For a moment, nothing existed but the sound of my own breathing.
Slow. Uneven. Too loud.
I didn't move.
I couldn't.
The train was still in motion — I could feel it beneath my feet, the steady rhythm of metal grinding against rails — but everything else felt… hollow. Like the world had been emptied out and left behind.
My arm hung at my side.
Cold.
Empty.
I forced myself to look down.
There was nothing there.
No hand. No shadow. No trace of whatever had been holding onto me this entire time.
Just my sleeve… slightly wrinkled, like something had been gripping it moments ago.
A chill crawled up my spine.
"You felt it too."
The voice came from beside me.
I flinched and turned.
The girl was standing there, closer than I remembered. Her eyes weren't wide with fear like everyone else had been earlier.
They were steady.
Watching.
Like she understood something I didn't.
"…What?" My voice came out rough.
She clearly knew something I didn't.
Not guessing.
Confirming.
Her gaze stayed on me, focused on something I couldn't see — like she was observing a layer of the world beyond my vision.
"You mean… you didn't see it?" she asked quietly. "The Ka… all over the Guardian?"
My brows tightened.
She was talking about the glow.
The same strange presence surrounding the bronze figure… and the seraphim.
I had seen things like that before.
Faint. Subtle. Easy to ignore.
And that's exactly what I'd always done.
Ignored it.
Kept my head down. Stayed out of anything that didn't make sense.
Lived a normal life.
Or at least… tried to.
My silence gave me away.
She exhaled softly.
"Then you really don't know," she murmured.
I didn't like the sound of that.
"The seraphim," she continued, her voice low, "it's probably an S-class Yokai."
The words hit, but they didn't land.
Yokai?
S-class?
I had almost no knowledge of this world she was talking about… but one thing was obvious—
It wasn't good.
Before I could ask anything—
"This one is… interesting."
The voice cut through everything.
Soft.
Warm.
Wrong.
My body stiffened.
The seraphim.
I didn't need to turn to know she was speaking about me.
"A butcher," she continued, almost thoughtfully. "And yet… such restraint."
A pause.
"I would have preferred more aggressive specimens."
My jaw tightened.
Specimens.
That's what we were.
She turned toward us.
"But perhaps," she added softly, "more like him would be… acceptable."
The air shifted.
"So much potential," she said. "Given to those who do not even desire it."
The train came to a violent stop.
Metal screamed against metal as the entire carriage jolted, shaking so hard I nearly lost my footing. Then, just as suddenly, it began to change — to shrink, to fold in on itself like reality was being forced back into place.
The structure creaked.
Groaned.
And then I saw it.
A hole forming in the air ahead — not in the train, but in space itself.
Beyond it, a small but blinding light stretched through, like the end of a tunnel tearing open reality.
It was just wide enough.
Barely enough for us to pass through.
The train continued to collapse behind us, as if an invisible hand was compressing it, forcing it out of existence piece by piece.
"Move!" she shouted.
I didn't hesitate.
I ran.
Stumbling, pushing, scrambling toward the opening as the world behind us folded inward.
And then—
We were through.
We spilled out into something impossible.
A vast, endless desert landscape stretched before us — so wide, so open, it made the Sahara feel like a closed room in comparison.
My mind froze.
I couldn't process it.
Why?
How?
No—
Why?
.......
20:22
Somewhere in Hokkaido, Japan.
"Impossible…"
A deep voice broke the silence.
The man standing over the reports didn't raise his tone, but the disbelief in it was clear.
"No way a yokai came through a new access point… and already reached S-rank in just three days."
The words didn't feel real even as he said them.
Executioner Kario Okimoto stared at the scattered data on the screen, as if looking at it longer might change what it meant.
But it didn't.
A yokai crossing over was already rare.
One that could gather enough KA to reach S-class this fast… was something else entirely.
He exhaled through his nose, trying to steady himself.
More reports kept coming in.
Disappearances.
Consistent patterns.
Witness descriptions that never fully matched — except for two things.
A six-winged presence.
And a bronze-lit figure beside it.
Kazumo stood nearby, scrolling through updates on his device.
"The survivors are strange," he said after a moment.
Okimoto glanced at him.
Kazumo didn't look up.
"Almost all of them show signs of innate Arts. High compatibility. Around eighty percent probability."
A pause.
"And at least two of them… might awaken second-rate Arts."
That finally made Okimoto's expression tighten.
He leaned back slightly.
"…So it's choosing them."
Kazumo didn't answer right away.
Instead, he lowered the device.
"We still don't know where it came from," he said. "No known colony matches its signature."
Silence settled again.
Heavier this time.
Because there was only one conclusion left that no one wanted to say out loud.
This wasn't supposed to be happening here.
The last recorded access point incident was in 2008, in Tokyo.
At the time, its appearance had been immediate.
Every Executioner within range had felt it at once.
So had everyone within a twelve-kilometer radius.
There had been no warning. No buildup. Just sudden, overwhelming presence.
And then—nothing like it again.
Until now.
This new one, however, had been discovered almost by accident.
An F-class Executioner had stumbled upon it during routine scouting.
No one had expected anything serious.
Not until the reports started coming in.
Okimoto exhaled slowly as he read.
He and Kazumo were not frontline specialists.
They were reconnaissance analysts — observers, pattern readers.
In rare cases, they engaged directly.
Both held A-rank classification individually.
Together, their coordination pushed them to near S-rank capability.
They had met three years ago at HANZU Tech.
Since then, they had become one of the most effective analytical pairs in the field — studying access points, Yokai emergence patterns, and response strategy optimization.
But this one felt different.
The winged Yokai wasn't behaving like a random breach.
It felt intentional.
Structured.
Almost as if something was being arranged through it.
Okimoto leaned back slightly, eyes half-lidded.
He wasn't looking at it correctly.
That much was obvious now.
But sitting here, waiting for clearance, wasn't giving him answers either.
And he didn't have time to wait.
The phone rang.
Kazumo answered immediately.
His expression changed almost instantly — tightening, sharpening.
He glanced at Okimoto.
Okimoto didn't ask.
He could already tell it wasn't good news.
Kazumo ended the call, stood up, and picked up a small brown wooden box from the table.
A pause.
Then he moved toward the door.
Okimoto followed without a word.
......…
We wandered for what felt like hours.
Maybe longer.
Time didn't feel real out there.
The conditions only got worse — the heat, the dryness, the endless stretch of nothing but sand. No landmarks. No direction. Just dunes rising and falling like a broken ocean.
At least… I wasn't completely in the dark anymore.
She had explained some of it.
Not everything.
But enough to make things worse.
There was nowhere to go.
No escape.
Just an endless desert and a growing sense of hopelessness.
Then—
A door appeared.
Just… there.
A stone's throw away from us, standing upright in the middle of the dunes like it had always existed.
We stopped.
Neither of us moved.
After everything we'd already seen, stepping into something unknown didn't feel like an option.
It felt like a trap.
But then the ground behind us began to shift.
At first, it was subtle.
Then the sand started to collapse.
Not slide.
Fall.
Like the desert itself was being swallowed by an endless abyss.
That made the decision for us.
"Run!"
We took off.
The ground gave way behind us, entire sections of sand disappearing into darkness as we sprinted toward the door.
It felt too far.
Like it kept stretching away from us.
But we didn't stop.
We couldn't.
She stumbled just as we reached it.
Her footing slipped, her body tilting toward the collapsing edge.
For a second—
She was gone.
I grabbed her.
Not cleanly.
Not gracefully.
I dragged her back with everything I had.
Then we fell through the door.
—and the world changed again.
We landed hard.
When I looked up, we weren't alone.
There were people.
A lot of them.
Roughly ninety, maybe more — scattered across the space in small groups or standing alone. Different ages. Different faces. Different reactions.
Some looked broken.
Others… strangely relieved.
I didn't care.
I just wanted to go home.
Then I saw her.
Floating above us.
The seraphim.
And beside her—
The Guardian.
The last door opened behind us.
One more person stumbled in.
Covered in fresh blood.
Bright.
Wet.
He was still licking some of it from his lips.
The door slammed shut.
Silence followed.
"Now that all have arrived," the seraphim said.
Her voice echoed across the space.
Calm.
Unnervingly calm.
"Let the games begin."
The air shifted.
My vision blurred—
And the last words I heard were:
"EXERT DESIGN: Zero Requiem."