The city of Ishikawa was a never-ending rhythm — screens blinked, electric boards chattered, and a thousand voices buzzed through the humid night. It had a pulse, a breath of its own, as if the steel and wires were alive, whispering the secrets of the past to the machines of the future.
But tonight… it all stopped.
Renji felt it before it happened — a strange itch at the back of his mind, like the air had thickened. He stood beside Yua at a crowded intersection, her holographic phone flickering between two unread messages and a photo of the sunset they'd missed. Neon lights painted their faces with pink and blue. People moved like waves — rushing home, rushing forward, always rushing.
And then, the lights died.
Not just flickered. Died.
The city fell into a black, unnatural silence.
One second ago, Ishikawa was alive. The next, it was a corpse.
No honking.
No buzz.
No digital breath.
Just stillness.
Yua's phone slipped from her hand. The screen cracked but no sound came out — as if the world itself had been muted.
"What the hell…?" Renji whispered.
Street lamps blinked once and went dark. Electric billboards faded into static. Drones that usually hovered over the streets to monitor civilians fell like dead crows, crashing onto the ground with sharp, echoing thuds. One slammed into a taxi's windshield, setting off an alarm — that never rang.
"Why is everything… frozen?" Yua asked, stepping closer to Renji.
People around them looked confused. Panicked whispers began to build. But no one moved. No one dared to run.
And then — the air shifted.
A soft mechanical clicking noise broke through the silence.
> tick… tick… tick…
It echoed through the empty city like a broken music box playing a song of doom.
Renji's pulse quickened. That sound. He didn't know why, but it felt familiar — painfully familiar.
He turned toward the sound, and so did everyone else.
From the far end of the street, something was moving.
It wasn't walking.
It wasn't flying.
It was… gliding.
A tall figure — over six feet — approached, wrapped in what looked like layers of shadow. Its skin was translucent, almost plastic-like, with faint glowing lines of blue crisscrossing underneath. Instead of a face, it had a broken digital screen, static flickering across it. Symbols — unreadable code — flashed for brief moments, like it was trying to speak a forgotten language.
The crowd froze.
Someone screamed, finally.
That's when it stopped.
The thing raised its head. And the screen on its face flashed a single line of text:
> [R-03: REACTIVATED]
[PRIMARY TARGET: R-00]
[MISSION: ELIMINATE ANCHOR ENTITY]
Renji felt like the words had punched into his chest.
"R-03…?" he whispered.
"R… 00?" Yua looked at him in confusion.
The figure turned toward them — slowly, deliberately.
Renji's left hand flared with red-hot pain. The mark he always thought was a birthmark began glowing. His vision blurred. In a blink, memories not his own flashed in his mind:
— A dark hallway.
— Crying children in glass tubes.
— A man with silver eyes laughing behind a wall of fire.
— Screams… so many screams.
He collapsed to his knees.
"Renji!" Yua shouted.
The figure moved.
It didn't charge.
It simply… phased.
One moment, it was twenty feet away. The next, it was right in front of them.
But before it could touch Renji —
CRACK!
A flash of steel and sparks exploded between them. A sword — short and curved — clashed with the creature's arm.
"Get up, dumbass!"
Renji looked up.
A boy stood between them.
Not a man. A boy.
He couldn't have been older than sixteen. Worn-out tactical clothes, a half-mask over his jaw, and eyes — sharp and cold — that had clearly seen war. His left eye glowed the same eerie blue as the creature's veins.
"Who—"
"No time! Move!"
He slashed again, fast and precise. The blade screeched against the creature's body but left no wound.
"It won't die easy," the boy growled. "But I can hold it."
Yua pulled Renji to his feet.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
The boy smiled coldly.
> "Name's Shinra Kurogane.
You just woke up the Ghost Division, R-00."
The world tilted.