The infirmary smelled of antiseptic and the lingering, sweet rot of Shoko's cigarettes. Arthur sat on the edge of the examination table, his shirt discarded, draped over his knees. His torso was a map of a war that hadn't happened yet. Bruises like blooming violets mottled his ribs—the internal echoes of his own power—and his right forearm hung at an unnatural angle, the skin stretched tight over the jagged break of the radius.
Shoko Ieiri didn't offer comfort. She offered a cold, damp cloth and the sharp sting of Reverse Cursed Technique.
"I told you not to break yourself in front of the kids," she said, her fingers glowing with a faint, greenish hue as she gripped his arm.
Arthur gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles jumping as the bone began to knit itself back together. It wasn't a clean sensation. Unlike natural healing, Shoko's technique felt like a thousand needles stitching his soul back to his meat. "They were in danger. The report said Grade 2. That... thing... was closer to a Special Grade."
"It was a coordinated ambush, Arthur," a voice drifted from the doorway.
Gojo Satoru was there, leaning against the frame, his posture casual but his presence filling the room like a rising tide. He wasn't wearing his blindfold; his sunglasses were perched on his nose, revealing just a hint of the crystalline infinity in his eyes. "The curse didn't just manifest. It was lured there. Someone left a trail of 'bread crumbs'—concentrated cursed energy—specifically to see what you would do when cornered."
Arthur looked up, his pale eyes narrowing. "A test?"
"A calibration," Gojo corrected. "The higher-ups in Japan are just as paranoid as the ones in London. They wanted to see if the 'Cursed Prince of Westminster' was a weapon or a liability."
"And your conclusion?" Arthur's voice was a jagged rasp.
Gojo grinned, a sharp, predatory flash of teeth. "Oh, you're definitely a liability. That's why I like you. But you're also bleeding time. Shoko, give him the bad news."
Shoko pulled her hands away, the bone set, though the skin remained bruised. She sighed, blowing a plume of smoke toward the ceiling. "Your 'Soul Wear' isn't just using your energy, Arthur. It's consuming your biological blueprint. Every time you accelerate, you're thinning the veil between your life and your end. At this rate, with that output in the subway? You've got maybe two years left. And that's if you stay in bed and eat your vegetables."
"I've lived through worse forecasts," Arthur muttered, reaching for his shirt. The movement was stiff. Even healed, his body felt heavy, as if the gravity of the Earth had a personal grudge against him.
"Two years for a normal man," Shoko added, her voice dropping its clinical edge. "For an exorcist in Tokyo? You'll be lucky to see next Christmas. Your heart is already showing signs of hypertrophic scarring. The Crime Hour... that 1.1-second freeze? If you use it more than once a day, your heart won't just stop. It will shatter."
Arthur buttoned his shirt with steady fingers. "Then I shall have to make every second count."
The following night, the humidity of Tokyo broke into a thick, cloying fog. Arthur found himself away from the campus, drawn to the Shinjuku district—not the neon-drenched tourist traps, but the "Shantin" sectors. These were the veins of the city where the cursed energy didn't just pool; it fermented.
He was looking for the observer from the tunnels. His family's training in London had been less about "heroics" and more about "investigation and elimination." He knew the feeling of being watched. It was a prickle on the back of his neck, a specific frequency of malice.
He navigated a narrow alleyway where the smell of cheap ramen mingled with the metallic tang of blood. He stopped in front of a heavy iron door with a sliding peep-hole. A sign above it read The Hourglass.
Before he could knock, the door swung open.
A woman stood there. She was taller than most, dressed in a sleek, charcoal-grey suit that screamed corporate power, but her eyes—sharp, calculating, and rimmed with a faint gold—screamed something else. She held a long, thin pipe, the smoke smelling of jasmine and something illicit.
"The Englishman," Mei Mei purred, her voice a low hum of greed and curiosity. "Gojo told me you might wander into my neck of the woods. Though, he didn't mention you looked so... edible."
"I'm looking for information," Arthur said, ignoring the flirtation. He could feel the pulse of his own blood in his ears, a reminder of the "Dette de Sang" he still carried from the night before. "The subway mission. Someone leaked the coordinates to a curse-user group."
Mei Mei took a long drag from her pipe, her eyes raking over him, landing on the slight tremor in his hand. "Information has a price, Penhaligon. In this city, secrets are the only currency that doesn't devalue. And you? You look like a man who has spent all his coins."
"I have something better than money," Arthur stepped closer, his presence darkening, the air around him beginning to vibrate with the low-frequency hum of his technique. "I have a name that makes the London Registry tremble. And I have a debt that I am willing to share."
Mei Mei's smile widened. She stepped back, gesturing for him to enter the dim, velvet-lined interior of the club. "Come in, then. Let's see how much your soul is worth on the open market."
The club was a den of the occult. Low-level sorcerers, curse-users, and wealthy mundanes seeking forbidden thrills sat in booths, their faces obscured by masks or shadows. At the center of the room, a large, ornate clock hung—its hands moving counter-clockwise.
"This is the Shantin exchange," Mei Mei explained, leading him to a private balcony. "We deal in 'Maudite Monnaie'—Cursed Coin. It's energy stripped from the dying and minted into physical form. Someone used a massive amount of it to 'grease the wheels' of that Special Grade in the subway."
"Who?"
"A group calling themselves 'The Westminster Remnant'," Mei Mei leaned in, the scent of her perfume—cloves and rain—filling Arthur's senses. It was the first time in months he had felt something other than pain. It was a dangerous, intoxicating distraction. "It seems your family followed you from London, Arthur. They don't want you dead. They want you ripe."
Arthur felt a surge of cold fury. He reached out, his hand gripping the railing of the balcony so hard the wood groaned. "They want the 'Grand Archive'. My body is the key to a ritual they've been preparing for three generations."
Mei Mei's hand settled over his. Her skin was warm, a jarring contrast to his own deathly chill. "Then you're a very valuable man. And I hate to see valuable things go to waste."
She moved closer, her breath trailing against the shell of his ear. The R18 tag of his life wasn't just about violence; it was about the desperate, clawing need to feel alive when the grave was already calling. Arthur turned his head, his lips inches from hers. The tension in the room shifted—from the cold calculations of a thriller to something carnal and hungry.
"Are you trying to buy me, Mei Mei?" he whispered.
"I'm trying to see if you're an investment," she countered, her hand sliding up his arm, finding the spot where the bone had broken. She pressed down, just enough to cause a flicker of pain—a reminder of his mortality.
Arthur didn't pull away. He leaned into the sensation. He grabbed her waist, pulling her flush against him. The "Soul Wear" hummed beneath his skin, the vibration transferring to her. For a moment, the world didn't feel like it was ending. It felt like it was burning.
The moment was shattered by a scream from the club floor below.
Arthur broke the contact, his eyes snapping to the center of the room. The large clock had stopped. The hands were melting, turning into a black, viscous liquid that poured onto the patrons below.
"A gift from your relatives," Mei Mei hissed, her hand diving into her suit jacket to retrieve a small, ornate axe. "It seems they don't like to wait for their investments to mature."
The liquid on the floor began to take shape—humanoid figures with clock-faces for heads, their "fingers" long, jagged needles. They didn't move like living things; they moved in staccato, jumping through frames of time.
Arthur felt the familiar hollow ache in his chest. He couldn't use The Crime Hour—not after Shoko's warning. But as the first clock-creature lunged toward Mei Mei, he knew he didn't have a choice.
"Mei Mei," Arthur said, his voice echoing with the power of a dying man. "Get the clients out. I'll settle this bill."
"And the price?" she asked, even as she swung her axe, cleaving a creature in two.
"Put it on my tab," Arthur replied.
He closed his eyes. Trade: 6 months of motor function in my right hand. The trade was accepted.
The world turned sepia. The screams died. The liquid frozen in mid-air became a beautiful, terrifying sculpture of chaos. Arthur moved through the stillness, a ghost in a world of statues. He struck three, four, five times—each blow a "Dette de Sang" that shattered the clock-faces into dust.
When the 1.1 seconds ended, Arthur was standing in the center of the room, surrounded by nothing but falling soot. He didn't collapse this time. He stood tall, though his right hand hung limp and grey at his side, the nerves deadened by the transaction.
Mei Mei looked down at him from the balcony, a look of genuine intrigue—and perhaps a hint of something softer—crossing her face.
"You're a madman, Arthur Penhaligon," she called out.
"I'm a Brit," Arthur replied, coughing a spray of blood onto the floor. "We're famously stubborn about our debts."
He walked out of the club, leaving the smell of jasmine and jasmine-scented smoke behind. But as he stepped into the Tokyo night, he knew the "Westminster Remnant" was no longer just a shadow. They were here. And they had brought the end of the world with them.