Location: Abandoned Skyrail Terminal, Sector Theta-4
Time: 1:07 a.m.
[LIN – THE BLACK REAPER]
Footsteps echoed like drumbeats in the hollow skyrail station. Dust hung thick in the air, disturbed only by the slow, deliberate movements of the man in the black coat.
Lin .
His boots scraped against broken glass and faded station tiles. His breath was steady — too steady for someone who'd just clawed his way back from hell.
He paused at the rusted railing and looked out across the ruins of Theta-4. Buildings shattered by time. Streetlights blinking like dying stars. This place had been wiped off the map after the breach. After he breached it.
"Still smells like scorched souls," he murmured. His voice was low, almost a growl.
From under his collar, red veins pulsed across his neck — unnatural. As if his body still hadn't accepted him back into the world of the living.
A broken mirror on the wall reflected a sliver of his face.
Eyes glowing crimson.
Half of his body was shadow — literally. His right arm flickered between matter and something else: pure entropy. A remnant of Gate corruption.
He stared into his reflection.
"You shouldn't have come back."
A low, whispering sound echoed behind him. Not a voice. Not wind.
It was her again.
Rune.
The little sister he couldn't save. The ghost that followed him still — silent, translucent, lips parted in an eternal scream.
Lin didn't flinch.
"You're not real," he whispered.
But she stood there. Barefoot, wearing the same uniform from the day she died.
He closed his eyes.
"I came back for one reason. To kill them all. Every last one who used the Gates. Who turned children into gods."
He turned. His coat flared with ash.
Behind him, half a dozen Contractor ghosts surged from the walls — failed experiments, bleeding memory fragments. But he didn't even raise a hand.
Instead, his corrupted right arm flared red.
And they burned.
Instantly.
Screaming, turning to ash mid-air.
The Black Reaper walked on, toward the lower levels of the terminal. Toward the heart of what remained. He had heard whispers of a girl — Eri — touched by the same Gatelight that had cursed him. If she existed, the cycle was repeating.
He wouldn't let another Rune happen.
---
[YUKI & SHOTA – SIX BLOCKS AWAY, ON A DERELICT MAG-RAIL BRIDGE]
Rain was falling. Thin. Dirty. Almost oily.
Yuki drove the stolen drone-bike hard, tires skimming over ancient iron. Shota clung to the back, one hand pressed against his temple. His spirit-sense pulsed like sonar, scanning the storm.
"Two more ether pulses!" he shouted. "Up ahead. Massive discharge. Definitely him!"
Yuki narrowed her eyes. "He's not hiding anymore."
"He never was," Shota muttered. "The Reaper doesn't run. He invites death."
She didn't reply. Her grip on the handlebars tightened.
Ten years ago, Lin Mikazuki had been a child prodigy in the government's Gate Project. The perfect Contractor. Until the breach in Theta turned him into a half-shadow. A weapon of anti-spiritual entropy.
They claimed he was lost in the void. But Yuki had always suspected otherwise.
"Why didn't you tell me he was your partner?" Shota asked quietly.
Yuki didn't answer at first.
Then: "Because Lin died the day the Reaper was born."
---
[SKYRAIL TERMINAL – LOWER DECK]
Lin descended slowly. His hand brushed along the rail, metal hissing at his touch. The deeper he went, the more real she became — Rune. Her whispers. Her smile.
He arrived at the central junction. A massive mural once decorated this place — children holding light between their hands.
Now it was torn.
And in its center stood an altar, burned with seals.
The origin point of the Gate Project.
Lin reached down and picked up a shard of glass shaped like a butterfly wing. The symbol of the Spiriters.
"She was here," he whispered.
Then — a voice behind him.
"You were always good at finding ghosts."
He froze.
Turned.
And saw her.
Yuki.
Standing at the stairwell's mouth, eyes unreadable. Drenched in rain, her cigarette burned slowly in her fingers. Shota beside her, a pale fox spirit circling his feet like smoke.
Lin's face didn't change.
"I hoped it would be you," he said.
Yuki exhaled. "And I hoped you'd stay dead."
A heartbeat. The air between them thickened.
Then — the power surged.
Lin's body flared with red Gatelight.
Shota gasped. "His aura— it's like... a collapsing world."
Yuki stepped forward. Her coat fell away.
Beneath it, her Asetter blade glowed white. A blade meant to kill the unkillable.
Lin raised his arm — the corrupted one — and shadows formed a scythe.
"Don't do this," she whispered.
"I have to," he replied.
---
TO BE CONTINUED...