The Boy Who Borrowed Tomorrow.

The city of Elaris believed in only one thing: power.

Every child who turned sixteen stood before the Soul Mirror to receive their Mark. Fire, lightning, healing, strength—there were countless abilities, ranked from F to S. The stronger your Mark, the higher your place in society.

Today was Kurosaki Ren's sixteenth birthday.

He stood in the great hall, hundreds of eyes watching him. The Soul Mirror loomed before him, black and endless. Ren placed his hand on its surface.

The mirror went dark.

Then, carved in shadow, the result appeared:

NULL

Silence.

Then laughter.

"Useless," someone whispered.

"Waste of space."

"Sixteen years of training for nothing."

Ren lowered his head. He had heard these words before. For sixteen years, they had been his name. He turned and walked out of the hall as the laughter followed him like a shadow.

That night, he didn't go home.

He wandered the empty streets of the Lower District, where no one cared about a NULL boy. The streetlamps flickered. The air grew cold.

Then, at exactly midnight, every clock in the city stopped.

The moon vanished. The sky turned pure black, starless and empty. The streetlamps died all at once.

And in the middle of an empty street, a door appeared.

It stood alone—no walls, no frame—made of dark wood that seemed to drink the light. Words were carved across its surface:

"The weakness you were born with is the power that will decide the fate of the world."

Ren approached it. His fingers trembled.

He touched the door.

Darkness swallowed him whole.

When Ren opened his eyes, he stood in a world that looked like Elaris, but wrong. The buildings stretched too tall. The sky was a void. And everywhere he looked, he saw faces.

Thousands of them.

All identical.

All his.

Then one figure stepped forward.

Ren froze.

The stranger had his face. His voice. The same scar beneath his left eye.

"Who are you?" Ren whispered.

The man smiled sadly. "I'm you."

Before Ren could speak, the stranger pressed a black pocket watch into his hand. Its face glowed with crimson numbers:

183 DAYS

"In 183 days," the future Ren said, "the world ends. And the only person who can change it is you."

He disappeared.

A blue light appeared before Ren's eyes:

[SOUL MARK: NULL]

[ABILITY: UNKNOWN]

[LEVEL: 1]

Then another message:

[WARNING: Your ability is not to steal another person's power.]

[Your ability is to bring possibilities from the future into the present.]

Ren stared at the words, understanding slowly dawning on him.

His weakness had never been the absence of power.

NULL meant he had no fixed form. No limits. He could become anything he could possibly become.

But there was a price.

Every time he borrowed a power from one of his possible futures, something from his present would disappear. A memory. An emotion. A relationship. A piece of himself.

A growl echoed behind him.

Ren turned. A monster emerged from the darkness—shadow and bone, with burning red eyes. It locked onto him, hungry.

For the first time in his life, Ren smiled.

He looked at the black watch in his hand and whispered:

"If I only have 183 days..."

The darkness trembled around him.

"...then I'll become strong enough to make the future afraid of me."

That night, the weakest boy in Elaris took his first step toward becoming the person who would either save the world—or destroy it.

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[END OF CHAPTER 1]

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