Riku Sakamaki, a high school student, wakes up in a world where the sky glows purple. He has been transported to this strange place with no idea how or why. The first person he meets is a silver-haired girl named Vestia Zeta, an agent of a secret organization with the codename V.7. She wears key-shaped accessories and has access to data from the virtual world. Cool and mysterious on the outside, she also has a sarcastic, sometimes clumsy side that makes her oddly charming.
"[cold]You'll die her
Vestia Zeta: Heir of the Black Key - The boy who fell into the purple sky
Before he knew it, the sky was purple.
The familiar morning road he walked every day suddenly twisted and warped.
The next moment, Sakamaki Riku found himself standing still.
Spread out before him was a cluster of crumbling high-rise buildings. The walls were covered in a crystalline material of white and pale purple, and the ground was thick with glowing moss he had never seen before.
"Where... am I?"
His voice echoed strangely.
Riku was eighteen. A completely ordinary high school student in a black gakuran uniform. He stood 172 centimeters tall. His short black hair had a bit of bedhead from the morning, and his dark brown eyes reflected his surroundings with unease. His frame was lean but toned from athletics. His strong suit had always been the courage to take that first step into anything.
But even so, this was—
"Hey hey, you've gotta be kidding me..."
He pulled his smartphone from his pocket. The screen was pitch black. No matter how many times he pressed the power button, nothing responded.
He glanced at his wristwatch.
The hands were spinning at an impossible speed.
"What the hell... it's gone crazy."
Riku's voice trembled.
There was no sun in the sky. And yet, purple light poured down faintly from the entire sky. It was bright, but a sickening kind of bright. Even the direction of shadows wouldn't stay fixed.
He looked into the distance. Tower-like pillars about thirty meters tall rose up in great numbers. From their tips, ripple-like light was being emitted intermittently.
Riku drew a deep breath.
The air was cold. It stung deep in his nose.
"Calm down. First... calm down."
Even as he told himself that, his heart pounded violently deep in his chest.
Back in elementary school, there had been a fire in his neighborhood. A friend had been trapped on the second floor, and while the adults panicked, Riku alone had charged inside and rescued him. His head had gone completely blank then, too. But his body had moved.
That feeling was coming back to him now.
"Gather information. If I walk, there's bound to be something."
He told himself that and took a step forward.
Rubble crunched underfoot.
As he walked, Riku remembered the dream from yesterday.
In the dream, he had stood before a massive black door.
On the back of his right hand, a crest in the shape of a black key had appeared.
And then, someone's voice had spoken.
'Come.'
He couldn't remember it clearly. But he had definitely been called.
At that moment, the back of his right hand burned hot.
"Hot—!"
Riku hastily looked at his right hand.
It throbbed with pain. A heat like a burn.
As he stared at it, he could see a faint black pattern showing through the skin on the back of his hand. A shape like a key. The same one he'd seen in the dream.
"No way... I thought it was just a dream."
A chill ran down his spine.
This was real.
He had been called by something.
Fear and curiosity churned together in his chest.
'Come.'
Whose voice had that been?
As he walked, lost in thought, he heard something from deep within the ruins ahead.
A low rustling...
Like the sound of insect wings, a low murmuring.
Riku stopped in his tracks.
From the shadow of a building, it emerged.
Black haze.
Like smoke, like ink, a shapeless black mass. About the size of a dog. And there were several of them.
"What... is that?"
The mass of haze moved sluggishly, as if craning its neck around.
It was looking this way.
No—it didn't even have eyes.
But he could feel it.
He was being watched.
Run—an alarm blared in his head.
Riku broke into a sprint.
Kicking through rubble, weaving between collapsed buildings, just trying to get far away.
His heart hammered wildly, and he gasped for breath.
"Dammit, what the hell are those things?!"
He looked back as he ran.
They were chasing him.
And they were fast.
The haze slid toward him, closing in.
"Way too fast—!"
He panicked.
That's why he didn't notice the rubble at his feet.
His ankle caught on a stone with a sharp jolt.
His momentum threw his body forward.
"Gah—!"
He tumbled across the ground, his vision spinning.
He tried to stand, and a searing pain shot through his right leg.
He'd twisted his ankle.
He couldn't move.
The masses of haze slowly drew closer.
Surrounding him.
Watching him.
And then, as if sensing his fear, their bodies began to swell.
The haze that had been the size of a dog ballooned before his eyes, growing to the size of a cow.
"Wh... you've gotta be kidding..."
Riku's mind went completely blank.
But that was exactly when it happened.
Because his mind went blank, his body moved.
Just like that time with the fire.
Riku forced his body upright.
His ankle screamed. He ignored it.
Escape.
He tried to take a step.
But it was too late.
The haze monsters lunged at him all at once.
Something like a black mouth filled his vision.
I'm going to die.
That was the moment he thought it.
The back of his right hand exploded.
No—not so much an explosion as light overflowing.
Black light.
The air boomed with a heavy thud.
The surroundings were swallowed by a black wave.
The haze monsters were obliterated without a trace.
The light didn't stop.
It slammed into the wall of a nearby ruined building from the outside with tremendous force.
The wall surface blew apart.
Shards of glass and crystal rained down like a storm.
Riku himself was blown back too.
His back slammed into the ground with a heavy impact, and his vision went white.
"Guh... ugh..."
His ears rang.
All the sounds of the world felt distant.
A few seconds later, the pain came rushing back.
Riku sat up, breathing ragged.
He looked at the back of his right hand.
The black crest was just then fading away, growing faint.
"That just now... did I do that...?"
He surveyed the scene before him.
The ruins within a radius of several dozen meters had been destroyed, scorched as if burned.
He had done this.
With a power that was supposed to protect people, he had destroyed something.
Heat welled up behind Riku's eyes.
"Dammit... what is this...?"
Tears threatened to spill.
But this wasn't the time to cry.
He roughly wiped his face and stood up.
His ankle throbbed.
Limping, he approached the spot where the haze had been.
There, two black crystalline objects lay on the ground.
Strange stones, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
"These... did those things leave them behind?"
He didn't know.
But he picked them up absently.
They were cool to the touch, and somehow, he felt like they were pulsing.
That was when it happened.
The light from the sky dimmed, fading quickly.
Riku looked up.
In the blink of an eye, the surroundings grew dark.
The purple glow shifted to a faint twilight like just before dawn, and only the light from the distant towers remained strong.
"It's... turning to night."
The world had transitioned into its dark phase.
Everything around him fell silent.
Only the sound of the wind blew through with a hollow whistle.
Dark.
Terrifying.
But it was different from before.
The back of his right hand still held warmth.
Riku gripped the stones tightly.
"I was... called here."
Someone had called him to this place.
They had given him the power of that key.
He didn't know why.
But he was certain of one thing.
This was no coincidence.
"I've got no choice but to go."
Riku began walking along the faint path lit by the glowing moss.
From far away, he could hear that low murmuring again.
A swarm of noise.
But Riku didn't stop.
His power might go out of control again.
That fear was certainly there.
But more than that—
He felt he had to meet whatever had called him.
Because this—
This was his problem.
The wind whistled.
The purple sky sank into the darkness of the dark phase.
A lone boy walked through the ruined city.
On his back, the weight of the black key, and the presence of someone he had yet to meet.
In Riku's hand, the two black crystals quietly grew warm.
That warmth, like a pulse, small and certain, overlapped with his heartbeat.
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