[ VERNON-POV ]
Tokyo's dark and narrow back alleys seemed to absorb all the light as if the sun was afraid of being here. The massive concrete walls, that had been neglected and vandalized for decades, rose like an enormous beast's ribs blocking the sun, and only a sickly gray haze was left to filter through—an eternal dusk that was sticky and rotten like flesh.
The atmosphere was mixed with the unpleasant smell of old rain, cigarettes, and a very light coppery taste of fear. The city was in its lowest part here, where the bright neon lights of Shibuya were just a dream and resistance was counted in shadows.
Like a ghost, I went through these dark arteries without making a sound, and my breathing was calm even though the chaos was roaring right at the mouth of the alley. The wide streets outside were the battlegrounds where the mob was crying out for my head.
They were thousands—faces distorted with righteous anger—were chanting my arrest and execution. The placards were like waves in a storm:
"Kill, Vernon!" "Kill, Akira" "Kill, Yura" "We want peace!"
And next to my name, written in fresh red paint, were the others: Akira, my brother, and Yura, the woman who could match his fire.
These were the same hypocrites who had once filled the squares with their praises, cheered Akira as he cut through the criminals that were plaguing our world. They had called him a hero, a vigilante god who meted out the justice that the law could not touch.
But when the fire got too close—when the danger was in their comfortable lives, they turned and ran like cowards blown by the wind. Now they were the ones who worshipped my father, Kinard, the builder of this chaos. One tampered video, shown on every monitor from Tokyo Tower to the tiniest convenience store TV, was enough.
A skillfully cut confession, a sobbing request for "law and order."
They did not know his name beyond the headlines, they did not know the rivers of blood he had spilled.
Mighty cities crumbled or were built through death. Humans... such misleading, ungrateful beings who change their opinion based on which lie is the loudest.
My fist struck the deteriorating brick wall, and the resulting crack was loud enough to reflect my frustration, while my knuckles were lacerated by the rough surface. A drop of blood flowed down my fingers, but I accepted the hurt—it kept me alert.
"Akira,"
I said to the deserted alley, almost in a whisper,
"it's been way too long since they separated us. And now, as destiny brings us back together... we are both hunting the same ghost, but you will set the world on fire to trap it, whereas I..."
I lost my words, tasting bitterness in my mouth.
The alley kept twisting, it was a maze of dirt and buried hopes. Then mingling with the far-off uproar of the protests, came a sound that paralyzed me: wet, brutal, smacking like skin being torn off the bones with insatiable lust.
I did not hesitate to follow it, instincts sharpened over years of being hunted were the ones to guide me. The noise took me to a run-down ramen shop, its droopy noren curtain in front of the entrance was old and shabby. The sign above barely shone—"Ichiraku"—like it was fighting for survival.
I stepped into the place.
The first thing I encountered was the iron-like smell—blood, thick and recent, spreading across the old and worn linoleum floor in shiny red lakes.
Chairs lying on their sides, bowls broken into pieces, splashes going as high as the walls like demonic abstract art.
\Dead people were lying around like rag dolls: people working in the kitchen, customers who were eating, their faces captured in a state of forever horror.
I moved my hand to the back, and with a hardly audible sound drew my sword from the scabbard—a katana made in the secrets that were older than the accursed city itself, the blade was lightly vibrating with the promise of bloodshed. I moved further, beyond the counter, towards the swinging doors of the kitchen.
There.
In the dim fluorescence of one hanging bulb, a monstrosity feasted.
It was a repulsive monster of nearly ten feet high, oozing with muscle and covered with sagging, wrinkled skin.
Its mouth was a huge slit running from chin to forehead and was a very terrifying place in which sharp teeth that whimpered and gnawed half-gnawed bones were the only thing along with the light that was being emitted from the creature's monstrous single eye.
In the middle of its face, a huge eye was bulging, with no lids and no drug with the hunger of hell—it illuminated the creature's food with its cyclopean gaze. A brawny paw held a human trunk, the ribs of which had been broken open and were displaying the insides like a deformed flower.
This creature was neither a yakuza thug nor a human monster. It was a demon - derived from the fire of whatever abyss my father had set free on the world.
The fear was very intimidating and of a primal nature; it was my very first encounter with the demonic.
When the creature's eye turned towards me, I made no noise and just kept my place, but the eye certainly saw me as its mouth was still tearing into a piece of meat.
It was just for a short moment, but we were already three—predator and predator—the meat-eater had just stopped his eating exposing ugly threads of entrails.
All of a sudden it went for me.
Floor boards rocked back and forth violently under the monster's heavy steps. It sprang, a hurricane of uncut muscle, and opened its terrible mouth wide at one point.
I was not even a bit scared. Nor did I move backwards.
It was at that moment when the beast jumped, its claws getting through the air where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier, I turned around—my sword shining in an arc of silver.
There was a disgusting crunch as the sword went into the flesh and made the cut through the monster's arm just below the elbow, disconnecting it and sending black, burning ichor spraying out all over, making my coat feel like it was on fire where the ichor hit.
The monster let out a loud and fearsome scream as it hit the ground, and the severed arm danced next to it.
I thought of letting it go but I did not.
With a quick swipe, the other claw came at me with the force of a felled tree, but I ducked under it, feeling the wind blow through my hair, and then I jumped—leaping onto its massive shoulders.
As it tried to shake me off, I squatted low and thrust my sword down in twin cuts, clawing both legs with swift and wild cuts. The tendons tore apart as if they were made of wet rope; the creature fell forward in a thunderous crash, shaking the entire shop.
Before it could recuperate, I jumped off its back, landing between its twisting body. With a primal growl similar to the demon's, I drove the sword directly through its one glaring eye—into the brain subsequently. The demon shook once, then twice and became motionless, its body disintegrating into smoke and fire which were very pungent to the air.
I was there standing with my sword dripping and breathing heavily looking at the corpse of a demon that was just like the one from the abyss. Murdering men had become a daily affair. But this... this was like deprivation from God.
It was thrilling and at the same time exhausting.
Then the growling started—first softly then gradually turning into a mixture of sounds that were loud enough to shake the windows.
GROWL! GROWL! GROWL!
I turned around quickly to face the entrance.
The nightmare was framed by the door: over a hundred demons already in the street and still more were coming—very faintly illuminated silhouettes with claws, fangs, and fire-like eyes. They were coming as a flood of demonic beings, attracted by the blood or the kill.
On the old television set hanging behind the counter, the emergency broadcast was playing loudly, and the voice of the frantic anchor pierced through the sounds of the snarls:
"URGENT: Unbelievable demonic invasions are reported in several cities across Japan—Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. The public should keep away from outside. This is an emergency nationwide. Never, even in such a situation, leave your homes..."
The world that my father had destroyed was now consuming itself.
And I was right in the middle.