The city from the roof looked like a circuit board deciding whether to short. Seigi leaned against the rail, the metal cool enough to make his palms ache pleasantly. Hana came up quietly and didn't speak, which was why he could.
"I thought becoming what I wanted would feel like… arrival," he said. "It feels like standing on the first stone in a river I can't see the far bank of."
Hana's shoulder brushed his. "Then we keep choosing the next stone."
A shadow separated from the stairwell door. Not Wraith. Not a Guild cloak. The modulation on the voice was almost polite.
"The Veil is watching your parents," it said. "We prefer incentive to punishment. Do what you like with that."
The figure left as if they had only delivered a parcel.
Seigi didn't move for a long heartbeat. He pictured a frame angled just for him to see. He pictured Kurogami's patient hands. He pictured Sato's cigarette butt going out in water.
"I can't be everywhere," he said. "I can't be everything."
"No," Hana said. "You can be the one who decides anyway."
He laughed once, without humor, and the sound still warmed. "Hero Boy," he said, like a benediction and a dare.
Below them, the city kept breathing. Somewhere, a boy was being pushed and deciding whether to stand. Somewhere, a woman was believing hard enough to unburn a wound.
Seigi closed his eyes and reached—not to seize the air, but to agree with it. The thread answered, not with power, but with permission.
"Tomorrow," he said.
"Tomorrow," Hana answered.
---
Elsewhere, Renji slipped out of a side street, his phone still buzzing with a call he hadn't wanted to answer. A figure leaned against the lamppost, face hidden.
"You're close to him," the voice said. Smooth, unhurried. "Closer than most. You know what he fears. You know what he loves."
Renji's fists clenched, then loosened. His reply was barely audible. "Don't ask me to—"
"You won't be asked," the voice interrupted. "You'll be given a choice. Soon."
The figure melted back into the dark. Renji stood alone, his shoulders trembling—not with anger, but with dread.
---
At the Guild's inner council chamber, painted birds wheeled endlessly across plaster skies. Members murmured, argued, doubted. Only Kurogami sat still. His hands folded neatly on the table, his expression as calm as stone beneath water.
"They doubt," he thought, as he listened to their voices rise and fall. "But doubt bends easier than certainty. One day they will see that reverence must be carved into law. Not begged for. Not hoped for. Enforced."
His lips curved faintly, almost prayerlike. "And when that day comes, they will call it vision."
---
And on another street, far from both Guild and Veil, Sato walked alone. His cigarette glowed like an ember dragging through the dark. Behind him, footsteps echoed—too steady, too close.
He stopped. Didn't turn.
When the first blade of shadow cut through the air toward him, his hand moved faster than thought. Light flared. From his palm, an Aether-forged katana whispered into being, its edge humming like struck glass. A flick of his wrist, and shuriken of pure energy fanned outward, slicing the dark into silence.
The pursuers were gone before they screamed. The night smelled of ozone and ash.
Sato sheathed nothing into nothing, his hand closing on air. He lit another cigarette, smoke curling around his face.
"Not yet," he muttered into the dark. "Not while he still thinks he can be saved."
---
The war hadn't started. It had been going on long before Seigi was born. But for the first time, Seigi felt like he was no longer running to catch up to the world.
He was running with it.
And it would have to keep up with him.