The metal door sealed behind them with a hydraulic hiss, locking out the chaos they had left in the Director's ruined chamber. The corridor stretching ahead was narrow, industrial, and dim—lit only by intermittent strips of pale blue emergency lights. The scent of scorched metal and suppressant foam clung to the air like a ghost that refused to dissipate.
Reiji walked in silence.
Akari followed, but her footsteps were noticeably slower—weighted by the confession she had been forced to make in Chapter 55. She didn't speak. He didn't ask. The quiet between them was not hostility; it was gravity. Something deep. Something that had shifted, irrevocably.
At the far end of the corridor stood an armored blast door with a sigil engraved into its center:
王冠の影 — The Crown of Shadows.
Reiji stared at it for several seconds.
"It's real, then," Akari whispered. "The rumors… the throne beneath the throne."
Reiji exhaled once, slow.
"He called it the Silent Crown."
"And he wanted you to inherit it."
Reiji didn't answer. He walked forward.
The biometric scanner beside the door flickered as he approached. Then, without prompting, it powered on—recognizing his presence before he offered any input.
A mechanical voice spoke:
"Shinomiya Reiji — validated."
"Authorized for ascension."
Akari stiffened. "Ascension…?"
Reiji placed his hand on the scanner.
"Let's find out."
The blast door split down the middle, each half retracting with a heavy metallic rumble. Cold air drifted out—unnaturally cold, like a tomb long sealed.
What lay beyond was nothing like the sterile underground facility they'd traversed.
It was… a chamber of stone.
Ancient stone.
Carved pillars supported an arched ceiling adorned with murals: legions of masked figures, blood-red crowns, cities burning beneath silhouettes of kings.
At the center of the chamber stood a circular platform made of obsidian-like metal. Above it hovered a faint, pulsing sphere of light—like a beating heart suspended in place.
Akari whispered, "A temporal stabilizer? Or… no… something older."
Reiji stepped forward.
The sphere reacted instantly.
It expanded—an unfolding bloom of light—and the entire chamber trembled. The murals shifted as though alive. The silhouettes moved.
A voice—not the Director's—echoed not in Reiji's ears, but in his mind.
"Successor. You arrive bearing the fracture."
Reiji froze mid-step.
Akari clutched his arm. "Reiji—stop. This is some kind of—"
The voice spoke again, layered and heavy.
"We are the Silent Crown. We have waited."
Reiji's jaw tensed. A faint pulse of his curse flickered behind his eyes.
"I'm not your successor," he said.
The sphere dimmed—like an organism studying him.
"You deny inheritance. But the blood does not deny you."
Akari slowly stepped between Reiji and the sphere. "We're not here to claim anything. We're here to shut this down. All of this."
For a moment, the chamber went silent.
Then the murals changed again—revealing imagery Reiji had never seen but somehow recognized:
A child torn from a pyre.
A shadow branded with a mark.
A monstrous silhouette reaching for him.
His pulse tightened.
Akari looked back at him. "Reiji… those images…"
"Not now," he muttered.
Because the sphere was shifting once more—stretching, unfolding—until a tall figure formed beneath it. Cloaked in black, faceless, wearing a crown of fractured metal.
A projection.
An echo.
A memory that could speak.
"Shinomiya Reiji," the figure intoned.
"The Director prepared you for one purpose."
Reiji clenched his fists.
"And I killed him."
The figure tilted its head.
Or maybe the crown shifted—it was impossible to tell.
"Ending one vessel does not end the line. Another rises."
Akari whispered: "It's calling him a vessel…"
Reiji stepped forward. "You said 'the line.' What line?"
The figure lifted an arm. A shimmer responded, and suddenly the obsidian platform lit with red lines—forming diagrams, genealogies, battlefields, histories long erased.
At the center of every pattern was a single symbol:
影 — Shadow.
The figure spoke:
"The Shadow Line. Carried through generations. You are the last."
Akari's breath caught.
Reiji's eyes narrowed.
"My family…? No. They were ordinary. My father was—"
The figure's voice cut through him like a blade.
"You were never meant to know the truth."
The murals shifted once more—this time showing a burning estate, a child's crib scorched, a sigil carved beneath the ruins.
Reiji froze.
He had seen that image before.
In nightmares.
In fragments.
In the moment he first awakened his curse.
Akari reached for his hand—slow, cautious.
"Reiji… are you okay?"
He didn't answer.
The figure stepped closer, the temperature dropping around them.
"The curse you wield is not born of chance. It is the Crown's legacy. A weapon forged for war."
Reiji's breathing grew quieter. Lower. Controlled—but barely.
"You're saying… I was made for this."
"You were chosen before birth."
Akari swallowed. "Reiji—listen to me. This thing is manipulating you."
He turned to her.
And for the briefest second, he wasn't sure she was wrong.
But the figure spoke again:
"You reject destiny, yet it calls to you. Accept the Crown, and we reveal the truth of your past. Reject it, and the world fractures beyond repair."
Reiji stepped closer until the cold air bit at his skin.
"What truth?"
The figure slowly raised its hand.
The sphere behind it pulsed—once.
A memory projection unfolded in front of them, clear as reality:
A small boy crying.
A man kneeling beside him.
A mark burned into the man's hand.
A crown-shaped sigil behind them in the shadows.
Akari whispered: "Is that… your father?"
Reiji didn't breathe.
Because the man in the memory turned, and Reiji recognized him—
not entirely by face, but by the pain in his eyes.
The man whispered something to the crying child:
"Your life will not be the same as ours."
"Run if you must."
"Hide if you can."
Then the memory distorted—twisted—
and the man shoved the child away moments before a blade of shadow tore through him.
The projection shattered.
Reiji stumbled back a half-step.
Akari caught his arm. "Reiji—hey. Stay with me. That might not even be real or—"
"It was real," he whispered.
And he sounded as if something inside him had cracked.
The figure lowered its arm.
"Your father broke the oath. His death was the price."
"You lived. That is your burden."
Akari glared. "You're nothing but a ghost protocol. You don't get to decide his life—"
But the figure's voice grew thunderous.
"He was born to bear the Crown."
"And you, Akari Ishida—were born to guard it."
She froze.
"What?"
Reiji turned sharply.
"Akari—don't listen to it."
But the sphere brightened, projecting another memory.
A young girl in a training hall, surrounded by masked instructors.
Her arms bleeding.
Her voice hoarse from screaming.
A mark hidden beneath her collarbone—matching the sigil of the Silent Crown.
Akari gasped.
"No… no, that's not real. That never— I don't—"
Reiji grabbed her shoulders. "Akari. Look at me."
Her breaths were shaking.
"I… I don't remember this. Reiji, I don't—"
"It's trying to break us. Don't let it."
The figure spoke again:
"You were shaped for him. Just as he was shaped for the Crown."
"Neither of you are accidents."
Reiji stepped forward, fury tightening every muscle in his body.
"Stop talking."
The figure did not.
"The throne awaits its king."
"I said—"
The curse flared behind Reiji's eyes.
"—SHUT UP!"
He launched forward, blade drawn, slicing through the projection's head.
The figure dissolved into fragments of shadow—then instantly reformed behind him.
Akari reacted first.
She hurled a dagger of pure light—one of her constructs—straight into the echo's chest. The figure blurred again, reappearing atop a pillar.
Reiji gritted his teeth. "We destroy it."
Akari nodded sharply. "Together."
The sphere pulsed, and suddenly the entire chamber warped—stretching into a shifting labyrinth of mirrors, each reflecting twisted versions of Reiji and Akari. Their reflections moved independently, some smiling, some weeping, some dying.
Akari flinched. "It's trying to separate us."
Reiji grabbed her wrist.
"Then don't let go."
They ran.
The reflections screamed.
The echo attacked.
Shadows lunged from the walls.
And Reiji felt the truth pounding in his skull:
He wasn't meant to inherit a throne.
He was meant to survive it.
As they fought through the shifting maze, Reiji shouted over the chaos:
"When we get out of this—"
Akari slashed another reflection. "Yeah?!"
"—I'm done running from the past."
She tightened her grip on his hand.
"Good. Because I'm done being lied to about mine."
The figure reappeared above them, its voice booming:
"You cannot escape destiny."
Reiji lifted his blade.
"Watch me."
He and Akari leapt together, slicing through the final layer of mirrored illusions and driving straight toward the sphere—the heart of the Silent Crown.
As the chamber shattered with blinding light—
the throne beneath the throne began to break.
And the world above it trembled.