The rain did not just fall; it sought to drown the city of Azerion.
Every drop was a needle, cold and sharp, striking the cobblestones with a rhythmic violence that mirrored the heartbeat of a dying man.
Kaito Hana Sato walked through the deluge, his black cloak heavy with water, clinging to his frame like the skin of a shadow.
His footsteps were silent, yet every stride felt like the tolling of a funeral bell. Inside, the silence was louder than the storm.
Once, I knew how to smile, he thought, his eyes fixed on the distant, glowing spires of the White Hunter Guild Headquarters.
Once, I lived with a family. We had a home that smelled of woodsmoke and peace. But they stole it. They took it all because I was weak. They took my name, they took my blood, and they left me with nothing but this hunger.
He looked at his hands, pale and steady in the dark.
"Now," he whispered, his voice a low rasp that the wind carried away, "I will hunt him down."
The loneliness was a physical weight, a cold void in his chest that no fire could warm. But as he walked, he didn't falter.
He was a man with the singular purpose of a falling star—bright, brief, and destined to crash.
High above the drowning streets, perched on the edge of a rain-slicked gargoyle, a man stood motionless.
His clothes were soaked through, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, but his gaze was as sharp as a hawk's, locked onto the small, dark figure moving far below.
"You aren't lonely because you were weak, little brother," the man murmured, a sad, knowing smile playing on his lips. "It's the opposite. You were so strong that they realised they couldn't harm you. So, they chose to break you instead."
The heavy rooftop door behind him creaked open, and Kanjo stepped out into the gale, squinting against the rain.
He saw the man on the edge and rushed forward.
"Blake!" Kanjo shouted over the thunder. "Is he safe? Have you seen Kaito?"
The man on the edge didn't turn around, but his voice cut through the storm with effortless clarity.
"Never call your big brother by his name, Kanjo. Call me 'Brother,' or call me nothing at all."
Kanjo lowered his head, a gesture of deep-seated respect. "Yes, Brother. Please... is he safe?"
Blake finally turned. He was a man built of hard angles and hidden power, his presence even more commanding than Kaito's.
He didn't look worried; instead, he threw his arms wide, embracing the wind and the rain with a sudden, booming laugh that sounded like the crack of a whip.
"Safe?" Blake smirked, his eyes flashing with a terrifying pride. "Look at him down there, Kanjo.
Look at that aura. Who in this godforsaken world could kill the strongest?"
He continued to laugh, a wild, jagged sound that made Kanjo shiver. It wasn't the laugh of a sane man, but the laugh of someone who knew exactly what kind of monster they had helped create.
The Mid-Air Execution
Below, Kaito continued his march. He was a walking dead zone.
He wasn't hiding his presence. On the contrary, he was emitting his Hunting Will with such raw intensity that the very air around him seemed to warp.
The rain didn't just hit him; it seemed to vaporise or veer away, creating a faint, shimmering halo of black mist.
From the third-story window of a nearby tavern, a bounty hunter—a man desperate for the one-billion-gold prize—saw his chance.
He didn't care about legends. He only saw a man with his back turned, walking slowly in the rain.
The hunter leapt. He held a jagged, two-handed greatsword, his face twisted in a silent roar of greed as he plummeted toward Kaito's exposed neck. He pictured the gold.
He pictured the fame.
Kaito didn't look up. He didn't even break his stride.
In mid-air, the hunter's body suddenly jerked. Without Kaito drawing his blade, without a single visible movement, the air itself seemed to turn into a thousand invisible razors.
Schling. Schling. Schling.
The hunter didn't even have time to scream.
His body was sliced into several neat, symmetrical pieces before he was halfway to the ground.
Blood sprayed into the rain, turning the puddles into a swirling crimson, as the segments of the man thudded into the mud like discarded butcher's meat.
Kaito stepped over a severed hand without looking down. He continued to move like a calamity—a force of nature that didn't acknowledge the obstacles it destroyed.
In the war room of the White Hunter Guild, the air was thick with the scent of expensive tobacco and cheap fear. Reports were flooding in:
sentries silenced, patrols vanished, and a "black ghost" moved toward the gates.
Kashima Hanto stared at the map on his desk, his hands trembling so violently he had to clench them into fists.
The cigarette in his mouth had gone cold.
"He's coming," Kashima whispered, his voice cracking. "He's actually coming."
He looked at Yanto, who stood by the window, his arms crossed. "Yanto! Take him down!
Use every man we have! Don't let him reach this building!"
Yanto didn't move immediately. He was watching the distant flickers of black aura in the streets.
"He's not just Kaito anymore, Kashima. He's something else."
But Kashima wasn't listening. A frantic, desperate thought took root in his mind—the only card he had left to play.
Without a word to his guards, the leader of the strongest guild in Azerion turned and ran. He didn't run toward the fight; he ran toward the back exit.
He burst into the rainy streets, his fine silks getting ruined by the mud. He tripped, his face hitting the wet stone, but he scrambled back up, his eyes wide with a manic, devouring fear.
He didn't stop running. He knew where the leverage was.
The girl. The house. The most precious thing he has left, Kashima thought, his breath coming in ragged gasps. If I can't kill the Fang, I'll pull his teeth.
High above even the rooftop where Blake stood, the Azer Tower pierced the clouds.
It was the tallest structure in the country, a needle of steel and glass that looked down on the world.
On the very tip of the spire, two men sat comfortably, protected from the wind by an invisible barrier.
Zereth, a man who looked to be in his late forties with salt-and-pepper hair and a sharp, tailored suit, sat in a floating chair. He held a deck of gold-trimmed cards, shuffling them with mesmerising speed.
Beside him stood Mukata, a burly man with scarred knuckles and a weary expression.
"How can you even see the fight from this height, Zereth?" Mukata asked, squinting down at the tiny, ant-like lights of the city.
"Even with binoculars, it would be a blur."
Zereth let out a dry, confident chuckle, flicking a card into the air. It hovered there, glowing with a soft blue light.
"Don't look down on the strongest gambler of the Sutra Continent, Mukata," Zereth replied.
"Distance is just a number for someone who possesses the Spectator's Will."
Mukata nodded slowly. "So that's why you can see the grain of the wood on the docks from up here.
And you can adjust the speed of time for your own eyes, can't you?"
"Exactly," Zereth said, his eyes turning a faint, luminous silver.
"I can see the trajectory of every raindrop.
I can see the fear in Kashima's heart. But still... we cannot interfere."
Mukata sighed. "I know. It's the captain's fight."
"Not Captain Kaito," Zereth corrected, his voice dropping an octave as he watched the black mist below.
"It's the fight of Captain Nihil. Or, as the world once knew him, Kaito Hana Sato."
Kaito turned into a narrow street valley, the tall stone walls on either side trapping the sound of the rain.
A member of the White Hunter Guild lay broken on the ground before him. The man had been part of a twenty-man intercept squad;
Now, he was the only one left, and he wasn't exactly 'whole.'
Kaito placed his boot firmly on the man's chest, leaning down until his shadow completely eclipsed the guard's face.
In the dim light, Kaito's face didn't look human. It looked like a mask of cold marble.
"Where is Kashima?" Kaito asked.
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of a mountain. As he spoke, a thick, black smoke began to curl off his body, pooling on the ground and filling the alleyway.
This was the true form of his Hunting Will—an aura so dense it became a physical poison.
The guard tried to speak, but his lungs wouldn't work. The air was too heavy, too full of Kaito's murderous intent.
He clawed at his throat, his eyes bulging as the black smoke swirled into his mouth and nostrils.
"Speak," Kaito commanded.
But there was no answer. The guard's heart simply stopped, unable to withstand the sheer pressure of being in Kaito's presence.
He died of pure, unadulterated terror.
Kaito stood up, the black smoke receding slightly. He looked down at the corpse with a hollow, disappointed expression.
"One hundred and twenty," Kaito whispered.
"One hundred and twenty useless lives, and still no Kashima."
"Nihil!"
A voice cried out from the entrance of the alley. Kaito froze. He knew that voice.
Yuri came running through the rain, her face pale and streaked with tears. She stopped ten feet away, her hands trembling as she looked at the carnage Kaito had left behind.
She looked at the man she once knew—the man who had shared meals with her, the man who had protected the guild.
"Nihil... are you alright?" she sobbed, taking a tentative step forward. Then, she corrected herself, her voice shaking.
"Sorry... I mean, Kaito Hana Sato. Are you still in there?"
Kaito turned his head slowly. He didn't look at her with the warmth of a friend or the fire of a lover.
He looked at her as if she were a ghost from a dream he had already forgotten.
"Kaito?" he repeated, the name sounding foreign on his tongue.
He looked into Yuri's eyes, his expression as calm as a frozen lake.
"Kaito Hana Sato is dead,
" he said, his voice flat and final. "He died the day you all let them take everything. There is only Nihil now."
He turned his back on her, walking deeper into the dark, leaving her alone in the rain with nothing but the sound of her own heart breaking.