Chapter 5: The Shattered Streets
Shinjuku lay in ruins. Neon signs flickered weakly above streets cracked open by the entity's passage. Cars had been tossed like toys, glass glittered across asphalt, and the faint hum of sirens mixed with distant screams, but none of it truly mattered. Shirou Kisaragi moved through the chaos with calm precision. Dust hummed under his skin, the air itself bending subtly in his wake, acknowledging him as its master. Every pulse of energy, every shifting current, answered him. He was not just human. He was beyond human. He was the heir of the Airy God, wielding a power that dwarfed even the understanding of ordinary mortals—and even the gods who had created the System now existed within him, guiding, restraining, whispering from the threads of his consciousness.
The System's presence was everywhere. Seven voices, fragments of the disciples who had failed before him, resonated in subtle harmonics across his mind. They did not command, but they observed, corrected, and predicted. Dust bent to their will even as it obeyed him, a network of energy, logic, and instinct intertwined, a weapon that had no equal. Every move Shirou made was enhanced, every perception sharpened, every step calculated in a fraction of a second. The anomaly in the streets could move impossibly fast, distort reality itself, and yet even it could not escape the System's silent surveillance.
A ripple in the air told him where the entity was. A fold in reality, like a mirage pressed wrong against the night. He could feel it through the currents of Dust—its motion, its intention, even its hesitation. The anomaly was not human. It was not even bound by the rules Shirou had known in his life as a mortal. But all the sophistication in the world meant nothing when confronted with the combined precision of Dust and the System.
Shirou's hand brushed the necklace around his neck, the relic pulsing faintly. It was the final tether, the control against the storm that lived inside him. He didn't need to learn Dust. He already wielded it effortlessly. The challenge was restraint: not unleashing the devastation he could, and not letting the Shadow—the fragments of godly terror planted within him long ago—erupt unchecked.
The entity twisted the air ahead, folding shadows around it like armor. It was fast, but Shirou was faster. He extended his hand, Dust flaring in arcs of concentrated energy, carving lines in space that cut even at the perception of matter. The anomaly shifted, but the System whispered faintly: Predict its vector. Counter the displacement. The threads of the seven disciples adjusted his movements before he even decided to move, amplifying every strike.
A flash of blue-white energy ripped through the street, slicing through the warped shadows of the entity. It staggered—not destroyed, but slowed. Even in its distortion, Shirou could sense its surprise. He advanced. Dust bent reality around him, forming barriers, blades, and currents that the anomaly could not dodge simultaneously. Every pulse of his power was a symphony of destruction, controlled with surgical precision. He could have leveled the entire district if he wished. Instead, he restrained, testing, observing, learning its patterns.
The anomaly struck suddenly, a blur that twisted space to its advantage. Dust surged around Shirou, forming shields and arcs that absorbed the force, deflecting debris harmlessly. He countered with a ripple that tore the ground beneath the enemy, fracturing the air and forcing it to reveal a faint shimmer of its true form. In that moment, the anomaly's illusion flickered—it was not untouchable. It had simply not anticipated the scale of his power, the union of Dust and the System, the godlike instinct that guided every reaction.
Shirou's eyes narrowed. He could feel the city bending subtly to his influence now. Every streetlight, every shard of glass, every shadow responded to the threads of Dust and the whispers of the seven guiding presences. He was the storm, the calm, and the judgement all at once. The entity twisted reality again, but this time, Shirou was already there, anticipating, moving, weaving energy in perfect harmony. With a flick of his wrist, a blade of condensed Dust sliced through the warped air, cutting across one of the anomaly's projections, which flickered and dissolved like smoke.
For the first time, the anomaly hesitated. It paused, twisting the air around it, testing, calculating—but Shirou was already several moves ahead. The System, alive and silent inside him, threaded his awareness through the currents of the environment, every molecule of Dust attuned to his intent. He could strike a hundred times simultaneously, defend against infinite movements, perceive beyond perception itself. The entity had no equal here.
Yet even as he dominated the battlefield, a faint, insistent pulse in the back of his mind reminded him of the Shadow. The relic around his neck glimmered faintly, keeping the power tethered, keeping the remnants of what the disciples had feared under control. If he let go, if he gave into the full surge of Dust, he could destroy the anomaly, the city, and probably the air itself—but that was not the path he walked. Control was understanding, and understanding was survival.
The entity flinched again, this time visibly. Its form fractured in the distorted light, shadows peeling off like tattered cloth. Shirou advanced, not recklessly, but with absolute authority. Dust surged, twisting the space around him, bending shadows, forming weapons and shields faster than thought. The anomaly realized, finally, that it was outmatched—not by strength alone, but by foresight, by inevitability.
Then, without warning, it leapt, a ripple in the street that would have unseated any human, but not Shirou. He bent Dust around him like liquid armor, flowed with it, and with a single thought, split the currents, creating a trap the anomaly could not see until it was too late. The air itself responded, condensing around the anomaly in a cage of reality-bending energy. There was nowhere to run.
Shirou's lips pressed into a thin line. Dust hummed, the System whispered, and the city itself seemed to hold its breath. He could have ended it here—erased it completely—but curiosity, the subtle instincts of a god in a mortal world, urged him to wait, to observe, to understand. The anomaly had survived this long for a reason. And Shirou Kisaragi had no intention of wasting the lesson it carried.
The streets fell silent, save for the low hum of Dust and the faint echoes of the seven guiding presences in his mind. The entity trembled within the cage, impossibly fast but utterly trapped, and Shirou stood above it, the storm of his power visible to any who could see beyond the ordinary. He was not just a boy with powers. He was the embodiment of the Airy God's legacy, a god walking in human skin, with a System of seven guiding hands threading through every move, and Dust flowing like a river of reality at his command.
And even as the anomaly struggled, Shirou knew this was only the beginning. Power was nothing without purpose. Knowledge was nothing without understanding. The Shadow lingered, the past awaited, and the world—fragile, ordinary, terrified—had no idea of the force that now walked among them.
He exhaled, dust curling around him like smoke in the wind, and stepped forward. Control was his. Destiny was his. And the city, the anomaly, and the world itself would soon learn the meaning of a god's judgment.