The night bled into silence.
Rain fell like shards of shattered glass, cutting through the smoldering remains of what once was a city. The wind carried with it the scent of smoke and rusted steel, whispering names of the fallen through the ruins. Every droplet struck the earth like a heartbeat—slow, heavy, unrelenting. And beneath the fractured sky, the world waited, holding its breath.
Kaede stood in the doorway of the ruined chapel, her cloak heavy with rain. The city behind her was nothing more than a graveyard of shadows. Fire still flickered in the distance, its reflection staining the wet streets crimson. She could taste the ash in the air, feel the ghosts of voices that would never speak again.
Inside, the chapel was silent. The great stained windows had long since shattered, leaving jagged teeth of colored glass that caught the lightning and broke it into dying hues. The altar was cracked down the center. Candles had melted into the stone like veins of wax. And there, among the debris, lay the emblem of the Shadow Court—broken, bloodstained, half-buried in the dust.
Kaede's boots echoed against the floor as she approached it. Every step sounded like a tolling bell. She knelt, fingers trembling as she reached for the insignia. It was cold—colder than death itself. For a moment she thought she could still feel Reiji's pulse in it, as if the metal remembered him even when the world did not.
The rain drummed harder on the roof, each drop a hollow percussion to the melody in her mind.
Reiji… do you still hear it? The silence you left behind?
Her breath fogged in the air as she whispered his name again, softer this time. "Reiji…"
A faint echo answered her—perhaps just wind through the rafters, or perhaps something older. The chapel had a memory of its own. Once it had been a place of prayer. Then a fortress of the shadows. Now it was only a grave, one that still sang to those who dared to listen.
Kaede rose slowly, the insignia clenched in her hand. The lightning outside illuminated her face for a brief second: pale, hollow, exhausted. She looked not like a soldier, nor a survivor, but a remnant—one of the few left to bear the weight of everything they had lost.
The air thickened, vibrating with something low and resonant. A hum. Then a sound—not quite human, not entirely ghostly. The stones themselves seemed to exhale. A chorus of faint voices rippled through the chapel, barely audible but unmistakable. They were singing.
Kaede turned toward the altar. The flames of the dying candles flickered to life once more. One by one, they stood upright, forming a circle of light around the insignia. Shadows stretched and trembled across the walls, merging and dividing like echoes of souls that refused to rest.
And in the center of that wavering light, she saw him.
Reiji—his silhouette drawn from memory and pain, standing before the altar like a phantom caught between worlds.
Kaede didn't move. Her breath hitched.
"Is it really you…?"
No answer came. Only that hum—that quiet, mournful harmony. It wasn't his voice, but the voices of everyone who had followed him. The lost, the betrayed, the silent. They were the Last Choir—the echoes of a thousand shadows that had given their lives to a cause swallowed by the void.
Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the flicker of light. "You once said silence was where truth waits," she whispered. "But the truth died with you, didn't it?"
The image of Reiji flickered, as though disturbed by the storm outside. The shadow of his form reached toward her, faintly, almost human. Then it stilled.
"No," she said suddenly. Her voice cracked but did not break. "You're wrong. Silence doesn't kill truth. It preserves it."
Kaede lifted the insignia, pressing it against her chest. The choir grew louder—not in volume, but in presence. It filled the room like breath, like heartbeat, like memory refusing to fade. And with it came a warmth she hadn't felt since the day he fell.
Lightning tore the sky open. The world outside burned white for an instant, and in that flash, the entire chapel seemed to come alive. The walls glowed faintly with blue veins of energy, as though every stone held the memory of a name, a face, a vow. The song reached its peak, and then—
Silence.
Not absence, but reverence. The kind of silence that follows a final prayer.
Kaede stood still, soaked to the bone, trembling. The insignia in her hand had grown warm—alive somehow. She looked down at it and saw faint letters glowing across the metal: "Reiji Shinomiya." Just his name, nothing more. Yet it was enough.
"Then this is where it ends," she whispered, "and where it begins again."
She turned toward the broken doors. Beyond them lay the city of shadows, a kingdom without kings. The rain had not stopped. The fires still burned. But beneath the noise, something stirred—the faint rhythm of drums, far away. A call to arms. The first sparks of the next war.
Kaede holstered her weapon and stepped out into the rain. Each drop hissed against her skin like memory turned to flame. She did not flinch. Her steps were steady, measured, as though following a melody only she could hear.
Behind her, the chapel began to collapse. The ceiling caved, the pillars shattered, and the altar split entirely in two. Yet the song lingered—an invisible resonance that would never truly die. It followed her into the storm, carried on the wind, carried by every echo the world refused to forget.
When she reached the edge of the city, she looked back one last time. Where the chapel had stood, there was now only fire. And in the heart of that fire, she swore she saw him again—Reiji's shadow, standing tall against the ruin, watching her go.
Kaede bowed her head. "Rest, Reiji. I'll carry what's left."
Thunder rumbled overhead. The horizon bled red. The war was changing form, but it had never ended. And as Kaede disappeared into the storm, the world took a single breath.
Then the choir began again—soft, wordless, eternal.
The last choir did not sing of victory. It sang of remembrance.
And in its final, fading note, the name Shinomiya Reiji echoed through the broken sky.