Chapter 1: The Glitch

The coffee at Lumi’s Diner tasted like battery acid and failed dreams.

Kaiser stared at the engineering textbook on the grease-stained table. The equations swam together, a cruel mockery of every failed attempt he’d made at life. Static. Everything felt like static—his bank account balance, his GPA .

“You’re staring again,” a voice drawled.

Kaiser didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look up. To everyone else, he muttered to himself like a loner. To him, Kai was the only thing real. 

“I’m studying,” Kaiser whispered, his voice cracking.

“Nope, you’re just reading instead of understanding,” Kai said. The figure leaned over the table, translucent and predatory, eyes glowing faintly. “You’re just glaring at the page like it personally owes you money.”

A phantom finger flicked the center of his forehead. Nothing actually touched him, of course. Kai couldn’t touch anything in the real world. But Kaiser still flinched out of habit.

“Shut up,” Kaiser muttered, rubbing the spot.

The diner door slammed open, rattling the windows. A figure lunged in, fists swinging. The man was tall, eyes wild, and he moved with the kind of reckless confidence only fools possessed.

Kaiser sighed. Finally, some action.

 The fight was chaos compressed into seconds. Chairs toppled. Coffee splashed like molten lava. Kaiser dodged a wild punch, countered with a sweeping kick that sent the attacker sprawling into the table. He moved with honed precision, instincts sharpened by years of scrappy street fights and MMA training, all without touching magic.

“Really?” Kai’s voice hissed. "You make it look too easy."

 Kaiser’s lips curled into a half-smile. He finished with a clean uppercut that left the man groaning on the floor. Not dead, not even close, but decisively beaten. He didn’t wait for applause.

Kaiser grabbed his bag and stepped outside. The morning air hit his face—clean, cold, and entirely too normal after the chaos inside. He took a deep breath and started walking home.

Then the world wobbled.

Beneath his feet, the concrete cracked. A jagged rift tore open beneath him, gray and jagged, pulsing like it had teeth. He barely had time to scream before the void swallowed him.

“Kaiser! What the hell—!” Kai shouted, but even his voice couldn’t pierce the darkness.

Gravity dissolved, sounds warped, and the city vanished. His senses were stripped to raw panic and instinct. He flailed, but the rift’s pull was merciless. The last thing he felt was the cold void wrapping around him, dragging him into a world he hadn’t been invited to.

And then, silence.

He had no idea something ancient and hungry had already caught his scent.