The night stretched over the ruined quarter of the city like a shroud woven from regret. Smoke lingered in the air, tasting of iron and burned parchment. Reiji walked through the empty avenue where echoes replaced voices, and the silence felt like something that could bleed. His steps were measured—too deliberate, too aware of the weight that followed him. The streets of Tazuna Ward had seen massacres before, but tonight, it was quieter than death itself.
He carried no light. Only the dim reflection of the moon brushed against the silver edge of his blade, half-drawn from its sheath as if uncertain whether it belonged in this world anymore. The witness was gone now—his confession swallowed by the storm that tore through the court's chambers. Reiji didn't remember killing him, but the blood on his gloves said otherwise. Memory and guilt intertwined until even his heartbeat sounded like an accusation.
A figure appeared from the fog ahead—tattered cloak, limping gait. Reiji stopped. The figure hesitated, then raised a trembling hand.
"Y-you're from the Court, aren't you?" the stranger rasped.
Reiji said nothing.
"They said the shadow walks when justice sleeps… Please—if you're real, tell me this city isn't dead yet."
The man fell to his knees, coughing blood into his palms. Reiji's expression didn't change, but something in his chest stirred—a flicker, faint as dying embers. He knelt beside the man and pressed two fingers against his throat. Faint pulse. Barely human.
"Who did this?" Reiji asked quietly.
"The… the sigil—" The man's eyes rolled back, his voice collapsing into silence. A mark seared into his wrist—a black emblem shaped like an eye devouring itself. Reiji had seen it before. The same sigil carved into the walls of the courtroom, burned into the back of the last witness's chair.
He rose, letting the body slump to the stones.
"They've started moving again," he muttered. "The ones who shouldn't exist."
Wind slithered between the ruins, whispering through the broken glass. Somewhere in that whisper, Reiji heard Kaede's voice—distant, pleading, "Don't lose yourself again." He shut his eyes for half a breath, then walked on. Each step brought him deeper into the labyrinth of intersecting roads, where the city itself seemed to breathe with the rhythm of unseen lives.
---
Far ahead, the crossroads awaited—four paths meeting under the remnants of an old monument. The stone guardian there had lost its face, its inscriptions eaten by time. Reiji reached it and stopped. The air thickened. The fog parted just enough to reveal three silhouettes waiting across the intersection, each cloaked in the same darkness he carried within.
One of them—a tall woman with silver hair tied in a braid—spoke first. "Shinomiya Reiji," she said, voice steady. "You've been following ghosts for too long."
Reiji didn't flinch. "You speak as if you aren't one."
The woman smiled faintly. "Maybe we all are."
Behind her, another figure shifted—broad-shouldered, armor scorched black. His voice was like gravel grinding metal. "The Court's shadow lost its chain. You shouldn't be here."
"I go where the truth leads," Reiji replied. "Even if it means walking through the ashes of your lies."
A blade hissed from its sheath. The third figure—a masked man draped in torn ceremonial robes—stepped forward. "Then you already know," he said. "The witness was never meant to survive. You saw too much."
Reiji's hand tightened around his sword. "I saw what you wanted buried."
The air trembled. The woman gave a soft sigh, almost sorrowful. "So this is the crossroads," she murmured. "Where loyalty ends."
---
The first strike came like lightning—swift, silent. Reiji's blade met the masked man's with a shower of sparks. Each movement was a memory; every clash, a fragment of their pasts colliding. The woman moved like wind, her dagger tracing crescents of silver light. Reiji parried, ducked, pivoted—a dancer in the dark. His coat fluttered as he turned the momentum of a strike into a counter, slicing through the mist.
The armored man charged, his gauntlet striking stone as Reiji slipped aside. The impact sent cracks across the ground. For a moment, Reiji glimpsed his own reflection in the broken surface—his eyes empty, his face ghostlike.
He fought without anger, without mercy. The crossroads became a stage of shadows and echoes, where each movement was a sentence in an unspoken story. Sparks fell like fleeting stars.
When the woman lunged again, Reiji disarmed her and held his blade at her throat. Her gaze didn't waver.
"Kill me," she whispered. "You'll only free another ghost."
Reiji hesitated. The mask of resolve slipped for just an instant.
Then the masked man struck from behind.
The blow grazed his shoulder, sending him to one knee. Blood soaked his sleeve, but he didn't cry out. Instead, he drove his blade backward—through the assailant's chest. The masked man froze, breath catching, then collapsed without sound.
The woman fell beside him, catching his hand before it hit the ground. "You never understood…" she said softly. "The Court was already dead before you left it."
Reiji's eyes flickered. "Then what am I fighting for?"
She smiled faintly—almost kind. "For the truth that will destroy you."
Her last breath dissolved into mist. Silence returned, heavy and unrelenting. The armored man had vanished; only his footprints remained, leading into one of the roads. Reiji stood among the dead, his breathing shallow. The fog began to thin, revealing the faint glow of the moon reflected on his bloodstained blade.
He sheathed it slowly, the metallic click echoing like a closing verdict.
---
As he turned to leave the crossroads, he saw something glimmering faintly beneath the monument—an old locket, cracked and scorched. Inside, a picture barely remained: the same sigil of the eye, drawn over a name erased by time. Beneath it, a line etched so faintly it could've been imagined:
"Every witness becomes a shadow."
Reiji closed the locket and slipped it into his coat. His gaze drifted toward the road ahead—a path swallowed by darkness, where no stars dared to shine.
"The crossroads never end," he murmured. "Only the ones who walk them do."
And with that, he vanished into the fog, leaving behind nothing but footprints fading into silence