The heavy wooden door of Hina's house groaned as Ryu forced it open, the old wood splintering and crying out under his immense physical pressure. As they stepped into the foyer, a wave of cold, stagnant air hit them like a physical blow—it smelled of copper, stale sweat, and the unmistakable, sweet rot of death. In the dim, flickering light of the hallway, the scene was a visceral nightmare. Hina's father and brother lay sprawled across the floor in a chaotic tangle of limbs. Their chests were a gruesome map of knife wounds—jagged, deep, and relentless. It was clear the killer hadn't just intended to end their lives; they had sought to erase their very humanity through a feverish, obsessive hatred. The blood had already pooled into dark, obsidian stains that seeped into the floorboards, and the look of sheer, frozen terror on their pale faces was a sight that clawed at Kaito's sanity, threatening to pull him into the abyss.
Ryu stood paralyzed, his breathing shallow and ragged in the heavy, blackened atmosphere. It felt as if liquid despair was circulating in the air instead of oxygen, choking the lungs of anyone brave enough to enter. Kaito felt it too—a dark, gravitational pull, as if the shadows in the corners were sentient, reaching out to merge with his own soul. "Ryu... we have to find Hina. Something... something ancient, dark, and fundamentally wrong is happening here," Kaito whispered, his voice sounding hollow and alien in the oppressive silence of the house.
As they began to ascend the creaking stairs, a sudden, invisible weight pressed down on their shoulders. Every step felt like wading through chest-deep, freezing water. The hallway itself seemed to flicker and warp; objects glitched in and out of existence like a failing computer program struggling to render reality. Kaito gasped, his eyes widening as he saw a faint, ethereal white light begin to seep from Ryu's skin, drifting upward like steam from a boiling pot.
"Ryu! You're glowing... your energy is leaking! What's happening to you?" Kaito's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"I don't know... everything feels so heavy, Kaito. Like the world itself is a predator trying to pull my soul apart," Ryu replied, his voice strained and cracking with the effort of simply standing.
Inside Kaito, a silent panic erupted into a deafening roar. "Is the world deleting him? Is his power being drained because he's near me? I have to save him, no matter the cost!" They reached the door to Hina's room, where a dense, swirling vortex of darkness pulsed like a necrotizing heartbeat. It felt hungry, ready to swallow any living thing that dared to cross the threshold. But as soon as Ryu stepped through, the darkness recoiled and hissed as if burned by holy fire. For a fleeting moment, the room looked normal, but the cost was etched into Ryu's features; his skin was turning translucent, a ghost of the boy he once was. Yet, he gritted his teeth, a fierce, suicidal determination in his eyes. "I won't let go... they need me... I'm not leaving them behind," he hissed to himself, fighting the invisible tide.They found Hina sitting before a shattered vanity mirror, her reflection broken into a thousand jagged pieces. In the next room, her mother sat in an identical, catatonic pose. Both held rusted kitchen knives, and both wore the same ghastly, unblinking smile that didn't reach their hollow eyes. Kaito realized with a jolt of horror that the trap wasn't just in this room—the entire house was a trap, a ritual ground designed to break them. "Bhai, we need to get out! Now! The center of this power isn't here—it's outside, watching us!"
The moment they sprinted onto the street, the world seemed to scream in agony. A massive electrical pole snapped with a thunderous crack, tilting and falling directly toward them like the finger of a vengeful god. Time slowed to a crawl. In those two heartbeats of suspended animation, Kaito saw every detail of the falling metal—the rust, the sparking wires, the inevitable end. "Someone... or something... is giving me this moment. I won't waste it!" With a desperate, guttural cry, he threw his entire weight into Ryu, shoving him clear with a strength he didn't know he possessed. The pole shattered the pavement where they had stood just a millisecond before, sending sparks and debris flying into the night.
"You... you really saved me. You actually did it," Ryu panted, looking at Kaito with wide, disbelieving eyes, realization dawning that his "weak" friend was changing.
But the reprieve was a cruel joke. In every window of the surrounding houses, silhouettes appeared—hundreds of girls, all sitting with that same lifeless, painted-on smile. Suddenly, they began to laugh. It started as a titter and rose into a soul-piercing, rhythmic chorus of madness. High above, perched on the flickering radio tower, a figure loomed against the glitched sky. "I am the God of this New Era!" the Villain's voice boomed, amplified by the very air. "And you are nothing but bugs crawling on my canvas, waiting to be wiped away!"
Kaito sensed the clashing auras—Hina's flickering, dying light and the Villain's sun-like, destructive presence that felt like a localized apocalypse. "Show yourself, you coward! Stop hiding behind children!" Kaito roared at the sky, his voice cracking with rage.
The Villain, Cun Lo, laughed—a sound like tectonic plates grinding together. "I have no time for conversation with insects. I only want the echoes of their laughter and the exquisite sweetness of their departing souls!" He unleashed a wave of shadows that tore through the asphalt like black saws. Kaito noticed a weakness in the chaos: the shadows were bound to the geometry of the street; they could only move along surfaces.
"Ryu, stay back! He wants us together so he can crush us both! I have to draw him away!" Kaito bolted toward a narrow alleyway, his heart racing. Cun Lo fired two massive Black Orbs that hissed through the air, erasing the light as they passed. "Die first, Little Error, then I will feast on your friend!"
Kaito stopped, turned, and thrust his hands out, his palms facing the oncoming annihilation. He reached deep for that strange, cold void inside himself and did the unthinkable—he Absorbed the black energy, pulling the destructive orbs into his own flesh.
Cun Lo's voice wavered, losing its arrogant edge. "What... what are you? That power... it's not supposed to be yours!"
Ryu's jaw dropped in the distance. "Bhai, are you even human?! What kind of monster did you just swallow?!"
The Villain, now desperate and sensing his control slipping, launched a final psychological assault. He forced the girls to begin hurling themselves from the windows in a horrific, silent rain of bodies. "Stop, Kaito, or I will break every soul in this city until there is nothing left but dust!"
Ryu, seeing Kaito's resolve begin to fracture under the guilt, gathered his last ounce of soul-strength. He lunged at Cun Lo's shadow manifestation with a scream of defiance. A blinding explosion of white and black light tore through the district. Ryu's soul began to fray at the edges, drifting away like white mist in a gale. Cun Lo seized the moment of distraction, grabbing Kaito's arm, his touch a freezing cold intended to shatter Kaito's mind into a thousand pieces.But the moment their essences touched, it was Cun Lo who learned the meaning of fear. He didn't see a boy's mind; he saw the "Infinite Void"—a realm of eternal, silent night illuminated only by a blood-red moon hanging over a sea of flowing black ink. The weight of Kaito's true, hidden nature was so immense, so ancient, that Cun Lo's soul shattered into billions of microscopic fragments. Kaito didn't let them dissipate; he reached out with his internal hunger and consumed them all—every ounce of the Villain's malice, his power, and his wretched memories.
Kaito's skin turned the color of midnight, his veins pulsing with a stolen, oily darkness. He fell to his knees, clutching his head as thousands of Cun Lo's vile memories—the faces of everyone he had deleted—flooded his brain like a tidal wave of filth. Hina, finally freed from the hypnotic trance, saw the ruins of her family and collapsed in a heap of broken sobs by Ryu's side. "Why? Why did you do this for us, you fool? I only ever trusted you... and you threw it all away!" she wailed, clutching Ryu's fading, translucent hand.
Ryu reached out a trembling, almost invisible finger to Kaito. "Bhai... I trust you. I've always known. Fix this. Stop crying like a child and become the Sovereign you were meant to be."
With a cry of absolute agony and love, Kaito used his new, cursed power to Seal Ryu, trapping his friend's essence in a protective shadow cocoon to keep him from vanishing into the glitch. Hina looked at Kaito with eyes full of pure, unadulterated loathing. "This is your fault! You're a curse, Kaito! Why are you so useless? Why is it always you who survives?" Her words cut deeper than any blade Cun Lo possessed. Kaito's aura became so toxic, so heavy with grief, that nearby birds fell dead from the sky, their little hearts stopping from the sheer weight of his presence.
Then... a Golden Melody reached his ears, cutting through the darkness like a sunbeam. 200 kilometers away, Yuna (The Idle) stood amidst the smoking rubble of her concert hall. Thousands were dead, the stadium a tomb of twisted metal. But Yuna stood up, her dress torn but her spirit bright, and began to sing. Her voice carried a primordial, magical light that caused the broken reality to stitch itself back together—the dead began to stir, eyes opening to a world reborn in gold. From the distance, Kaito recognized that aura—it was the only light in the universe that felt like it belonged to his own dark heart.