Sakura stopped the car in front of the crosswalk, the red glow of the brake lights blurring into a smeared halo in the rain.
The wipers thrashed back and forth across the windshield, their rhythmic screech doing almost nothing to clear the view, which remained miserable.
She glanced down at the weather forecast on the dashboard screen — "Severe thunderstorm warning, continuing until 3 a.m."
This was the third day this week she'd worked overtime until this hour before finally clocking out.
The phone on the passenger seat suddenly buzzed, a string of push notifications lighting up the screen.
They weren't work messages — just trending topic alerts from various social platforms.
Sakura didn't reach for the phone. She only rolled her stiff neck.
Midway through that motion, a jolt of cold shot up from the base of her spine, racing up her back and exploding at the base of her skull.
Sakura's head snapped up.
Through the rain-blurred windshield, her gaze swept past the silhouettes of countless high-rises and locked onto one direction in the city center.
Arc City Tower.
Atop that landmark, the heavy thunderclouds were spinning in a way that felt deeply unnatural, as if some unseen giant hand were stirring them from within.
Deep in the clouds, a dim violet light seeped through — a color no natural weather phenomenon could ever produce.
It was the sign of space itself being torn open.
Sakura's fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
The phone kept buzzing.
Sakura glanced at the screen out of the corner of her eye.
miHoYo's official account had posted something earlier, and the repost count had already rocketed into six figures.
The headline was absurdly dramatic — [TOP SECRET 4D Anti-Gravity Levitation Shock-Wave Engine Testing in Progress! Best experienced alongside tonight's severe thunderstorm!]
The comment section had completely descended into chaos.
"Damn, Arc City locals really have it made, huh? We just finished the holographic projection thing and now there's a 4D shock test?! Old scammer Su Yu, you wait for me — I'm booking a flight over there right now, and tomorrow I'm moving in across the street from your studio!"
"I'm from out of town and I'm so jealous. Over here we don't even have 4D — half our 3D theaters are shutting down. Old scammer, could you not play favorites like this?"
"I'm working overtime in an office building across from Arc City Tower, and I can confirm — that thunder up there is definitely real! The rain's blowing sideways! The problem is... why does my phone have zero signal? I can't even record a video!"
"Same here, I'm nearby too, and it's not just no signal — even my Bluetooth earbuds disconnected. What level of electronic jamming is the old scammer using? Military grade?"
"Quick question — if there's no signal, how are you all even chatting right now?"
"By running out of the jamming zone before posting, obviously!"
"Old scammer Su Yu: For the sake of promotional secrecy, I just cut off your internet — surprise, surprise?"
Sakura finished reading the comments and looked back up at the violet-black vortex above Arc City Tower, growing more distinct by the second.
The netizens had no idea.
They thought this was a promotional stunt, a 4D shock engine, just another one of the old scammer's wild marketing gimmicks.
Only Sakura knew what it really was.
Scenes from the underground Anti-Entropy laboratory not long ago surfaced in front of her eyes.
That was Honkai — a force that could grind all life to dust.
Just as she stared fixedly at that swirling mass, a streak of light tore through the rain.
It had ignited from the rooftop of Arc City Tower.
At first it was only a small, bright point of white, but in an instant it swelled into a blinding tail of flame.
The light shot upward at a slant against the pouring rain, carving out a sharp, blazing trail.
The curtain of rain split apart along that path, a ring of white mist erupting in midair.
Sakura made out the core of that light.
It was a suit of pure white battle armor.
Like a shooting star surging upstream, it looked impossibly small against the vast, raging storm.
Sakura's fingers tightened on the wheel.
She didn't scream, didn't gasp — she just clenched her back teeth shut.
In this city, there was only one person capable of preparing an emergency response this fast, and rushing to the scene the instant it happened.
Su Yu.
The man who, in the middle of the night at the convenience store, wearing rumpled house clothes, had lined up beside her at the oden stall waiting for instant noodles.
The man she'd raced against.
The man who normally looked so laid-back, always wearing that expression like he was thinking, oh great, this crap again.
And now he was charging headlong into a rift big enough to swallow an entire tower whole.
Sakura sighed. The scenes from the underground Anti-Entropy laboratory played through her mind again.
Should she throw herself into a fight against the doomsday coalition — one that even Su Yu himself couldn't guarantee surviving — or should she spend her last days with her little sister before the end came?
At the very least, with the latter, in that final moment when the world ended, she would still have some precious, warm memories to hold onto.
With great Strength comes great responsibility — Sakura remembered the superhero movie she'd watched with Rin. But she wasn't a hero.
She was just an assassin.
An older sister.
Nothing more.
The light turned green.
The cars behind her started honking.
Sakura pulled the car over to the side of the road, killed the engine, pulled the key, pushed open the door, and stepped out into the storm.
She simply tilted her head back and watched that pinpoint of white light grow smaller and smaller, farther and farther away, until the violet-black vortex swallowed it whole, vanishing into the heavy clouds.
The rain soaked her through in an instant, but she just stood there before the crosswalk, head tilted back, staring up at that vortex, unmoving.
She suddenly realized that Su Yu seemed to have given her two choices, but to him, those two choices made no difference at all.
He'd be glad to have more like-minded people fighting alongside him, and he was just as willing to protect, to the very last moment, those who only wanted to spend their remaining time in peace.
Either way, he wouldn't retreat a single step.
Why, though?
Sakura felt lost. What had changed him? Changed that man who just wanted to laze through his days, who showed up at the late-night convenience store so often, who sometimes fought her over the same pack of instant noodles, who'd kindly shared his oden with her?
She didn't know.
At the same time.
Schicksal Headquarters, Europe.
Otto stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, a glass of red wine in hand.
The night outside was quiet, an ironic contrast to the raging storm over in Arc City.
The red encrypted communicator on the desk lit up with a message just received —
Arc City had been completely blanketed by a massive violet-black cloud of electromagnetic interference, and the edges of the thunderstorm zone were still slowly expanding outward.
Satellites tried to capture footage, but could only make out a blurred mass of cloud.
Otto was silent for a moment, then spoke. "Pass down my order. Everyone in Schicksal, stand down. No one is to come within a mile of Arc City without my personal authorization."
Amber hesitated for a few seconds, but couldn't hold back. "But... the energy level of that rift—"
"I know."
Otto gave the wine glass in his hand a gentle swirl, his tone unhurried. "Schicksal isn't a monolith internally. Some stubborn old relics have been getting far too much in the way."
He paused.
"This is as good an opportunity as any for me to dispense a little justice — to clean out some useless dead weight."
Amber wanted to say more, but Otto's phone rang.
He glanced at the caller ID and picked up.
"Otto, just as you predicted," Kallen's voice came through the receiver, carrying a hint of restrained fury. "Someone couldn't sit still — they've started secretly mobilizing troops."
"Mm." Otto's expression didn't change at all. "Keep watching them. Don't spook them. Once they've all surfaced, we sweep them all up at once."
He hung up and turned to look at Amber, a flicker of danger passing through those unfathomably deep eyes.
"You see, people's fear usually comes from the unknown."
"I deliberately gave the order to stand down precisely so they'd start guessing."
"Guessing whether the anomaly in Arc City has anything to do with me, guessing where the bottom line of my intentions really lies. And when their fear drives them to defy orders, to act on their own authority to dig for the truth... that's when I'll have all the justification I need to carry out the cleansing procedure."
Amber was silent for a moment, then bowed slightly. "Understood, Bishop."
Once Amber had left the office, Otto set his wine glass down on the desk and picked up the private communicator.
On the screen was a message Su Yu had sent not long before.
No wasted words — just a single number.
"1."
Otto stared at that number for a long time.
He knew exactly what it meant.
He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and tapped his fingers twice against the armrest.
"How's it looking on Nagamitsu's end?" Otto opened his eyes and turned to the monitor.
On the screen played a real-time satellite feed. Arc City was now completely blanketed by intense electromagnetic interference and thunderstorms — nothing was visible at all.
Over the comm channel came the voice of Chief Scientist Nagamitsu, sounding uncharacteristically flustered. "Bishop! The data on that spatial distortion is off the charts! With Schicksal's current technological resources, mending a rift of this magnitude is simply impossible!"
"Then don't mend it." Otto raised the wine glass, his tone betraying no ripple of emotion. "Wait and see. That young man who charged in there will give you your answer."
Nagamitsu fell silent for a few seconds, then spoke again, his voice tinged with disbelief. "You mean... that producer from miHoYo? Alone?!"
Otto didn't answer.
He looked at the screen, at Arc City buried beneath the storm, the wine glass in his hand hovering for a long, long moment without ever reaching his lips.
That man, Su Yu, carried within him a Strength powerful enough to overturn this entire world with ease.
And yet he hadn't used that Strength to seize power or fight for advantage — instead, the moment the apocalypse arrived, he'd charged straight to the front line.
"Ha."
Otto let out a faint, almost inaudible sigh, his voice carrying a complexity even he couldn't quite put into words.
"Not telling me the full picture of things... for someone as in the dark as I am right now, that might just be a kind of luxurious mercy."
He shut off the screen and rose, walking toward the window.
Over Europe, the sky was clearing to clouds, the cloud layer hanging low — it looked like it was about to rain there too.
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