The ruins of Osaka stretched black and broken under a moonless sky. Shitsubo's boots crunched over glass, every step a whisper. The silence inside him had changed since Dvalinn's forge. It wasn't a stillness anymore—it was gnawing, restless.
Every breath tasted like ash. Every shadow pulsed like meat.
Then he heard it—voices.
Not whispers of envy, not Aggressor shrieks. Real voices. Human.
He crept through the ribs of a collapsed tower, crouching low. Across the rubble, a fire flickered inside the husk of a bus. Shapes moved around it—five of them. Survivors.
A woman's laugh cracked the stillness. Too brittle to be joy, but human enough to cut through the endless ruin.
For a moment, Shitsubo froze. His chest tightened. He hadn't heard that sound in months.
But then the hunger spoke.
They are alive. You are starving. You know what Dvalinn gave you. Take it.
He stepped closer.
One of them spotted him first—the youngest, barely more than a boy, his hands wrapped in torn cloth. His shout broke the camp.
"Someone's there!"
Knives flashed. A pipe raised. They backed into a half-circle, firelight trembling against their cheeks.
Shitsubo raised his hands, slow, deliberate. He couldn't speak. He wanted to tell them he wasn't Aggressor, wasn't their enemy. But silence bound his throat.
The boy's eyes widened. "Why don't you say anything? What are you?"
The hunger surged. Their suspicion bled into envy. He felt it. The way they stared at his steadiness, his calm, his weapons. They wanted what he carried. And the curse whispered: Absorb it. Make them fuel.
He staggered forward.
The woman with the brittle laugh raised her knife. "Stay back!"
Something in him cracked. His silence pulsed outward—heavy, suffocating. The flames bent low, smothered by the weight of it. Their breath hitched, faces twisting with sudden fear.
Shitsubo felt their emotions flood him—their envy, their desperation, their will to survive. It poured into him like molten iron. His veins burned.
The boy dropped to his knees, clutching his head. "Stop! Please!"
Shitsubo's hand trembled. He wanted to pull back. But the hunger howled. More. All of it.
He reached for the boy's shoulder. The silence didn't shield—it devoured. The boy's scream cut short as black smoke tore from his mouth and eyes, swallowed by the air around Shitsubo. His body sagged, empty, still breathing but hollow-eyed, like the envy had been sucked from his soul.
The others froze, horror stamped into their faces.
"What… what did you do to him?"
Shitsubo couldn't answer. His hands shook, his throat raw with nothingness. The hunger purred. The others stared at him like he was no different from the Aggressors.
And in that moment, he wasn't.
The woman lunged at him with her knife. Shitsubo didn't dodge. The blade glanced off his coat—but before she could strike again, the silence swallowed her too. Her envy, her fear, her strength—ripped from her body, pouring into him. She collapsed, twitching, knife clattering to the floor.
The last three ran.
Shitsubo didn't chase. He couldn't. His knees hit the ground, breath coming in ragged bursts. His veins glowed faintly beneath his skin, pulsing like molten metal. His silence was louder than ever, but it wasn't pure anymore. It dripped with hunger, with the taste of stolen survival.
The boy beside him whimpered, still alive, but broken.
Shitsubo reached for him. His hand hovered above the boy's face. End it. Ease his suffering. Feed the hunger.
He pulled back.
The boy flinched away, crawling blindly into the dark.
Shitsubo sat in the ruins of their camp, the fire dead, the silence pressing down like a tomb. The whispers of the curse lingered.
You will never be one of them again. You are theirs no longer. You are mine.
The Authority of Dvalinn had chosen its host well.