The street was gone.
When the dust settled, Shitsubo no longer stood before Osaka's ruins. The firelight, the cracked shelters, the choking stench of smoke—all of it dissolved into a sky that burned violet.
He blinked, but the vision held. The world around him had shifted, not like a dream, but like a bone snapped from its joint.
The ground underfoot was no longer asphalt. It was glass. Black, endless, reflecting his own body in a thousand fractured shards. Each reflection showed him different—his face twisted, eyes hollow, his hands soaked in blood that wasn't there.
And above him…
Above him stretched the Rift.
Not the pale wound in the sky he had seen from the streets, but a mouth split across eternity, filled with light that throbbed like a heartbeat. From its edges dripped rivers of violet flame, flowing upward as though gravity no longer held dominion.
Shitsubo's chest burned. The hunger inside him quivered like it was bowing.
Then the voice came.
"To carry fracture, you must be broken. To wield silence, you must scream. To be chosen, you must crawl."
The words rattled his teeth. They were not spoken from one mouth, but from a thousand reflections. Each Shitsubo in the glass opened its lips and spoke in unison, some smiling, some weeping, some tearing at their own throats.
His pipe felt small in his hand. Too small. Too human.
---
A figure rose from the glass.
At first, it was nothing but shadow, a column stretching up, up, until it dwarfed even towers. But then it bent, its surface cracking, shaping itself into something almost human.
Almost.
The Stone-Walker's face emerged again, but wrong—half shattered, half whole, its eyes bleeding light. Behind it, other faces flickered in and out: Natsumi, Daigo, Genji. Their mouths moved, whispering things that were not their words.
"You failed me."
"You let me die."
"You were always the monster."
Shitsubo's jaw tightened. His eyes burned violet.
"This is nothing but a game," he spat. "Your tricks don't break me."
The figure's voices twisted into laughter, a sound like glass grinding against bone.
"Then break yourself."
---
The world shuddered.
The reflections in the glass below him began to climb out. Each Shitsubo pulled itself free, dripping shards like blood. They rose one by one, pipe in hand, eyes blazing with the same hunger that lived inside his chest.
The first swung before he could move.
The pipe smashed against his ribs, bone cracking, breath exploding from his lungs. He stumbled back, coughing blood, his grip weak.
The clone smiled with his own mouth.
"Weak things fall."
The others echoed the words, a chorus of hunger.
"Weak things fall. Weak things fall. Weak things fall."
Their voices crawled inside his skull like worms.
---
He staggered to his feet, fury gnawing at his bones. The Insight surged, veins glowing faint violet under his skin.
He swung his pipe at the nearest clone.
The wood cracked skull. Shards of glass sprayed like blood. The clone shattered into a scream, dissolving into dust.
But two more stepped forward.
Then three.
Then ten.
---
The trial became war.
Pipes clashed, bone split, voices screamed. Shitsubo fought himself again and again, each strike tearing flesh, each wound burning deeper than the last. His chest rattled with broken ribs, his knuckles split, his breath ragged.
But the hunger roared louder.
Every time he struck down one reflection, his pulse surged. Every kill poured fuel into the fire inside him.
And with it came clarity.
These weren't just tricks.
This was Dagon's way of testing him—forcing him to confront what he would become if he gave in fully.
And the deeper he fought, the more the truth revealed itself.
He wasn't fighting enemies.
He was fighting possibilities.
---
At last, the glass plain was littered with fragments. Shards of himself lay scattered like corpses, their mouths still twitching, whispering hunger even in death.
Shitsubo collapsed to his knees, chest heaving. Blood dripped from his lips, pooling on the mirrored floor.
The Rift above pulsed once.
And the voice spoke again.
"You endure fracture. You are worthy of silence. But silence does not feed. Silence must consume."
The glass beneath him rippled.
From the cracks rose not another clone, but a new figure. Taller. Broader. His father.
Arita and Odo's home flashed before his eyes. The drunken fists. The bottle smashing against walls. The smell of cheap sake and his mother's tears.
Odo stood before him, pipe in hand, face twisted with drunken rage.
"You always were a mistake, Shitsubo. Nothing but waste. Nothing but hunger."
Shitsubo froze. His hand trembled on his weapon.
This was no clone.
This was memory.
---
The blow came fast.
Odo's pipe crashed against his shoulder, bone splintering. Shitsubo roared, staggering, rage boiling so hot it blurred his vision.
The Insight showed cracks across his father's body, glowing violet. Every weak point, every place he could shatter.
The hunger howled for it.
Break him. Break him like he broke you.
For the first time since the Rift opened, Shitsubo hesitated.
Because if he swung now, if he let the hunger take this one… he didn't know if he could stop.
---
Odo sneered, lifting the pipe again.
"Monster. Just like me."
The word cut deeper than the strike.
Shitsubo's scream tore out of him, raw and bloody. He swung, pipe cracking bone, shattering his father's skull in a spray of violet light.
The figure dissolved into dust, but the voice lingered.
"Monster. Monster. Monster."
The Rift pulsed brighter.
And this time, Shitsubo did not deny it.
---
The world shuddered again. The glass plain split apart, shards rising into the sky, swallowed by violet fire. The Rift above thundered like a drum, its heartbeat shaking his ribs.
The voice spoke once more, not from reflections, not from illusions, but from the Rift itself.
"You have killed your shadows. You have embraced fracture. Rise, bearer of silence. Rise, weapon of hunger."
The plain collapsed.
The sky tore.
And Shitsubo opened his eyes back on the streets of Osaka.
---
The survivors' screams filled his ears.
The shelter burned. Aggressors swarmed the barricade, claws tearing through wood and steel. Natsumi was on the ground, blood pouring from her shoulder, screaming for help. Daigo fought like a madman with his knife, already covered in bites.
And above them all, Dagon loomed.
Its eyes glowed pale, fixed on Shitsubo.
But now, when Shitsubo met that gaze, something inside him had changed.
He no longer trembled.
He no longer denied the hunger.
He stood, pipe in hand, and the violet glow beneath his skin burned brighter than the Rift itself.
The survivors froze when they saw him. Their prayers died in their throats.
Because he didn't look human anymore.
He looked like the Rift's answer.
And he whispered the word that sealed it:
"Monster."