★ ★ ★
Chapter Two
Humanity
――――――――――
The people went wild.
It didn't happen all at once. First came the stillness — one final collective breath — and then something snapped, and it was everywhere. Shouting. Shoving. Two men lunging for the knife at the same time, going down together in a tangle of limbs and graduation robes.
It had begun.
Shiebe pressed his back against the rear wall of the carriage. The fighting was concentrated at the front — which bought them time, not safety. The distinction mattered.
"Mona. I'm going to use it." Shiebe stood up, not taking his gaze off the fight. He couldn't afford to.
"You sure? After the way you just vomited…" Mona muttered.
"What, you worried about me?" A slight smirk appeared on his face as he glanced back at his sister.
"Tsk! As if!"
"Akari. I hate to ask you this but — can you help fight. I'll need your brains for this."
Akari stood up, keeping her hand close to her chest. "Of course! I hated just watching anyways." Despite what she said her legs still shook.
Damn, I thought my fighting days were over… Sorry.
"My plan is simple — I'm getting everyone out of here by force. I'm killing the anomaly." Shiebe stated.
Akari hesitated. "And if you can't?"
"Then we hope someone stronger than me had the same idea."
Mona stood up, brushing dust off her skirt. "He's an Ace."
"S-Shiebe! You're an Ace!" Akari repeated, shocked.
"Yeah… though I don't have really good control over it. I don't use it much for fighting." He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Well then. I feel safer already! I'll protect the kids and elderly who are unable to fight." She declared.
Shiebe looked at her with something like awe. He smiled.
"I was even thinking about them… alright, you do that. And Mona, watch my back."
"Obviously."
Without another word, they plunged into the crowd.
They pushed in together. The carriage had become something else entirely. The narrow aisle — built for standing passengers and rolling luggage — was now the worst possible arena. Bodies couldn't fall cleanly. People couldn't run. Every collision happened at close range.
"DIE — DIE —"
"Please — I have a kid — I have a —"
The voices overlapped until they stopped sounding like people. Shiebe kept his eyes forward and his jaw tight.
"M-Mommy… where are you?"
"A-Ah… l-little girl… come here. I'll take you to your mom." A man covered in scratches reached out to the little crying girl. He closed his eyes and smiled whilst keeping his other hand behind his back.
The girl reached out to him when —
Akari had seen the man's other hand before anyone else had. The one he was keeping behind his back. She had assessed it, assessed him, assessed the child's trajectory, and made a decision.
The decision took approximately half a second.
The man felt a throbbing pain to his left temple and collapsed.
He held his temple in pain and scowled. "What the fuck…"
He saw a tall woman with long black hair frowning at him. Akari.
H-Holy shit…
"Heh! Serves him right!" Mona grasped her fist and grinned.
Shiebe approached the man and grabbed him by the hair.
"Akari — I'm sure you can take care of yourself. I'll handle this guy."
Akari, comforting the child, smiled. "Ah okay. Please stay safe, you two."
Remind me not to get on her bad side.
"Ow. Ow, stop that!" The man punched at Shiebe's arm as he dragged him across the train.
"You're lucky my little sister's here. Otherwise I may have already killed you."
"H-Hey — don't use me as a means to hold you back! I don't give a crap if he lives or dies!"
"You say that but if I do kill him I bet you'll cry agai — oh shit." Shiebe stopped himself as heat rose to his ears.
"Y-You… you guys are fucking crazy!"
The man continued to shake himself and tried to escape. "Look who's speaking." Mona kicked him in the legs.
As Shiebe kept dragging him he felt a shift in weight.
"W-What the!" Mona looked around, confused. The man… had been stabbed.
Shiebe kissed his teeth and threw the body aside.
They stood in the heat of the fights, yet no one had attacked them — everyone was too busy. So how did —
"It seems we finally meet, Zackaria." A voice called from Shiebe's left.
He turned to see a blue-haired boy sitting down peacefully with his eyes closed and arms crossed.
"You…" Shiebe muttered.
"Shiebe, you know this guy?" Mona questioned, narrowing her eyes.
The boy stood up and stared Shiebe face to face. "Can't say he rings a bell." His voice had gone deeper.
"Hm. I was in your class for anomaly studies. Along with Wilson. We never spoke though." The boy smirked.
"What do you want? This… this is all because of your instigation." Shiebe growled.
"Is it now? All I did was give the girl the knife. It was her mental weakness that caused her to crack under pressure. I don't think I had anything to do with that." The boy slightly dipped his head, allowing one eye to be visible under his hair.
"Asshole," Mona muttered. "Forget this guy, he's wasting our time."
Mona tried to move forward but the boy blocked her way. "Don't move. I've got something to settle with your brother."
Shiebe stepped back a bit.
What the hell is his problem?
"Zackaria. You are able to use an Ace ability, right? That makes you just like my elder brother." The boy shoved his hand into his robe's pocket.
"How do you —?"
"I've been watching you for a while now." The train light glistened on the sharp metallic object he pulled out. "I will end you today."
The boy moved with swift haste, aiming for Shiebe's stomach.
Before contact was made he found himself stopping centimetres away.
"Are you fucking insane!" Mona gripped the boy's arm.
"You're strong. You must train a lot." The boy leaped back, escaping her grasp with ease.
S-Shit. Well then, I guess I'm doing this!
Shiebe grabbed his chest and closed his eyes.
"Phantom."
It started at his shoulders.
Darkness bled outward from beneath his graduation robe — slow at first, then all at once. Six tendrils unfurled from his back, each one moving with a loose, unsettling independence, as if they weren't extensions of him but something that had been waiting inside him for permission to exist. His arms disappeared beneath a shell of shadow. Where his hands had been, curved claws now rested — dark, silent, and very still.
The carriage felt smaller.
Ren stared at him from six feet away. Something moved behind his blank crimson eyes.
Something about the ability nagged at him. The cold precision of it. The specific way it filled space rather than attacked through it. He'd read about abilities like that.
"So this is The Ace Carnage." Not a question.
He charged.
"Black Mist."
The word left his mouth like a switch being flipped. Darkness poured from Ren's palm — not the warm organic shadow of Shiebe's tendrils but something cold and mechanical, filling the carriage from floor to ceiling in under a second. The seats disappeared. The windows disappeared. The screaming of the crowd at the far end of the carriage disappeared.
Shiebe couldn't see his own hands.
This guy… can use magic. I knew he wasn't normal.
The fog shifted as the boy moved within it.
He felt it before he heard it. A sharp vibration ran up through the tendril on his left — the one he'd spread furthest — and then came the sound. Metal on shadow. A noise that shouldn't have been possible.
He can cut them.
Shiebe pulled the tendril back and sent two others sweeping low across the floor where he'd last heard footsteps. Nothing. Ren had already moved.
It's smart enough to know it's in danger.
The mist thinned — not all at once but in patches, the way fog burns off in the morning. Ren materialised four feet ahead, closer than expected, teeth pressed together and knife already mid-swing.
The tendrils reacted before Shiebe told them to. Two crossed in front of the blade. One drove itself into Ren's stomach with the blunt force of a swinging door.
The sound Ren made wasn't a scream. It was shorter than that.
Mona had been circling wide while Shiebe held Ren's attention. The moment the tendril connected with his stomach she was already moving — a kick that caught Ren clean under the chin and snapped his head back.
Blood left his mouth before he hit the wall. She pulled back and measured her next move, reading him the way someone reads a fight they've been in before.
Ren's eyes opened. In one motion — faster than someone coughing blood had any right to be — he flicked the knife underhand. Low. Aimed at the one thing Shiebe's tendrils weren't covering.
The blade caught Mona's leg before either of them registered it had left his hand.
"Urgh —" She swallowed the sound but her leg buckled.
Something in Shiebe's chest went cold.
"MONA —"
The tendrils didn't wait for the rest of the sentence. Two of them drove into Ren's arms simultaneously — not a defensive move, not a calculated one. Just fury finding the nearest target.
Ren's back met the floor.
"Release!" Shiebe said as the tendrils disappeared. He rushed toward Mona.
"Mona… are you okay?" Shiebe asked, looking at her leg.
"It's… nothing." She smiled.
The boy had stumbled back, coughing blood in thick, dark strings. His grip on the knife loosened. He didn't let it go — just held it badly, like his hand had forgotten what it was doing.
Shiebe approached slowly.
"You're Ren." He said it quietly, like confirming something he'd suspected for a while. "The Ace Tyrant's younger brother."
Ren's head lifted. For just a moment, something crossed his face that wasn't arrogance.
"I will not die," he said. "If that's what you're hoping for."
"Your mask is slipping."
Ren looked at the floor. When he spoke again the cold precision was gone from his voice entirely, replaced with something raw and unguarded. "You bother me, Zackaria. You always have." Blood welled at the corner of his mouth. "How does someone like you get chosen? Born an Ace — just like that — while I…" He stopped. Started again. "Why you? Why not me?"
"I don't know," Shiebe said. And he meant it.
Ren was quiet for a long moment.
"…I wonder what my parents would say to that."
He closed his eyes. His body went slack.
Shiebe stood over him and said nothing. Whatever Ren was — whatever he'd done today — that last question had sounded painfully human.
―――
"Shiebe, Mona — are you okay?" a voice from behind called. It was Akari, holding the hand of the little girl.
Shiebe helped Mona get to her feet and placed her hand over his shoulder.
"We ran into a little bit of trouble, but apart from that we were fine." Mona said, grinning.
"A-Ah, your leg!"
"Seriously, don't worry about it. I'll be fine."
Today was meant to be a day of celebrations and goodbyes. The day of my university graduation — but instead I'm carrying my injured sister through a train carriage filled with murders happening by the second.
Shiebe led Mona to a vacant seat and sat her down.
"This is my fault. If I had put more thought into my plan this wouldn't have happened." Shiebe apologised.
"Shiebe, don't say that!" Akari raised her voice. "If it wasn't for you… I don't even want to imagine what would have happened to me or my grandfather. I owe you so much!"
Shiebe stared at the kid by her side and frowned.
"Well, we are pretty much at the front of the train now. So I'll end this once and for all."
Shiebe turned around, staring at the anomaly as she let more and more people leave.
As he began to walk —
"Shiebe." Mona's voice called out.
He turned his head. "Don't die."
He smirked. "Not planning to."
As he walked past the bodies of the arrogant men, the businessmen, and eventually the fat man — the first murder — he finally reached the anomaly. The woman who had trapped them in this hell.
"Show me the proof of your kill and you can leave," she said casually.
"My first kill will be you." He pointed toward the anomaly, causing her to tilt her head.
"You? Kill me?" She scoffed. "Listen, I'm flattered and all, but I got —"
"Enough with the fucking jokes!" Shiebe shouted. "Right now. Right here. You and me. Let everyone else leave."
The anomaly stepped forward. "What makes you so sure you can defeat me?"
"I'm The Ace of Carnage. That should be enough compared to these ordinary humans, right?"
She smiled and licked her lips.
"Ooh, aren't you the brave warrior." She blushed. "Fine then — everyone is allowed to leave the train."
Everyone had stopped fighting at those words as they looked at one another.
"F-For real…"
"T-Thank the gods."
People cautiously started to approach the anomaly as she moved away from the exit. Akari had gone to get her grandfather and then grabbed the hand of the kid. They were the last to leave.
"Hurry up, we don't have all day, you know," she muttered.
Shiebe walked across the train and picked up a particular body. Ren.
Akari let her grandfather step down, then the child. Then she left herself and took hold of Ren.
"Shiebe… please be careful." Tears formed in her eyes. "Don't die. Please."
"I won't. Don't worry." Shiebe smiled as he stepped back and saw Mona using the wall to support herself.
"Kick her ass for me." Mona grinned, wide and shameless and completely herself. "You've got this."
She turned toward the open door. The wind from outside caught her hair.
Shiebe watched her back and felt, for just a moment, something that might have been gratitude. That she'd been here. That of all the people on this train, it had been her.
He almost said something.
He didn't.
The anomaly moved.
There was no warning — no shift in her posture, no inhale. One moment she was standing still and the next her leg had already connected with the back of Mona's spine. The sound of it was wrong. Too solid. Too final.
Mona didn't make a sound.
That was the part that stayed with him. Later, when he tried to remember it, what he kept coming back to wasn't the kick or the crack or the open door rushing past. It was that she hadn't made a sound. No gasp. No scream. Just — gone. Like a candle someone cupped their hand around.
"If you thought for one moment I was going to let all those people walk free," the anomaly said pleasantly, "then you were greatly mistaken."
Shiebe stood where he was.
He wasn't sure how long.
The carriage was wrecked around him. Overturned seats, broken glass, the particular stillness of a space that had recently contained a large amount of violence and now contained very little.
Mona.
He'd told her not to worry. He'd smirked at her like it was already decided. Like the outcome was never in question because he was the one handling it.
I was carrying her on my shoulder twenty minutes ago. She was complaining that I was walking too fast.
His hands were shaking. He noticed this from a distance, the way you notice weather through a window.
"What the hell," he said quietly. Not to the anomaly. Not to anyone. "…are you."
"You." His voice had dropped to almost nothing. "I'll carve your guts out. I'll drink your blood while I pick out your organs one by one."
He wasn't performing it. That was what made it frightening.
"I will kill you."