Arthur came back to himself like someone surfacing from deep water: a hard, ragged intake of air, the world slamming into place with a chorus of pain. Light fractured across the room in bars—broken fluorescents, reflected off warped steel—and for a second his mind shuttered, trying to make sense of angles and sound. Then his gaze dropped to a weight at his side.
His right leg was wrong. It lay at an angle that betrayed the anatomy beneath—bone shaped into a cruel, impossible line. Pain lanced up his thigh and through his spine, white-hot and clean. He tasted copper on his tongue and the dry film of his own sweat on his lips.
"Kaito—" he tried to whisper, but words came as gravel. He blinked, and the scene rearranged itself: the upended chair, the console sparks, the shadowed figure of Kaito's father slumped nearby, clutching his side. Blood darkened the fabric of the man's shirt. The old man's breaths were shallow but steady; he blinked and tried to smile, an effort carved from muscle and duty.
Something moved at the edge of Arthur's vision and the surgeon's calm dissolved into a new, sharper panic. Kuro stood not ten meters away, an incongruous pillar of quiet in the chaos; beside him were four people Arthur didn't recognize—new faces in tailored dark clothing that sat wrong in that room of broken light. Their posture was casual, predatory. One of them—tall, with a restless look—kept a hand hovering near a pocket, as if checking a weapon's weight.
And then Arthur saw Alexander, leaning on a console like a man clinging to a cliff. His right leg was a ruin—cloth soaked and darkening, the angle of it giving away bone beneath. Blood glistened on the concrete where it fell. Alexander's face was drawn, but the eyes were the same calculating coals Arthur had seen before: cold, sharp, and unrepentant.
Between the collapsed machines and the humming monitors, Rose—the twin-knives woman—stepped forward, blades glinting with rehearsed menace. Her voice was flat and dangerous. "Stay," she ordered Arthur and Kaito's father. "Move and you'll be killed."
Arthur's mind worked in slow, precise ticks. Stay still and hope? Or move and risk bleeding the corridor red? His instinct—muscle memory from too many bruised training fields—whispered that motion was often the only salvation. If he and the old man could move, could crawl, could put distance between them and this control room, they might reach Kaito before the net closed. Get to Kaito. Make it right. Protect the boy until breath leaves you. The thought crystallized and, for half an instant, he balanced between the two choices like a man on a thin ridge.
Alexander's inner voice was a different thing entirely: pragmatic and furious. Of all times for these third-party messengers to arrive, he thought, every syllable of his anger bleeding through the wound. If I move now, I risk losing too much blood. If I don't, they take advantage. Fuck this timing. He forced a laugh like a shard of glass. "Huh—who are you? Why have you come?" The tone was a bluff, the kind of question a man asks when he needs to project strength he does not feel. "Do you think you can beat me here?"
Silk-breath confidence. But Alexander felt each heartbeat like a footstep on a glass floor. The wound in his leg screamed in rhythm with his pulse. Movement would cause more blood to wheedle out, to reduce his control. He forced his voice to sound higher than it was. If they believed him shaken, perhaps they would hesitate. Hope was a weapon as much as any metal.
Louis, the one with the impatient hands, didn't wait for words. He had been watching Alexander with ugly intent, jaw set. He produced a metal scissor from his pocket and lunged. The motion was animal—quick, precise—a blade closing on a soft target.
Rose and Tina moved at the same time: Rose with a blade in her grip, Tina with that unnerving ability they'd heard whispers of—her rim bending the world at the contact point, fragility becoming shrapnel. They breached the last few meters between predator and prey, eyes hard, ready to strike.
Alexander's face peeled into a smile that did not reach his eyes. He knew better than most how to make predators pause. But Louis was reckless—brash—and that recklessness nearly met its end the instant he reached Alexander.
Louis thrust with the scissor, aiming for flesh. Alexander's reflex did not fail but his body was sore and the limb unreliable. He grasped at the metal as it flew, palm meeting scissor in a steel kiss. The scissors bit. Metal sheared through the air and a thin line of red opened along Louis' fingers where the blade met bone and tendon.
It was not clean. The scissor's leverage turned, snapped, and for a stuttering heartbeat the mechanism bucked like a trapped animal. The scissor's end slammed into Louis' hand with such force as to shatter bones. A sickening crack filled the room—more visceral than any arrowed word—and Louis's grip failed. The scissor fell with a clatter, clanging off metal. His hand hung at an angle no child should ever see.
For a breathless moment nothing moved. Then Rose laughed—short and deliberate; she had counted on ferocity more than finesse. "So even wounded, you still manage to damage us," she said, voice sharp with a sad sort of admiration. She licked her lips, knives flashing in the red light. Tina's eyes glowed a muted ember; she made a subtlest motion and the edge of a shattered console spat a hundred jagged fragments into the air like a burst of rain.
Alexander didn't flinch at their show of force. He had been through worse. The blood on his leg clung to cloth, dark and obscene, but he liked moments like this—the kind where lesser predators could be reminded of scales. He turned his head slowly, looking at them with predator's calculation and said, coolly, "For people like you, I don't have to move. I can kill each of you standing right where you are."
The words meant to cow, to close off their options. He wanted them to feel the chill of impotence; the confidence was theater—he would not deny that—but the theater needed a truth underneath. It was dangerous bravado, and Arthur heard it for what it was: an attempt to keep control through posture and voice.
Arthur's mind was a kitchen of cold calculations. This is the perfect moment to leave, it hissed. If he and Kaito's father could wriggle out unnoticed—if they could find a route under the consoles, a shadowed crawlspace—they could reach the containment area. The odds were thin. The corridors hummed with distant alarms; Kuro's presence made every move risked betrayal. And yet Kaito waited in his iron bed like a candle under a glass. They needed him.
His hand flexed. The pain in his leg flared, but adrenaline braided itself with purpose. He began to move, his thigh muscle protesting like rope against stone. Kaito's father's eyes met his; a blinkate exchange—silent, urgent. The old man's lip trembled. He pushed himself upright with a grunt, pain painting his face in honest lines.
"Move, Arthur," Kaito's father breathed, voice thin but steady. "Before—before they think of it."
Arthur nodded once. The world condensed to the simple business of getting upright and away. He shifted his weight, preparing to crawl. Each heartbeat sent shocks up the limb; it was a negotiation with bone and will. He tried to plan a path—under the console, around the fallen rack, a crawl across cool steel to the maintenance hatch that led toward Kaito's wing. He felt time like a tangible rope being pulled taut.
Kuro's figure did not move. His eyes were unreadable, a neutral stone that gave nothing away. The four strangers watched like men at a hunt. Rose's voice rose again, thin and soft. "Don't be foolish. There's no running now." Her knives gleamed, a promise.
Alexander's predatory gaze flicked to Kuro, measuring. He smelled opportunity and tried to carve it into a blade. But under his breath, a new thought crawled in—If they leave, the game changes. If they stay, perhaps I can still bait Kuro into a misstep. The calculus was messy; his leg screamed a reminder of mortality.
Louis's hand hung in a ruined mess at his side, blood slick and hot. He swore in a low, animal sound and fought to control the nausea. In the corner, Tina flexed her hands, a small dance of pressure and release. The room had shifted from a would-be execution into a trap-littered chessboard with too many players.
Arthur felt the pull of choice like a rope tugging his chest. He saw Kaito's father's eyes—resolute, a line cut through the chaos that demanded they try—and he felt something inside his sternum harden. Perhaps it was pride or the last scrap of loyalty left in a world that hollowed men out. Maybe it was simply the animal refusal to leave someone behind.
He braced and began to crawl.
Pain flared. Rose hissed, knives whispering as she adjusted stance. Alexander's tone layered into the air like acid. "Run, Arthur… run," he said, a smirk twisting across his bloodied face. "Let's see how far you can go with that broken leg of yours."
He stopped himself. It was a threat sliced through with the thinness of a man who knew he could be wrong.
Kuro shifted infinitesimally. For the first time since Arthur came to, the man's eyes landed on Arthur like an appraisal. There was no warmth there, only the kind of neutrality that can look like betrayal when hope is its opposite. Arthur's breath came ragged, the motion slow, precise. Each inch was a victory against bone and fear.
Kaito's father rose with a groan, every move deliberate. He put a supporting arm behind his son's back and started moving, old scar tissue flexing like rope. They made their way under the machines—two slow figures sliding like ghosts between sparking conduits and fallen racks. For a heartbeat the world contracted to the small, taut universe of their escape: a maintenance panel that might, if luck favored and enemies gazed away, lead them closer to Kaito's room.
Rose's voice rose, sharp and amused. "So—you're running," she said, not without contempt. Tina's eyes glittered. Louis, clutching his ruined hand, spat blood and got up, a raw grunt that was more animal than man.
Alexander's smirk remained, but the blood on his leg spelled a new kind of threat. He had always been a man who preferred to dominate the stage; now the stage tilted. His hand tightened on the console to steady himself. The sound of Arthur's crawl was a small, stubborn series of noises in that room—the sound of a man refusing to be a corpse.
---
Arthur dragged himself across the cracked floor, each movement carving pain through his leg. Beside him, Kaito's father limped forward, one arm clutched around his bleeding side. The sound of battle behind them shook the air — metal against flesh, shattering marble, and the heavy hum of killing intent.
Kuro was the first to move.
He stood near the corner, expression unreadable, coat torn and face shadowed. Then, without a word, he turned his back to Alexander and the mafia squad, sprinting toward the hall's shattered exit.
Arthur glanced at him — a flash of confusion, a whisper of betrayal — but there was no time to question. Kuro was gone, a blur of black through the smoke.
Behind them, Alexander's gaze shifted. Even in the chaos, his predatory eyes locked on the fleeing trio.
"So, you're all going to crawl away? Pathetic," he muttered under his breath.
Just then, Rose and Tina lunged.
Tina's hand glowed faintly — everything her fingers touched cracked and splintered, her Break Rim tearing through the stone floor. Louis, clutching his broken arm, charged again with his scissor blade, screaming in rage.
Alexander didn't move from his spot.
He raised his blood-soaked hand, blocking Rose's twin knives with sheer force. Sparks scattered.
Tina's shockwave slammed into his side, but he twisted his body, absorbing the hit like an immovable wall. The air exploded with the impact, sending dust and shards of tile outward.
From the corner, Elke watched, trembling — her ability, is nulliefier. Her eyes darting between her team and the monster in front of them.
Arthur felt the tremors through his palms.
He and Kaito's father crawled faster, dragging themselves toward the hall's end, the noise of fighting fading into the distance.
Every instinct screamed to look back, but he didn't.
Not until he heard Alexander's voice again — quiet, calm, filled with that same impossible confidence.
"Run, little heroes… I'll find you when I'm done with them."
Arthur's heart pounded, blood dripping from his chin. He didn't know if they were escaping or being allowed to escape — but for now, every second alive was victory.
---
Dust fell from the cracked ceiling as Alexander's shadow loomed over the broken floor. His breathing was steady — eyes locked on Rose and Louis, both battered but still ready to fight.
"You two," he said, voice low and cutting, "aren't very nice, you know."
He tilted his head slightly, a cold grin on his lips. "While I was setting my eyes on them, you tried to attack me… Why did you let them escape?"
Rose clenched her knives tighter, sweat trickling down her neck.
Louis said nothing — his arm still trembling from the earlier blow.
Alexander continued, "You're probably not even with his team, are you? No matter. I can find them anytime…"
Tina adjusted her gloves, unfazed. "We didn't let them escape," she replied, eyes narrowing. "You don't know, do you?"
Alexander raised an eyebrow.
"We've got a ghost moving with them," Tina said, her tone carrying a trace of confidence. "And once it decides to show itself… they won't even realize they're already dead."
---
Scene change:
Deep within a shadowed corridor, Kuro moved silently, one hand clutching his side.
The metallic scent of blood and dust filled the air.
"I'm free," he whispered, a small grin forming, "but this… this feels too easy. It's their plan—I know it."
He slowed, breath steadying, eyes scanning the narrow hall.
For a moment, silence. Then—
a faint sound.
A whisper of movement from behind.
In the dim glow of the emergency lights, something shifted—just a blurred figure in the corner, almost human, almost… not.
Kuro didn't notice.
---
alexander eyes sharpened, predatory gleam flickering like fire. "But the problem here…" — he took a single step forward, the floor cracking beneath his boot — "…is dealing with you."
Rose exhaled slowly. "Monster," she muttered. "You're a monster."
Alexander smiled faintly. "Takes one to know one."
---
Arthur's POV
Crawling through the dark, narrow corridor of the facility, Arthur could barely move his broken leg. Each scrape of metal against his arm echoed through the ducts like a scream.
Kaito's father followed behind, panting — his shoulder bleeding heavily, the fabric of his coat soaked crimson.
"Arthur," he said weakly, "Kuro has… abandoned us." His voice was steady, but beneath it was a tone of quiet dread. "If reinforcements arrive, we'll be cornered and executed. There's only one path left…"
Arthur turned his head slightly. "What do you mean?"
"The ventilation ducts," he said, pointing upward. "They connect across several sections. It's narrow, but we can crawl through. It might be our only way out."
Arthur nodded, forcing his battered body to climb. The metal burned against his palms, and the ducts groaned under their weight as they entered.
Inside was silent. Only the distant hum of machinery and their heavy breathing filled the dark.
After several painful meters, Arthur whispered, "Uncle… let's rest for a bit. Just for a few minutes… then we'll move again."
Kaito's father didn't argue.
Both of them lay still, gasping softly in the dim red light leaking through the vents.
For now, in that suffocating crawl space above the chaos — they were alive.
But Arthur's heart whispered a truth he didn't want to face: Kuro really left us.
---
The room pulsed red and blue, two clashing hues tearing through the air like living storms.
Alane's crimson sword hummed with a low, vibrating growl — the heat from its blood-forged edge warping the space around it. 56's blue blade glowed faintly, energy rippling along its edge, flickering as though resisting death itself.
Each strike cracked the ground, sent shockwaves through the walls.
Metal fragments danced. The air was thick with iron and blood.
56's movements were slowing. His stance wavered slightly, his vision blurring. Blood seeped from invisible cuts — the work of Crimson Domain.
Alane smirked. "You're tough… I'll give you that. But your blood is feeding my sword now."
56 exhaled, steadying himself, his tone dry and cautious. "Tell me something, Alane…"
Their blades met again, sparks showering between them.
"Why do you seek that boy?"
Alane twisted his sword, their faces inches apart. "Why?" he said, grin widening. "Because that boy is the key — the piece that'll make our Mafia untouchable. The ultimate weapon, the one no one can stop."
56 deflected, sliding back on the slick red floor. "And you think power will save you?"
Alane chuckled, his red eyes glinting. "It always has."
He tilted his head. "And what about you? Why risk your life for him?"
56 lifted his sword again, breath shallow, blood dripping down his hand.
"It's… a long story."
"Long story short," Alane said, stepping forward, "you're about to die."
He swung.
The crimson sword sliced through air — clean, merciless — and for an instant, it seemed to cut through 56 entirely. The mask split, cracking down the middle.
A flash of pale skin.
The skull fell.
The impact echoed.
Alane blinked — the first hint of surprise flickering in his expression.
Underneath the broken mask stood a man with sharp black hair, piercing eyes, and a faint, calm smile despite the blood trickling from his lips.
Alane froze, lowering his sword slightly.
"…Why," he murmured, "do you hide such a handsome face behind that ugly mask?"
For a heartbeat, the room was still — until Alane's cheek suddenly split open. A thin, perfect line of blood trailed down his face.
He touched it, eyes widening.
That wasn't his domain's doing.
It was a counterstrike.
56 — no, Guren — raised his glowing blue blade again, expression unreadable.
He didn't answer.
And for the first time, Alane's grin faltered.