The sun hung directly overhead as Kamina and Shmuel finally reached the outskirts of the abandoned factory in rear District 13. Their boots scraped across rusted sheet metal, broken glass, and remnants of things best left unnamed. They looked every bit the picture of exhausted Fixers who had, indeed, walked eight hours straight through several flavors of hell.
Kamina cracked his back with a loud pop and grinned as if it had all been part of the plan. "That was the most fun I've had since that giant worm thing tried to eat us in the tunnel," he said, ignoring the patchy gash across his coat and the ichor-stain on his sandal.
Shmuel, wheezing and bent over with hands on his knees, muttered, "That was not fun. That was a sewer beast the size of a small train, and you taunted it."
"Worked, didn't it?"
Before Shmuel could reply, a long black limousine-its surface polished so smoothly it distorted the very air around it-pulled silently up to the scene like a phantom. Its windows were opaque, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. It didn't fit here, not in the rust-bled wreckage of a forgotten industrial zone. But maybe that was the point.
The rear door opened with a hiss of pressure and out stepped Alexy.
"You've arrived later than expected," they said calmly, not unkindly. "Still, I trust you remember what's in your contract. Investigate. Report. Act if capable. Payment follows."
Without waiting for a reply, they stepped back into the limousine.
The limo pulled away like it had been swallowed by the mist of the City itself.
Shmuel stood frozen, eyebrows twitching. "Who even are they…?"
Kamina patted him on the back. "Someone who pays. That's enough for me."
They turned their attention to the factory. It loomed like a dead god's skull, long hollow corridors framed by fractured pipes and flickering emergency lights powered by some half-functioning remnant of the grid. The air here tasted burnt and heavy, and there was an unnatural quiet that wrapped itself around them like insulation.
They found the circle almost immediately. Just like Alexy described.
Perfectly round. Roughly three meters across. Burned deep into the concrete floor. The edges were too clean, too uniform. No splatter, no smear. Like something had been removed from the world, violently.
"White Circle," Shmuel whispered, scribbling in his notebook with shaking fingers. Case: White Circle. He paused, added: Appears like a precision burn. Possible warp or energy-based cause. Victim unknown. No blood.
Kamina crouched beside the circle, arms resting across his bent knees, and stared at it for a long moment. His expression was unreadable. Calm. Focused.
"This… feels wrong," he muttered.
Shmuel blinked. "Wait. You feel it too?"
"Yeah." Kamina tapped a knuckle against the floor just outside the circle. The sound was dull, normal. Then, slowly, he moved his hand toward the edge. "Feels like… the air's thinner here. Like the heat of it's still around. But this thing's old."
Shmuel nodded slowly. "They said the last disappearance was three days ago."
"No soot trails. No melted debris. Nothing like an explosion." Kamina stood, arms crossed. "Whatever it is… it only took what was inside this circle."
They stood in silence, gazing at the void-like mark.
Shmuel flipped to a blank page and added another note. No signs of force. Not from above or below. Not magnetic or chemical based. Victim removed without trace.
Kamina turned to him. "You think this is one of those distortions you talked about?"
"I—I don't know. But maybe. Or worse." Shmuel rubbed his face. "Whatever it is, we'll need to start talking to locals. Maybe someone saw something. Maybe there's a pattern."
Kamina looked back at the circle, eyes burning with that same flame he always carried. "Then let's start digging. Because I'm not gonna let some weird-ass disappearing circle get the last word."
Kamina squinted at the perfect white circle again, this time narrowing his eyes like he was staring down a worthy opponent. Without a word, he reached to the side, picked up a fist-sized rock, and with the casual confidence of a man daring the universe to blink first, he tossed it directly into the center of the mark.
The rock vanished.
No sound. No flash. No ripple.
It was there… and then it wasn't. Like reality itself politely erased it from existence.
Kamina gave a low whistle. "Well, that's not normal."
Shmuel's eyes widened as he instinctively took a step back from the circle. "Y-you just threw something into it?!"
"Hey, better a rock than one of us, right?" Kamina grinned, but the edge in his voice betrayed the seriousness with which he treated the anomaly.
Shmuel closed his notebook, exhaling hard. "We need to talk to someone. If this happened three days ago, someone must've seen or heard something. Let's check the factory workers. Maybe someone's willing to talk."
Kamina nodded. "Lead the way, partner."
They circled around to the front entrance of the factory. The massive reinforced door, stained with time and grime, loomed like the mouth of a sleeping beast. But to their surprise, as they approached, a scanner blinked green and the lock clicked open.
"Huh," Shmuel muttered. "Guess Alexy took care of permissions already. That's… surprisingly thoughtful."
Kamina smirked. "Starting to think Alexy's ten steps ahead of everyone."
Inside, the hum of machinery filled the air. Conveyor belts rattled, mechanical arms moved in rhythmic patterns, and dozens of workers operated tools or monitored control panels. The sharp scent of heated metal and processed chemicals tingled in the nose. This was a factory dedicated to light. Rows upon rows of glowing bulbs, in various states of assembly, filled the space like stars trapped in glass.
Kamina walked in like he owned the place, boots clanking boldly against the steel walkway. He climbed atop a nearby box and raised his voice without hesitation.
"HEY! Anyone here know about the weird white circle in the back that's been making people vanish?!"
Dozens of heads turned. The machinery didn't stop, but the energy shifted. The workers stared at him with confusion, annoyance, and-somewhere beneath it-nervousness.
Shmuel groaned, covering his face. "Kamina! You can't just yell that at everyone at once! We're here to investigate, not cause a panic."
Kamina leapt down from the box, chuckling. "Sorry, sorry. Thought I'd speed things up."
To their surprise, someone did respond. A worker at the far end of the assembly line-mid-30s, sleepless eyes, and grease-streaked cheeks-kept his hands moving while speaking.
"You're talking about Torren, right?" he said, not looking up. "He disappeared three days ago. Friend of mine."
Shmuel walked over carefully, notebook in hand. "You saw it happen?"
"No. He was just… gone when his shift ended. Clocked out like normal. Never came back." The man paused only a second, then resumed screwing a cap onto a glowing bulb. "They said he walked out through the back. Probably into the circle. Factory called it an unexplained absence."
"And you didn't report it to an Association or the District Office?" Shmuel asked.
The man snorted. "What's the point? No one cares if another cog disappears. Management doesn't lose sleep over one missing worker."
Kamina crossed his arms. "You think he jumped in on purpose?"
The man shrugged. "He'd been different lately. Staring off into space. Talking like there was something waiting for him. I thought it was burnout. But maybe…"
He fell quiet again. Shmuel jotted it down, frowning.
Subject: Torren. Disappeared during routine shift. Possible suicidal ideation. Known personality shift before disappearance. Victim spoke of 'something waiting.'
Kamina glanced back toward the direction of the circle. "So the guy walks back there alone, steps into a glowing mystery hole in the ground, and just… vanishes."
"And no one's stopped working since?" Shmuel asked.
The worker gave them both a tired smile, thin and dry. "It's just how it is."
They left the man to his task.
Kamina rubbed his chin. "You think he was really trying to end it?"
Shmuel shook his head slowly. "Maybe. Or maybe he just thought whatever was in that circle was better than here."
Kamina's expression hardened. "Then we're gonna find out what took him. And we're gonna punch it in the face."
Shmuel let out a sigh as they exited the front gates of the factory. The haze of machinery still clung to his jacket like industrial perfume. He flipped through his notebook one last time before snapping it shut.
"That's it," he said. "We've squeezed every bit of info we can from this place. No more workers willing to talk. No access to security footage. Just that damn circle…"
Kamina stood beside him, arms crossed and eyes narrowed at the factory's rear like it had just challenged him to a duel. The white circle burned quietly in the distance, unnaturally clean against the filth-streaked concrete.
Shmuel noticed that gleam in Kamina's eye. The gleam of a man too confident to fear the unknown and too stubborn to back down from it.
"…Wait," Shmuel said. "You're not actually thinking about—?"
Kamina grinned, wide and wild, before scooping Shmuel up under one arm like he weighed nothing at all.
"Wanna go on a little adventure, partner?"
"Kamina, WAIT—!"
Before Shmuel could twist free, Kamina leapt into the circle with all the conviction of a man diving into destiny. A flash wrapped around them. And then, the world blinked.
They landed hard, but not painfully. The air was still. Too still.
Before them sprawled an impossibly massive chamber, bathed in warm yellow light. Hundreds of light bulbs dangled from the ceiling above them. Some flickered softly. Others glowed like stars about to go supernova. The air buzzed faintly, as though the very space around them hummed with anticipation.
Shmuel stood, wobbling slightly. "Where… the hell… are we?"
Footsteps echoed, slow and deliberate.
A figure stepped forward, emerging from a corridor that hadn't been there a second ago. It was humanoid, tall and broad-shouldered, its body sculpted like a statue carved from solid light. But where its head should have been was a giant incandescent lightbulb-glowing, pulsing faintly, distorting the air around it like heat off a stove. Its filament sparked gently with every movement, casting strange shadows across the walls.
The voice it spoke with was not a voice at all, but a reverberation. Deep, sonorous, yet somehow intimate-like an echo inside the mind.
"Welcome."
It gestured to the dangling bulbs overhead.
"What kind of light bulbs would you like to become?"
Kamina stepped forward without hesitation, resting Nodachi on his shoulder and scowling up at the figure.
"The hell kind of question is that?" he barked. "More importantly-what the hell are YOU?!"
The lightbulb-headed entity tilted its head slightly, like a curious child inspecting a bug.
"We are the Choice. You are the Spark. All who enter choose what kind of light they leave behind."
Shmuel backed up, whispering harshly. "Kamina, maybe we shouldn't antagonize it."
But Kamina didn't budge. His voice rang clear and defiant, echoing across the glowing chamber.
"I didn't come here to be turned into a bulb on a string! I came here to find out what took that factory worker-and if you had anything to do with it, then you've got another thing coming!"
The lightbulb-headed being let out a sound. Not laughter, exactly, but something close-a crackling flicker in its filament, a flick of brightness like it was amused.
"One chose to become nothing. He left his filament cold. Do you wish to follow?"
Shmuel blinked. "Wait… Are you saying Torren chose to disappear?"
Kamina's hand tightened around his blade. His eyes narrowed.
"No. I think you offered something. And people like him-people who've been crushed too long under this City's weight-they don't always say 'no.'"
The figure pulsed again, brighter.
"Your answer defines your path. Your light defines your ending. Shall we begin your illumination?"
The glowing chamber dimmed slightly as the lightbulb-headed being straightened its postur-and reached toward the ceiling.
One by one, it began ripping bulbs from the tangle above. They sparked and shrieked as they were torn loose, and with a terrible, effortless motion, the being hurled them toward the intruders.
The first bulb spun like a comet toward Kamina.
CRACK!
Steel met glass with a furious flash as Kamina drew Nodachi with a roar and smashed the bulb midair. Shards ricocheted in all directions. Another flew toward Shmuel, and he barely dove out of the way before it struck the floor.
But the bulb didn't shatter.
It bounced.
With a sharp, metallic hum, the bulb sprang off the floor and slammed into a wall-its speed doubling as it careened back into the room like a possessed bullet. It was glowing brighter now, hissing with energy.
More bulbs rained down.
Kamina stood in the storm, sword flashing like lightning as he sliced through them, his coat fluttering in the hot wind generated by their movement. He grinned with that wild, star-born defiance.
"Throw more, freak! I could use the exercise!"
Meanwhile, Shmuel ducked and weaved, narrowly avoiding a bulb that exploded just inches from his head. The echoing voice rang again across the chamber.
"You could become bright. You could shine. Like all the others who stepped into the circle and chose their place among the stars…"
Kamina's eyes blazed.
He slammed Nodachi against his shoulder, teeth bared in a wolfish grin.
"Shine? I already shine brighter than those damn lightbulbs-
WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!"
With that roar, he charged forward-straight into the storm of lights.
Glass and filament sparked around him, but nothing slowed him down. He leapt, twisted midair, and slashed at the lightbulb-headed being with a single massive arc of his blade.
SHHRRRRRNG!
The katana bit deep.
Sparks flew as the blade cleaved partway into the being's shoulder, revealing glistening, warped metal beneath the glass skin. It wasn't a clean wound.
The lightbulb-headed being staggered back, for the first time reacting with something like pain.
Its voice dimmed and trembled:
"People in this city… never get the chance to shine. They live in gutters, in shadows… but here, they can glow. Here, they can have purpose. I give them what the world never will…"
Kamina pointed his sword at the creature, fury in his voice.
"You don't give them purpose-you trap them. You sell them a lie and call it salvation. You're just another bastard making people disappear and calling it a miracle."
Shmuel's breath was ragged as he rolled behind a pillar, avoiding two more rebounding bulbs. He peeked over the edge, eyes wide with dawning understanding.
"This... this isn't some anomaly," he muttered. "Kamina! He's a Distortion!"
Kamina didn't turn. "Tch. Explains the crazy. What's your angle, lighthead?"
Before Shmuel could elaborate, a bulb struck him.
CRACK-!
A white-hot pain lanced through his side. He screamed and collapsed to his knees, clutching the spot-
-and saw the flesh around the impact begin to twist.
The skin hardened, clarified. Glass spread out like a disease under his coat, reflecting dim glimmers of light. Where it struck, his side now resembled the smooth, curved surface of a lightbulb. Tiny filaments twitched beneath the surface.
"Ngh-dammit-" Shmuel hissed through gritted teeth. "It hurts-! That freak is turning people into bulbs!"
Kamina's jaw clenched, rage building. But the lightbulb-headed figure only raised its arms again-more glass missiles gathered overhead, spinning like a storm.
"All must shine. Whether they choose to or not. Everyone deserves to glow…"
But Kamina's voice, calm and burning, cut through the hum of madness.
"No. Not like that. Not in your twisted fake paradise."
He raised Nodachi again.
"People shine because they fight. Because they burn through the dark themselves. Not because you trap 'em in some glass prison."
Kamina's body bore the marks of battle-several of the bouncing lightbulbs had struck him, hard.
One had hit his shoulder, another cracked against his ribs, and one burst against his thigh, embedding glass filaments into the skin. Part of his coat sizzled, half-melted. A sheen of distorted glass shimmered on his forearm like an infection trying to take root.
But he never stopped moving.
Even as pain clawed at his nerves, even as each step sent jolts of agony through his legs, he surged forward-screaming, blade raised high.
And then-
CRACK-!
The edge of Nodachi met the glowing, glass head of the distortion.
For a moment, it felt like the world held its breath.
Then-SHATTER.
The lightbulb head exploded into a thousand shards of light and glass. A silent flash rippled out across the glowing chamber. Everything twisted into a single point of white...
And then the world snapped back.
Kamina stood on his feet again, panting hard.
He was back at the factory's rear courtyard. The sky was overcast, grey-yellow like sick paper. The concrete was cracked. The white circle on the ground was now just soot.
And he wasn't alone.
All around him, people were reappearing.
Dozens-fifty or more-men, women, even a few children. Some in factory uniforms. Some in rags. Some barefoot. Their eyes were dazed. Their skin glowed faintly from residual energy.
Some dropped to their knees and bowed toward the still-standing figure of the distortion-headless, yet upright, humming with quiet remnants of power. Its movements were sluggish now, hands trembling.
"Please…" whispered a man in work coveralls. "Please... bring me back. Let me shine again…"
Another wept, hands outstretched. "It was warm... I felt something... I was someone... Please, please... take me back…"
Others curled into balls, twitching, shivering, holding their heads like they were waking from a euphoric dream into a nightmare.
Kamina stared, sweat still dripping from his brow.
He felt it-the fear. The hollow place these people had been. The longing that still lingered in their eyes.
He took a deep breath, blood dripping from his hand.
And then, in one explosive bellow.
"SHUT UP!"
His voice tore across the courtyard like thunder.
Heads snapped toward him. The prayers halted.
He stepped forward, limping but unyielding, glaring down at the kneeling crowd.
"You want to shine? THEN DO SOMETHING! Don't crawl around begging someone else to do it for you!"
A man stood up shakily-still glass around one eye, tears in the other.
"You... you don't understand. You're a fixer. You have power. You can shine... but we're nobodies! People like us-we can't! We live in filth, we die in alleys-we don't matter! That light gave us meaning!"
And Kamina's response was louder still.
"NO ONE JUST GETS TO SHINE!"
He pointed his blade to the sky, even as blood dripped from the hilt.
"You fight for it! You suffer for it! And if the world beats you down, you stand back up-because you don't do it alone! You fight with someone at your side!"
His voice cracked with raw, burning passion.
"A drill with one spiral breaks! But a double helix-with two people supporting each other-that's what reaches the heavens!"
His eyes swept over them.
"You shine not because someone lets you. You shine because someone believes in you—and you believe in them. You want to be more? Then BE MORE! Not for some false god in glass—but for your friends, your family, your people. Become their spiral! And climb together!"
Then a young woman-no older than twenty-stood up slowly.
"…I didn't want to go back," she said quietly. "But… I don't want to live like that again either."
The man who had shouted looked down, shaking. Then slowly-he too stood.
They didn't all get it. Some still prayed. Some still wept.
But a few stood taller now.
They weren't fixed.
But they had heard him.
Meanwhile, Shmuel—sweating and mildly limping himself—had snatched the security guard's rotary-style phone from the guard booth nearby.
He dialed the encrypted line Alexy had given them.
"Yeah. This is Shmuel. The distortion's dealt with. Case log: White Circle. We got about fifty civilians, alive and returned-though most aren't mentally stable."
A pause.
His eyes flicked to Kamina, who was still standing tall in the middle of the crowd.
"…And Kamina's giving a speech."
He could almost hear Alexy smirking on the other end.