The morning light filtering through the windows of Tanuki's Tea House was gentle and golden, a stark contrast to the chaos of the previous night. Dren sat across from Aiko at a low wooden table, steam rising from their cups in lazy spirals that seemed to mock the urgency of their situation. The traditional setting—tatami mats, sliding paper screens, the subtle scent of jasmine—should have been peaceful, but Dren found himself unable to relax.
Every shadow seemed to hold potential threats. Every sound from the street outside made his hand twitch toward where his ethereal blade would manifest. The Soul Flame depletion from his battle with the Greater Fiend had left him hypersensitive to spiritual disturbances, and Tokyo's ambient corruption felt like a constant itch beneath his skin.
"You need to eat something," Aiko said quietly, gesturing toward the untouched plate of rice and grilled fish before him. "Soul Flame recovery requires physical sustenance as well as spiritual restoration."
Dren picked at the food without enthusiasm, his attention focused on the newspaper spread between them. In the harsh light of day, the pattern of disappearances seemed even more ominous than it had the night before. Seventeen people in a month, each one a potential node in Malakar's growing network of corruption.
"There's something else," Aiko said, unfolding a second section of the paper. "I noticed it while you were... recovering from the locket revelation."
She pointed to a small article buried on page six: "Unexplained Power Outages Plague Shibuya District." The headline was bland, the kind of technical problem that most people would dismiss as routine infrastructure failure. But as Dren read the details, he began to see what had caught Aiko's attention.
The outages weren't random. They followed a pattern—cascading failures that moved through the district's digital infrastructure, similar to magical systems, like ripples in a pond, always originating from the same general area. Internet services, cell phone networks, even electronic payment systems were experiencing intermittent disruptions that lasted exactly forty-seven minutes before mysteriously resolving themselves.
"Forty-seven," Dren murmured, remembering their climb up the corporate tower the night before. "The same number of floors we ascended to reach the Greater Fiend."
Aiko nodded grimly. "It's not a coincidence. In the old texts, numbers have power—they create resonances between events, linking them across space and time. If Malakar is using numerological patterns to coordinate its activities..."
"Then these outages are connected to the creature we killed," Dren finished. He set down his chopsticks, appetite completely gone. "But how? Technology is just... metal and lightning. Tricks and trinkets that make life easier for the weak."
The dismissal came out harsher than he'd intended, colored by frustration and a deep-seated mistrust of anything he couldn't understand through the lens of his previous existence. In Vyrn, power had been straightforward—divine blessings, consecrated steel, the strength of arm and purity of purpose. Technology felt like cheating, a crutch that weakened those who relied on it.
Aiko's jade eyes flashed with something that might have been amusement. "You sound like my grandmother when she first encountered television. She called it 'a box of demons that steals souls through the eyes.'"
"Was she wrong?" Dren asked, only half-joking.
"In a sense, no," Aiko admitted. "But she learned to adapt, to understand that new forms of power require new forms of wisdom. The spirits that watch over our shrine have always manifested through whatever means are available—stone carvings in ancient times, paper talismans in the medieval period, and now..."
She gestured toward her smartphone, its screen displaying a map of the affected areas. As Dren watched, the device flickered slightly, the display wavering as if something were interfering with its normal operation.
"Now they speak through circuits and signals," Aiko continued. "And if they can use technology, so can their enemies."
As if summoned by her words, Dren felt his Lore Sight activate unbidden. The passive blessing allowed him to perceive spiritual emanations, to see the underlying patterns that connected seemingly unrelated events. What he saw when he looked at Aiko's phone made his blood run cold.
The screen wasn't just flickering—it was pulsing with the same rhythm as a corrupted heartbeat. Faint sigils, barely visible against the digital display, crawled across the surface like electronic parasites. They were crude compared to the elaborate markings he'd seen on the Greater Fiend, but their intent was unmistakable: surveillance, infiltration, gradual corruption of the device's normal functions.
"The block," he said urgently. "There's something—"
Aiko's eyes widened as she followed his gaze. Without hesitation, she powered down the device and wrapped it in a silk cloth that seemed to shimmer with protective wards. The oppressive feeling that had been building in the air immediately began to dissipate.
"It's been watching us," she said, her voice carefully controlled. "Probably since we left the corporate tower. Maybe longer."
The implications were staggering. If Malakar could corrupt electronic devices, could use them as eyes and ears throughout Tokyo, then the entity's reach was far greater than either of them had imagined. Every smartphone, every computer, every piece of connected technology could potentially be compromised.
"You mentioned whispers," Dren said, forcing himself to focus on actionable intelligence rather than the vast scope of the threat. "Someone tracking these digital disturbances."
Aiko nodded. "A hacker, from what I've heard. Goes by the handle 'Shinji's Shadow'—apparently he lost someone important to what he calls 'the things in the wires.' He's been documenting anomalies, trying to map the corruption's spread through Tokyo's digital infrastructure."
"And you think he might help us?"
"I think he might be the only one who can," Aiko replied. "If we're going to fight an enemy that can turn our own technology against us, we need someone who understands that technology better than they do."
Dren drained his tea in one gulp, the bitter liquid helping to clear his head. "Where do we find this so called shadow hacker?"
"Underground café in Shibuya," Aiko said, already rising from the table. "The same district where the outages have been most severe. If he's still alive, that's where he'll be—right in the heart of the digital storm."
---
The descent into Shibuya's underground felt like entering a different world entirely. The morning's gentle sunlight gave way to harsh neon that painted everything in electric blues and acid greens. The air was thick with the smell of instant ramen, stale coffee, and the ozone tang of overworked electronics. Dozens of internet cafés lined the narrow streets, their entrance ways marked by glowing signs in a dozen languages.
"Cyber Haven," Aiko read from a particularly garish sign that featured a cartoon character with electric blue hair. "Third basement level. This is the place."
The stairwell leading down was cramped and poorly lit, lined with motivational posters in Japanese and English that had seen better decades. As they descended, the sounds of the street above faded, replaced by the constant hum of cooling fans and the rhythmic clatter of keyboards. By the time they reached the third basement level, Dren felt like they'd traveled to the bottom of some technological abyss.
The internet café itself was a cavern of flickering screens and makeshift partitions. Dozens of cubicles had been carved out of what might once have been a legitimate business space, each one containing a chair, a desk, and enough computing power to run a small corporation. The air was thick with the fog of cheap energy drinks and cheaper cigarettes, and the constant background noise was a symphony of digital warfare—gunfire from first-person shooters, the ping of messaging apps, the frustrated cursing of gamers in multiple languages.
"Charming," Dren muttered, his enhanced senses nearly overwhelmed by the assault of stimuli. In Vyrn, even the busiest marketplace had possessed a certain organic rhythm, the natural ebb and flow of human activity. This place felt artificially accelerated, as if time itself moved differently within its fluorescent embrace.
"There," Aiko said, pointing toward a corner cubicle that seemed somehow more isolated than the others. "That has to be him."
The figure hunched over the glowing screens was exactly what Dren had expected and nothing like what he'd prepared for. Wirily thin to the point of being almost skeletal, dressed in an oversized black hoodie that hung off his frame like a funeral shroud. His hair was a masterpiece of deliberate neglect—disheveled black locks with electric blue streaks that seemed to shift and flow in the monitor's light, hanging down to obscure half his face in calculated mystery.
But it was his hands that truly caught Dren's attention. They moved across the keyboard with inhuman speed and precision, fingers dancing through complex sequences of keystrokes as if he were playing some impossibly intricate musical instrument. Multiple screens displayed scrolling code, network diagrams, and data streams that updated faster than normal eyes could follow.
As they approached, Dren caught a glimpse of the hacker's face in profile—sharp cheekbones, hazel eyes that gleamed with manic intensity, and a perpetual smirk that suggested he found the entire world slightly amusing. There was something almost feral about him, like a predator that had adapted to hunt in digital spaces rather than physical ones.
"Riku Tanaka?" Aiko called softly.
The typing stopped instantly. The hacker—Riku—turned in his chair with fluid grace, and Dren found himself looking into eyes that held far too much knowledge and far too little hope. The smirk was there, just as he'd expected, but it was the kind of expression that masked pain rather than genuine amusement.
"Well, well," Riku said, his voice carrying a slight rasp that suggested too many energy drinks and too little sleep. "Shrine maiden and her pet samurai. Let me guess—you're here about the weird shit happening to the networks."
Dren bristled at the casual dismissal, his warrior's pride rebelling against being called anyone's pet. In Vyrn, such an insult would have demanded satisfaction, would have been answered with steel and blood. But he steeled himself. This wasn't Vyrn, and the scrawny hacker posed no physical threat worth acknowledging.
"We're here because we think you might have information about—" Aiko began diplomatically.
"About the digital demons?" Riku interrupted, his smirk widening. "The ghost in the machine? The things that go bump in the ethernet cable?" He gestured toward his screens, where Dren could now see that the scrolling data wasn't random code but carefully organized surveillance reports. "Yeah, I've got information. Got more information than any sane person should have about the way reality's coming apart at the digital seams."
"Then you'll help us?" Dren asked, stepping forward. Not even bothering to understand the technobabble.
Riku's hazel eyes fixed on him with uncomfortable intensity. "Help you do what, exactly? March up to whatever corporate tower the latest nest of nasties is using as a base and kick down the door? Challenge the corruption to single combat like some kind of medieval knight-errant?"
The accuracy of the assessment stung, partly because it wasn't entirely wrong. Dren's instincts were still those of a straightforward warrior, someone who believed that most problems could be solved through the application of superior force and unwavering determination.
"We killed a Greater Fiend," Dren said, letting a hint of his spiritual pressure leak through the words. "Last night. Forty-seven floors up in the Matsumoto Financial building."
For the first time since they'd approached, Riku's perpetual smirk faltered. His fingers, which had been absently tapping against his keyboard, went still. When he looked at Dren again, there was something different in his eyes—not quite respect, but a kind of wary reassessment.
"You're the ones who caused the cascade failure," Riku said slowly. "The feedback loop that killed half the servers in downtown Tokyo for about six hours." He leaned back in his chair, studying them both with new interest. "I was wondering what kind of electromagnetic pulse could produce that kind of systematic disruption."
"Not electromagnetic," Aiko said. "Spiritual. The creature we fought was using the building's digital infrastructure as an extension of its own nervous system. When it died..."
"The spiritual shock propagated through every connected device," Riku finished, understanding dawning in his voice. "Jesus. I thought I was tracking some kind of revolutionary malware. You're telling me it was actually a goddamn digital ghost?"
"Worse," Dren said grimly. "It was a servant of something much larger. Something that's been systematically corrupting people throughout Tokyo, building toward... we're not sure what."
Riku's fingers resumed their nervous tapping, but now the rhythm was different—less random, more like someone working through a complex problem. "The missing persons," he said after a moment. "The seventeen people who've vanished over the past month. You think they're connected to whatever killed the thing in Matsumoto Financial."
It wasn't a question, but Dren nodded anyway. "We know they're connected. The pattern's too precise to be coincidence."
"And you want my help tracking down the source," Riku continued, his voice taking on a calculating edge. "Want me to use my 'unmatched data sorcery' to dig through the digital breadcrumbs and find where the corruption's coming from."
The phrase was mocking, but there was genuine pride underneath it. This was someone who understood his own worth, who knew exactly how valuable his skills were in a world where information was the ultimate currency.
"We want—" Aiko began, but she was interrupted by a sound that made every hair on Dren's neck stand up.
It started as a low hum, barely audible over the constant background noise of the café. But it grew quickly, rising in pitch and intensity until it became a discordant whine that seemed to emanate from every electronic device in the room. Screens flickered and dimmed. Keyboards stuttered. The carefully maintained artificial environment that allowed dozens of people to exist in this underground space began to fail.
"Shit," Riku breathed, his hands flying over his keyboard as he tried to isolate his systems from whatever was happening. "They found us."
"Who found us?" Dren demanded, but the answer became apparent as the first screams echoed from the far end of the café.
The patron who'd been playing some kind of racing game suddenly convulsed, his back arching as electricity seemed to dance across his skin. His eyes rolled back, showing only white, and when he opened his mouth, the sound that emerged was definitely not human. It was the digitized shriek of a Lesser Fiend, translated through vocal cords that had never been designed to produce such noise.
Around the café, similar transformations were beginning. People collapsed over their keyboards, their bodies spasming as something invaded their nervous systems through the very devices they'd been using. When they rose again, their movements were wrong—too fluid, too precise, like marionettes being controlled by an inhuman intelligence.
"Lesser Fiends," Dren said, his ethereal blade materializing in his grip. "But they're possessing people through the electronics. I've never seen anything like this."
"Digital demons," Riku said, his voice tight with a mixture of fear and fascination. "They're using the network infrastructure to jump from device to device, looking for suitable hosts." His fingers never stopped moving, even as he spoke, building firewalls and isolation protocols with desperate efficiency. "The electromagnetic signatures are off the charts. These things are broadcasting on frequencies that shouldn't exist."
One of the possessed patrons—a middle-aged businessman who'd been checking his email—turned toward them with movements that were too sharp, too angular. His face was still recognizably human, but his eyes had taken on the flat, reptilian quality that Dren associated with demonic possession.
"Three little mice," the thing said in a voice like grinding metal, "playing with toys they don't understand. The Weaver sees all, knows all, corrupts all."
"The Weaver?" Aiko asked, her ceremonial daggers already in her hands.
"Malakar," Dren realized. "It's using these people as mouthpieces."
More of the possessed were rising from their cubicles now, moving with that same unnatural precision. They didn't rush forward in a mindless assault—instead, they began to spread out, surrounding the three of them with tactical awareness that spoke of a single, coordinating intelligence.
"Riku," Dren said urgently, "can you get us out of here?"
"Working on it," the hacker replied, his fingers flying over multiple keyboards simultaneously. "But these things are jamming everything—cell networks, emergency services, even the fucking fire alarms. Whatever's controlling them doesn't want anyone leaving."
The circle of possessed was tightening now, and Dren could see that they weren't unarmed. Office supplies had been transformed into weapons—letter openers gleamed like knives, metal rulers bent into makeshift clubs, even computer cables had been fashioned into garrotes. The corruption had turned ordinary people into a perfectly coordinated death squad.
"New plan," Dren said, raising his ethereal blade. "We fight our way out."
"Are you insane?" Riku hissed. "These are innocent people! You can't just—"
His protest was cut off as one of the possessed—a young woman who'd been working on what looked like a college assignment—lunged forward with a screwdriver aimed at his throat. Riku threw himself backward, his chair spinning, but the improvised weapon still scored a line across his cheek that began to bleed freely.
"They're not innocent anymore," Dren said grimly, stepping between Riku and the possessed woman. "And they're not really people. The corruption is using their bodies, but their souls are already gone."
To prove his point, he brought his ethereal blade down in a controlled strike, cutting through the woman's torso with surgical precision. Instead of blood, digital static poured from the wound—lines of corrupted code made visible, writhing like luminous worms. The possessed body collapsed, but the static continued to writhe for several seconds before finally dispersing.
"Jesus Christ," Riku whispered, staring at the display with horrified fascination. "They're not just possessed. They're being rewritten. The corruption is literally overwriting their biological operating systems."
"Which means," Aiko said, moving to engage another group of the possessed, "that freeing them isn't an option. The only mercy we can offer is a clean death."
What followed was less a battle than a systematic extermination. The possessed moved with inhuman coordination, but they were still operating in human bodies with human limitations. Dren's ethereal blade carved through them with grim efficiency, each strike releasing bursts of digital static that flickered and died like dying flames. Unfortunately, it seemed liked the digitalisation for some odd and inexplicable reason did not increase Dren's experience. But that was not important at the moment.
Aiko fought with fluid grace, her ceremonial daggers leaving trails of silver light that seemed to disrupt the corruption's hold on its victims. Where Dren's strikes were direct and final, hers were precise and surgical, targeting the nexus points where the digital demons had rooted themselves in human nervous systems.
Riku, for his part, proved surprisingly resourceful. He couldn't match their combat abilities, but he had other skills—overloading computer monitors to create blinding flashes, triggering fire suppression systems to provide cover, even managing to electrify several keyboard cables to create improvised tasers.
"There," he called out during a brief lull in the fighting, pointing toward an emergency exit that had been hidden behind a bank of servers. "I've got the locks overridden, but we need to move now. My systems are showing massive network activity—they're calling in reinforcements."
As if summoned by his words, the café's main screens flickered to life, displaying a face that made Dren's blood freeze in his veins. Not Malakar—he'd never seen the Prime Weaver's true form—but something almost as devastating.
Cassian's face filled the monitors, but it was wrong in every possible way. The features were the same ones Dren remembered from their youth—sharp cheekbones, intelligent eyes, the kind of aristocratic beauty that had made him the envy of half the knights in Vyrn. But those eyes now held depths of corruption that hurt to look at directly, and when he smiled, it was with teeth that seemed too sharp, too white, too perfectly predatory.
"Hello, brother," Cassian said, his voice emanating from every speaker in the café. "I was wondering when you'd finally make your presence known. The corruption told me you were here, but I wanted to see for myself."
Dren found himself unable to speak, unable to move, paralyzed by the sight of his greatest fear made manifest. Cassian was alive, but he was also something else—something that wore his sworn brother's face while serving the enemy that had destroyed their homeland.
"The three of you have been quite entertaining," Cassian continued, his corrupted smile widening. "But playtime is over. Malakar grows impatient, and there are greater works to be accomplished than hunting down one lost knight and his new pets."
"I'm nobody's pet," Riku snarled, his fingers flying over his keyboard in what looked like a counter-attack against the hijacked systems.
Cassian's laugh was like breaking glass, beautiful and terrible in equal measure. "The hacker thinks he can fight me through the networks. How adorable. Tell me, little shadow—how did your sister die? Was it quick, or did she have time to scream as the corruption ate her from the inside out?"
The color drained from Riku's face, and his hands froze over the keyboard. In that moment of hesitation, the screens around them began to spark and smoke, overloading from whatever digital warfare was being waged through the café's systems.
"Riku!" Aiko called out urgently. "We need to go now!"
The hacker shook himself out of his paralysis, but Dren could see the damage had been done. Whatever composure Riku had maintained was cracking, revealing raw grief and rage underneath the cynical façade.
"The sister," Dren said quietly, understanding flooding through him. "That's why you're tracking the corruption. They killed someone you cared about."
"Shut up," Riku said, but his voice lacked conviction. "Just... shut up and let me get us out of here."
The emergency exit led to a maintenance tunnel that stretched beneath Shibuya's streets, lit by emergency lighting that cast everything in hellish red shadows. As they ran, Dren could hear the sounds of pursuit behind them—not footsteps, but the electronic whine of corrupted devices being pushed beyond their design limits.
"How far?" Aiko asked, her breathing still controlled despite their desperate flight.
"Three blocks," Riku replied, his voice strained with exhaustion and suppressed emotion. "There's a secure location where I keep my real equipment. If we can make it there, I can shield us from digital tracking."
They ran in silence after that, each of them processing what they'd witnessed in their own way. Dren found himself torn between relief and horror—relief that he finally had confirmation of Cassian's survival, horror at what his sworn brother had become. The corruption wasn't just using Cassian; it had transformed him into something that could look at Dren with recognition and feel nothing but contempt.
The secure location turned out to be another basement, this one beneath what looked like an abandoned electronics store. Riku's real setup was impressive—banks of servers, multiple redundant network connections, and enough processing power to make the internet café look like a child's toy. But what struck Dren most was the memorial wall covered with photographs of a young woman who shared Riku's sharp features and mischievous hazel eyes.
"Shinji," Riku said quietly, noticing his attention. "My sister. She was... she was better than me at everything. Smarter, kinder, more patient with idiots who couldn't tell a CPU from a power supply." He slumped into a chair, suddenly looking every one of his years and more. "She was working on some kind of augmented reality project when the corruption got her. I found her three days later, still sitting at her computer, still typing. But it wasn't her anymore. It was something else wearing her face, writing code that hurt to look at."
"I'm sorry," Aiko said, her voice soft with genuine sympathy.
"Don't," Riku said sharply. "Don't pity me. Pity gets people killed." He straightened in his chair, some of his earlier composure returning. "But you want to know something? That thing on the screens back there—your precious sworn brother—he made a mistake. He let slip that there are 'greater works' being accomplished. In hacker terms, that means there's a primary objective, a main target that everything else is just preparation for."
"Can you find it?" Dren asked.
Riku's perpetual smirk returned, but now it held genuine malice instead of casual amusement. "Oh, I can find it. I can trace every packet, follow every connection, map every node in their network. And when I do..." He gestured toward the memorial wall. "When I do, I'm going to burn it all down. Every last corrupted byte, every compromised system, every digital demon hiding in the wires."
He turned to face them both, his hazel eyes blazing with the kind of focused intensity that Dren recognized from his own mirrors. "You want my help? You've got it. But we do this my way, with my rules, using my methods. And when we find the source of this corruption—when we find the thing that killed my sister—I want to be the one who pulls the plug."
Dren extended his hand, and after a moment's hesitation, Riku took it. The hacker's grip was surprisingly strong, callused from years of intensive keyboard work but steady with purpose.
"Welcome to the war," Dren said.
"Brother," Riku replied, and for the first time since they'd met, his smile reached his eyes. "Let's go save the world."