The first breath he took outside the Trial burned like charred glass in his lungs.
Shitsubo staggered forward, pipe clenched in his blood-stained hands, and found himself standing once more on the cracked asphalt of Osaka. The Trial's abyssal void had spat him back into reality, but the world around him wasn't the same city he remembered.
Above Namba's skyline hung a wound in the sky. Terrifying in all its vile glory.
The Rift boiled in violet lightning, its jagged edges glowing like molten glass. Each shudder spat out chunks of dark matter that dissolved into sparks before they struck the ground. The buildings trembled beneath its weight.
Osaka screamed.
Car alarms wailed in the distance. Windows rattled with every thunderclap. Smoke rose in crooked pillars from collapsed structures. Somewhere nearby, a woman's desperate cry for her child cut through the chaos—then was abruptly silenced by the sound of tearing flesh.
The Aggressors hadn't gone anywhere. The invasion still raged.
Shitsubo braced against a toppled lamppost, ribs aching with every breath. His mind should have been spiraling—panic, confusion, horror. But instead, his vision burned.
Runes flickered faintly across his sight like fireflies caught in glass. They shimmered over every surface, faint but undeniable.
> Vafthrúdnir's Insight – Active.
It was the gift of the Trial. The reward for betrayal. The mark of survival.
And it changed everything.
The Aggressor down the ruined street wasn't just a nightmare of jagged limbs and chitin anymore. Through Shitsubo's sight, glowing fissures spread across its body—fractures in its armor, tendrils of weakness snaking around its joints and spine. Its very anatomy was a map of vulnerabilities, laid bare for him.
The creature hunched over a corpse, its spear-like limbs buried in the chest of a man who still twitched weakly. It fed with a wet, sucking noise that curdled the air.
Shitsubo raised his pipe. His pulse was steady. His hands no longer trembled.
The Aggressor's mandibles clicked. Its head jerked up, compound eyes locking onto him. Then it lunged, shrieking like metal tearing.
But he saw everything.
The arc of its limbs. The twitch of its muscles before it leapt. The exact timing of its strike.
He moved left, precise and calm, the attack brushing past him by an inch. His pipe came down like a hammer on the glowing fracture at the base of its skull. The crunch was wet and final.
The Aggressor convulsed once, legs flailing like a dying insect. Then it collapsed in a heap of chitin and gore.
Shitsubo stood over it, chest heaving. His pipe dripped black ichor onto the street. He should have felt relief. Triumph. Anything.
Instead, something else filled him.
It wasn't fear. It wasn't joy.
It was hunger.
He wandered through the ruins, pipe dented, hands raw. Each street was littered with reminders of failure—cars split open, bodies crushed beneath rubble, Aggressors feeding where they pleased. Yet he walked with new certainty, guided by the Insight that pulsed behind his eyes.
He lost count of how many he killed. A swipe here, a crack there, every strike precise. His arms ached, his breath burned, but he never faltered.
The culling whispers returned. The same that had crawled into his skull during the Trial.
You are chosen. You are the break of worlds. You are Ragnarok.
Each life he took only sharpened the hunger.
By the time he reached the edge of Shinsaibashi, his pipe was nearly broken, but he was alive. And then—
"Shitsubo!"
The voice stopped him cold.
He turned, and there was Genji. His younger brother sprinted down a ruined street, glasses cracked, his school uniform torn at the shoulder. His eyes burned with desperate relief as he saw Shitsubo standing.
"Brother—thank god, I thought you—"
Genji stopped short. His gaze fell to the pipe in Shitsubo's hands, slick with gore. His eyes darted over the crushed Aggressors littering the street, the blood soaking Shitsubo's clothes.
"What… what did you do?"
Shitsubo didn't answer. Words were useless. How could he explain the Trial? The betrayal? The runes burning behind his sight? How could he tell his brother that the calm inside him wasn't peace, but hunger?
He only tightened his grip on the pipe.
Genji's jaw tightened, but he stepped closer anyway. His voice was steady, though his hands trembled.
"We can't stay here. Daigo's alive. He's with the others. We've got a shelter."
Daigo. The name cut through the haze. Their childhood friend, the one who'd always been the voice of reason, the one who dragged them out of street fights when pride burned hotter than sense.
Shitsubo followed. Silent.
The streets narrowed into alleys where fire still smoldered. Posters fluttered like dead leaves. Smoke clawed at the sky. Genji led the way, ducking through collapsed scaffolds and across roads where Aggressor corpses twitched faintly.
At the edge of Shinsaibashi, they found him.
Daigo crouched near an overturned battered bus, tying lengths of rebar into a barricade with strips of cloth torn from his own jacket. His face was streaked with grime, his knuckles bloody, but his hands didn't stop working. Around him, a handful of survivors stacked debris into makeshift walls.
When he looked up and saw Shitsubo, relief flooded his face—then froze into unease.
"You… you made it," Daigo said. His eyes dropped to the gore on Shitsubo's pipe, the vacant calm in his expression. "But… damn, man, what happened to you?"
Shitsubo held his gaze. Didn't answer.
Daigo's throat worked as he swallowed. His hands never stopped tying the barricade, but his voice dropped low.
"You look like you walked out of hell."
Shitsubo almost laughed. If only it had been that simple.
The whispers stirred again, coiling through his skull like smoke. Their lives are numbers. Their deaths are tools. The world falls, and you will feed.
His grip on the pipe tightened.
But Genji's hand touched his sleeve, grounding him.
"Brother," Genji said softly. "Stay with us. Please."
Shitsubo blinked. The whispers retreated.
For now.
They moved together, guiding the survivors to a barricaded shopping arcade. The shutters had been reinforced with furniture, the inside crowded with a hundred trembling people clutching whatever weapons they'd found—baseball bats, kitchen knives, shards of glass wrapped in cloth.
The air was thick with sweat and despair. Children whimpered in the dark. Adults prayed beneath their breath.
Shitsubo sat in the corner, pipe across his knees. He should have felt relief to be among the living. Instead, the Insight wouldn't let him rest.
Every time his gaze swept the room, runes flared across human bodies just as they had across Aggressors. Weak points glowed faintly over slouched backs, trembling hands, vulnerable throats. It was inescapable.
He saw them not as people, but as prey.
And deep in his chest, the hunger grew.
Outside, the city screamed. The Rift pulsed above Osaka, vomiting more Aggressors into the streets. The survivors whispered of rescue, but no one came.
Shitsubo waited in silence. He thought of the Trial. Of the choice he made. Of the woman he had shoved into the beast's jaws to save himself.
He remembered her eyes.
And yet, there was no regret.
Only hunger.
Only the whispers.
You are chosen. You are Ragnarok.