"If you hurt the walls, you hurt him. And if you hurt him—" The vibration surged. This time, it wasn't subtle.
The floor bucked under their feet as if something massive had shifted just beneath the surface.
Rei stumbled, but caught himself.
The golden light burst outward in a defensive flare, threads thickening around the party in a dome.
"Stability dropping!" Rei snapped. "He's pushing back against the light itself."
"Hold it," Ayame said.
The girl's body arched backward.
Green light erupted from the crack Kurojin had opened and from half a dozen others along the tunnel.
Veins of color tore through the stone, converging behind the girl, coalescing into a vertical oval—a gate that wasn't a gate, a wound in the tunnel.
On the other side, something opened its eyes.
They weren't just big.
They were deep.
Twin slitted pupils, burning in a shade of poisonous jade, stared through the forming gap.
Pressed against whatever membrane separated its space from theirs, a scaled muzzle strained forward.
The girl screamed.
It wasn't a human scream anymore.
Her back split—not with flesh and bone, but with light.
Jagged lines of green power tore through her robe as something forced its way through her body's outline.
No torn organs.
No broken spine spilling out.
Her form dissolved into luminous scales, one by one, falling away like shedding skin.
For a moment, there was blood—thin trails running from her nose, her mouth, the corners of her eyes.
Red streaked down through the green glow, dripping onto the tunnel floor, pattering against Rei's golden barrier and evaporating into red mist.
Then she was gone.
In her place, the thing behind the wound stepped through.
The Shinryu Beast.
He emerged hunched, forcing the tunnel to make room. Stone groaned around him and then… bent.
It refused to break, so it warped, reshaping itself to his frame.
He stood on two legs.
They were long, digitigrade, jointed like a raptor's, each foot tipped with three talons that sank into stone as if it were damp clay.
Emerald-black scales covered him, each one edged in sickly green light.
Two powerful arms ended in clawed hands, fingers too long, joints too many, each movement trailing a faint ripple in the air.
His torso was humanoid only in silhouette. Muscles shifted under scaled plating, breathing with a slow, terrible patience.
From his back, not wings, but ragged, half-formed appendages of translucent membrane stretched and retracted, like the memory of wings burned into him.
His head was draconic.
Elongated snout.
Horns sweeping back along his skull in twisting, asymmetrical arcs that scraped the tunnel ceiling, shedding flaking bits of stone.
His eyes were the same as the girl's had been—green, luminous, vertical-slit pupils—but multiplied, tiny secondary eyes opening and closing along the sides of his face, blinking out of sync.
He inhaled.
The entire tunnel exhaled.
Air rushed toward him in a violent gust, dragging dust, loose stones, and the remnants of the girl's dissolving light.
Rei's barrier shuddered as the pressure shifted.
Kijin's knees bent instinctively. "Wind displacement… insane," he ground out. "He's bending the currents around his own lungs."
Tsuramo's hand went to the hilt of his short blade without thinking.
Ayame's voice cut through the rising panic.
"Tsuramo. Kijin. I said do not engage." They froze.
"Yes, taichō," Tsuramo forced out. Kijin's teeth clicked as he swallowed what he'd been about to do.
Rei's golden light dome tightened, threads weaving thicker where the Shinryu's gaze grazed it.
The beast's eyes tracked the light, studying it with slow, patient malice.
When he spoke, the sound wasn't just heard. It was felt. Like a low drum struck inside the bones.
"…So," the Shinryu Beast rumbled, voice scraping against the air. "They send SS-rankers into my throat now."
The support man with the fan flinched.
A thin line of blood slipped from his ear.
Ayame raised her chin a fraction.
"You speak," she said. Not surprised.
Not impressed.
Just adjusting her assessment.
The beast's lips pulled back in something that could be called a smile.
"Of course I speak," he hissed. "You named me. You fed me. You carved my sigil into your offerings and threw them into this pit." His eyes narrowed, head tilting.
"You call me… Shinryū Kōryu Ryugan."
Kurojin muttered under his breath. "Classified name just dropped by the source. That's comforting."
Kōryu's chest expanded. "Remember it," the beast said. "Etch it into the last thread of your souls before they are unwound."
The tattered appendages on his back unfurled slightly. The green veins in the walls brightened.
Ayame's hand rose, just slightly.
"Rei," she said.
"Full defensive weave. Kurojin—marks on ceiling and floor, now. Swordsman—front. Support, half-step back. Do not fire without my order. Tsuramo, Kijin, maintain observation. I want ability mapping." Orders snapped through the group like a wire tightening.
Rei exhaled, golden light streaming from his palms in thicker ribbons, lacing together into a complex lattice.
The tunnel dimmed as his glow concentrated around them, forming layered hexagonal panes that rotated slowly.
Kurojin slid his fingers along the walls and floor as he backed up three steps, leaving thin, almost invisible lines of red energy.
He didn't joke this time.
The silent swordsman stepped forward until he was at Ayame's right, drawing his blade in one smooth motion.
The steel reflected both gold and green, line of the edge perfectly straight. Kōryu chuckled.
"Good," he said. "Form your shell. Curl like insects under a leaf." He lifted one clawed hand.
Scales along his forearm shifted, rearranging like sliding plates. Green light flooded the gaps, then condensed around his palm.
A sphere formed—no bigger than a human head—dark at the center, rimmed in pulsing neon jade.
The air around it warped, compressing into visible rings.
Rei's eyes widened.
"That's—" Ayame's voice cut him off. "Ability designation pending," she said flatly. "Everyone brace. This is not a projectile. It's field manipulation."
Kōryu's grin widened, rows of sharp, uneven teeth gleaming.
"Ryūyoku no Ankoku," he intoned. "Dragon's Vein Eclipse."
He clenched his hand.
The sphere imploded silently.
The world didn't.
Sound vanished for a heartbeat.
Then pressure slammed into them.
It wasn't a shockwave so much as a sudden, crushing change in what "down" meant. Gravity twisted, dragging their bodies toward Kōryu's outstretched hand.
Rei's barrier screamed, golden threads stretching thin, bending under invisible weight.
One of the support specialists at the rear didn't brace fast enough.
His legs buckled.
Bone cracked audibly as his knee hit the stone at a warped angle.
Blood burst from his nostrils, spraying onto the floor in a dark arc before his forehead slammed down.
He didn't move again.
Another support member tried to shout a sutra, but her voice cut off as the pressure hammered his chest.
She spat blood, the red splattering against Rei's shield, painting it in spreading streaks before sliding down.
The swordsman gritted his teeth, blade digging into the floor to anchor himself.
Kurojin dropped to one knee, hand braced against the wall, a new crack forming where his fingers pressed too hard.
Ayame did not fall.
Her stance lowered, one foot sliding back, center of gravity settling as if she had trained her entire life for this kind of impossible weight.
Tendons stood out at her neck, but her gaze stayed locked on Kōryu's.
"Tsuramo," she rasped. "Report."
Tsuramo's voice came through clenched teeth.
"Presence density… multiplied," he ground out. "He's making the tunnel itself part of his body. Every stone in range is… him."
Kijin's hair whipped around his face despite the crushing force.
Tiny whirlwinds clung to his limbs, fighting to keep his blood flowing.
"Air's collapsing toward his core," he shouted. "If Rei's shield breaks, we get pancaked into that lizard's hand."
Kōryu tilted his head, amused. "Not dead yet," he murmured.
"Good. It would be disappointing to crush you all in one breath." The green veins in the walls pulsed faster.
Shadows detached from them. Dozens—no, hundreds—of smaller forms peeled away from the stone, as if carved reliefs had come to life.
Each was a two-legged, emaciated lizard-thing barely waist-high, with oversized claws and empty eye sockets glowing faintly green.
They clung to the ceiling, the walls, the floor, heads twitching in unnatural jerks as they turned toward Ayame's group.
Kōryu spread his arms, as if presenting a garden.
"Witness my gun," he said, voice proud.
"The Ryūhei—dragon soldiers, born from the veins of this rotten land. Each drip you fed me grew one of these. Each prayer for vengeance sharpened their claws."
The Ryūhei skittered, claws scraping faintly against stone. Some opened gaping mouths that stretched too wide.
No sound came out—only fine sprays of dark-green fluid that hissed when they touched the ground.
Rei swallowed hard.
"If those touch the barrier—"
"Rei," Ayame said.
He straightened. "I know."
She shifted her grip on the short baton hanging at her hip—its surface carved with talismans so worn they were almost invisible.
Her eyes never left Kōryu.
"Shinryū Kōryu," she said, voice steady despite the weight bearing down on her bones.
"On behalf of the Special Suppression Division of Shadowreach, Yokoshima Ward, I, Ayame Takara, classify you as a top-tier calamity entity. You and your army are to be eradicated."
Kōryu laughed.
It was not a nice sound. Stone dust rained from above with each guttural pulse of his amusement.
"Big words," he purred. "For prey already in my maw."
The pressure around them tightened another notch. Somewhere behind Ayame, another body hit the floor with a dull, wet thump, a pained grunt cut short.
Blood smeared across stone as consciousness fled.
Ayame exhaled once.
Her pupils thinned.
"Rei." Calm. Precise. "On my signal, reverse your lattice. Make it a blade, not a shield. Kurojin—prime your lines for detonation. Swordsman—when the barrier opens, you go for the tendons on his lead leg. Tsuramo, Kijin, you keep reading. I don't care what happens—you do not swing."
She raised her baton.
"Everyone who can still stand," she said. "Prepare to carve a path through a demon who forgot he was just a beast."
Kōryu's grin grew wider.
His Ryūhei army crouched, ready to leap.
The tunnel, the beast, the army, the dead weight of gravity itself—everything drew a collective breath.
Ayame's eyes flashed. "Move," she whispered. And the first clash with Shinryū Kōryu truly began.