The wind that followed the Monarch's fall carried no triumph—only the smell of ruin. The once-sacred halls now lay in silence, dust curling through the pale dawn. Shinomiya Reiji walked through the aftermath like a survivor of his own death. His shadow trailed him, longer than before, as if reluctant to let go.
Outside the sanctum, the plains of Arath lay bare and desolate. The horizon was fractured, dark spires jutting from the earth like broken teeth. Every step he took was heavy, every breath drawn through air that felt too old to sustain life.
He stopped by a collapsed statue—the effigy of a forgotten monarch. Its crown lay cracked beside it, half-buried in ash. Reiji crouched and traced the fractured symbol on its chest. The same ouroboros. The same hollow crown.
"Even your gods bled from the same lies," he muttered.
Then, he heard it—a faint rustle of cloth behind him. Reflex took over. In one smooth motion, Kagetsu was drawn, the blade whispering through air.
> "You're still fast," a calm voice said.
Reiji froze. That voice didn't belong to an enemy. It belonged to someone who should have been dead.
From the fog emerged a figure in a tattered cloak, one arm bound in black bandages, the other resting on a curved blade—Kaede.
She looked older, her eyes colder, carrying the quiet fury of someone who had seen too much. The light brushed against her face, revealing the same faint scar Reiji remembered—the mark left from the siege of Orien.
"Kaede…" His voice broke against her name. "You—"
"Don't," she interrupted. "Not yet."
She walked closer, stopping a few meters away. The silence between them was a graveyard of unspoken things.
Reiji lowered his weapon slightly. "How long have you been following me?"
"Long enough to see the Monarch fall. Long enough to see you burn everything you touch."
Her tone carried no hatred—just resignation.
Reiji sheathed his blade, though tension lingered in every movement. "If you came to blame me, you're late. The dead already have."
Kaede's expression didn't change. "I didn't come for blame."
"Then why?"
She paused. "Because the Council is moving again. The 'Court of Ashes' isn't gone. You cut off one head, but three more have risen. And they've made a pact—something worse than before."
Reiji's gaze hardened. "Who?"
"Not who," she corrected. "What. They call it the Fractured Pact—an oath made in blood between those who remain of the old order and the Echoes of the Lost City."
The name chilled the air. The Echoes—the same entities that once tried to bind Reiji's consciousness in Zephyros. Things that existed between memory and silence.
Reiji stepped closer. "You've seen them?"
Kaede nodded once. "I saw what they left behind. Villages erased without a trace. Shadows whispering through walls. And at the center—your mark."
Reiji's body stiffened. "My mark?"
She threw something toward him—a small metal disc, cracked and faintly pulsing. The sigil etched into it was unmistakable: his crest, the one burned into his hand years ago by the Shadow Division.
Reiji's throat tightened. "That symbol should've died with the old order."
Kaede's gaze was sharp. "It didn't. Someone's using it to rebuild what you destroyed."
For a long moment, neither spoke. The wind carried the faint echo of crows in the distance. Reiji's mind twisted with fragments of the past—the betrayals, the orders, the silence that had turned him into a weapon.
"I told myself it was over," he said quietly. "That killing them all would be enough."
Kaede's voice softened, almost like a memory. "You know better than that. Shadows don't die—they move."
He looked at her, and for a second, there was something almost human in his eyes. "Then we move with them."
She nodded once. "There's a meeting at the ruins of Halveris. Agents loyal to the old Monarchs. They're gathering to complete the Pact. If we don't reach it before dawn tomorrow…"
"They'll seal it."
"…and every name erased by the Monarch's rule will vanish forever."
Reiji turned toward the horizon. The faint silhouette of the ruins stood there, distant and skeletal against the pale sky. He exhaled slowly. "Then we don't rest."
Kaede's lips curved faintly—not a smile, but the ghost of one. "You haven't changed."
Reiji glanced at her. "Neither have you."
They started walking, side by side, through the silent wasteland. The light was cold, the ground still trembling from what had happened beneath the sanctum. As they moved, Kaede spoke again, voice low:
> "You faced him, didn't you? The Hollow Monarch."
Reiji's eyes darkened. "He wasn't real. Not entirely."
"Then what was he?"
Reiji's grip tightened around his blade. "A reflection. A throne built from everything I refused to see."
Kaede said nothing. The silence between them said enough.
As they neared the edge of the ridge, Reiji stopped suddenly. The ground below shimmered, thin trails of black mist rising like smoke from invisible cracks. Beneath it, faint murmurs—voices that didn't belong to the living.
"The Pact's already bleeding through," he said.
Kaede's hand went to her weapon. "We're too late?"
Reiji shook his head. "No. They're waiting."
And then the sky broke.
The clouds above twisted, parting like torn fabric, and from the rift spilled a lightless rain—droplets of ink that hissed when they touched the earth. Each drop carried a whisper, a fragment of memory.
Reiji looked up, and in the distorted reflection of each falling drop, he saw faces. The ones he'd killed. The ones he couldn't save.
Kaede whispered, "What is this?"
"The price," Reiji said quietly. "The Pact demands witnesses."
Lightning cracked across the horizon. Shadows rose from the ground, forming the shapes of long-dead soldiers, priests, and specters of the Monarch's court. Their bodies were empty, their mouths moving in silent chants.
Reiji's hand tightened on Kagetsu. "They want to finish what he started."
Kaede drew her blade. "Then we'll end what we never could."
The air trembled as they stood against the growing storm. The ruins of Halveris loomed ahead, the faint pulse of ancient sigils igniting in the distance. The first of the specters lunged, their movements unnatural, bending through space like broken glass.
Reiji moved first. The blade sang through the darkness, each motion cutting through history itself. Kaede followed, her strikes fluid and precise. The battlefield blurred into a dance of shadows and light, their blades carving through the echoes that screamed like memories refusing to die.
But as the last phantom fell, a figure stepped from the ruins—hooded, cloaked in crimson smoke, holding a scroll bound in chains.
> "You're too late," the figure said. "The Pact is sealed."
Reiji froze. The sigil on the scroll pulsed—his mark again, burned in black fire.
Kaede whispered, "Reiji… what did you do?"
The figure removed his hood.
And Reiji's heart stopped.
It was his own face.