Wind moved across the city in slow, uneven breaths.
It came in from the bay, slipping between abandoned buildings, threading through shattered windows, coiling down empty streets like something alive but weary. It carried salt, rust, and the distant groan of steel under strain — the lingering after-echo of a metropolis that had not truly been silent, only paused.
Karl walked with measured steps, boots hitting cracked asphalt in a rhythm that matched the faint pulse of the compass in his HUD. West. Always west. The Erevos Prototype's signature sat like a steady heartbeat at the edge of his perception, not urgent, but persistent — a promise of what waited if he kept moving forward.
Agnes floated at his side, her cyan glow dim and stable, hands clasped loosely behind her back. Her projection drifted with effortless grace, adjusting to Karl's pace as if tethered by invisible thread.
"Vector remains stable," she said after a while, voice even. "At this rate, we'll reach the prototype's perimeter within—"
Karl stopped.
Not abruptly. Not dramatically.
Just… stilled.
His foot hung mid-step for a fraction of a second before settling back down.
Agnes halted immediately, her glow flickering once in mild surprise. She turned her head toward him, eyes narrowing slightly.
"Karl?"
He didn't answer.
His gaze had shifted — not west, where the compass tugged him, but east.
At first, it was just a glance. A subtle tilt of his head, eyes scanning the skyline behind them. Agnes followed his line of sight instinctively, expecting nothing more than another abandoned skyscraper, another collapsed overpass, another hollow silhouette of the world that used to be.
She saw nothing remarkable.
Only the same broken cityscape: skeletal buildings, toppled billboards, shattered glass catching dull light like scattered stars.
She turned back to him.
Karl had turned his head fully now.
He looked west again — just for a second — then back east.
This time, his gaze lingered.
His expression changed.
Not shock. Not fear.
Recognition.
Agnes frowned.
"…You're doing that thing," she said slowly.
No response.
Karl stood perfectly still, eyes fixed on something far beyond her field of view. The faint hum of his Drive Regulator ticked quietly beneath his coat, the Trinity Node Core cycling at low RPM, patient and idle.
Agnes rotated slightly in place, scanning the skyline with heightened precision, amplifying her visual input. Ruined towers. Smoke-stained facades. The carcass of a collapsed monorail. Nothing that should have stopped him like this.
Then — she saw it.
At first, it was just a shape.
A thin, skeletal line rising above the urban horizon, taller than everything around it, jagged and uneven, cutting against the gray sky like a broken needle.
Her eyes widened slightly.
Oh.
She returned her attention to Karl.
He was still staring.
Not blinking.
Not breathing quite right.
"…You see it, don't you?" Agnes murmured.
Karl's jaw tightened, barely perceptible.
Far to the east, towering above the city's corpse, stood what remained of Tokyo Tower.
Or rather — what it had become.
The red-and-white paint was gone entirely, stripped away by time, weather, and whatever catastrophe had emptied the city. What remained was exposed steel, rusted and corroded, the skeletal frame twisted in several places where damage had warped its structure.
Whole sections of the latticework had collapsed inward. Some beams hung loose, dangling like snapped bones. The observation decks — once bright, once alive — were shattered rings of metal, jagged and incomplete.
No lights glowed along its frame.
No birds circled its peak.
No sound came from it except the faint, mournful creak of metal under the weight of its own ruin.
And yet — even broken — it was unmistakable.
333 meters of silent history stabbing into the sky.
Karl swallowed.
"…I recognize it," he said softly.
Agnes drifted closer, her glow dimming instinctively as if to match the solemnity of the moment. "You've never been here."
"I haven't," he replied. "Not in person."
His eyes traced the tower's ruined silhouette with a reverence bordering on disbelief.
"But I've seen it."
His voice grew distant, like he was speaking through layers of memory rather than across empty air.
"In Kabuto."
Agnes tilted her head. "The series you idolized as a child."
"Yeah." A faint, almost breathless smile touched his lips. "In the World of Kabuto arc… they called it a world-prominent location. A keystone. A place that stood no matter how reality shifted."
He took a slow step forward — still west — then stopped again.
His gaze slid back east.
Locked.
Agnes crossed her arms, floating directly in front of him now, forcing him to look at her instead of the distant tower. "We have a heading. A stable one. You know this detour costs us time."
Karl didn't look away.
"I know."
"Then why do you look like you're about to ignore that entirely?"
He exhaled quietly through his nose.
"…Because I always wanted to stand at the top."
Agnes stared at him.
Not annoyed.
Not mocking.
Just… studying.
He continued, voice softer now, almost embarrassed. "When I was stuck in the hospital… when I could barely breathe, barely walk… I used to watch old footage of Tokyo. Landmarks. Skyscrapers. Places I thought I'd never see."
His fingers curled slightly at his sides.
"Tokyo Tower was always there. In every skyline shot. In every Rider battle. In every impossible scene where heroes fought gods in the clouds."
He finally turned his head back west — but his eyes kept drifting east again, as if pulled by a magnet he didn't want to resist.
Agnes sighed.
A long, theatrical, utterly Agnes sigh.
She pinched the bridge of her nose with two glowing fingers and tilted her head back, staring at the overcast sky like she was silently asking the universe for patience.
"…You are unbelievable," she muttered.
Karl glanced at her briefly, guilt flickering in his expression. "We'll still get there."
"Mm-hmm." She dropped her hand and leveled him with a flat look. "Let me guess. Five minutes?"
He hesitated.
"…Maybe twenty."
Her glow flared brighter for a second in pure exasperation. "Karl."
"I just want to see it," he said quickly. "Not climb it. Not scan it. Not disassemble it — don't look at me like that. Just… see it up close."
Agnes floated in a slow circle around him, eyeing him from every angle like an engineer inspecting a faulty component.
"…You're going to regret this later," she said finally.
Karl smiled faintly. "Probably."
She stopped in front of him again, arms crossing, head tilted. "You are actively delaying a city-scale walking weapon that may or may not be catastrophically unstable because you want to be a tourist."
"Yes."
She stared at him.
He stared back.
For a moment, the only sound was the wind.
Then — to Karl's surprise — Agnes let out a quiet, amused huff of air.
"…Fine."
His eyes widened slightly. "Wait — really?"
"Yes," she said, already drifting eastward. "But on my terms."
He blinked. "Which are…?"
She turned her head just enough to look at him over her shoulder, a faint, familiar smirk tugging at her lips. "No touching anything. No overanalyzing structural integrity. No blueprints. No replicas. No 'educational disassembly.'"
Agnes floated a little higher, crossing her arms behind her back again, posture cool and composed. "Come on, then Rider. Lead the way to your childhood fantasy."
Karl hesitated for only a second longer.
Then, without another word, he turned fully east.
The compass in his HUD pulsed insistently — a reminder of duty, of purpose, of the journey he was supposed to be on — but he minimized it with a flick of his eyes.
The icon faded to the corner of his vision.
West receded.
East became the path.
He started walking.
Agnes followed, still looking faintly exasperated, but the sharpness of it had softened. Her glow reflected faintly off the broken windows they passed, casting ripples of cyan across shattered glass and twisted metal.
As they moved closer, Tokyo Tower grew larger on the horizon, its skeletal frame looming above the surrounding ruins. The scale of it became undeniable — even in its broken state, it dwarfed everything nearby, an ancient giant standing amid the bones of the city.
Karl slowed without realizing it, eyes constantly drifting upward to track its height.
"…It's taller than I imagined," he murmured.
"Perspective distortion," Agnes replied. "Your childhood memories were constrained by hospital ceilings."
He shot her a look.
She smiled innocently.
They crossed empty intersections, stepped over collapsed guardrails, passed beneath the remains of a toppled overpass. Every few blocks, Karl glanced back over his shoulder — not at the bridge they had left behind, but at the path he was abandoning for now.
Then he looked forward again.
Toward the tower.
His steps grew steadier, more purposeful, as if this detour had suddenly become something important instead of impulsive.
Agnes watched him carefully.
She noticed the subtle shift in his posture — shoulders relaxing, breathing deepening, the faint tension around his eyes easing. The world had not become safer, but for Karl, it had become… meaningful in a different way.
"…You look ridiculous," she said eventually.
He glanced at her. "In a good way or a mean way?"
"Both," she replied without hesitation.
He huffed out a quiet laugh.
As they drew nearer, the damage to Tokyo Tower became more visceral. Support beams were twisted like melted wire. Entire sections of the lower structure had collapsed inward, creating a jagged, cavernous wound at its base.
Karl stopped at the edge of a wide, cracked plaza that once surrounded the tower.
He didn't step forward immediately.
He just… looked.
Up.
For a long time.
Wind howled faintly through the broken lattice, producing a haunting, hollow melody that echoed across the empty space.
Agnes floated beside him, no longer teasing, no longer rushing.
Just present.
"…I used to think if I could stand somewhere like this," Karl said quietly, "it would mean I made it. That I survived long enough to live."
Agnes didn't respond.
She didn't need to.
Karl finally took a step forward onto the plaza, boots crunching against shattered concrete and scattered debris. His eyes never left the tower.
Another step.
Then another.
Each stride carried him closer to the ruined monument that had lived in his imagination for years before it ever existed in his world.
Agnes drifted behind him, arms crossed, expression equal parts fond and exasperated.
"…Tourists," she muttered under her breath.
But she followed him anyway.