The more Seigi searched, the clearer it became: the cloaked man, "Wraith," wasn't alone.
Bodies began surfacing. Not many—never civilians, never accidents. Always criminals. Always men whose names were already stained with violence.
The first was found in an abandoned pachinko parlour. The skull collapsed inward like someone had cupped it in one hand and squeezed. The second turned up in a derelict parking garage, ribs shattered so cleanly it was as if his chest had folded in on itself.
The press chalked it up to escalating gang wars. "Tit-for-tat violence." "Underground turf battle." Reporters wrote the same recycled lines, and the public swallowed them without a second thought.
But Seigi knew better.
The wounds told their own story. No crowbar or bat or bullet left marks like these. This was surgical. Intentional. A purge.
---
Night after night, Seigi dug deeper. His desk drowned in case files and photos, his walls covered in red string like a spider had gone mad. He mapped smuggling routes, weapons caches, and names of low-level operatives. One by one, they were being erased with brutal precision—always gone before law enforcement could intervene.
It wasn't random. Someone was cleaning house.
And then he saw it.
A pattern.
At first it was nothing more than background noise: a faint marking on a crate at one scene, graffiti half-buried under spray paint at another. But when he lined up the photos side by side, his breath caught.
A circle, split by jagged lines.
He copied it into his notebook, circled it twice, and stared. The design carried a strange weight, like a glyph torn from some half-forgotten mythology. He remembered his grandmother's sengoku stories, her "villains" who always carved banners with cursed marks. His childhood drawings of them weren't far off.
Seigi tapped the pen against the page. "Who are you?"
---
The deeper he pushed, the more resistance he hit.
Files vanished overnight. Digital records that he swore he'd bookmarked showed only error messages. His own search logs sometimes erased themselves, as if someone inside the system was scrubbing his trail clean.
Renji passed by once, pausing at the corner of Seigi's desk. His eyes lingered on the scattered photos and the symbol scratched in ink.
"What's that?" he asked lightly.
"Just paperwork." Seigi closed the folder too quickly.
Renji gave him a long, unreadable look before walking away, tapping his pen against his thigh.
---
It was a contact on the street who broke the silence.
A jittery man Seigi had leaned on before for scraps of information—a thief with too much debt and not enough spine. They met in a back alley behind a ramen shop, steam curling from the vent above them. Rain dripped from a fire escape into dirty puddles.
"You didn't hear it from me," the man whispered, refusing to meet his eyes. "But they call themselves the Aetherion."
Seigi rolled the word on his tongue. It tasted old, heavy. Dangerous.
"What are they?"
The man flinched at the question. "A shadow. That's all I know."
He left quickly, disappearing into the night. Days later, his name disappeared from Seigi's contact sheet. Phone disconnected. Apartment emptied. Gone.
---
Seigi carried the word with him like contraband: Aetherion.
That evening, he met Sato for ramen at a hole-in-the-wall joint near the precinct. The old detective sat opposite him, cigarette tucked behind his ear, steam fogging his glasses as he leaned over his bowl.
"You're quiet tonight," Sato observed, breaking the silence. "That's not like you. Normally I can't get you to shut up about suspects or your theories."
Seigi twirled noodles on his chopsticks, then pulled a napkin from the dispenser. With quick strokes of his pen, he sketched the circle split by jagged lines and slid it across the table.
"Ever seen this before?"
Sato froze. Just for an instant. He covered it with a sip of broth, but Seigi saw it—the flicker in his eyes, the tightening of his jaw.
"Just kids' nonsense," Sato said flatly. "Don't waste time on it."
Too fast. Too firm.
Seigi leaned back, watching him. "You always told me to follow the truth."
Sato's gaze sharpened, the weight of storms pressing down in his eyes. "And I'm telling you now: let this truth go."
The words landed like a wall between them. Seigi felt the fire in his chest flare hotter in response.
He couldn't. Not when the shadows were circling closer. Not when answers dangled so close he could almost taste them.
The Aetherion existed. Wraith moved parallel to them—sometimes cleaning up what they started, sometimes lighting the match and walking away. Contractor. Tolerated. Untouchable.
If Seigi wanted to master the thread, he'd have to step into their world—and learn why a man like Wraith chose to walk beside it without ever belonging.