The Rift didn't sleep.
By the third day, Osaka wasn't just a city anymore—it was a carcass. The skyline bled smoke where towers had been gnawed open. Streets pulsed with veins of mana that hadn't been there yesterday, twisting asphalt into flesh-like ridges. The air itself buzzed, as if the city had been folded into another plane of existence and hadn't yet decided what shape it wanted.
Shitsubo walked the ruins in silence. The Authority clung to him, its gift and curse stitched into the marrow of his bones. Every step echoed with no sound, every breath swallowed before the world could hear it. To others, the streets groaned with collapse. To him, it was like walking in a dream where sound was an afterthought.
He thought back to Hung Chu's calm smile, the corpses dancing on his strings. That wasn't a rival anymore—that was an omen. And if one boy could twist death, how many more had survived their Trials? How many monsters had been reborn under the Rift's light?
The question itched at him, but there was no answer. Only movement.
He followed the veins of mana. They glowed faintly beneath the pavement, like blue rivers flowing toward the wound in the sky. He knew instinctively: the Rift wasn't just a doorway. It was a parasite. It was eating.
A soundless growl rolled through his chest.
He turned a corner and froze.
Something crouched over a wrecked van, tearing chunks from it as though metal were flesh. Its skin was grey, stretched too tight, and its limbs bent wrong, folding like blades. Its mouth split sideways, teeth clamping down and chewing on steel like it was cartilage.
The Aggressor.
It lifted its head.
Shitsubo's Insight sparked:
> [Aggressor Spawn – Strain: Steel-Eater]
HP: 620/620
Trait: Devours inorganic material to fuel regeneration.
Weakness: Soft palate beneath jawline.
The monster's eyes locked onto him. He didn't move. The silence wrapped him, and for a moment, the Aggressor seemed confused, its ears twitching like it couldn't quite place him.
Then the van's twisted frame clattered to the ground, and it roared—metallic, like rebar grinding against rebar.
Shitsubo sprang sideways as its claws raked the wall, sparks spraying. He slid under its next swing, pulling the jagged knife from his belt. The Insight burned in his vision: under the jawline.
The Aggressor bent, its maw opening, serrated teeth dripping molten spit. Shitsubo jammed the blade upward, burying it into the roof of its mouth. The silence absorbed the screech that should have deafened him, smothering the sound before it was born.
The monster spasmed, claws smashing into the pavement, but Shitsubo held the knife until it cracked bone. Then he ripped it free, hot blood splashing his arm. The Aggressor thrashed once, then collapsed.
Shitsubo stood over the corpse, chest heaving.
> [Aggressor Spawn Defeated]
XP +250
Threshold Approaching: Next Trial Inbound.
His stomach twisted. Another Trial. So soon.
He wiped the blade on his sleeve, staring at the twitching body. The Rift was feeding them in waves. Every kill pulled him closer, not further, from the center.
The silence inside him didn't object. It almost hungered.
---
By nightfall, Shitsubo had crossed into a district that didn't feel like Osaka anymore. Skyscrapers leaned like rotten teeth. Entire intersections sagged under veins of Rift energy, glowing cracks running deep as if the earth itself was bleeding light.
And at the heart of it, he saw movement. Not just spawns. Not just carcasses.
Figures. Tall, scaled, and armored. Their silhouettes shimmered like warriors, but their forms bent wrong, too angular, too deliberate. Aggressors—true soldiers, not beasts.
One of them turned its head, and Shitsubo ducked into the shadow of a collapsed bus. The Insight triggered, flooding his vision.
> [Aggressor Vanguard – Rank 2]
Trait: Rift-touched infantry. Genetically altered for colonization campaigns.
Status: Awaiting orders.
Orders.
That was when he saw it.
Beyond the vanguard, standing with the calm stillness of an executioner, was something else. A shape that didn't belong to human imagination. Taller than any soldier, wrapped in a cloak of black stone and crimson veins, its hands clasped as though in prayer.
The Rift pulsed harder when it shifted. The vanguard bowed.
The Insight buckled under the attempt to name it, but fragments bled through:
> [??? – General Designate: Dagon]
Authority: Earthshaper. Gene-Molder.
Note: Designation marked TRAITOR by Aggressor Protocol. Risk factor unknown.
Shitsubo's heart hammered. His silence felt like a curse now—it kept him hidden, yes, but it also trapped the scream building in his chest. He was watching something that wasn't meant for human eyes.
Dagon lifted its hand, and the earth groaned. Buildings tilted further, their foundations twisted into jagged spears. The vanguard obeyed without hesitation, their claws carving trenches through the streets as if preparing the city for burial.
The Rift wasn't just a doorway. It was colonization. Osaka was being rewritten, repaved for a war humans didn't understand.
Shitsubo pressed himself tighter against the bus, sweat freezing on his skin. The Insight whispered one more word before collapsing into static:
Settler.
He didn't dare stay longer. He slipped back through the veins of mana, deeper into the shadows, his silence his only shield.
For the first time since his Trial, he felt small. Not broken, not beaten, but small—like the world had revealed the scale of its hunger, and he was only a cracked shard in its teeth.
Yet the silence within him pulsed steady, almost reassuring. It told him one thing, wordless but clear:
You can endure this. Even the earth's hunger cannot erase you.
Shitsubo clenched his fists. His voice was gone. His laughter was gone. But his defiance remained.
And if Dagon was rewriting Osaka, then Shitsubo would learn how to break the stone they carved it with.