The wind in Kyoto's ruins shifted, carrying with it the echo of something vast and hollow. Shinomiya Reiji stood amidst the fractured street, the world still quivering from the unraveling he had just fought against. Yet the silence that followed was not relief—it was a prelude. A weight pressed upon the city, a presence that bent even the air around it.
He felt it before he saw it. A vibration in his chest, like the low resonance of a great bell. Then the shadows thickened, pooling unnaturally as if the earth itself was bleeding darkness. From that abyss rose a throne, wrought not of stone or steel, but of absence. A shape carved from void.
Upon it sat a figure that should not have been.
The Hollow Monarch.
His body was a husk—robes draped around bones that were not bones, flesh that was not flesh. His crown shimmered with fragments of broken mirrors, each reflecting a distorted piece of reality. Where his eyes should have been, only empty caverns stared, and yet Reiji felt himself pierced to the marrow.
"Another thread… resisting," the Monarch's voice rumbled, not in sound but as a hollow hunger gnawing at Reiji's mind. "You cling to existence as though it were more than a shadow. Why?"
Reiji's hand tightened on his blade, his breath steady though his chest burned. "Because shadows exist only because there is light to cast them. You… are nothing."
The Monarch chuckled, a sound like dead leaves scattering across a tomb. "And yet nothing endures longer than flesh, longer than memory. Nothing swallows all."
The throne pulsed. The ground beneath cracked as the Monarch raised a hand, and from the void spilled forms—shades of men, women, children. Hollow echoes of those erased, their faces blank, their voices a chorus of whispers that begged for remembrance. They swarmed, not with malice, but with despair.
Akari cried out as one of the shades brushed her arm, draining warmth from her skin. She stumbled back, but Reiji stepped forward, placing himself between her and the tide of hollowed souls.
"Stay behind me," he muttered.
He fought—not against enemies, but against emptiness. Each swing of his blade scattered shades into dust, yet the void kept birthing more. They clung to him, reaching, not to harm, but to pull him with them. Into forgetting. Into silence.
The Monarch watched with stillness, his voice a whisper across the battlefield.
"You bleed shadows, boy. You wield what you despise. But every time you draw upon that abyss, you carve away at yourself. How long before you, too, are hollow?"
Reiji gritted his teeth. The mark within him burned, the shadow pact pressing at the edges of his restraint. He could unleash it fully—let the abyss consume the hollow tide in a single breath—but he knew the cost. Each time, he lost a fragment of who he was.
Akari's voice broke through the storm. "Reiji! Don't let him decide who you are! Not him!"
Her words anchored him. Not completely, but enough.
With a roar, Reiji plunged his blade into the ground, shadows erupting in a controlled arc. Not surrender, but defiance. The shades shattered, torn apart by the very void they worshipped. The Monarch's throne trembled, cracks spiderwebbing across its hollow frame.
The Hollow Monarch leaned forward, his voice lowering into something almost intimate.
"Good. Resist. Break yourself against the void. Every struggle, every defiance… only makes the unraveling sweeter."
And then, as swiftly as he had come, the Monarch receded. The throne collapsed back into the abyss, the shadows dispersing like smoke. The silence returned, but it was heavier now, as if the city itself feared to breathe.
Reiji fell to one knee, his breath ragged, sweat mixing with the grime of battle. His blade felt heavier than ever, the mark on his hand pulsing faintly like a parasite feeding on his soul.
Akari knelt beside him, her hands trembling as she reached for his shoulder. "Reiji… who was that?"
He lifted his gaze, his eyes dark yet steady.
"The Hollow Monarch. The one pulling the strings behind this unraveling. If he succeeds, there won't be a world left to fight for."
A bitter silence lingered between them. The night felt thinner, as if reality itself had grown fragile.
Reiji closed his eyes for a moment, the Monarch's words gnawing at him. Every shadow I wield takes me closer to hollow.
But he could not stop now. Not with the threads fraying. Not with the Monarch watching.
When he stood, the resolve in his gaze was colder than steel.
"I won't vanish," he whispered, more to himself than to Akari. "Not while the Monarch still breathes."
Yet deep inside, in the pit where his shadow writhed, another truth stirred—an unspoken dread.
What if to defeat the Hollow Monarch… he had to become him?