The atmosphere surrounding the Prom Tower had curdled into something far more sinister than a simple rescue operation.
As the military cordons tightened, the rhythmic thud-thud-thud of tactical boots against the asphalt sounded like a drumbeat for an execution.
They moved with the practiced, chilling grace of predators, pulling the survivors back with a rough, mechanical efficiency that brooked no argument.
Meter by meter, the traumatized crowd was shoved back toward the shadows of the surrounding district, leaving a vast, desolate arena of grey, cracked concrete.
At the center of this artificial void sat Trizha and the unconscious Nomoro.
The silence that filled the space was heavy, tasting of ozone, river silt, and the sharp, iron scent of fresh blood.
Trizha, her hands still trembling from the frantic rhythm of the CPR she had been performing, finally felt the shift in the air.
She stopped, her palms hovering just above Nomoro's still, cold chest.
Water from the river was still dripping from her matted blonde hair, icy droplets tracing paths through the grime and soot on her face.
She looked around, her purple eyes wide with a dawning, frantic confusion.
The wall of rifles was closing in, creating a cage of steel, gunpowder, and laser sights.
Then, a voice—sharpened by decades of scorched-earth warfare and amplified by a megaphone—shattered the stillness.
"Trizha Frantzes. Step away from the target. This is a direct command from the High Command."
The voice was like a blade of ice.
Trizha looked up toward the source and saw the silhouette that haunted her family's legacy.
General Koby Frantzes stood atop the turret of an M1-Abrams tank that had rumbled out of the darkness like a prehistoric beast.
The massive barrel was lowered toward the girl and the boy, a silent threat of total annihilation.
He was a statue of military perfection, his heavy clothing snapping in the night wind, his amethyst eyes—the same shade as Trizha's—reflecting no warmth, only the cold, lethal calculation of a man who had long ago traded his soul for "order."
An uncle was looking down upon his niece, yet there was no recognition of family—only the recognition of an "obstruction."
Koby narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping over the scene.
He saw the way Trizha gripped Nomoro's shoulder, her knuckles white, her body positioned like a cornered animal protecting its mate.
It was a sight that made his jaw tighten with a suppressed, ancestral irritation.
To him, she was a stain on a proud lineage, a girl playing heroism in the middle of a war zone.
"You are standing in front of a demon, Trizha," Koby stated, his voice carrying effortlessly over the plaza, amplified into a roar. "A remnant of a tragedy that should have stayed buried nine years ago. You are protecting a monster that will eventually devour everything you hold dear. Do not let sentimentality cloud your judgment. Move."
But even with that command, Trizha didn't move.
She didn't even flinch.
She simply stared up at him, her breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches that rattled in her lungs.
"If you are not clear of the perimeter in sixty seconds," Koby continued, his voice dropping into a register of finality that chills the marrow of everyone listening, "you will be classified as a secondary target. And we will clear the zone."
With a sharp, clinical flick of his wrist, he gave the signal.
CLACK-CLICK.
In a single, terrifying unison, the hundred soldiers surrounding them snapped their rifles to their shoulders.
A hundred laser sights—tiny, crimson dots of light—began to dance across Trizha's shredded white dress and Nomoro's pale, water-logged skin.
One dot rested directly over Trizha's heart; another centered on her forehead.
They looked like glowing embers against the dark fabric of her ruined gown.
The survivors behind the military line erupted into a cacophony of horror.
The very people who had watched Trizha pull a boy from the river were now watching the government prepare to execute them both in cold blood.
"What the hell are you doing?!" a man screamed, his voice cracking with rage as he lunged against the barricade, only to be shoved back by a riot shield. "They're just kids! He's unconscious, he's not hurting anyone!"
"Let them go! They've suffered enough!" a woman wailed, her hands reaching out as if she could pull Trizha back by sheer force of will.
"Izha! Run! Get out of there before they fire!"
The crowd surged, a desperate wave of humanity hitting the iron levee of the military line.
The soldiers didn't budge, their rifles remained steady, their eyes hidden behind the dark glass of tactical visors.
General Koby didn't even acknowledge the noise.
He was focused entirely on the girl who dared to defy the state.
"Anyone who breaches the restricted zone will be engaged with lethal force," Koby announced, the megaphone distorting his voice into something monstrous and inhuman.
"I repeat: this is an area of active engagement. Stay back or be neutralized."
The threat was a guillotine hanging over the plaza.
Some in the crowd recoiled, weeping into their hands; others stood paralyzed, watching the seconds tick away on an invisible, deadly clock.
Every breath Trizha took seemed like it might be her last.
Then, a roar of pure, unadulterated fury broke the stalemate.
"KOBY! You arrogant, overreaching son of a bitch!"
Yuri Calypso emerged from the dust-clogged entrance of the Prom Tower.
She looked like a nightmare—her elegant suit was a scorched rag, her skin was peppered with shrapnel, and one of her eyes was swollen shut and weeping blood.
Yet, she moved with the terrifying grace of a wounded tigress.
She had welcomed these students into her hotel, her sanctuary, and she would be damned if she let a government lapdog execute them on her doorstep.
"Yuri, stand down," Koby said, his voice dropping an octave into a warning growl. "This is a matter of state security. You are interfering in a necessary purge."
"'Stand down' my ass!" Yuri spat, blood staining her teeth as she grinned like a demon. "You talk about security, but you weren't in there when the floors were pancaking! You didn't see the terror in these kids' eyes! You don't know a thing about the hell we just survived, you desk-sitting coward!"
"I know what is necessary to prevent a second cataclysm," Koby replied coldly, his eyes never leaving Trizha. "You see a boy. I see a ticking time bomb that will level this city if left unchecked."
"And I see a fake hero who's too afraid to admit he's just a murderer in a fancy cape!"
Yuri slammed her heavy metallic suitcase onto the pavement.
With a violent hiss of escaping steam and the high-pitched, harmonic whine of powering magnets, the case began to reconstruct itself.
Plates shifted, heavy barrels elongated, and within seconds, Yuri was encased in a pair of massive, experimental kinetic cannons.
The power cells hummed, vibrating the very air with a frequency that made the nearby windows rattle in their frames.
"I've been waiting ten years for an excuse to see if these things can put a hole through that thick, arrogant skull of yours, Koby!"
BOOM!!
She didn't wait for a reply.
She pulled the triggers, and the recoil sent a shockwave that cracked the concrete beneath her boots and sent a cloud of dust billowing outward.
The twin projectiles—heavy slugs of diamond-obsidian composite—tore through the air at Mach 3.
The sound was a physical blow, a screech that felt like it was peeling the skin off everyone within a block.
But General Koby did not move.
He did not draw a weapon.
He didn't even raise his arms to brace himself.
He simply stood there, an icon of absolute, terrifying indifference, as the slugs struck his position.
The explosion was a pillar of white-hot fire and obsidian shards that swallowed the tank and the General alike.
A dome of pressure expanded outward, knocking soldiers off their feet and throwing the front row of the crowd backward.
Dust, ash, and the acrid smell of scorched metal filled the air, creating a localized winter that obscured everything in a grey haze.
As the smoke began to curl away, a silence fell that was deeper and more profound than any that had come before.
The crowd held its breath, waiting for the smoke to reveal a crater.
But as the air cleared, Koby remained.
He was standing exactly where he had been, his posture unchanged, his feet planted firmly on the turret.
His clothes was scorched at the edges, and the sleeves of his military uniform had been vaporized by the heat, revealing arms like corded steel, dusted with grey ash.
He hadn't just survived; he had endured the impact as if it were nothing more than a mild inconvenience.
The crowd stared in a state of absolute psychic shock.
This was the legend of General Koby—the man who was more mountain than human, more weapon than man.
Yuri stared up at him, her breath coming in ragged, painful gasps, her cannons smoking and spent.
She let out a dry, bitter laugh, clicking her tongue against her teeth as her knees began to buckle.
"Tsk... I knew you were a monster. I guess I'll need a few more modifications to break a wall like you, you bastard."
The words were her final act of defiance.
The toll of the night's battle and the massive energy drain of the cannons finally caught up to her; her eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed into the rubble, unconscious before her body even hit the ground.
Koby looked down at her prone form with a flicker of boredom, as if he were looking at a broken toy.
"The Calypsos... always so loud, yet always so fragile. Disappointing antagonists."
He turned his gaze back to Trizha.
The sixty seconds were up.
The rifles were still leveled.
The lasers were still burning bright red against her skin, marking her for death.
But then…
"...No."
The word was small, but in the absolute silence of the plaza, it rang out like a bell.
Trizha remained on her knees, her hand anchored firmly on Nomoro's shoulder, her fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt.
"No?" Koby repeated, his voice laced with a genuine, dangerous confusion.
He had never been told 'no' by someone so small.
He watched her carefully.
She was a wreck—her dress was a ruined shroud, her body was likely fractured in a dozen places from the river impact, and she was shaking with a tremor so violent it was a miracle she could remain upright.
Yet, her eyes—those purple, Frantzes eyes—were locked onto his with a light that he hadn't seen in a decade.
"Trizha. This is your final chance. Move away from the demon before I give the order to fire."
"I'm not... leaving him," she stammered, her voice growing stronger with every heartbeat, a low vibration of resolve starting deep in her chest.
Koby's patience finally disintegrated.
A vein throbbed visibly at his temple, and his grip on the megaphone tightened until the plastic groaned and cracked.
"You are being a reckless, idiotic child! Do you even grasp the gravity of your situation? You are protecting a monster that will kill us all!"
Trizha didn't answer.
She simply stared, her silence a wall that even the General's absolute authority couldn't penetrate.
Koby closed his eyes for a heartbeat, and when he opened them, they were devoid of any human emotion, cold as the void between stars.
He had made a vow to the state, and he intended to keep it.
「I'd rather save the world from a demon than bring back the child of a traitor.」
With a movement that was nothing more than a blur to the human eye, Koby drew a high-caliber handgun from his side.
BANG.
The percussive roar of the shot sent a flock of crows screaming from the nearby ruins.
A spray of crimson erupted into the moonlight.
The crowd shrieked in unison, a hundred voices crying out in grief and horror as they watched Trizha's body jerk violently, her torso beginning to tilt backward as if she were a puppet with its strings cut.
But then…
.
.
.
Trizha: 107
Fate: 1
.
.
.
Trizha: 108
Fate: 1
.
.
.
A heavy, deliberate step echoed against the concrete.
Trizha didn't fall.
In the microsecond the bullet traveled, her "State" had perceived the trajectory.
She had tilted her head by a hair's breadth.
The bullet hadn't shattered her skull; it had carved a searing, jagged furrow across her forehead, the heat of the lead cauterizing the flesh as it tore through.
She stood her ground, her feet planted like iron pillars.
The soldiers behind their visors gasped, their discipline momentarily breaking.
Koby's hand, the hand that had never missed a mark, trembled.
It was an impossibility—a defiance of the very laws of probability and physics.
Trizha stood there, her head bowed, blood beginning to mask her face like a ritualistic veil of red, dripping onto the concrete and Nomoro's shoulder.
[Normally, in this situation… it would've obeyed this guy and ran. Maybe I would then try to expose him as revenge.]
[But that was all just in my thoughts. all of it is telling me exactly what I was supposed to do—the same thing I do, what I always do... to return the favor. But in reality, I never felt like doing so.]
[And it was because I chose a new way, a new destiny, a new fate... a new Route. Within that choice, within my heart, I felt... new. My thoughts guide, but my will defies.]
[Those thoughts expected the same feelings I always had ever since I chose the wrong route, but ever since then... I've forgotten all of it, as if they all never happened. I felt different. The same, but entirely different.]
[And suddenly… I found myself standing before my broken, trembling legs. I felt as if I was going to fall anyways, but I stood firmly without fail.]
[Then, my arms lifted, and the exhaustion was clear, yet it didn't falter and instead, it spread wide. And then, I realized it. I was protecting Nomoro by covering him using my body... I was a shield before his unconscious body.]
[I wanted to protect him, yes. But for all I know... the Trizha that I am, the Trizha that everyone knows, would never do this. This is... something I wouldn't do. And yet, it felt so right. It fitted. And I liked it. For the first time in nine years... I finally took... the opportunity.]
[At that moment, I myself... knew exactly what I was supposed to do.]
She lifted her head. Her voice was no longer the melodic, practiced tone of a socialite.
She fixed her stature, her head still down. And she spoke in a tone like never before—a tone that she never once used, a tone she will use for the first time.
It was a tone of her voice… that originally belonged to someone else who wasn't her, but at the same time, was her.
"No one... is alone in my world."
She stared Koby down, her eyes burning with a light that flickered between her natural purple and an obsidian, depthless darkness.
Her irises seemed to vibrate, shattering and reforming in the haze of her survival.
"So come on," she challenged, her voice a low, predatory growl that vibrated in the air. "Try and take him from me. I will make you regret the day you were born. I will make you regret every life you've ever taken."
The words echoed through the plaza, chilling the blood of every man under arms.
To the crowd, it was the most "Izha" thing she could have said—ridiculously dramatic, almost like a line from a cheap shonen manga.
Some found it corny; some found it embarrassing.
But three people saw the truth behind the mask.
Teacher Myrcella watched from the edge of the throng, her eyes wide with a shock that bordered on reverence.
She had always seen Trizha as a reckless, spoiled, and deeply idiotic child.
Now, she saw a woman standing at the mouth of the abyss, refusing to blink, a shield against the darkness.
Margaret stood nearby, a soft, knowing smile touching her lips even as tears welled in her eyes.
She had seen the slow, quiet change over the weeks.
She had been waiting for Trizha to realize that her greatest strength wasn't her influence, but her heart.
…And Wyne.
Wyne stood in the shadows, a single, hot tear tracing a jagged path through the dust on her cheek.
She didn't see the influencer.
She didn't see the "Golden Girl."
She saw the girl she had met nine years ago.
The real Trizha.
The girl who had been stuck in a long, painful pause, finally moving forward into the light of her own making.
[T-this is Search Squad 4! General, do you copy?! Emergency! We found him! We found the demon from the kindergarten incident!]
The radio on Koby's shoulder crackled with a burst of frantic, panicked static.
Koby blinked, the intensity of his standoff with Trizha breaking for a fraction of a second as the report filtered through.
"Say again, Squad 4?" Koby muttered, his eyes still locked on his niece, his finger still on the trigger.
[Sir! We have a positive ID! He's at the center of a crater three miles north of the hotel! The energy signature is off the charts—red hair, black tips, massive physical trauma!]
Koby looked at the unconscious Nomoro behind Trizha.
Then he looked at the report flashing on his wrist-link.
"Negative, Scout. The target is right here. I have him in my sights. He is at the riverside."
[W-with all due respect, sir! We're sure this IS the guy!]
From a few miles away, just by the other side of the outer prom tower, a few among the search squad, with the rest surrounding them for observation, all stood and knelt before a body.
Red hair with black edges, wounded body, and a fading dark aura, and he was at the center of a crater, as if he had fallen and crashed down here, unconscious.
The squad's medical member leaned into the face of the mysterious person and forcefully opened his eyes using his fingers.
To his surprise, this man's eyes were strange; it was red and the irises looked like shattered glass, almost representing Freedom against all usual benevolence.
Those who didn't look up close would quickly assume it was just eye contact, but if they asked, then the medical member would admit to them that it wasn't.
[This guy's eyes, uh… I'm not sure, they look like glass that has been shattered!]
Koby froze.
Shattered glass.
The description didn't match Nomoro's peaceful, unconscious face.
It matched the creature V had warned him about—the true architect of the night's chaos.
Two different threats.
Two different monsters.
One was a boy.
The other was a being who does not exist.
He realized in that moment that he was standing over a boy who was nothing more than a casualty, while a true predator was elsewhere, laughing at them.
He clicked his tongue in irritation, the cold, military logic taking over once more.
He gave a sharp, silent signal to his commanders.
"Lower your weapons. Fall back to the secondary extraction point. We have a higher-priority target north of the sector. Move! All units, redeploy!"
The soldiers obeyed instantly, the wall of rifles vanishing as the military began a disciplined, rapid retreat toward their vehicles.
Koby turned his back on Trizha, his heavy boots clanking against the tank as he prepared to leave.
He didn't offer a word of apology, a glance of concern, or even a nod of recognition.
He simply left, as if she were a piece of scenery he was bored with.
Trizha watched them go, her vision beginning to gray out at the edges as the adrenaline that had kept her bones together evaporated.
The world began to tilt in a slow, sickening spiral.
She felt herself falling, her knees finally giving out.
But before she could hit the cold, hard concrete, a pair of familiar, thin arms caught her.
It was Wyne, sobbing openly as she lowered Trizha to the ground.
Margaret was there a second later, wrapping both girls in a fierce, protective embrace that smelled of home, safety, and the end of the world.
"You've done enough! Please, it's enough!" She stammered.
Trizha let her eyes close, the sounds of the sirens, the crying of the survivors, and the distant thunder of the retreating tanks fading into a peaceful, hollow hum.
And now… it all ends. Right here.
For a moment, the world slowed down, only the voices of everyone could be heard, and the bustling sound of the world caught on as everyone continued to live because of one single reason; Trizha. And that was the very moment… that the world survived a fantastical catastrophe.