The air was thick with silence, a kind that screamed louder than chaos. The ruins of the old ward lay smoldering. Blood painted the pavement, but none of it seemed to belong to the monster.
Shin stood there, breathing heavily, shirt torn, arms limp.
And then—he laughed. A quiet, broken kind of laugh.
"Is this all they sent?"
A distant voice echoed in his skull. Not Ryuu. Not Kai. Not even himself.
"No. This is only the beginning."
His hand reached back, fingers gripping the hilt of a sword that should've been broken.
But it pulsed—alive.
The sword bled.
Not metaphorically. The blade itself dripped crimson mist, leaking from the cracks like it was wounded and angry. Shin's veins lit up red beneath his skin.
The monster—no, the abomination—that had been towering above the city gates trembled.
Shin vanished.
A slash later—so did half the city block.
Concrete, metal, flesh—it all screamed in unison before silence devoured it whole.
On the edge of a rooftop, a boy laughed.
Ryuu Kagami. The Laughing Void.
"That's one way to introduce yourself, Shin."
His eyes glinted not with fear—but fascination. Something inside him stirred.
Because when Shin cut the world open... the void answered back.
And somewhere in the broken skyline... a shadow flickered.
Kai.
But it wasn't him. Not yet.
Something darker walked with his face.
Shin stood in the dust, panting, surrounded by the silence he carved.
The sword pulsed again—like a heartbeat.
But it wasn't just power. It was memory. His father's voice. His mother's scream. The name they tried to erase.
And in that blood-slick haze, he saw them all.
"Your legacy is pain," whispered the sword.
"And your oath was betrayal."
Shin didn't cry. He smiled.
If his fate was ruin, then he'd become the blade that carved it.
Ryuu dropped from the rooftop, landing with a smirk and a clap.
"You sure know how to make an entrance," he said.
Shin didn't answer.
"Listen, Bleeding Blade," Ryuu's tone dropped, deadly serious. "That sword's not just a weapon. It's a gate."
"A gate to what?" Shin asked flatly.
Ryuu's eyes flicked toward the east—toward the stormclouds swirling over Kai's last known location.
"To the thing that broke Kai."
A cathedral in ruins. Candlelight flickering on shattered glass. Rain dripping in reverse—falling upward.
Kai stood alone... or so it seemed.
Chains coiled around his arms, feeding into the altar behind him. Symbols burned across the floor, pulsing in sync with his heart.
He whispered a name.
Not Shin. Not Ryuu.
His own.
"Who am I really?"
The shadows answered with a voice that sounded like his—but wrong.
"You are the fracture."
And in that moment, three fates aligned.
One bled.
One laughed.
One forgot.
But none of them were whole.
And none of them were ready for what was coming.