The 2021 season opened under a grey Barcelona dawn, the kind that made the tarmac look like brushed steel. Eleven years had passed since the crash that tore Nathan Blackwood out of the world and left a boy standing alone in the paddock, staring at a broken car and a future he didn’t choose.
Hendrik moved through the winding streets of Gondolia with the solemn grace of a man long accustomed to silence. The port town, once vibrant in his memory, now felt distant—its merchants casting wary glances and stepping aside, not out of fear, but reverence for the Heliodorian general whose name had become myth. He had been summoned again, this time for a disturbance haunting the western docks—an echo of unrest in a city that had once known peace.
Akira Narumiya used to be a Kyudo archer in high school—focused, graceful, always chasing perfection in silence. Now she’s a soldier, steady and strong, with a quiet kind of confidence that people notice without her saying a word. She doesn’t talk much about her work, but when she comes home, her eyes soften the moment she sees Asahi.