The night had no stars—only the glint of distant embers left behind by burning machines. Reiji and Kaede moved through the ruins of the southern district, where towers leaned like broken teeth and the air smelled of rain that had forgotten how to fall. The silence between them was not absence; it was the kind of quiet that follows a scream too large to echo.
Kaede's voice broke it. "You think the Abyss is done?"
Reiji didn't answer at first. He stopped near a half-collapsed archway and brushed the ash off his sleeve. "Places like that never die. They just… change the shape of their hunger."
The wind hissed through the street—cold, narrow, full of whispers. A faint trail of energy flickered on Kaede's scanner, a thin silver thread that darted between buildings like a heartbeat made visible. The Pact had left traces here—faint, deliberate, the way an assassin leaves the knife just visible enough to be found.
Reiji followed the signal into an alley where the world narrowed into shadow. The walls here were wet, reflecting light in shards that looked like broken mirrors. Footsteps echoed ahead—too light to be soldiers, too steady to be scavengers. Reiji lifted his blade slightly, enough to catch the glow from a cracked neon sign.
Then came the voice. "You shouldn't have burned the Abyss, Shinomiya Reiji."
It was male, smooth, but with the rasp of someone who'd swallowed too much smoke. From the dark stepped a figure draped in black, armor plated with thin scales that shimmered faintly under the neon haze. A mask covered his lower face; a single eye, bright crimson, watched from the shadow.
Reiji knew the emblem etched on the man's shoulder—the serpent biting its tail. Another fragment of the Pact.
"I don't burn things," Reiji said quietly. "I erase them."
"Then erase yourself," the stranger replied. He drew his weapon—a curved blade blacker than night. Its edge sang as it left the sheath, the sound thin and beautiful.
Kaede moved to flank, her dagger reversed in her hand. But the man moved faster—his body a blur, shadow slipping through shadow. Steel met steel in a flash that tore the dark apart for an instant. Sparks fell like dying fireflies.
Reiji blocked, turned, countered; each motion carved by memory, not thought. The man fought with silence—no grunts, no words, only the rhythm of a killer who had practiced on ghosts. His movements were too deliberate to be human instinct alone. The Pact had trained him—or perhaps remade him.
Kaede's blade caught his shoulder once; the wound didn't bleed. Instead, a faint vapor hissed out—red smoke curling like veins of fire. The masked man pivoted and slammed her against a wall, but Reiji's strike found his arm before he could finish. The clash rang like thunder in a tunnel.
The man staggered, regained stance, and spoke again. "The Monarch waits for you. The hollow throne is never empty, only unseen."
Reiji's eyes narrowed. "You speak of a king without a crown?"
"I speak," the man whispered, "of what you used to be."
That sentence hit harder than the blade. For a heartbeat, Reiji saw not the alley, not the rain, but fragments of glass—faces looking back at him through crimson reflection. He blinked once, the image gone.
The masked assassin lunged, fast enough to blur. But Reiji met him mid-stride, their blades locking in a flash of light. The man twisted, tried to slide under Reiji's guard—but Reiji anticipated, shifting his weight, slashing upward. The edge cut through the mask.
The sound that followed wasn't pain—it was a sigh, as if the night itself exhaled. The mask fell in two pieces. Underneath was a face too familiar. Pale, gaunt, eyes like Reiji's own reflected in tarnished glass.
Kaede froze. "Reiji…"
He didn't move. His blade hovered inches from the man's throat. "Who did this to you?"
The doppelgänger smiled—a quiet, broken thing. "You did."
The words struck like a memory detonating. For a moment, everything stilled: the wind, the rain, even the lights. The copy tilted his head, blood—black and shimmering—dripping from the corner of his mouth. "Every echo needs a voice," he said. "You were loud enough."
Then he moved again, faster than before, but not to attack. His hand pressed a shard of glass into his own chest, directly over the heart. A surge of light erupted—crimson, spiraling, alive. The street shook. Walls split as the ground trembled with the resonance of something awakening below.
Kaede threw an arm around Reiji and pulled him back as the assassin's body convulsed, the veins in his skin lighting up like burning wires. The voice that came from his throat was no longer human—it was the Abyss speaking through borrowed lungs.
> "One becomes many. The Monarch rises when the blade remembers its name."
The body exploded into mist, scattering shards of black glass across the alley. They embedded into the walls, still humming faintly. Reiji's pulse raced. He could feel the mark on his wrist burning, echoing the same crimson tone that had filled the Abyss.
Kaede looked at him, her eyes reflecting the faint light of those shards. "They're not done with you."
Reiji's reply came through clenched teeth. "No. They're beginning."
He knelt, picking up one of the shards. It vibrated faintly in his palm, showing fleeting images—shadows kneeling before a throne carved of obsidian, a figure crowned in silence. The Hollow Monarch.
He closed his fist around it, crushing the glass until it cut his skin. "If they want a monarch," he murmured, "then I'll show them the price of building one."
The city around them groaned like a wounded animal. Somewhere deeper within the ruins, bells began to toll—soft, uneven, as if struck by unseen hands. The crimson glow spread through the cracks in the ground, veins of light threading through the streets.
Kaede tightened her grip on her dagger. "They're calling something."
Reiji turned toward the direction of the sound. His eyes, once dim, now mirrored the faint red glimmer. "Then let's answer."
The two vanished into the maze of dark corridors, the air behind them trembling with unseen movement. High above, on a shattered rooftop, figures watched—hooded, silent, blades drawn but unmoving. The watchers whispered:
> "The Shadow walks again. The mirror bleeds."
Lightning split the sky, revealing for an instant the symbol carved into the highest tower: a throne without a king, surrounded by seven blades suspended in midair. The sign of the Monarch's return.
And far below, in the hollow where the Abyss once breathed, something old turned its face upward—smiling through the dark.