yanked me by the back of the skull.
Then… visions.
Memories that weren't mine.
Battles in cities that didn't exist.
Dead languages I could suddenly understand.
And that strange sensation of being... split.
> "You are an Emboîteur, Hunter Ikaris. A Walker of Causality.
You can link gifts, fuse abilities like fragments of stars."
And suddenly, it appeared.
A drone. Floating before me.
Smooth, black, etched with shifting symbols.
It beat like a heart.
— "This is your Fracture Weapon. It will take the form you need. A sword, a gun, a scout."
— "And it absorbs powers?"
— "It binds them. But be warned: every link has a price."
When I took hold of it, I saw.
Invisible lines, everywhere.
Chains of cause, effect, decisions.
Everything was connected.
And I… could walk between them.
That's when I understood what it meant to be a Walker.
I don't chase people.
I chase consequences.
---
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the complex…
Another.
A man, standing before a rupture in matter.
He didn't know what he was yet.
He remembered fire.
Screams.
Pain.
Hair red like embers. Eyes gold, burning like twin stars.
He had lost everything.
But he still stood.
They called him Phoenix.
He hadn't signed.
He had been chosen.
> "You burned… but you survived. This fire is yours now."
His body lit up.
Ancient patterns. Marks of rebirth.
And before him, three drones appeared.
— "These are yours. Shapes of memory and metal. They obey your will. You can shift them, merge them, send them out."
— "And if I lose them?"
— "They will rise again. As you do."
His power wasn't Hunter's.
He didn't bind.
He consumed, rebuilt, commanded.
> "Your name is Phoenix. You are a weapon reborn at every fracture."
---
That day, two Walkers were born.
They did not yet know each other.
But Causality had already bound them.
And somewhere, in the shadow between two realities,
a figure watched them.
Unmoving.
Unblinking.
The Observer.