The rain had ended an hour before dawn, yet the streets of the Lower District still shimmered like glass. Neon lights blinked over puddles, fractured reflections painting the world in false color — blue, red, violet. A whisper of static hummed through the wires above as if the city itself were breathing.
Shinomiya Reiji stood beneath a half-broken street lamp, collar raised against the damp wind. His hand rested inside his coat pocket, brushing the cold edge of a silver coin engraved with a symbol he had long tried to forget — the emblem of The Silent Court.
He hadn't worn that mark in years. Yet tonight, as the sun threatened to rise, the past refused to sleep.
Reiji lit a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating a scar beneath his left eye. He watched the smoke twist upward, lost between the wires that crisscrossed the dawn. The sound of distant footsteps echoed off the wet pavement, measured and light — the kind that belonged to someone who didn't want to be heard.
> "You're early," a familiar voice murmured behind him.
Kaede's reflection appeared first in the puddle before he turned. Her coat, dark as ash, blended with the fog, and her eyes — sharp, unreadable — found him with the same quiet irritation she always had.
> "You said it was urgent," Reiji replied, voice low.
"It was," she said, stepping closer. "Until you decided to ignore three encrypted calls."
Reiji exhaled a thin stream of smoke. "Didn't feel like answering ghosts."
Kaede's lips curved into a half-smirk. "Still poetic, even when you're rotting inside."
He didn't answer. The silence stretched, filled only by the drip of rain from the rooftops. For years, they had been partners — not by choice, but by necessity. When the Silent Court collapsed, most of its members vanished into shadow or grave. Reiji walked away. Kaede stayed. Yet somehow, both ended up back in the same gutter where it all began.
She handed him a sealed envelope. Black wax. Unmarked. Familiar.
> "It's from what's left of the network," she said. "They're calling it The Dawn Directive. You'll want to read it."
Reiji turned the envelope over, fingers brushing the wax seal. Inside, a faint hum — coded resonance from an encrypted sigil. Old habits returned like ghosts. He cracked it open and unfolded the letter under the flickering lamp.
The message was simple.
> 'Target: Unknown. Codename: The Hollow Monarch.
Location: Western Quarter, Sector Nine.
Condition: Retrieve the artifact before dawn. Do not engage.'
Beneath the text, a symbol: a mirror split by a single drop of blood.
Reiji's jaw tightened. "They're still chasing the fragments," he said.
Kaede nodded. "This one's different. The Monarch's fragment doesn't behave like the others. It's sentient."
He looked up. "Sentient?"
> "It speaks, Reiji. In dreams. To those who've touched the veil."
The words hung heavy between them. The veil — that thin, silent barrier separating the living from what waited beyond. The same boundary The Silent Court once tried to manipulate through forbidden experiments.
Reiji dropped the letter into his coat pocket. "If it speaks, it lies."
> "You don't know that anymore," Kaede said softly. "None of us do."
He started walking. "Then let's find out."
---
The Western Quarter was quiet — too quiet. Buildings leaned like crooked teeth, and fog slid between the alleys like a living thing. Reiji's boots splashed through shallow water, echoing in rhythm with the hum of distant power lines. His coat brushed against the crumbling walls marked by faded graffiti — sigils of old factions now extinct.
Every shadow here carried memory.
He stopped in front of an abandoned safehouse. The air smelled of rust and ozone. The front door, half-broken, hung by one hinge. Reiji slipped inside, flashlight cutting through the dark.
Dust floated like ash in the beam. Scattered papers. A cracked mirror on the wall, its reflection distorted. A table covered in dried ink and blood. And on the far end — a chair. Someone sat there, motionless.
Reiji approached slowly, gun half-drawn.
The figure was lifeless — head bowed, wrists bound by wire. On the chest, carved words in deliberate strokes:
> "I AM THE FIRST TO HEAR THE MONARCH."
Behind the corpse, something glimmered — a fragment of dark crystal, pulsing faintly with light.
Reiji knelt. His reflection rippled within the shard, shifting into something that wasn't him. For a brief second, he saw another face — his own eyes, but older, colder, filled with ruin.
Then the whisper came.
> "Reiji…"
The voice was neither male nor female. It slid beneath his skin like cold water.
He stumbled back, breathing hard. His pulse pounded in his ears. The fragment pulsed once more — bright, sharp — before dimming into silence.
Kaede's voice cut through the dark. "Reiji! What the hell happened?"
He turned, eyes still wide. "It spoke."
> "To you?"
He nodded. "It knows my name."
Kaede's face paled. "Then the Monarch's awake."
---
Outside, dawn broke over the horizon. The fog glowed faintly gold as the first light touched the ruins. Reiji stood at the threshold, the city stretching endless before him. Somewhere beyond that rising light, a war long buried was beginning again — and he was already part of it.
Kaede joined him, her voice low.
> "You could still walk away, you know."
Reiji shook his head, lighting another cigarette. The flame flickered in the wind, stubborn and fragile.
> "I tried that once," he said. "The shadows followed anyway."
Kaede looked at him for a moment — the faintest trace of pity, or perhaps respect — before turning toward the street.
> "Then welcome back, Reiji. To the war that never ended."
He took one last drag, crushed the cigarette beneath his boot, and stepped into the morning mist.
The shadows stretched long behind him — silent, endless, alive.
> "Dawn," he murmured. "Always comes too late."