Two hundred meters beneath the ruined crust of the Earth, where light was a forgotten memory and hope clung like a dying ember, the Bunker of Broken Mirrors stirred with restless breath.
The surveillance hub was a place stitched together with dying machines and haunted air. Cracked screens lined the walls like broken windows into a world that had long since abandoned kindness. Ren sat slumped in the battered command chair, the leather worn thin beneath his fingers. His shoulders, once broad with conviction, now curved inward as if trying to shield a heart too battered to beat without pain.
Before him, the screens flickered, each a silent confession of the living world's collapse.
Screen 1: In the ashen remains of Osaka, a small child was dragged by Argwan enforcers, her tiny frame stumbling over the jagged ground. Chains clattered at her ankles, each step a symphony of cruelty. Her face turned up once to the sky—a sky so heavy with black clouds it seemed to smother even the stars—and in that moment, Ren saw Yui. Saw the trembling, desperate hope still clinging to a child who had never known anything else.
Screen 2: Kyoto's execution square, a place where music had been declared treason. A woman stood on the gallows, her lips still curled around the ghost of a song she would never finish. Her body jerked as the rope snapped taut, swaying like a broken marionette in the acid rain that pelted her skin with merciless kisses..
The air tasted of metal and mold. Somewhere in the corner, Yui and Ami huddled together, drawing sunflowers with scavenged charcoal on scraps of plastic. Their childish voices were faint, a soft, impossible contrast to the death playing out on every screen.
"See? The petals always reach toward the light," Yui said, her voice so delicate it almost cracked. "Even when it's dark."
Ren's chest tightened painfully. He could not look at her. Could not bear the weight of her hope.
The door creaked open with a sound like an old wound reopening. Hajime stepped through, his gait uneven, the thud of his prosthetic leg oddly gentle against the rusted floor. His face was a map of old battles—sharp, scarred, and lined with something heavier than mere age.
"They're ready, Kuroda," Hajime said, voice low and firm.
Ren didn't move. His eyes remained fixed on the screens, as if willing the horrors to undo themselves if he stared hard enough. His hands gripped the chair so tightly the fabric groaned under his touch.
"No," he said simply, the word falling into the bunker's gloom like a stone sinking into a stagnant pond.
Hajime limped forward, the faint hiss of hydraulics in his prosthetic barely masking the anger beneath his calm exterior. On the screens, the child from Osaka cried out again as an enforcer kicked her forward, a shock collar sparking against her thin neck.
Hajime's voice sharpened. "You've been saying 'no' for half a year. And what's changed, Ren? Huh? That?" He jabbed a scarred finger at the execution square. "More bodies swinging in the rain? More children being killed daily? Screw it ?"
Ren's jaw clenched. His fist slammed into the console with a dull, hollow thud, making Ami startle behind him.
"Going out there now is suicide," Ren rasped. "We have three rifles that barely fire straight. Half the tunnels are choked with Hollowing spores. Yui's fever spiked again last night. You want to bury her next?"
For a moment, only the machines whispered.
Hajime's voice softened into something infinitely more dangerous. "My daughter was eight. Same as Ami. I watched the Argwans turn her into fertilizer. I can still hear her asking, 'Papa, where did the sun go?'"
Behind them, Yui's laughter chimed like cracked bells as she pointed to a rough sketch. "The sun's just hiding! We'll find it, promise!"
Ren closed his eyes. The sun is hiding. What a foolish, beautiful lie.
His gaze dropped to the battered locket resting near the console, its cracked glass holding Aiko's smiling face, frozen forever in a time before the world broke. Next to it, a cherry blossom petal—brown and fragile—clung stubbornly to life. Sora's last gift. Live for them, they had said. But what if living was the crueler curse?
"We're not ready," Ren whispered, the words tasting of ashes.
"No one ever is," Hajime answered, stepping closer until Ren could feel the heat of his anger, his grief, the molten core of a man who had already decided he would rather die on his feet than rot in a bunker.
A new screen sputtered to life with a burst of static. Koji's face appeared, bloodied, grinning—a wild, reckless light in his eyes that even the Hollowing had not dimmed.
"Yo, Doc," Koji's voice crackled through the battered speakers. "Got a convoy headed to the Kansai camps. Medical supplies. Some kids in the cargo. You want 'em or not?"
Time froze.
Yui's golden eyes lifted from her drawings, their glow reflecting all the pain of a world she could barely understand. "Papa…?"
The word cut deeper than any blade. Ren's heart twisted in his chest, an agony so complete it almost felt like peace. He thought of the countless times he had whispered that he would wait, that later would be safer, that tomorrow they might stand a better chance. But tomorrow never came. Only graves.
He reached out and touched the cracked locket, feeling the brittle edge of the cherry blossom beneath his fingertips. Aiko. Sora. Yui.
They would never be ready.
But if they waited any longer, there would be nothing left worth saving.
Ren rose slowly, the movement creaking from joints too stiff with fear and grief. His voice was low, steady, carrying the weight of all the broken promises he could no longer afford to make.
"Gear up," he said to Hajime. "We move at 9 pm."
Hajime's grim smile was answer enough. He clapped Ren on the shoulder—a rare show of warmth—and turned toward the armory with a renewed purpose in his limp.
Ren remained behind for a moment longer, staring at the screens. Osaka. Kyoto. Fukuoka. A world drowning under violet vines and bone-deep despair.
And yet, somewhere in that devastation, a convoy rolled forward with stolen lives inside it, and a handful of broken people still dared to believe they could reach it.
A small hand slipped into his.
Ren looked down. Yui's face, pale with fever yet fierce with stubborn light, tilted up toward him.
"We'll save them, right, Papa?" she whispered.
Ren squeezed her hand, swallowing the thick knot in his throat. He tucked a stray curl behind her ear, his fingers trembling just slightly.
"We'll try," he said.
And for the first time in a year, as the bunker lights flickered and the world above continued to rot, Ren's hands finally, finally, stopped shaking.