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Riku’s scar burned white-hot. He picked up the phone. It flipped open with a click that echoed like a gunshot. The screen read: STANDING BY – 1 SIGNATURE DETECTED.

The screen glitched, and a face formed. Not a person. A mask. The sleek, insectile, dead-eyed visage of the Faiz suit. But it spoke in a woman’s voice, crackling with the warmth of a dial-up modem.

That was twenty years ago. The Orphnoch War had fizzled out, not with a bang, but with a legal settlement. Humans and the surviving Orphnochs signed the Kyoto Accords. Faiz, Kaixa, Delta—they became folklore, cosplay conventions, and angry tweets. Riku believed none of it.

“Henshin,” he whispered, not because he knew the word, but because the phone dialed it for him.