I AM EXTRA IN A SHONEN MANGA

The morning air of Pearlbay was crisp, salted by the tide and still carrying faint smoke from the fires of mourning. Rael's blade cut it clean. Each arc of the Lumen Blade traced a line of light, its hum rising and falling like a measured chant. Twelve strikes, twelve breaths. Each swing marked the rhythm of a heart that refused to settle.

He trained where the sand met stone at the village's edge. Here, solitude cloaked him. The others were scattered, Khael among the elders, Kaen helping lift wreckage, Juno and Lira tending wounds. They were all healing Pearlbay in their own ways. Rael chose the blade. Solitude sharpened him; silence kept his grief from consuming him.

The sea, as always, kept time. Its waves broke against reefs with distant roars, then hissed into foam as they retreated, as though reminding him that even fury had its lull. Gulls cried overhead, thin notes against the vast, steady percussion of tide.

Then the rhythm broke.

It wasn't a sound but a sensation like a skipped breath, a pause in the air itself. Rael froze mid-swing.

Across the salt-silver glare stood a man. His white hair gleamed against the horizon, slicked back like porcelain knives. His smile curved too sharp, too precise, like it had been cut into his face.

The name caught Rael's throat before he even spoke it, heavy as a curse.

"You."

Seirath's lips tilted, cold amusement in every angle. "Long time, little brother."

The world shrank. For a moment, the village, the tide, the gulls all of it fell away. There was only Rael, and the ghost in front of him. Memory uncoiled like an old wound torn open: a funeral shroud heavy with rain, the copper tang of iron, a mother's body fading into shadows. At the edge of that memory, sharp as a knife, was Seirath's face.

Rael's grip tightened on the hilt until the leather bit his palm. "Bastard." His voice cracked with fury. In a single motion he drew the Lumen Blade, its living light blooming into the morning air. Cold radiance pulsed across the ground, and the training sands glowed as if seared by moonlight. "I will kill you."

Seirath tilted his head, his smirk widening. "You can try. But I am not what you hunt."

Rael's body moved before his thoughts caught up. He surged forward, each step a vow, and swung. The strike was a thunderous sweep, radiant steel cleaving a line that could have torn through rock itself.

It carved nothing.

The blade passed through air as though Seirath had never stood there at all.

Rael stumbled forward, fury twisting into confusion. "What—" His shout broke, caught between disbelief and rage.

The figure in front of him shimmered. Edges folded, light bent. The smell of salt and smoke thinned, as though even the air conspired in the lie. Seirath's form flickered, dissolved, then reformed like a reflection on water disturbed by ripples.

Seirath's voice rang clear, mocking. "You cannot kill a ghost, Rael. You can only learn why it haunts you."

Rael's chest heaved. Panic tried to claw up his throat, but he anchored himself in the steady hum of his blade. He felt the pulse of Seraphis at his back, the Verdant Mirror spirit, bound to him. Its cool weight pressed against his chest like a steadying hand.

He whispered, half-prayer, half-command. "Seraphis, now."

Light burst.

Six wings of radiance unfurled from his back, each feather threaded with runes that shimmered like glass catching sun. They fanned wide, transforming the training ground into a cathedral of judgment. Rael stood at its center, his breath slow, his fury honed. "If you dare mock my mother's name, I will break you."

Seirath only laughed. His smile cracked wider until it looked unnatural. "Delightful. Such fire, for a boy still learning to burn. Tell me—did you truly believe the fragment at Pearlbay woke by chance?"

He moved sideways, hand brushing a lantern that hung from a bent post. His fingers pale, deliberate pressed against the glass. The lantern light blinked, then died.

Rael's pulse hammered. His voice cut the air, sharp. "What do you know?"

Seirath leaned in, his voice thinning into a whisper meant for conspirators. "Everything and nothing. Only children of the old myths have strength enough to crack the old locks. Someone opened the cave. Someone let Thal'ryx breathe again." His eyes gleamed like knives. "You fought well against it. Did it feel… satisfying?"

The word struck harder than a blade. Satisfaction? That battle had not been triumph; it had been loss. It had been blood in the waves and bodies dragged ashore. His knuckles whitened on the hilt.

Seraphis' voice rippled through him, calm and sharp. (Do not let hatred blind you. Pain is a tool; vengeance is a trap.)

Rael swallowed the fury rising in his throat, forcing himself steady. "Who opened the seal?" His voice was quieter now, but sharper, a knife honed instead of swung. The blade's light braided with Seraphis' sigils, tracing truths he could not yet name.

For the first time, Seirath's smirk shifted into something colder. Pity. "Not my concern. I am but a shadow. I plant whispers; others wrench the gears. But you…" He stepped along the edge of the training ground, his feet never disturbing the sand. "You are useful. You bleed wonder as others bleed blood. I came to see the bloom."

The mockery struck deep. Rael's jaw clenched until his teeth ached. "If you had a hand in this… I will find you. I will unmake everything your kind builds."

Seirath's smile fell away like a mask. His eyes, sharp as broken glass, fixed on Rael with sudden cold. He stepped backward, body unraveling into haze, less flesh than memory.

"Find me?" His laugh slipped into the air, smooth and oily. "I am where the wind forgets names. I am your brother in blood and better at forgetting. Come. Hunt me. Let us see what you become."

The world cracked.

Seirath's body shattered like a page torn from a book, scattering into fragments of light and shadow. For a heartbeat, Rael glimpsed beneath the white façade ink crawling across Seirath's palm, a black sigil that slithered like ivy before vanishing.

Then it was gone.

From the northern cliffs, a bell tolled. The elders' warning. The sound rang out over the sea, deep and resonant, calling the village to arms.

Rael spun, blade raised. The training ground was empty. Only the echo of his breath remained. Where Seirath had stood, the sand was untouched save for one thing.

A scrap of cloth. It fluttered in the wind, half-buried in salt. Upon it rested a shard of dark crystal, sharp as ice and cold as forgotten winter.

Rael bent, lifting it. The shard hummed faintly in his palm, its cold pressing into bone. His hand trembled not from fear, but from the weight of realization.

Seraphis' thought cut through, precise. (He left it deliberately. Not as bait. As announcement.)

Rael closed his eyes, his breath steadying. The smolder in his chest burned hotter, no longer wild grief but tempered resolve. He opened his eyes, and his voice came low, iron-carved. "So be it."

He turned to the sea. In the distance, he saw Khael pulling children from wreckage, Kaen lifting beams with raw strength, Juno binding wounds with scarred hands, Lira pouring the last of her light into the injured. Pearlbay lived because of them.

Rael raised the shard high, its cold hum cutting against the warmth of the sun. "I will not let you hurt them again." His words were not to Seirath now, but to the path ahead, to the vow carved into his blood.

From the shadow of a broken pier across the cove, a silhouette lingered Seirath's reflection, or perhaps another illusion. He lifted his chin, mock salute, before folding into a dozen afterimages.

His voice drifted across the tide, carried thin by gulls and salt. "Then hunt, brother. The game has only just begun."

To be continue