The shutters didn't hold.
The first blow dented the steel inward, shrieking like a tortured beast. Dust rained from the ceiling. People screamed, scrambling away from the barricade as if distance alone could save them.
The second blow buckled the frame. Furniture screeched across the tiled floor, legs snapping beneath the weight.
The third tore a gap wide enough for pale light to flood in.
The Aggressor's claw punched through, black chitin splitting the shutter like foil. It screeched, mandibles dripping ichor, before wrenching its arm free to strike again.
Survivors scattered. Some cried out for help. Others shoved each other down in the frenzy to escape. Genji tried to calm them, his voice breaking against the tidal wave of panic. Daigo hefted a bent length of rebar, sweat streaking his face, though his hands shook too much to hold it steady.
Shitsubo didn't move.
He watched the steel bend inward, runes crawling across his vision like molten veins. Weakness bloomed on the shutter itself, faint cracks where strain would split the metal. The creature beyond glowed brighter, fractures dancing along its limbs.
The Insight whispered. Strike here. Break there. Tear the giant down.
His hunger surged. His grip on the pipe tightened until his knuckles cracked.
Another blow split the shutter. A claw punched through the gap, slicing the air where a survivor had stood seconds earlier. Blood sprayed as the man's shoulder tore open. He screamed, collapsing to the ground, clutching the wound.
The crowd erupted into chaos.
Shitsubo stepped forward.
The whispers thundered in his skull. Take. Feed. Become.
He didn't hesitate. He swung the pipe down with all his weight, shattering the glowing fracture in the inhumane claw. The limb snapped in two with a sickening crack, black ichor spraying across his face.
The Aggressor shrieked, wrenching itself back in undescribable pain.
Gasps filled the shelter, but no cheers followed. Dozens of eyes stared at Shitsubo—terrified, wide, as though the monster wasn't the thing clawing through the shutter, but the man who had broken it.
The whispers laughed. Menacingly.
The barricade wouldn't hold. Everyone knew it. The Aggressors were gathering outside, their screeches rising like a chorus of rusted blades. Each blow rattled the walls, shaking dust loose in choking clouds.
Panic consumed the survivors. They screamed, shoved, clawed at the exits that weren't there. The smell of urine and sweat thickened as bodies pressed against one another.
Daigo grabbed Genji by the arm, dragging him back. "We can't stay! They'll tear through—we need another way out!"
"There is no way out," someone wailed. "We're trapped!"
Shitsubo turned away from the crowd, eyes fixed on the ceiling. His Insight traced faint fractures in the concrete—stress lines from the tremors. Above them, another building loomed, its upper floors leaning dangerously close.
An idea took root. Ugly. Violent. Simple.
He stepped into the center of the crowd. His voice was low, rasping, but it cut through the panic like a blade.
"Move."
Heads turned. Faces paled. No one argued. The crowd parted, fear carrying them back against the walls.
Shitsubo raised his pipe and slammed it into the ceiling where the runes burned brightest. Concrete cracked. Dust rained down. Another blow widened the fissure, spreading like spiderwebs.
"Are you insane?!" Daigo shouted. "You'll bring the whole place down!"
Shitsubo struck again. The ceiling groaned. Chunks of plaster fell in heavy bursts.
"The weight will crush them," Shitsubo said flatly, pointing at the shutter. "Not us."
The crowd erupted in shouts, some screaming at him to stop, others crying that he'd kill them all. But Shitsubo didn't hear them. The whispers drowned everything out.
Collapse the walls. Break the giants. Feed.
He struck once more. The ceiling gave.
The world roared as concrete collapsed in a tidal wave of rubble. The barricade buckled under the weight, Aggressors shrieking as tons of stone and steel buried them alive.
The shelter plunged into choking dust. Screams echoed through the haze. Survivors coughed, gasping for breath, clawing at the dark.
Shitsubo stood amid the wreckage, dust coating his blood-streaked face. His chest heaved, his arms trembled—but his eyes burned.
The hunger purred.
---
When the dust cleared enough to breathe, the survivors huddled in the remaining corner of the arcade. Dozens had been crushed in the collapse. Their bodies lay broken beneath rubble, limbs twisted, blood seeping through the cracks in stone.
The living stared at Shitsubo.
No one spoke. No one dared.
Daigo's voice finally broke the silence, raw with fury. "You killed them. You killed half of them yourself!"
"They'd be dead either way," Shitsubo said, his voice calm. "Now the Aggressors are buried too."
"They trusted you!" Daigo's hands shook as he raised the bent rebar, pointing it at Shitsubo like a blade. "And you crushed them like they were nothing!"
Shitsubo met his gaze, unflinching. "They were nothing."
The words slipped out before he realized. His lips twisted into something between a sneer and a snarl.
Daigo froze, horror filling his eyes. The rebar clattered from his hand.
Genji stepped between them, trembling but firm. "Stop. Both of you. We can't… we can't fight each other. Not now."
Daigo turned away, fists clenched, shoulders shaking with rage he couldn't release.
The survivors pulled further from Shitsubo, whispering, casting fearful glances. He didn't care. Their fear filled him more than their gratitude ever could have.
The whispers coiled like hazy smoke. Breaker. Betrayer. Chosen. Ragnarok.
---
Night fell again—or what passed for night beneath the Rift's glow. The survivors slept in trembling clusters, though few closed their eyes for long.
Shitsubo didn't sleep. He sat near the rubble, pipe balanced across his knees, staring at the faint violet glow bleeding through cracks in the ceiling.
The Rift pulsed, spreading veins of light across the ruined sky. And in that pulse, he heard it—faint at first, then growing louder.
A voice.
Not the whispers that had haunted him since the Trial. This was deeper. Older. Heavy as the ocean, cold as winter.
"Hunger stirs. The breath of Vafthrúdnir burns in your skull. You carry the giant's wisdom, the ruin's seed. Feed, and grow."
Shitsubo's breath caught. His grip on the pipe tightened.
The voice continued, each word vibrating through his bones.
"The Aesir and Jotun broke the world once. They will again. You will be the edge, the breaker, the hand that feeds their war."
Images flashed through his mind—visions not his own. A great wolf sinking its teeth into the sky. A serpent writhing through oceans of flame. A one-eyed god staring into fire, silent and still.
And among them, a giant whose face was shadow, whose mouth whispered riddles that bled into eternity.
Shitsubo gasped, sweat slicking his skin.
The voice faded, leaving only the crackle of distant fire and the muffled sobs of survivors.
But the hunger remained. Stronger than ever.
---
At dawn—or what passed for dawn beneath the Rift's wound—Genji crouched beside him. His voice was quiet, raw with exhaustion.
"You scare them," Genji said. "You scare me."
Shitsubo didn't answer.
"But you saved us too," Genji whispered. "Even if it was… wrong. You're the only reason we're still alive."
Shitsubo turned his head. His brother's face was streaked with grime, his glasses cracked beyond use, but his eyes still burned with that fragile, impossible thing: faith.
Faith in him.
Shitsubo almost laughed.
Instead, he looked back at the violet sky. His voice was low, steady, final.
"They fear me because they should."
The Rift pulsed. The hunger stirred.
And Osaka groaned beneath the weight of ruin.