The world didn't wake up with a sound; it woke up with a color.
Deep violet eyes snapped open, the irises vibrating with a sudden, sharp clarity. Elina blinked, her yellow eyelashes brushing against her skin as she tried to make sense of the ceiling. But there was no ceiling—only a sky the color of blue seas.
"What is... this?" she whispered. Her voice felt thin, like it was being squeezed through a straw.
She sat up, but the damp pavement of Havenport was gone. Beneath her palms was manicured emerald grass, smelling of morning dew and expensive fertilizer. Slowly, out of the swirling grey mist, a structure began to materialize. It was a massive, sprawling estate of white stone and dark ivy—a fortress of old money and even older secrets.
The D'arcy Estate.
Elina stood, her legs feeling like lead and her skin felt cold to the touch. She hadn't seen this place since she was a child, yet every detail was agonizingly sharp. She walked toward the towering oak doors adorned in gold, which creaked open before she could even touch the iron handles.
The air inside was heavy with the scent of lilies and beeswax. As she reached the center of the grand foyer, the sound of rhythmic marching echoed against the marble. A Guard, dressed in the pristine silver armor of the elite units, hurried toward her.
"Excuse me," Elina greeted, bracing for impact.
The guard didn't slow down with his helmet pushed down and pressed onward. He marched straight into her—and then through her. Elina felt a cold, static shock ripple through her chest as the man flickered like a dying candle and vanished right behind her.
"What?" she gasped, clutching her heart. She looked down at her hands; they were translucent, glowing with a faint, violet hue. She wasn't a guest here. She was a ghost. This was a dream.
Elina always had dreams, but this one felt different.
Drawn by a soothing voice she recognized in the marrow of her bones, Elina followed the guard into a private study. There, bathed in the golden light of a crackling fireplace, stood a woman with hair like spun gold and a face etched with weary elegance. There she sat, bedridden, visibly sick. Her skin was pale, and her smile was visibly fading, yet somehow the woman looked just like Elina. It was her mother.
"Mom?" Elina's voice broke. She ran forward, her arms reaching out for a hug she had craved for years.
She fell right through. She tumbled through her mother's shimmering form, landing on the pristine satin rug on the other side. She turned, watching as her mother looked past her, her eyes wet with tears of relief.
"How could I ever repay you?" her mother whispered, her hands trembling as she clutched a silk handkerchief.
"However, you can," a voice replied.
The temperature in the room plummeted. Elina turned around, her violet eyes widening until they hurt.
"Is my daughter?" Elina's mother moaned, as she tried standing up but her frail body couldn't support her.
"Shes doing just fine,"The voice interjected .
Standing in the shadows was a man who didn't look Natural. His hair was long, a jarring split of obsidian black and snow white. But it was his face that stole the air from Elina's lungs. The flesh was divided down the middle, one half a natural, pale tone, the other a stitched, absorbing black. Heavily Noticeable was his dull grey eyes and the blue diamond pressed in the middle of his forehead
The man didn't phase like the others. When his gaze shifted, it felt as though he was looking directly into Elina's soul, bridging the gap between the memory and the dream.
"However, you can," the man repeated. His voice wasn't a single tone; it was a layered, discordant sound, like two people speaking over one another in a hollow tunnel.
Elina backed away, her ghostly boots making no sound on the rug. The man stepped out of the shadows. The blue diamond embedded in his forehead pulsed with a rhythmic, sickly light, and his dull grey eyes seemed to drain the color from the room.
"She will live," the man said, his stitched, black-skinned hand reaching out toward the bed where Elina's mother lay. "But the life I give her is not her own. I have taken the essence of her father. I will stitch immortality into her dead, human heart."
"No..." Elina whispered, her hand flying to her chest. She could feel it now—a secondary heartbeat, slow and cold, thumping beneath her own.
"She will be a Daywalker," he continued
"The Perfect Balance."
Elina's eyes flew open.
She wasn't in the D'arcy estate anymore. She was on the floor of Base 6, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She jolted upward, half her body twisting out of the thin sleeping bag as she gasped for air. Her yellow hair was matted to her forehead with cold sweat, and the scent of fresh, colorful lilies was replaced by the stale, metallic tang of the base's air filtration.
Through the dim, early morning light, a silhouette stood perfectly still a few feet away.
"Hello?" Elina rasped, her hand instinctively reaching for the skateboard she used as a makeshift pillow.
"Zzzzzzz... hugh... zzzzz..."
A loud, rhythmic snore echoed through the cavernous room. It was Eiji. He was standing completely upright, leaning slightly against a support beam with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were closed, and his head was tilted back.
Elina let out a long, shaky breath, her shoulders slumping. "Oh, he's asleep," she thought, wiping the sweat from her eyes. "Of course. Only he could sleep standing up like that".
"I'm awake," Eiji said.
His voice was clear, devoid of any sleepiness.
"AH!" Elina yelped, jolting backward and nearly tripping over her own sleeping bag. "Dammit! You were just snoring! How long have you been standing there like a creep?"
Eiji finally tilted his head down, his "closed" gaze directed toward her. A tired, half-smirk played on his lips. "I've been standing here for hours. And it's hard to sleep when someone is rolling around and screaming in their sleep, Elina."
Elina felt a flush of heat creep up her neck. She looked away, tucking a strand of yellow hair behind her ear. "I wasn't screaming. I was... practicing my battle cry."
"Right. You sounded more like a cat stuck in a vacuum cleaner," Eiji remarked, finally uncrossing his arms and stretching his back until it popped. "Reiner's already up. He's been pacing the porch for an hour. Apparently, our 'neighbor' left a welcome gift, and he's too scared to touch it."
Elina stood up, kicking her sleeping bag aside. The heavy, cold thrum of the "Man" inside her head quieted, but it left her feeling hollow and incredibly hungry.
"Better a gift than another lecture from you," she muttered, though her voice lacked its usual bite. "Let's go see what the old d bag wants."
Elina and Eiji headed down the creaking wooden stairs, the sound echoing through the expanded spatial floor. At the bottom, Reiner was a blur of orange-tracksuit-clad motion, pacing a tight circle on the rug. He was muttering under his breath, his silver beard bristling with every turn.
"That hag... that absolute, relentless hag," Reiner growled, his boots thumping rhythmically.
Bob was leaning against a server rack, casually tossing his orange cap into the air and catching it. "Dude, it's really not that serious. You're going to give yourself a stroke before we even leave the base."
Alvia didn't even look up from her tablet, though her blue hair gave a small, amused flicker of light. "Yeah, Reiner. It's nothing bad. Actually, it's practically civil. Maybe you're too old to understand that."
Elina pushed past Eiji, her violet eyes scanning the room until they landed on a small, brightly wrapped package sitting on the wooden table. "What is it? A bomb?? A cursed artifact? Did she leave a severed finger or something?"
Alvia finally looked up, her smirk widening. "Better. A box of chocolates. Dark cocoa, by the look of the ribbon."
The room went silent. Elina, Eiji, and Reiner all stared at the small, innocent box. The "Great" Vanguard Team Z stood frozen, collectively disappointed.
"Chocolates?" Elina deadpanned. "The 'threat' is a box of candy?"
"It's a psychological tactic!" Reiner barked, pointing a finger at the box as if it might explode. "She's lowering our guard! First comes the caramel chews, then comes the citation for 'unauthorized loitering, who knows,maybe its poison'!"
Eiji let out a long, weary sigh, the sound of his thumb clicking against his sword-guard the only thing breaking the awkward tension. "Boss, I think you just need a hobby. Or a nap."
"I'm fine," Reiner grunted, still unsettled, adjusting his orange tracksuit and stepping out onto the porch. He didn't look fine, his eyes were still darting around for Luaine, but the mission was officially underway.
The group stepped out of Base 6 and into the heart of Havenport. During the day, the district transformed. The "Red Light" neon was replaced by the smell of salt-cured fish and the rhythmic, loud shouting of vendors. It was a dense, sprawling fish market square, where the morning fog clung to the scales of hanging tuna and wet crates of crab. Dozens gather around to buy "the fish of the day."
For Reiner, it was a waking nightmare. The square was packed with elderly women—the "Matriarchs of Havenport"—who moved through the crowds with sharp elbows and even sharper eyes. Every time a floral dress caught his eye, Reiner flinched.
Eiji, however, was in his element. As they moved through the crowd, he didn't stumble once. He walked with a smooth, effortless grace, his hand resting lightly on his Z-Sword.
"Oh, look at this handsome young man!" one grandmother chirped, reaching out to pat Eiji's arm.
"Good morning, lovely ladies," Eiji replied with a charming, effortless tilt of his head. He didn't have to see them to know exactly where they were. He offered a small, respectful bow to a group of women selling salted kelp, causing a chorus of giggles to follow him. While Bob,well, Bob tasted every delicacy he could find.
Elina watched this with a look of pure confusion, her skateboard tucked under her arm. She nudged Alvia. "What is his deal? He's acting like he's always so relaxed."
Alvia adjusted her glasses, her blue hair dimming slightly to blend in with the shadows of the stalls. "Oh, him? Just being the typical was cast out of his clan back in the day. Apparently, a 'blind' mutt was an insult to their lineage. It shaped him, I guess."
She watched Eiji navigate around a stack of falling crates without even looking. "The way he sees the world is different from us, Elina. He doesn't need eyes. It's like he can see the very soul, the spiritual weight of everyone here. To him, this market isn't a mess of colors; it's a map of energy."
Bob stood by a vendor stall, scarfing down a tray of greasy fish sticks. "Mmm, best part of Havenport," he mumbled with a full mouth, pointing a half-eaten stick toward a brick wall near the market's edge.
There, a woman in her late forties was frantically slapping posters onto the soot-stained brick. Her hair was disheveled, and her arms shook so violently that she fumbled the stack, sending a dozen sheets of paper fluttering into the wet gutter.
MISSING: MAY GARCIO.
Reiner's expression shifted from annoyed captain to something softer, more somber. He stepped forward, his massive frame dwarfing the woman as he knelt to help her gather the papers. "Here, let me help."
Reiner looked at the poster. The face staring back was the same girl from the grainy security footage they'd seen at Base 4—the one who had been yanked into the sky by invisible threads,recognizable by her noticeably short hair.
"Is this your daughter?" Reiner asked quietly.
"Yes," the woman whispered, her eyes bloodshot and frantic.
"What happened?" Reiner responded.
"She went missing weeks ago," she said, her voice calm yet raspy and cracking. "She was just coming home from a night out with her friend ... and then, nothing. Just an empty street."
Reiner frowned, his hand tightening slightly on the edge of the poster. "Did you contact the police?
The woman let out a dry, hollow chuckle. "I did. Every day for the first week. But they just filed a report and told me 'people wander off' in Havenport. Not a word from them since."
"Maybe she ran away ," they said.
"That's a damn shame," Reiner muttered, his voice thick with a genuine, low-simmering anger. He knew he didn't know why they hadn't called back. The Helsing guard picked up on this, Reiner figured to the higher-ups, May Garcio was just a statistic they didn't want to spend resources on.
"Yeah," the woman replied softly, her gaze drifting toward the dark, narrow alleys that branched off from the market like veins.
"Well ill let you know if there's anything new I guess" Reiner responded.
"Do you know anywhere unusual?." Reiner added.
"I do appreciate it,it would save time on the search" the lady responded .
"Search?" Reiner asked.
"Yeah," the woman muttered.
"Weeks ago, a group of people in lime track suits…or whatever came to my home after finding out about my missing may, they questioned me on any unusual things, people vanish here every day" The woman exclaimed.
It was the missing team V.
"They gave me a number, when I tried calling, it was the landlady telling me they had just moved on."
The woman retorted disappointingly.
Elina watched the exchange from a distance, her jaw tight. The sight of the mother's shaking hands felt like a sharp blade. She couldn't stand the talking anymore. Conversations didn't bring people back, something was off, and for a full twelve minutes, she felt a strange pair of eyes watching her as she turned around to nothing.
Without a word to Reiner, Elina turned on her heel and began to weave through the crowd, her skateboard tucked tightly under her arm fell as she headed deep into the town, oblivious to the "old women" somehow noticing her using her red spiritual shift.
Eiji didn't even have to "see" her move to know she was leaving, he felt her shift as she skied away. He offered a quick, respectful nod to the grieving mother and followed Elina, his footsteps silent on the pavement. That left Bob and Alvia standing with Reiner, the heavy silence of the market square closing in around them.
Elina's trade of the bustling fish market to the side streets was like stepping into a different world. The salt-and-scaled air of the square was replaced by a stagnant, heavy chill that seemed to cling to the back of Elina's throat.
Elina darted down a narrow alleyway, her sneakers skidding on the damp pavement. She stopped suddenly, her head tilting as she wiped a thin, almost invisible strand of something sticky across her forehead. Her violet eyes were wide, the pupils dilated until they were nearly black.
"I... I feel it," she whispered, her voice tight with a mixture of fear and adrenaline. "I can sense the energy. It's right here, lurking just far beyond." All around her, there were translucent webs, but she couldn't tell where they were coming from
Eiji stopped several paces behind her. He stood perfectly still, his "closed" eyes turned toward the dark rafters of the warehouses. He looked like a statue of iron and orange fabric.
"Elina, stop," Eiji warned. "What are you doing? You're supposed to stay with the team you know."
" What? I'm looking! people are vanishing!" Elina snapped, turning back to him. Her "secondary heartbeat" was thrumming now, a cold, heavy pulse that made the spiritual energy in the alley feel like it was vibrating against her skin. There was a strong aura, and it kept getting bigger. "I can sense something, Eiji. It's close."
Eiji sighed, a slow, weary sound. He could feel it too, the spiritual weight in the air was so dense it felt like lead. The "map of energy" he usually perceived was being distorted, warped by something predatory and old.
"Fine," Eiji said reluctantly, his hand finally moving to the hilt of the Z-Sword. "I feel it too. But we keep our eyes peeled and our backs together. This isn't a game."
"Sure," Elina responded.
He stepped up beside her, the two of them standing in the center of the silent alley. Above them, the "strange eyes" Elina had felt earlier began to open one by one in the darkness, watching the two Vanguard soldiers step deeper into the web.
"We stick together, okay Elina," Eiji retorted
"Yeah, I know," She barked.
Concurrently, Bob finished his last fish stick, crumpling the greasy paper and looking around the crowded square. The colorful blur of the market was still there, but two distinct orange tracksuits were missing.
"Wait... where are the other two?" Bob asked, scratching the back of his head.
Reiner stopped his pacing, his eyes snapping to the spot where Elina had been standing seconds ago. "How would I know? I thought you were watching them!"
"I was watching the deep fryer, man and the pristine and beautiful fish sticks! How do you lose a girl with a skateboard and a guy who sleeps standing up?"
"Whatever," Reiner growled, though a vein was beginning to throb in his temple. "They're probably just scouting. We still need to find the creature. Alvia, status?"
Alvia's eyes glowed blue as she held a Spirit Doll, flicking her wrist to infuse it with energy. The doll shivered, its button eyes sparking, and shot into the air—visible only to the team, signaling their next move.
"We search until nightfall," Reiner commanded, watching the doll disappear over the rooftops. "Then we rendezvous with the other two."
As Alvia tracked the doll on her tablet and Bob scanned the crowd, a shadow fell over them. It wasn't a monster, but it chilled Reiner to the bone.
"Hello again."
Reiner let out a high-pitched, monkey-like scream, nearly jumping out of his boots. He spun around to find Luaine standing inches away. Her head gave a sharp, mechanical-like twitch to the left, her smile never reaching her cold, observant eyes.
"How are you enjoying Havenport?" she asked, her voice like sandpaper on silk.
"It's... uh... good. Really quaint," Reiner stammered, trying to hide Alvia's glowing tablet behind his back.
"Is it?" Luaine's smile widened, showing a bit too many teeth. "You know... You never did move your car. I thought a professional man like yourself would know better than to ignore the rules."
Reiner opened his mouth to apologize, but the words died in his throat. From the corners of the alleyways and the shadows of the fish stalls, multiple old women began to emerge. They moved in a synchronized, haunting fashion, their floral dresses swaying as they slowly formed a tight circle around Reiner, Bob, and Alvia.
With Elina, the air near the unknown location didn't just feel cold; it felt heavy, as if the oxygen had been replaced by a thick, invisible silt. Eiji and Elina moved cautiously, their boots crunching softly on the gravel path that followed the stream of silken webs. These weren't ordinary spirit webs; they were thick, pulsating cords that glowed with a faint, sickly luminescence, leading straight toward the rusted silhouette of an abandoned warehouse. Eiji and Elina both brandish serious looks as they rush forward
"The resonance is shifting," Eiji muttered, his hand hovering near the hilt of his blade. "I'm picking up traces of concentrated dark energy. It's dense, Elina. Watch your—"
"I know," Elina interrupted, though her voice sounded uncharacteristically thin. "It's weird. It feels like the shadows are... vibrating, there's word of creepy things near here as well."
As they crossed the threshold a few blocks from the warehouse's shadow, Elina's world began to tilt. Her head spun, and a high-pitched hum rang in her ears, and the concrete floor beneath her feet seemed to dissolve into a gray haze. Before she could call out, the ground vanished entirely. A cold, multi-jointed grip tightened around her waist, hoisting her into the air with terrifying speed.
"Shit," she groaned as she passed out.
The silence that followed was more deafening than a scream.
Eiji spun around, not sensing Elina, his head darting through the gloom of silence. "Elina? Elina, where are you! All he could hear was a drop of water splashing.
He reached out with his hands and tapped into his senses, his spiritual "echo" pulsated out, but the ambient dark energy acted like white noise, masking her presence. "Elina, what the hell is going on?!"
A rhythmic, clicking sound echoed from the sky. Descending from the roofs above on a single, shimmering thread was a creature of nightmare, the Tsuchigumo. Its bloated, chitinous body was covered in coarse purple hair, and its multiple eyes, adorned on its long pale head, reflected Eiji's panicked expression like a fractured mirror.
But as Eiji looked at the beast, a chilling realization struck him. The creature in front of him was empty-handed; Elina's spirit was missing. If this one was here to fight him, then Elina had already been taken by something else. There are two of them.
Eiji didn't hesitate. He drew his Z sword in one fluid motion. The blade was a masterwork of grim craftsmanship—pitch-black metal that seemed to swallow the dim light, accented by intricate, snake-like silver engravings that ran like veins down the center.
"Give her back," Eiji hissed.
The creature growled.
He braced his feet and initiated a Spirit Shift. A surge of glowing energy erupted from his core, flowing down his arms and into the sword. The silver accents began to glow with a fierce, celestial light, humming with the power of his resolve.
With a burst of speed, Eiji charged. He was a blur of black and silver, leaping toward the Tsuchigumo to deliver a finishing blow. He was mid-air, his blade poised to cleave through the monster's guard, ready to cut it clean in half, when the air behind him whistled.
A heavy, blunt force slammed into the back of his head. The world exploded into a piercing noise before fading into nothingness.
"There's number two" Eiji muttered
His body hit the floor, his sword clattered still tight in his grip, its silver glow flickering out like a dying candle.
The two Tsuchigumo clicked to one another in the setting sun light , their work finally complete.
" We bring them to our mother," one of them exclaimed.
"The girl's flesh smells strong"The other snickered.
"Yes,Yes". The first one added.
With the trio the sunset over Havenport wasn't golden; it was a bruised crimson that bled into the murky waters of the harbor. Reiner stood near a stack of plastic shipping crates, his chest heaving. His silver beard was no longer pristine—it was partially braided and tied with a dainty pink ribbon, a "parting gift" from the Matriarchs before they had made their escape.
Bob leaned against a lamp post,exhausted, fanning himself with his orange cap. " Always carry Powerball tickets. Those ladies have the grip strength of a tiger's jaw."
"Shut up, Bob," Alvia growled. Reiner's hand trembled as he keyed his comms unit. The orange fabric of his tracksuit was wrinkled, and his patience was nonexistent. "Eiji, report. We ran into a little problem. What's your status? Is Elina with you there?"
Silence. Only the hollow whistle of the wind through the alleyways answered him.
Reiner's expression shifted from annoyance to a cold, sharp dread. "Eiji, come in. This isn't funny. If you're napping again, I'll break you!"
Still nothing. No static, no breathing—just a dead line.
"Captain," Alvia interrupted, her blue hair pulsing with a low, neon rhythm. She didn't look up from her tablet, but her fingers were flying across the screen. "I'm not picking up their vocal frequencies. The local Shift levels just spiked near the old fishing warehouse. It's creating a spiritual blackout."
"Can you trace their gear?" Reiner asked, his voice dropping.
Alvia tapped a final command. A jagged green line appeared on her screen, pulsing in sync with a steady beep... beep... beep... "Eiji's Z-Sword has a spiritual signature too strong to hide," she said, pointing toward the silhouette of the old warehouse. "The signal is stationary. They aren't moving, Boss. And they've been at the same coordinates for the last twenty minutes."
"Crazy shift readings are coming from where they are at". She added
"Whatever is there, we have to get them," Reiner concluded as his flail materialized in his hands.
Bob straightened up . He reached into his vest, checking his equipment. "Stationary isn't good."
Just as Reiner turned, a flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye. It was her—the old lady—standing there again like a grim fixture in the alleyway. Reiner stood confused.
"What do you want now?!" he groaned, his patience finally snapping.
The woman remained deathly silent as the towering man closed the distance, his shadow looming over her. "Can you even hear me?!"
"What the hell is wr-"
Without a word, the lady's arm blurred. With a force that defied every law of physics, she backhanded Reiner, sending him crashing into the far wall with a bone-rattling thud. Alvia and Bob froze, their breath hitching in their throats.
Then, the woman or whatever she was began to change.
Her head snapped and twisted with violent, wet cracks. Her torso buckled and split, ribs snapping outward to form massive, bristling legs. Her two eyes fractured into eight obsidian orbs, and her neck elongated into a pale, fleshy stalk.
"A Tsuchigumo..." Alvia hissed, her voice trembling. "And a Father, at that."
"How do you know?" Bob retorted
"It has shorter legs, and if it's still alive, the mother is nearby," Alvia responded
The massive spirit-spider rose to its full, terrifying height, its mandibles were wet and clicking in a rhythmic threat. From the shadows beneath its bloated abdomen, hundreds of tiny, skittering offspring began to pour out, surrounding the trio.
"Shit!" Bob yelled, stumbling back.
"I told you!" Reiner roared from the debris, pushing himself up. "I told you she was evil!"
"Yeah, we got the memo!" Bob screamed. He whipped out a matte-black revolver,brandished with the words "Tweedle dee", the muzzle flash lighting up the dim alleyway as he caught a lunging spider-ling mid-air. The creature burst into a puff of white ichor as a ghostly spirit flew away.
Alvia's eyes began to glow with an eerie, rhythmic pulse as she drifted upward, her feet leaving the floor. The air around her crackled with static. "We have to get to the warehouse!" she shouted over the clicking of mandibles.
"How?!" Bob retorted, firing again as two more skittering shapes closed in on his boots.
"We fight!" Reiner roared. He stood his ground, the heavy iron round head of his spiky flail whistling through the air as he spun it into a violent, shimmering blur. "We move—now!"