The day began as a hum in the neural cloud—static at first, then shaped into words, then purpose. In Tokyo's sky-tier police headquarters, Yūgen stood in the command atrium, bathed in the electric glow of memory rivers flowing through glass walls. An urgent telegram from England spiraled downward from a pneumatic message chute, brass casing glinting like something from a museum.
"Top Clearance: Imperial Urgency," the seal read. The digital envelope unfurled in his palm, revealing encoded Victorian text in clashing contrast to the Tokyo streamlines.
> To the Keeper of Harmony and Sword of Justice,
We implore your presence in the Isles of Britannia, plagued by a shadow from the old world. Bodies torn and vanished. A name echoes through our smoke-choked alleys—Ripper. A return. A rebirth.
Send help, or send hope.
- Eighth Office of Internal Security, London
Yūgen read it without blinking. Yet deep inside, gears long rusted began to turn.
Hours later, the Imperial Command summoned him. The Council of Twelve appeared via hologram, robed in symbols of ancient Kyoto overlapped with quantum sigils.
"Go," the speaker commanded, "and remind the world that time cannot shield monsters."
Yūgen bowed. "By steel, light, and law."
He returned home to pack.
But the shadows of his past… had other plans.
---
The night swallowed the sky.
Yūgen laid in a sterile room lined with holograms of stars—his home, minimal and vast. He closed his eyes, drifting into sleep. But there, beneath his synthetic calm, the dream unfolded like a knife.
He was human again.
Standing in the warm light of a modest kitchen. A girl laughed. A woman smiled, humming a lullaby. His wife. His daughter. Then blood. Screams. His hands shaking. A knife in his grip. His daughter's eyes wide in confusion, not fear.
"Daddy, why?"
He tried to stop. He couldn't. Something moved inside him, whispered commands, hollowed him.
Then silence. The warm room turned cold. The bodies lay still.
He screamed himself awake.
Sweat rolled down his brow. His eyes flickered between human sorrow and machine clarity. The pain was real. More real than any simulation.
Back then, he had tried to end it.
He stood atop the Meiji Skybridge, arms open to the wind, when the police drones found him. They tased him down, whispering apologies in soothing tones.
He awoke in a capsule.
And met Defensor. The sentient AI that defended Tokyo.
"You were infected," it said. "With a forgotten plague—a MurderBug. Thought extinct."
"I don't care," Yūgen had growled. "Let me die."
But Defensor offered purpose instead.
"You loved once. You gave. You tried. Now… become something more. Let justice be your redemption."
The transformation began.
They rebuilt him—not into a weapon, but a guardian.
And just before memory purge, Defensor hesitated.
A choice.
It left the laughter of his daughter. Her voice, her eyes.
A flicker of light in the machine.
Yūgen stood under a sodium lamp, eyes tracing the veins of light webbing through the Tokyo Underbelly—an autonomous district layered beneath the city's law code, where governance faded and freedom bled.
His coat fluttered behind him as he stepped through the haze-filled street, neon kanji flashing on steam-wet tiles. Jazz mixed with synth in the distance, leaking from corner joints where androids played electric shamisen.
He needed noise.
He needed forgetfulness.
The Black Loop, an underground poker parlor lit in teal and brass, welcomed him like an old friend. He sat among bio-modded drifters, clockwork gamblers, and silent brokers, cards shuffling with magnetic pings.
Yūgen won twice, lost thrice, and drank a flask of thermal vodka that warmed his copper blood.
Outside, as the artificial moon rose over rusted catwalks, his eyes found something strange.
A caravan.
Stall after stall of exotic goods. Swords etched in Aztec rune-glow. Persian water clocks running backward. A headless statue that sang when bathed in moonlight.
Then he saw it.
A pocket watch.
Elegant. Handcrafted. Gold filigree. It ticked out of rhythm with Tokyo time—as though marking the pace of another world.
He approached the seller. "How much?"
The man, face hidden beneath a layered gas mask, rasped: "No credits. Physical cash only."
Yūgen frowned.
Paper currency hadn't existed in over two centuries.
Yūgen moved through the glowing web of the Tokyo Underbelly, digital frustration simmering beneath his calm exterior. A century's worth of encrypted credits couldn't buy what he wanted. Everyone here dealt in nostalgia, in decay, in touchable things. Value was weight, smell, and memory. His breath-based transaction systems meant nothing. He was too modern for this moment.
The clinking of old yen and the musty scent of paper notes surrounded him like ghosts of the past. He tried every vendor, flashing his wristport, offering rare access, promising favors. A few merchants scoffed. One laughed in his face. Another offered a wooden token in mockery.
So he waited. Quietly. Like a statue beneath the flickering light of a broken vending shrine. Time passed. The watch still ticked inside the stall, waiting.
Then came the voice.
"I got cash."
The old man emerged like a phantom from the fog. His coat hung like wilted silk, patched a dozen times. His eyes were glazed with milky cataracts, yet sharp with wisdom. In his bony hand, he held a weathered cloth pouch—stitched with kanji so faded it was unreadable.
Yūgen didn't speak immediately. He scanned the man's vitals instinctively: weak heart, damaged lungs, memory decay.
"Why help me?" Yūgen finally asked.
The man smiled, revealing yellowed teeth. "Because you look like someone who used to give a damn."
Yūgen studied him. Noticed the burn marks across his palm, the stumps where two fingers used to be. Signs of a long and painful life.
"You were a soldier?"
"A healer. Then a rebel. Then nothing," the man said. "Now I watch."
"Your name?"
"Sorai."
"Mine's Yūgen."
"Don't tell me your rank. Not here. It'll just ruin the moment."
Yūgen allowed a slight grin. The rarest movement on his otherwise frozen face.
"Do you still have a soul in there, cop?"
Yūgen hesitated. Looked down at his metal-knuckled hands. "Only fragments."
Sorai pressed the pouch into his palm.
"Then let them guide you."
The pocket watch felt heavier than expected in Yūgen's hand—as though its gears held more than brass and time. The gold filigree shimmered subtly, but beneath that ornate beauty, something pulsed. Something alive. He raised the lid with a soft click.
The hands inside didn't tick forward like a normal timepiece. They spun counterclockwise… then paused… then skipped entire seconds as if time itself were stumbling. Runes coiled along the edge of the face—runes that changed shape when he wasn't looking directly at them. No language Yūgen had encountered, not in Earth's databanks nor among alien ciphers studied in the Fringe Archives.
And at its core—where a second hand might reside—was a single, crimson droplet encased in a prism of glass. It shimmered like memory. Like blood spilled in a dream.
He blinked. A sound echoed faintly through the gears—not ticking, but whispering.
It said his name.
"Yūgen…"
He snapped the lid shut.
"Careful," rasped the seller, who now stood in the shadows behind him. "You just bought a curse, Officer."
Yūgen didn't flinch. "Then I'll make it my weapon."
The merchant tilted his head. "Many have tried. Most lost their way."
Yūgen turned, but the merchant's stall was already folding in on itself, vanishing into light. One moment he was there—smoke, bones, brass—and the next, gone. Like the past he came from.
As Yūgen walked away, the timepiece thrummed against his chest.
Above, high in the Mirror Sky, a subtle crack appeared in the glass.
For the third time that day, the glyph returned. Unbidden. Unexplainable.
And somewhere, far across time and sea, a man in a blood-soaked coat lifted his hat to the fog, smiled at the moonlight, and whispered:
"Soon."