Osaka was alive.
Neon light bled from the signs in Namba, bouncing off puddles left by an earlier rain. Salarymen staggered home drunk. Pachinko parlors howled with electronic laughter. Street vendors shouted about takoyaki and okonomiyaki, grease popping in pans. It was a Friday night, and the city pulsed with the heartbeat of millions who thought the world still belonged to them.
Shitsubo Date leaned against the shutter of a closed arcade, smoking a cheap cigarette. His uniform smelled of sweat and rusted iron—a third-shift security guard's badge pinned to his chest like an insult. He flicked ash into the gutter and stared at the passing crowd.
Twenty-eight years old. No degree. No future. His younger brother, Genji, was already doing better than him—university, a clean reputation, a life that mattered. Shitsubo? He had night shifts, debts, and a bitterness that gnawed like acid.
"Another wasted day," he muttered, the words vanishing in the city noise.
And then the sirens began to scream.
Not the usual wail of police cars or ambulances.
These were eerie, mechanical, unnatural. A bass rumble that made teeth ache and windows rattle. Heads turned upward as shadows stretched across the pavement.
The sky was bleeding.
Directly above Namba, the clouds tore apart. A jagged wound of light split the night, as though someone had stabbed heaven with a knife and left it festering. Sparks of violet lightning crawled along its edges. The air reeked of ozone and iron.
People froze. Phones lifted to record. Nervous laughter rippled, but died as the wound widened and something pressed through.
Not aircraft. Not meteor.
The first Aggressor emerged—angular, insectoid, its body built of bone-like plates threaded with veins of silver light like lightening parading in the clouds. Six limbs stabbed the air as its head split into mandibles, shrieking a frequency that shattered glass and eardrums alike. Behind it, more shadows writhed within the rift.
The street broke into chaos.
"Run!" someone screamed.
The crowd surged. Cars crashed into one another. Pedestals tripped underfoot and were trampled. The Aggressor leapt from the sky and landed in the middle of Dōtonbori, crushing a taxi beneath its weight. Horrific creams tore through the district as it began to butcher, without pattern. Or remorse.
Shitsubo didn't move. For a moment, he was frozen, cigarette burning between his fingers as his already bleak reality shattered into darker fragments, right in front of him. The world wasn't supposed to end in neon and takoyaki smoke.
Then the Aggressor's eyes— ashen pale globes without pupils—locked on him.
The spell broke.
Shitsubo grabbed the nearest thing he could—a bent iron pipe lying by a dumpster. His heart pounded against his ribs as the creature shrieked and lunged.
He swung. Metal clanged against chitin, useless. The Aggressor's limb knocked him off his feet. Pain lanced his ribs as he slammed into the pavement. Around him, people screamed and scattered. Nobody stopped to help.
The creature raised its limb again—spear-like, dripping with strange fluid.
Shitsubo's breath caught. So this is it. Another nameless corpse on the pavement.
But before the blow fell, the air warped.
A second tear yawned open at his feet, sucking him downward. He didn't even have time to scream before he was swallowed into the dark.
Shitsubo woke to silence.
Not the silence of the city at night, but a void that swallowed sound itself. He sat up, gasping, and found himself on cold stone. Around him stretched an endless chamber—walls of shifting obsidian, skyless and infinite.
Dozens of others were there. Men, women, teenagers. Some in suits, others in casual wear. They looked as lost as he felt, shivering, sobbing, or screaming questions that vanished without echo.
Then the floor shuddered.
A monolith erupted from the ground at the chamber's center—a black obelisk etched with runes that burned white-hot. The air thrummed as a voice, metallic and ancient, vibrated inside their skulls.
>RIFT TRIAL INITIATED.
*Parameters: Survival. Duration: Until all but one remain.
*Reward: Ascension. Failure: Consumption."
The words weren't Japanese. They weren't any language Shitsubo knew. Yet he understood them perfectly.
Panic detonated.
"What does that mean?" someone screamed.
"Until one remain? Are you insane?!"
"I—I want out! This is a mistake!"
A businessman in a navy suit bolted for the edge of the chamber. He slammed into the obsidian wall, bones cracking. The wall swallowed him whole like tar, and when it spat him out, only bones remained.
Screams rose higher.
Shitsubo's hands trembled around his iron pipe. His heart pounded, but his mind… his mind felt strangely clear. He scanned the crowd, counting heads, assessing distance.
Survival. Duration. Until all but one remain.
It wasn't a mistake. It was a test.
The ground split open again. From the cracks crawled skeletal beasts, their bodies stitched from bone and ash, eye sockets glowing with ember-light. They moved on all fours, shrieking as they charged the group.
Chaos. People scattered. Some tried to fight with fists, shoes, anything. They were torn apart instantly, blood spraying across the black stone.
The businessman's jawbone landed at Shitsubo's feet.
A woman tried to grab his arm, begging for help. "Please—please, I don't want to—"
Instinct roared. Shitsubo shoved her back into the oncoming beast. Its jaws closed around her throat, tearing it out in a spray of red. Her scream ended in a wet gurgle.
He didn't watch. He swung his pipe into the skull of another beast, caving it in. Bone fragments scattered. His breath came ragged, but his mind sharpened further.
And then it happened.
Across his vision flickered something impossible—white runes burning like scars on reality. They formed symbols, then words.
> Runic Imprint Acquired: Vafthrúdnir's Insight.
Effect: Enemy weaknesses revealed. Cognitive acceleration engaged.
Shitsubo staggered, clutching his head. His gaze snapped back to the diabolical beasts, and suddenly—suddenly he saw them differently. Thin red lines traced their joints, glowing at the weakest points. Their movements slowed in his perception, like he was watching them half a second ahead.
He grinned, lips splitting bloody.
The next beast lunged. He sidestepped, pipe cracking into its marked joint. Bone shattered; the creature collapsed. He stomped its skull into fragments.
All around him, people screamed and died. Some begged. Some cursed. Most were slaughtered, unfit for this nightmare.
But Shitsubo moved like he'd been waiting for this his whole life.
Pipe rising, falling, crushing glowing weak points. Blood and dust smeared his uniform. His breaths came in cold rhythm. He didn't think of the woman he'd sacrificed. He didn't think of the businessman or the dying. He thought only of the lines, the openings, the survival percentages etched into his brain.
One by one, the others fell. Some beasts. Some humans—bludgeoned by those who refused to die quietly.
Until at last, only Shitsubo remained.
He stood over the corpse of a man he'd just killed—one of the last survivors who had tried to grab his weapon. The man's skull was caved in. Blood dripped from Shitsubo's pipe onto the obsidian floor.
His chest heaved. His eyes were wide, but not horrified. They were alive—more alive than they had ever been in his wasted years.
The monolith pulsed again.
> CANDIDATE SURVIVED.
*Designation: Thread of Ragnarok Initiated.
*Reward: Authority Progression Unlocked.
Light engulfed him.
And then, just as suddenly, he was gone.
Dragged from the Trial, spat back into a world that was no longer his.