Bruno stood at the rail as if she had always belonged there.
Her fingers curled around the cold metal, pale skin reflecting the dim, starless light that stretched endlessly above the black sea. Below her, the water moved in slow, heavy swells. She leaned forward slightly, blue eyes fixed on the horizon, watching the rise and fall of something she had never seen before and yet somehow understood without needing to be told.
She had never been on a boat before. Not the old Bruno nor this one. And yet the sensation of standing here did not feel foreign.
Behind her, Kamina rested his katana across his lap as he sat on the deck, his back against a section of white railing that still gleamed with impossible cleanliness. His hands trembled faintly from exhaustion, the muscles in his forearms twitching from strain that had not yet been given time to settle. His breathing had finally slowed, but his body still carried the memory of violence, still expected another attack to come crashing out of the dark at any moment.
He glanced sideways at Imogen, who had seated herself a short distance away, one knee drawn close to her chest while her rifle lay across her lap. Her mechanical eye had returned to its normal pale color, though faint trails of dried blood still marked the path it had taken down her cheek. She stared out across the deck without focusing on anything, her expression caught somewhere between fatigue and something she did not yet have the words to process.
"Imogen," Kamina said. "You know anything about Abnormalities?"
"No, I barely knew anything about the City before I ran away. Pisanio taught me some things, but not enough."
Kamina exhaled slowly and leaned his head back against the railing, eyes half closing as he stared upward into the endless artificial night.
"Great."
"Missing someone to explain right now feels really inconvenient."
Both of them turned their attention forward again, toward the lone figure at the rail.
Bruno had not moved.
She remained there, watching the waves with an intensity which did not belong to curiosity alone. There was something else in her stillness, she was listening to a voice carried beneath the water's surface.
Then, slowly, she raised her hand.
She pointed toward the horizon.
"Ice," she said.
The word came softly, but it cut through the silence.
Both Kamina and Imogen stiffened.
Imogen rose to her feet immediately and stepped beside Bruno, lifting her hand to shield her eye as she focused her enhanced vision toward the distant dark. At first, she saw nothing but the endless stretch of black water. Then, gradually, a shape began to separate itself from the horizon.
A pale shape. Massive.
Her breath caught.
"…Kamina."
She lowered her hand.
"There's an iceberg."
Even from this distance, she could tell its scale was enormous. It rose from the sea like a silent wall, its surface faintly reflecting the dim starlight. It was still far away, far enough that it would take hours for the ship to reach it, but its presence alone was enough to make the air feel colder.
Kamina pushed himself to his feet and stared at it, his expression hardening as his mind began assembling possibilities he did not like.
"How long?"
"At least two hours," Imogen said. "Maybe a lot more."
He clicked his tongue softly.
Around them, the deck remained empty.
No sound except the endless breathing of the ocean and the quiet groan of the ship's massive body moving forward at a steady, unstoppable pace.
Kamina turned in a slow circle, scanning everything.
They were alone.
Completely alone.
Which meant whatever happened next would be their responsibility.
"We don't know the rules here," he said. "We don't know what this thing wants. We don't know what happens if that ship hits the iceberg."
Imogen nodded faintly.
Abnormalities did not obey physics.
Which meant the worst possible outcome was always the most likely.
She looked again at the distant iceberg, then at Bruno, who still stood at the rail, watching it.
The wind grew quieter the moment they stepped away from the open rail and pushed through the heavy door leading inside.
Kamina led the way without saying anything, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his katana, not gripping it, just keeping contact the way a man might keep a hand on the shoulder of an old friend. Imogen followed close beside him, rifle held low but ready, while Bruno trailed a few steps behind them, her bare feet making no sound at all against the polished floor.
The interior of the ship stretched before them in luxury.
The staircase descended in a grand curve, its wooden banister carved with delicate hands, its surface polished to a mirror sheen that reflected their small figures back at them. A great glass dome hung overhead, fractured starlight filtering through it in pale fragments. The floor beneath their feet bore intricate patterns that had never known dirt, never known wear, preserved in a perfect, frozen moment of pride.
It would have been beautiful if it had not been empty. Or rather, empty of life.
Because through the windows and open doorways, they could see them.
Humanoid figures made entirely of iron.
They stood in the adjoining rooms, their bodies shaped like people but wrong in the details, their limbs slightly too stiff, their movements slightly too delayed. One sat at a dining table with a fork raised halfway to its mouth, though there was no food on its plate. Another stood near a wall, its head tilted toward a painting, unmoving, as appreciating something it could not see. Further down the corridor, a pair of them stood facing each other, their hands raised, frozen in the suggestion of conversation that never reached sound.
None of them acknowledged the intruders.
But none of them felt safe to be near.
Imogen slowed her steps instinctively, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"…Kamina."
"I see them."
They kept walking.
One of the figures near the window lifted its hand toward the glass.
Its iron fingers rested against the surface as it stared out into the endless black sea, its posture heavy with something that resembled longing. The metal of its body was smooth in some places and corroded in others, like something that had spent too long waiting in salt air for something that never returned.
Imogen felt her throat tighten without knowing why.
Kamina did not stop moving.
They passed through the grand staircase, through the long corridors, deeper into the ship's interior where the decorations grew more elaborate, the carpets thicker, the doors heavier. The nameplates beside them carried titles of importance, of wealth, of status that had once meant safety.
At the far end of one corridor, they found the millionaire suites.
The doors here were larger.
The silence here was heavier.
And when Kamina pushed one open, they found it empty.
No iron figures waited inside.
The room was pristine.
A wide bed rested against the wall, its sheets perfectly arranged. A small table sat near the window, beside a couch that had never been sat in. A mirror stood in the corner, its reflection untouched by time.
It looked like it had been prepared.
Kamina stepped inside first and scanned the room carefully, his eyes moving across every corner before he gave a small nod.
"We'll rest here," he said. "Just for a few minutes."
Imogen did not argue.
Her body had already begun to sag under the weight of exhaustion she had been forcing herself to ignore. She leaned her rifle carefully against the wall and sat down on the couch, her mechanical eye dimming slightly as her mind finally allowed itself to slow.
Kamina had already collapsed onto the bed.
He did not ease himself down.
He dropped.
The mattress sank under his weight, and within seconds, his breathing deepened. Sleep took him immediately.
Bruno remained standing near the window.
She watched the dark ocean outside without blinking.
And Kamina dreamed.
White.
Endless white.
It stretched in all directions without boundary, horizon and depth. The same place he had stood before
Kamina stood in the middle of it, slippers planted firm, shoulders squared, his hand resting on the hilt at his side out of pure instinct. There was nothing to fight here. Nothing to cut. Nothing to break. And yet his body refused to relax.
He clicked his tongue.
"Oi," he called out into the emptiness. "I know you're here."
Silence answered him.
Then, a voice.
"You've come again. Oh and it's rude last time I didn't give you my name. It's Carmen"
Kamina did not turn.
His jaw tightened.
"…You," he said. "You're the one, aren't you?"
"The one who spoke to the child?"
Kamina's fingers curled.
"Why did you drive Shmuel to become a distortion?"
"I only gave that child a small push," Carmen said gently. "Toward what he truly desired."
Kamina's head snapped toward the voice.
"Desired?" he shouted. "You call that desire? He's suffering! He's tearing himself apart!"
"Is he?"
The question was soft.
Softer than anything in this world of white.
"People do not break without reason," she continued. "When the heart fractures, it reveals the shape it was always meant to take. The distortion is a bloom of one's abstraction."
Kamina's teeth clenched.
"That's not blooming," he said. "That's a man drowning."
"…Is drowning not also a form of surrender?"
"Don't play word games with me!"
His voice cracked through the empty space, hot blood and fury burning through every syllable.
"He trusted people! He fought for people! He wanted to live! And now you're telling me this is what he wanted?"
"And what is it that you believe he wanted?"
Kamina opened his mouth.
Stopped.
For a moment, there was only his breathing.
"…He wanted them back," Kamina said. "He wanted his friend back. He wanted things to go back to the way they were."
"Yes."
"And he realized he could not."
"Desire and despair are not opposites," Carmen said. "They are reflections. When hope loses its shape, it becomes abstraction. Abstraction that cannot remain human."
Kamina stared at the ground.
Then he asked,
"…Why am I here?"
"Because you can be."
That answer irritated him more than anything else.
"Don't give me that cryptic crap," he said. "Talk like a normal person."
There was a hint of amusement in her voice.
"Your body is special," she said. "It allows you to reach this place through making contact with the fragment of the Light."
"That's some terms you're throwing at me."
"Yes."
She did not elaborate.
He waited.
She did not continue.
"…You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?"
"Perhaps."
Kamina groaned.
"Explain it so a dumb guy like me can get it."
"The people of the City call it the product of White Nights and Dark Days," she said. "A project meant to cure the disease of the mind." She said, "It allowed humanity to face itself."
"Looks more like it let humanity destroy itself."
"That depends on the individual."
Silence lingered between them.
Kamina exhaled slowly.
Then he asked the only thing that mattered at the moment.
"…How do I change him back?"
"It is impossible."
"Across countless mirror worlds," she continued, "I have never seen one return."
Kamina's eyes narrowed.
"There were attempts. Many attempts. Researchers tried to restore them. They gave them their old names. They recreated their old environments. They encouraged them to behave as they once did."
Her voice did not change.
"They tried to remind them of who they were."
"And?"
"They failed."
"The moment one becomes an Abnormality," Carmen said, "the individual is erased. Completely. What remains is no longer a person. It is the abstraction of one's self."
Then Kamina laughed.
"…Heh."
He lifted his head.
"Then be damned with the impossible."
Kamina stepped forward.
"If he's gone, then I'll drag him back anyway."
Another step.
"I don't care what you call him. Distortion. Abnormality. Monster."
His hand tightened around his sword.
"You know what? I'm going to call him my Bro." He said, "And I don't abandon my bro."
Kamina stood there, staring into the endless white, his jaw set with the same stubbornness that had carried him through every wall that had ever tried to tell him no.
"You said," he began, his voice calmer now but no less firm, "most attempts started by trying to replicate what they once were. Giving them their name. Making them live like their old self again. Right?"
"Yes," Carmen replied. "They tried to rebuild the past, piece by piece. They believed that if the shape was restored, the person would follow."
"And they all failed."
"Yes."
He rolled his shoulder, working out a stiffness that did not belong in a place like this.
"So," she asked gently, "you intend to attempt what so many others could not?"
Kamina grinned.
"Nah." He said, "I'm not stupid enough to copy a losing strategy."
"Oh?"
"I'm not gonna remind him who he was," Kamina said. "I'm gonna make him feel again. I'll grab that humanity of his and yank it back where it belongs."
He looked up, eyes burning with that familiar, reckless certainty.
"I don't care if the world says it ends badly. I only care about the good ending."
Carmen's voice softened.
"…And how will you accomplish that?"
He drew his katana.
He looked at the blade.
Then he drove it down.
The tip pierced the white space.
It should have met nothing.
Instead, it sank in.
Kamina roared. "I'M GONNA EVOLVE RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW!"
The white cracked. Spiraled.
"I'M GONNA BECOME THE ANCHOR THAT DRAGS MY FUTURE BRO BACK TO THE MAN HE WANTS TO BE!"
Something answered him. The very thing inside him.
It began as heat.
Deep in his chest.
A stubborn spark that refused to go out.
Kamina laughed.
He knew this feeling. He'd lived on it his entire life.
"Hell yeah," he breathed. "There you are."
His Fighting Spirit.
What others might have called Spiral Energy was, to Kamina, something simpler. Something more human. The power born from the refusal to stay down. The force that pushed a crawling man to stand. The force that let the weak punch gods in the face.
It was the belief that tomorrow could be better, and the audacity to make it happen with your own two hands.
And it grew.
The light spread from his chest to his shoulders, down his arms, into his legs, until his entire body burned like a living star. The ground beneath him warped into spiraling patterns, twisting outward, responding to his will.
His body trembled from growth.
He could feel it. Every second, he was more than he was before. Every heartbeat carried him further. He laughed louder. "THIS IS IT!"
The spiral expanded.
His cloak whipped in a wind that did not exist.
His soul roared.
"I'M NOT JUST ME ANYMORE!"
He pulled the sword free.
The crack spread across the white like a living thing.
"I'M THE ME WHO'S GONNA SAVE HIM!"
He stepped forward.
"And THE ME AFTER THAT!"
Another step.
"And THE HE AFTER THAT!"
He was no longer the same man who had arrived here seconds ago.
He was more.
And still becoming more.
Endlessly.
Behind him, Carmen watched.
"…I see," she murmured.
"Ayin," she said quietly, to someone who was not there.
"You were right."
"A story with a hero," she said, "no matter how brief…"
"…is better than a story without one."
Kamina's eyes snapped open to violence.
The first thing he heard was the sound of iron collapsing.
A deep, heavy impact followed by the grinding scream of metal tearing loose from its shape. His vision focused slowly, the ceiling of the suite coming into view, pristine and untouched, in complete contradiction to the war raging just beyond its walls.
Then another impact came, shaking dust loose from the frame of the door.
Kamina sat up.
Outside the open doorway, Bruno fought.
Her bare fist drove forward into the chest of one of the iron humanoids, and the entire thing caved inward before launching backward down the corridor, its body tumbling end over end before disappearing from view. Another rushed her from the side, its limbs jerking in that uncanny imitation of life, and she answered by grabbing its head and slamming it down into the floor hard enough to crater the polished surface.
Beyond her, crimson light flashed.
Imogen stood further down the hall, her form wrapped in [Effloresced E.G.O:: Wedlocked], her mechanical eye burning red, her molten rifle roaring with each pull of the trigger. Each shot tore through iron torsos, punching glowing holes straight through them, sending bodies collapsing in jerking, lifeless heaps. Embers floated around her like dying fireflies, her posture rigid, her breathing uneven but controlled through sheer stubbornness.
She noticed him.
"Kamina!"
Her voice carried relief and irritation in equal measure.
"You finally woke up."
Kamina swung his legs off the bed and stood.
"…What's going on."
"You've been asleep for an hour," she said, firing another shot without looking away from her target. "I tried to wake you up. I shook you. I yelled at you. I even kicked you. You didn't react at all. You just kept sleeping like an idiot."
Another iron humanoid rushed her.
She shot it through the head.
It dropped instantly.
Kamina stared at her for a moment.
"…An hour."
Light began to leak from him.
At first, it was faint. Barely visible. A soft glow beneath his skin.
Then it grew.
Imogen noticed immediately.
"Kamina…?"
He did not answer.
He reached down and picked up his sword.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the glow intensified, spiraling around his arm, crawling up his shoulder, wrapping around his entire body like something alive. The air around him began to distort, trembling in response to a pressure that did not belong to this world.
He stepped forward.
Raised the blade.
And swung.
The ceiling split open.
Parted.
The force of the strike tore through steel and structure alike, carving a clean, vertical path straight upward through the decks above them, exposing the night sky in a single impossible motion. Cold air and starlight poured down through the opening, washing over them.
Before Imogen could react, Kamina grabbed her.
"Wha. Kamina wait. What are you doing."
"Moving forward."
He bent his knees.
Then jumped.
The floor vanished beneath them.
They shot upward through the opening, past shattered decks and twisted metal, rising higher and higher until they burst free onto the open surface of the ship. The wind roared around them as they landed hard against the cold steel of the topmost deck.
And Kamina's body ignited.
Light erupted from him.
It poured upward into the sky like a pillar, illuminating the endless ocean, illuminating the massive ship, illuminating the unnatural world trapped within the Abnormality. The darkness retreated from him, driven back by the sheer force of his existence.
Imogen stared.
She had seen this before. The pillar of light illuminated the city for 3 days. It was one of the reasons why she left the walls of the castle of maidens.
He stepped forward.
Each step left faint spirals of light fading behind him.
He looked out across the deck.
At the ship.
At the world Shmuel had created.
He raised his sword.
And spoke.
"Get ready to live out your fantasy, Shmuel."
His voice carried across the silent ship.
"Because I'm gonna drag every last piece of you out into the open."
He pointed the blade forward.
His light burned brighter.
It roared upward into the heavens and downward into the bones of the ship, threading itself through steel, through walls, through the endless constructed grief that made up this world. It was not simply brightness. It was pressure. Presence. A declaration that something had arrived that refused to accept the shape of things as they were.
Imogen stood just behind him, one arm raised to shield her eyes, her dress of embers shedding sparks that were instantly swallowed by the greater radiance.
"Kamina," she called, her voice strained. "What is this. What are you doing."
He did not turn around.
Instead, he said something that made no sense to her.
"Imogen. Stabilize it."
"…What?"
"The light," he said. "Use the fragment inside you."
Her mechanical eye flickered.
"…What fragment?"
"The same one that lets you burn."
She stared at his back.
He sounded completely serious.
She didn't understand.
But she understood one thing.
He was trusting her.
Imogen clicked her tongue softly.
"…Idiot."
She stepped forward.
Her fingers tightened around her rifle.
If he wanted light, she would give him light.
The crown of blackened wood formed upon her head.
[Effloresced E.G.O:: Wedlocked]
Her output surged.
The flames pouring from her did not lash outward this time. They flowed upward instead, merging with Kamina's pillar, threading into it like veins of molten gold. Her mind screamed in protest at the strain, her vision blurring as her mechanical eye drank in more information than it was meant to process, but she held it there through sheer, spoiled, stubborn refusal to fail.
And the light stabilized.
The violent turbulence evened.
The pillar became whole.
Kamina smiled.
"…Yeah," he said quietly. "That's it."
Imogen's knees trembled.
"…You better explain this later."
"Do I look like I understand this?"
He stepped forward again.
"It's not up to us now."
He looked out across the ship.
"It's up to them."
The light expanded outward.
It spread across the deck in a radiant wave, spilling over railings, flooding corridors, pouring into every room and hallway and forgotten corner. It raced across the length of the ship toward the horizon itself.
And as it passed, the iron began to change.
Rigid metal softened.
Cold surfaces warmed.
The iron humanoids froze where they stood as light consumed them, their bodies reshaping, reforming, becoming something warmer, something softer. Their stiff, uncanny movements melted into fluid motion. Their silent mouths opened into laughter. Their empty eyes filled with life that did not exist, but felt like it did.
Music began to play somewhere.
Soft.
Distant.
Real.
The ship breathed.
Couples walked the decks in elegant attire, their hands intertwined. Gentlemen leaned against railings, speaking in low voices. Women in flowing dresses laughed behind gloved hands. Stewards carried trays of drinks through crowded halls. The grand staircase filled with movement, with conversation, with the illusion of life restored in defiance of death.
The Titanic lived again.
Not as it was.
But as it was remembered.
At the far end of the ship, Bruno stood still.
The iron bodies around her dissolved into people who passed her without question, brushing against her shoulders, their warmth unreal but convincing. They did not see her as an intruder. They accepted her as part of this place, as if she had always belonged.
She walked. She did not know why. Only that she needed to. Through the hallway. Past laughing strangers. Past lives that had never lived. Voices followed her. Familiar voices.
"You must not forget your duty."
Ernst.
His calm, tired voice at her side.
"For the glory of Izan."
Franz.
"You are the Queen Piece."
The Knight.
The Bishop.
The Rook.
Even the countless Pawns, their whispers overlapping into a suffocating chorus.
"Successor."
"Salvation."
Their words pressed against her from every direction, wrapping around her like chains made of expectation.
She kept walking forward.
The corridor opened. The cold night air greeted her.
The stern stretched out before her, vast and endless, the wake of the ship cutting a white path through the black ocean.
She stepped toward it.
The wind caught her hair.
She stopped at the rail.
And looked down.
At the waves.
They moved endlessly.
She watched them.
She liked it.
The wind brushed against her face.
She liked that too.
The voices behind her faded.
She placed her hand on the railing.
And watched the sea.
The wind carried the sound of footsteps.
They approached from behind her, each step accompanied by the faint creak of polished deck wood and the distant murmur of a ship that believed itself alive.
A young man's voice spoke.
"You are not plannin' to throw yourself into the sea, are you, miss?"
His tone held that particular gentleness common to well-mannered company, it treated even strangers with the dignity of familiarity.
Bruno turned.
She saw a boy who looked to be not much older than herself. His hair was black, combed simply, though the wind had begun to steal its order. His eyes were brown, warm in a way that felt unguarded. He wore a formal suit, though not with the stiffness of those born to it. It sat on him like clothing he had grown into rather than inherited.
He smiled.
"I beg your pardon," he said, lifting a hand sheepishly. "I did not mean to startle you. It is only that you were standin' there so still, I feared you might be contemplatin' somethin' dreadful."
His eyes drifted over her, not rudely, but with quiet admiration.
"I must confess," he added, "I was first drawn by your hair. It is rather remarkable. And that dress…"
He hesitated, searching for the proper word.
"…it suits you."
Bruno looked down.
White.
She was wearing white.
She did not remember putting it on.
She did not remember owning it.
She did not remember anything that explained it.
Her lips parted.
The second word she ever spoke entered the world.
"Hate."
The boy blinked.
Only confused.
"…Hate?" he repeated gently.
He tilted his head slightly.
"I wonder," he said, "what sort of sorrow must exist for such a word to be the first companion of your voice."
Bruno did not answer. She stepped toward him. Her bare foot met the edge of the rail.
And slipped.
Her body tilted backward into empty air. The ocean opened its arms.
But a hand caught her.
"WHOA there!"
The boy lunged forward, his shoes scraping against the deck as he seized her wrist with both hands. His grip was firm but trembling, his balance barely holding as her weight pulled against him.
"Steady now, miss!"
The sea churned below her..
The boy pulled harder.
"With respect," he said breathlessly, "I should very much prefer it if you remained among the livin'."
He hauled her back over the rail, and she collapsed lightly against him before he helped her stand upright again.
He did not let go immediately.
He searched her face.
Concern lived there plainly.
"Forgive my forwardness," he said, his voice softer now. "But… could you speak?"
Bruno looked at him.
At his eyes.
At the warmth in them.
And she asked,
"What is your name?"
The boy opened his mouth.
Stopped.
His brow furrowed faintly.
"…I…"
He hesitated.
"…I do not know."
The answer seemed to surprise him.
He laughed softly, though it carried no joy.
"How very strange."
He looked at her.
"And yours, miss?"
She did not answer immediately.
The wind passed between them.
The ocean moved below them.
"…What," she asked slowly, "is my name?"
Neither of them could answer.
Because the boy did not remember his.
And the girl did not know if Bruno was truly hers.