Scene: Arata Estate – The Arata's Mansion, Upper District – Night
The mansion sat on the city's far edge, tucked between two cascading hills. Once, the place gleamed under polished lights and layered security gates. Now, it was dim—emergency power only—its vast hallways and garden yards draped in silence and shadow, save for the occasional hum of backup systems rerouting power from Mika's personal grid.
A storm of purple light from the portal painted flickering patterns across the tall windows.
Inside, the main lounge was warm, despite the chill of the night outside.
A soft blanket was draped over Ren, laid out carefully across a long leather sectional. He hadn't moved much. Not since they arrived. Not since Mika helped clean the dried blood from his brow and fingers, hands trembling just slightly as she worked.
She sat on the edge of the sofa now, elbows on her knees, face dimly lit by a single lamp overhead.
...idiot," she whispered.
Not angry. Not even disappointed. Just tired. Like the word wasn't meant to insult him, but to release the tension crushing her ribs.
Infernia, in her human form, stood by the wide glass window that overlooked the garden. Her arms were crossed. Not out of annoyance—more like she didn't know where else to put her hands.
"You sure he should be lying down like that?" she asked.
Mika didn't look up. "His system's stabilizing. Body temperature's normalized. He just needs to rest."
Infernia didn't reply immediately. She shifted, leaned a little against the glass. The moonlight bounced off her red eyes, made her look softer than she ever admitted to being.
"You could've just left him at the shelter, you know. Someone else would've watched him."
Mika's response was immediate, low, not open for discussion.
"No."
A pause. Infernia tilted her head, a slight grin tugging at one side of her lip.
"Figured."
Ren stirred slightly.
Just enough for a soft breath to escape his lips.
Mika leaned forward, gaze sharpened, like every part of her was waiting for a sign he'd wake fully. His hand twitched under the blanket. His face scrunched for a second before relaxing again.
"You're a real mess," she whispered. "You always have to take it farther than anyone else. Even when it hurts."
Behind her, Infernia was watching.
But not mocking.
Not even teasing.
Just… watching. Quietly. With the expression of someone who understood the weight behind reckless strength.
"You're staying up with him all night?" Infernia asked.
Mika nodded. "I'll take the couch."
"And me?"
"Floor."
Infernia groaned. "I'm a kaiju, not a house cat."
"You're a third wheel."
"Slander."
"Truth."
They locked eyes for a moment, but even their bickering felt hollow tonight. Muted. Like neither of them had the energy to put full sarcasm into it.
Infernia flopped down on the far end of the sectional, arms behind her head. She looked up at the ceiling.
"He'll wake up tomorrow. He always does. Dumbass is built like a glitch in the system."
Mika didn't respond, just looked back at Ren. Her hand gently brushed a strand of hair from his forehead.
"...just don't leave again. Not without telling someone."
The firelight from the wall-mounted lamp flickered slightly, casting soft shadows across the room. It wasn't stormy outside, but the wind had a certain weight to it now—restless. Like the world was holding its breath.
Ren shifted again under the blanket, his breathing shallowed for a brief moment. His lips parted just slightly, a low murmur slipping through—barely audible.
"...don't… let them fall…"
Mika's gaze snapped toward his face.
"What…?"
He didn't speak again. Just that one broken phrase. Barely more than a whisper.
But it rattled her.
"Don't let them fall"—what was that supposed to mean?
Her fingers clenched into her knees. Something in her chest knotted, sharp and cold. Her mind ran wild, eyes scanning his expression, trying to pull meaning from the twitch in his brow or the way his jaw tensed.
Was he dreaming? Warning them? Did he see something again?
Behind her, Infernia shifted on the floor, her voice cutting into the silence with the subtlety of a knife dragged across velvet.
"Cryptic sleep talking. Always fun."
Mika didn't respond right away. The fire crackled. The silence was too thick, too much unsaid.
Finally, she stood up slowly, walked across the lounge, and poured herself a small glass of water from the jug on the table. She took a sip. Her expression didn't change.
"...If you weren't here…"
Infernia perked slightly, eyebrow raised.
Mika didn't turn to look at her. Just stared at the water in the glass.
"I'd probably be in that bed with him right now."
A beat. Infernia didn't interrupt.
"But…" Mika's voice dropped lower, more bitter, "someone… wouldn't just drift back into my head."
A longer pause. Then—
"Tch."
She tossed back the rest of the water and set the glass down a little harder than needed.
Infernia leaned back slowly, lacing her fingers behind her head, smirking just a little too knowingly.
"Aha. I knew it."
Mika turned, annoyed.
"Knew what?"
"Knew you had feelings. Deep ones. All that fire and bark, and here you are—ready to curl up beside him like a lovesick—"
"You're the lovesick third wheel."
"You're the main girl with denial issues."
"You're literally sleeping on the floor."
"And yet here I am, still third-wheeling through this soap opera."
Mika didn't respond, just shot her a look that could kill a god.
Infernia chuckled, but her voice softened again.
"...He's lucky to have you. You know."
Mika sat back down beside the couch where Ren slept.
She stared at him again, that worry seeping back in around the edges.
"He's the one who keeps trying to carry everything. All the pressure. All the pain. Even the future."
Her hand hovered just over his—wanting to hold it, but too afraid to cross that line.
"I'm just… trying to be the one who stays."
A beat.
Outside, the portal continued to glow—its pale light leaking through the edges of the curtains. Even in the safety of the mansion, the world's ending still hovered, silence was returned. The wind howled gently outside the tall glass windows. The portal above continued to pulse, but slower now—rhythmic. Like a heartbeat syncing with the city's slumber.
The scene held like that.
Mika watching over him, Infernia pretending not to care but staying anyway. A quiet night in a world on the brink of another war.
And Ren, caught somewhere between dreams and tomorrow, just breathing.
None of them slept that easily.
Not when tomorrow might not wait.
Not when cryptic dreams warned of something falling.
And not when hearts were this close to breaking through the silence.
The shadows inside the mansion had grown longer, darker, but the portal's light from the horizon still painted soft streaks of bluish violet across the floor.
Mika had dozed off at last, curled sideways on the nearby couch. Her hand hung loosely over the edge, close enough to brush Ren's blanket. The strain of the last 48 hours had finally caught up to her.
Ren remained unmoving—still pale, still silent—but breathing had steadied.
Infernia sat cross-legged a few feet away, eyes half-lidded, her body language deceptively lazy. Still, every sound that echoed through the halls made her eyes twitch, her senses sharp even when resting.
And then—
A shift.
The air around them flexed, like something tore softly through the fabric of stillness. The hairs on Infernia's neck rose as she looked up, already moving.
A figure had appeared—tall, cloaked in faint static, posture relaxed like it didn't belong to this world at all.
Infernia moved.
A blur of fire and motion, she struck with a silent right hook, flame trailing her knuckles—the heat invisible but real enough to snap the couch leather in half if it missed—
—tap.
A single finger stopped her fist mid-air.
No impact.
No force.
Just presence.
"Yo," said the figure, almost bored.
The static cleared.
Raijin.
The lightning kaiju stood in his human form, eyes calm, expression unreadable. Faint runic marks still glowed on parts of his collarbone, residual from the earlier sealing.
He gestured past her, toward the couch.
"He's waking up."
Infernia blinked. Turned sharply. Ren stirred.
A slow inhale. Fingers tightening.
Then eyes—still hazy—opened halfway.
Ren sat up slowly, groaning under his breath, as if the mere act of consciousness hurt.
Mika didn't move. Still sleeping.
"What time is it?" Ren asked groggily.
"Too late," Infernia muttered. "Or too early."
"Either works."
Ren turned slightly, wincing as he stretched his limbs. Raijin watched him silently. The two exchanged a brief nod.
"You're not supposed to move, dumbass," Infernia said, standing, arms crossed now.
Ren glanced at her, then at Raijin, then sighed.
"I have to go."
"Go where?"
"Nexus plane."
"You're joking."
"I go every night. No matter what. We train."
"You're literally half-dead—"
"Half is still enough."
Infernia didn't respond right away. Her jaw tensed. She looked back at Mika for a second, then returned to Ren.
"She's gonna kill you when she finds out."
"If I don't get stronger, someone else might not wake up next time."
A long silence.
Infernia clicked her tongue. Looked away. Then back.
She walked up to him, very close. Poked his forehead with two fingers—hard.
"Four minutes."
Ren blinked.
"What?"
"Four minutes. Real world. I'm counting."
Raijin faintly grinned.
"Four minutes is sixteen hours down there," Infernia said.
"You better be back in exactly that. I want her to wake up and see you here, not off playing warrior ghost in a pocket dimension."
Ren gave a tired nod.
"Thank you."
"I swear, Ren, if you push yourself till you pass out again—"
"I won't."
Raijin held out a hand.
A sigil lit up at Ren's feet, and the space around them began to hum softly—space folding inward in silence.
"Ready?" Raijin asked.
"Always."
They vanished—gone in a flicker of static and warped gravity.
The lounge was empty again, except for Mika on the couch and Infernia pacing like a cat guarding its territory.
Cut to:
Nexus Plane – 4:00 AM equivalent
A world without stars.
Infinite dark skies stretched across an obsidian field. Arcs of flickering light pulsed through the air like veins, connecting to distant monoliths floating in anti-gravity stillness.
Ren and Raijin land— his feet slid across the shimmering floor of crystallized energy.
The space felt alive. Watching. Judging.
Ren straightened.
"Let's make every second count."
Raijin's hands ignited with blue lightning.
"Then stop holding back."
A thin pulse of lightning rippled across the crystalline obsidian ground as Raijin landed first, his cloak whipped slightly behind him, arms glowed with faint circuits of energy.
The air here was warped and cold, an endless, starlit void above them, refracted with shattered shards of forgotten memories and raw elemental code floating like static.
"Pulling in the simulation grid," Raijin muttered
He knelt, then slammed his palm into the ground. The surface beneath them flared with blue runes, like a circuit awakening. Neon threads shot out in all directions, as it twisted midair then looped back.
A translucent interface opened up before him — part digital, part organic — pulsing.
"Setting spawn density to phase 3... corrupted hostiles... ambient interference stable..."
Ren adjusted his stance beside him, silent. No hesitation in his eyes. But slight exhaustion— and cold readiness.
"Copy unit: Abbadon," Raijin said, as he flicked his wrist to the side. "Strength dampening to twenty-eight percent. Mental pressure and conceptual dissonance active."
Ren looks over.
"What version of Abbadon are we going up against?"
"Not the real one," Raijin replied, eyes still on the interface. "Just a nerfed echo. Something to teach you how to bleed properly before you drown."
Ren paused. "…You know him?"
"Nope," Raijin said simply, "but you know OP when you see one."
The interface collapsed. Behind them, pillars erupted from the ground in a circular formation, enclosing the arena in jagged thrones of energy. Corruption started to form at the far ends—shadows twisting into shapes, dozens at first, then hundreds.
"Simulation live," Raijin announced, as he stepped forward. "4,000 corrupted ops, no breaks, full sync."
Ren's twin daggers materialized — reverse grip, the blades hummed faintly with power, small arcs of lightning trailed their hilts.
"Then let's not waste the minutes."
The two blurred forward—
and chaos began.
A blackened corrupted screecher lunged with razor claws—Ren ducked low, slid under, and split it at the waist with a clean upward arc. Its body glitched, then disintegrated midair.
Raijin, three paces ahead, summoned a crackling spear and hurled it across the field— skewering seven corrupted units at once before it detonated into an EMP wave, frying the ones behind it.
Ren spun mid-air, his daggers cutting circular arcs as he moved between clusters, never staying still. He slashed forward—then vanished with a burst of wind—appearing behind the enemy and eliminating three more.
Raijin moved like thunder—fluid, crashing, devastating. One swipe of his halberd sent shockwaves down the field. He sidestepped a leaping enemy, then punched it in the chest, and watched it explode into electric mist.
"...You're lucky, you know," Raijin mutters casually between combat movements.
Ren kicked off a pillar, dragging his blade across a crawling beast's skull before flipping back beside Raijin.
"Not really."
"Mika's watching over you like a guardian angel," Raijin continued, not missing a beat as he ripped through another wave with chain lightning. "Even after getting bodied by dumb luck—"
"It's not luck," Ren snapped, as he was slicing through a cluster that tried to flank them. "It's work. Everything I get, I fight for."
"Eh, that's not what I meant—" Raijin couldn't really say anything, Ren completely missed the point and he wasn't really stressing himself any longer.
"Maybe it is luck," Ren interrupted, panting now. "Lucky to have them. Lucky to still be here. But I'm not gonna rely on that. I earn everything."
Raijin grinned slightly, despite himself.
"Good. Just don't forget who you are when you start winning."
The field erupts again—a fresh surge of corrupted crawled across the walls, dropping like leeches from the ceiling of this simulated dimension. 4,000 is no joke.
But Ren and Raijin moved like two storms colliding—separate, yet synchronized. Raijin clears the left flank with a sweeping bolt barrage while Ren danced through the right, his daggers carving precise arcs in a deadly tempo.
Bloodless, but violent.
Visceral.
And then—
The simulation stuttered. Time slowed.
A tower of code slammed down in the center of the field, glowing black with red veins.
The temperature drops.
The corrupted vanish in an instant, sucked into the darkness.
And from that darkness…
Something crawled out.
A form — tall, twisted, majestic and terrifying, hunched like it bore the weight of the cosmos.
Copy of Abbadon.
A weaker echo.
But still felt heavier than the thousands they just destroyed.
Raijin stepped forward. Eyes narrowed.
"Ready?"
Ren, breathing was steady, blades were still gripped tight.
"I have four minutes."
The atmosphere shifted.
Not just cold anymore— but heavy.
The ground began to pulse beneath their feet, like something alive had taken hold of the realm's core. Black dust kicked up in waves. Particles of corrupted code rippled through the air like embers floating through space.
The towering figure of Abbadon's copy stood ahead—its body layered in molten stone-like plates, leaking dark cosmic fluid. Its eyes are jagged slit, twitching erratically, like corrupted data constantly rewriting itself.
Light bent near it.
The closer you got, the more your instincts screamed wrong.
Raijin stepped forward, rotating his shoulder, letting the crackle of blue lightning build in his palm. His system UI flickered into view, semi-transparent and locked to his forearm.
After three minutes, the battlefield went quiet, and Ren looks down at an op he just finished off.
Raijin checked the system counter.
"Less than two minutes left," he muttered.
A countdown continued—[01:59]... [01:58]...
Ren scoffs from behind.
"Really? A counter?"
"Someone's gotta keep time."
"You really fear Infernia that much?"
Raijin's lip twitches—half a smirk, half a grimace.
"Nah. But someone's feelings are on the line."
"What, Mika's?"
Raijin didn't answer. Instead, he gripped his halberd tighter and vanished in a blink of light.
"Dash."
Ren didn't wait. No ceremony.
He burst forward just as Raijin disappeared—twin daggers crackling, energy lines crawled up his forearms, trailing like phosphorescent scars.
Abbadon's copy didn't charge.
It warped.
The space between them twisted inward, and suddenly, it was in front of Ren, swiping with an arm longer than it looked, coated in rusted bone armor.
Ren ducked—barely.
A thin cut grazed his cheek despite the dodge, and the shockwave behind it tore open the air itself.
He spun low, kicking backward while slashing up with his daggers, igniting in a spiral of lightning. The attack landed—but the creature didn't flinch. It rotated its torso unnaturally, twisting in two directions at once, and tried to grab him mid-recovery.
A bang cuts across the field.
Raijin reappears in a thunderclap, shoving Abbadon's hand back with his halberd and knocking it off-balance.
"Don't let it get you," he warns. "If it gets a gain on you, it's over."
Ren breathed through his nose, and cracked his neck. "Yeah. Got it."
Combo maneuver — static pulse: twin strike.
Raijin and Ren burst into motion.
Raijin dashed up first, his weapon split into three mid-air — a staff, a blade, and a spear — rotating around him like satellites.
He hurled them forward, pinning Abbadon's limbs momentarily.
Ren followed behind, blades glowing — he spun forward into a diving slash, hitting Abbadon's shoulder joint, then vanished in a blur before the counterattack hit. He reappeared behind its knee and slashed low, causing the creature to stumble.
But then—
The ground bent upward in a vertical wave.
Abbadon's presence pulsed — the environment glitched. Fragments of the ground begin floating. Time de-synced briefly, showing flickers of past and future actions.
Abbadon split into four for a brief instant — four afterimages, each phasing out in one direction.
"It's copying itself," Ren realizes.
"Then destroy the original."
Ren called out, "How—!" but was cut off.
Raijin slammed his halberd into the floor, causing lightning pillars to erupt in a calculated pattern — trapping three of the phantoms. He called out:
"The last one — front right!"
Ren adjusted instantly — dashing through the falling debris and static wind currents, aiming his daggers toward the remaining afterimage.
The real Abbadon roared.
It saw him coming—
Raised its arm—
And suddenly its palm opened, revealing a spiraling eye.
A beam of distortion fires out, erasing everything in its path.
Ren flipped backward in a last-second reaction, the beam just barely grazing his side, sending arcs of corrupted energy across his ribcage. He grunted in pain — landed rough, but not broken.
Raijin leapt above the beam, flipping mid-air, his weapons recombined into a glaive.
He threw it downward, straight into the source of the beam — the corrupted eye in Abbadon's hand — the impact caused an implosion, sucking in corrupted particles and silencing the beam.
Ren and Raijin regrouped near one of the floating shards of ground.
"Minute and a half left," Raijin panted.
"We're not beating this thing in two minutes," Ren said, wiping blood from his mouth. "Not like this."
Raijin's expression didn't waver.
"We're not supposed to win."
Ren raised an eyebrow.
"Then what are we doing?"
"Proving you won't run next time."
They turn as Abbadon's form began cracking, adapting.
More arms formed.
A crown of writhing shadow took shape.
And now—its real movements began.