CHAPTER NINE: THE PATTERN CRACKS
(POV: Rei Kagami , Zero , Mr. P, shifting)
...
Rei Kagami :The Hidden Sanctum, Sector Null
The vault swallowed sound.
No footsteps. No echoes. No breath but his own.
It was the kind of silence that didn't just muffle.. it erased.
Rei stood with his back to the door, arms folded, his head slightly bowed. Threads of shadow illusion drifted around him like dying stars, pulsing faintly in the black.
They weren't for defense. He didn't expect anyone to strike him here.
They weren't for hiding.
They were for silence.
For solitude.
This place didn't appear on any schematic of Eden. Even Mr. P would have trouble mapping the winding paths down here... Sector Null was less a location than an accident of architecture, a forgotten wound in the city's skin.
Rei liked it here.
Because here… even Zero could not control the air.
Or so he thought.
He didn't need to hear the footsteps. He didn't need to turn. He knew the moment his father entered the room.
That presence.
It filled the space. Dense. Subtle as glass, sharp as razors.
The Prophet of Ascension.
Zero.
"You shouldn't be here," came Zero's voice, soft, calm, and echoed all at once.
Rei did not turn.
"And yet," he murmured, "here we are."
A faint flicker of the shadows above him revealed the construct he'd been studying.. an enormous floating schematic of light and scripture, an intricate spiderweb of glyphs and code etched into the void.
It hung above the altar, vast and alive.
Zero's grand design.
Rei had been decoding it for weeks.
The ritual to become divine.
And the corpse it required.
...
Zero , Stepping Into Shadow
Rei was his son.
By blood.
By tragedy.
By inevitability.
But Zero hadn't said that word aloud in decades. He hadn't allowed himself to feel it.
Not when they branded Rei defective. Not when Rei disappeared into the cracks of Eden. Not when Rei's silhouette appeared again years later, dark and dangerous, a thorn in every prophecy.
He approached carefully.
Not because he feared an attack.
Because he feared what his son might say.
Rei turned just enough to meet his eyes.
No fury. No anguish.
Only observation.
"You're building a god from grief," Rei said, his voice low.
"And you," Zero replied, "are building nothing from fear."
A beat.
"You still believe this?" Rei asked. His silver black eyes glittered faintly in the dark. "Stealing divinity? Taking what was never meant to be ours and making yours?"
Zero's hands stayed behind his back. His robe shimmered faintly, ink and starlight stitched into every fold.
"It's not stealing," Zero said. "It's reclamation. We were made in their image. They abandoned us. We endured.... That means we've earned the right to take what they left behind."
Rei's jaw tightened.
"You mean you've earned it."
Zero said nothing.
But his silence admitted more than words would have.
...
Mr. P ; Watching from the Corridors
He hadn't meant to find them.
Not officially , anyway.
The vents wounds are everywhere through the old levels of Eden. He used them to monitor the lower sectors, crawl between places no one expected him to be.
It was boredom, mostly, that led him here. A faint heat signature. A strange silence.
And then…
The one room in Eden even he shouldn't have stumbled into.
Zero and Rei. Together. Alone.
Mr. P froze in the dark behind a wall of cracked machinery.
He adjusted in his sunglasses, muted his own breathing, and watched.
What he saw wasn't a prophet confronting a traitor.
It wasn't a general meeting a rebel.
It was a father, trying not to weep.
...
Rei ; The Needle Pierces
"At the very least do you still care about me," Rei said softly.
Zero didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
But the silence deepened... thickened.. a pause too long for a man who claimed to see everything.
"You're projecting," Zero murmured.
Rei stepped closer.
"You trained me to see lies," he said, his voice just above a whisper. "hmm... but its funny how you never learned to hide your own eyes."
"Rei.. "
"What am i... to you really me Dad?"
It wasn't a demand.
It wasn't even anger.
It was a question.
A whisper.
And it cut through everything else.
Zero's mouth opened, then closed. His hands tightened faintly behind his back.
"Rei... ," he said finally, his voice cracking just slightly, "You.. my son thats it."
...
Zero ;The First Break
He hadn't meant to say that.
Not aloud.
Not here.
Rei's eyes widened slightly.
Just slightly.
But enough for Zero to feel it... a little boy who doubts his father.
He stepped back, composing himself.
"This ritual is not about family," he said, voice sharpening again. "It's about survival."
"No," Rei said.
His voice was ice.
"It's about control."
"I have seen everything," Zero said.
"But not me," Rei replied.
And that stopped him.
...
Mr. P ; Watching from the Shadows
Paku Shinomiya bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
"Oh my god," he whispered, to no one.
"You still love the kid."
It was like finding the weak spot in a tank.
His mind began moving in nine directions at once.. lines of tactics, contingencies, probabilities all lighting up like constellations behind his eyes.
Rei was no longer a rogue variable.
He was leverage.
If I can twist the son, Paku thought, I can break the father.
And if I break the father… maybe I save my son.
He leaned back against the cold wall of machinery and smiled faintly to himself.
...
Rei , Leaving
He turned to go.
Zero didn't stop him.
Didn't speak.
But as Rei passed through the door, he paused, his hand on the frame.
"I'm not your weapon," he said.
Zero's reply was quiet.
"No," he said.
"You're the part of me that refused to die."
Rei disappeared into the dark without another word.
...
Mr. P ; Alone Again
Once they were gone, Mr. P stepped lightly into the sanctum, whistling faintly as he entered.
The celestial schematic still hovered above the altar, glowing faintly in the dimness.
He craned his neck up at it, hands buried in the pockets of his coat.
Even now, he didn't understand all the divine logic written into its impossible geometry. Not yet.
But he could see the weak node.
It was there.
Glowing softly in the corner of the pattern.
Rei.
He lit a cigarette, the smoke curling lazily around his head as he exhaled.
"Zero's crack is pride," he said under his breath. "Same as always."
He laughed softly, shaking his head.
"Let's see what happens," he murmured, "when the shadow outshines the prophet."
The laugh lingered as he walked away, fading into the dark, leaving the sanctum silent once more.
And high above Eden, unseen and unspoken, the pattern began to crack.
END OF CHAPTER 9