Even the wind, once playful, now held its breath between the ancient trees of Moriyama Valley. Birds had flown away hours ago. The sunlight flickered, struggling through dense clouds that weren’t part of the forecast.
Something was wrong.
And deep down, Rai Kuroda knew it.
His boots crunched over dry leaves as he climbed the forgotten trail, alone. No friends, no map, just an ache in his chest and a rage that refused to leave. Another fight. Another expulsion. Another day being called a “bad seed.”
Rai didn’t care anymore.
But something was calling him.
Something… other.
A soft, ringing hum, metallic, almost ancient, echoed from the base of a half-buried temple stone ahead. Glowing lines formed across the cracked surface like veins of light, a sigil he had never seen before... yet it felt familiar.
He stepped closer.
And it spoke.
“You… are broken.”
“You are angry.”
“You are worthy.”
The light surged. Rai's eyes widened as the earth beneath him crumbled, pulling him into a pit of roots and ancient stone. His body twisted mid-fall, then everything stopped. Time bent. Sound faded.
He floated in something else.
A vast consciousness surrounded him. Cold. Cosmic. Divine.
A silhouette stood before him, tall, serene, neither man nor god, draped in faint blue fire. Its face masked, unreadable. Its body a paradox of armor and stardust. A symbol glowed in its chest, not of Light… nor Darkness… but something in between.
“I am Azuren.”
“You are not the hero they deserve.”
“You are the one they need.”
Rai opened his mouth to scream. To run. To cry.
But all he could say was:
“Why me…?”
Azuren’s voice answered with something he did not expect, calm. Not cruel. Not kind. Just… truth.
“Because you have not chosen a side.”
“And neither have I.”
The air was gone.
Rai hung in a void of shimmering starlight, his limbs weightless, his body pulled between gravity and godhood. All around him, constellations bled into one another, shifting, swirling, forming unfamiliar galaxies. A cosmic sea.
Azuren stood in the center of it all, unmoving. His armor flickered with pale blue pulses, slow and steady, like a heartbeat that echoed through eternity.
“Do you accept the pact?”
“You will not be saved. You will not be guided.”
“You will be tested.”
Rai clenched his fists, trembling. “I don’t want to be a hero.”
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“You will not be.”
“You will be… necessary.”
Before Rai could speak again, a torrent of energy surged from Azuren’s chest symbol. It wasn’t warm or cold, it simply was. It shot through Rai’s soul, cutting through every wall he had built since childhood: anger, hate, loneliness.
Everything was exposed.
He saw it all.
The moment he stopped caring.
The look in his mother’s eyes the last time he came home bruised.
The mirror he avoided every day.
And then… something broke.
But not in pain.
In release.
A glyph formed on Rai’s chest, glowing bright azure, and a voice rang through the cosmos, not Azuren’s, but his own.
“I… accept.”
In a flash, he was back, gasping, coughing, on the forest floor. But something had changed.
His hand was glowing.
His skin crackled with faint blue lines, like lightning trapped beneath the flesh. The air vibrated with unknown potential. Around his neck, a strange silver device, sleek and curved like a blade of glass had appeared, floating just above his collarbone.
He reached for it instinctively.
And the world shifted.
?Azure Drive: Activating. Deunamist Initiation Complete.?
Suddenly, the trees ahead exploded, thrown aside like paper, as a kaiju stepped into view. Tall, fanged, chittering in unnatural tones. A sick fusion of steel and bone, with reactor cores spinning inside its ribs.
It had found him.
And it wasn’t alone.
Behind Rai, multiple drones hovered, military grade, AI-controlled, tracking both the kaiju and him. The targeting systems clicked in. The voice of a pilot echoed through a speaker:
“Unidentified bioform detected. Stand down or be neutralized.”
Rai stood still, energy rising from his body like mist.
He turned to face the monster.
Then the drones.
Then… nothing at all.
“I didn’t choose this…”
“But now I’ll see it through.”
The Azure Drive glowed...
And he began to change.
Rai screamed,
but no sound came out.
Light enveloped him, flaring from the Azure Drive like a star going nova. His body was no longer flesh and blood. It restructured, cell by cell, fiber by fiber. Bones turned to silver-threaded crystal. Skin dissolved into armored starlight. The glyph on his chest burst wide, no longer a symbol of rage, but purpose.
“AZURE NOVA: INITIATION COMPLETE.”
The sky cracked.
The kaiju paused, confused, for a fraction of a second, then roared. It launched forward, smashing trees, its claws dragging dirt like blades through flesh. But Rai, now Ultraman Azuren’s Nova Form, didn’t flinch.
His hand moved slowly, open palm forward, and the kaiju froze mid-charge, pinned by invisible pressure.
Telekinetic stasis. Level 1.
In the distance, military drones locked in and fired missiles. Azure Nova glanced upward, and with a flick of his hand, curved shields of translucent energy snapped into place midair. The warheads dissolved on contact, no explosions. No debris.
“This power… isn’t destruction.”
“It’s balance.”
But the kaiju screamed again and broke free. Its reactor cores flared violet. It leapt, claws extended. Azure Nova reacted instantly.
His body twisted gracefully, wings of energy unfurling from his back like flowing ribbons of plasma. He vanished in a blink, then reappeared midair, kicking downward with a shockwave that cratered the earth beneath the kaiju.
The beast howled, spine fractured, but still standing.
“Persistent thing, aren’t you?”
“Fine. Let’s finish this.”
Nova's chest core spun. Rings of azure and white spiraled into focus. His right hand formed the shape of a blade, and energy poured into it, a concentrated beam forming a short, celestial sword.
Azure Severance.
With one clean motion, he sliced through the air,
and the kaiju split in half.
No blood.
No fire.
Just silence… and falling dust.
Rai, no, Nova, stood still. Breathing steady. Not triumphant.
Just aware.
But the moment was broken when a red light blinked on his Drive. He turned his head, eyes glowing, but dimming slightly.
A voice echoed from deep space.
Calm. Powerful. Familiar.
“You have accepted the pact, Rai Kuroda.”
“But this is only the beginning.”
“Others will come.”
The image of Azuren’s true form shimmered above him, massive, celestial, crowned in radiant blue fire, watching over the Earth.
“And some will not kneel.”
[ To be continued… ]