The corridor leading to the infirmary was almost empty.
The smell of disinfectant still hung in the air when Kotobe walked out, crude bandages wrapped around his forearms, his breathing slow but steady. Every step echoed too loudly in the silence of the now-dark arena.
He sensed a presence behind him before even hearing the footsteps.
Dante.
He didn't turn around.
Dante, however, hesitated. A second too long. Then he spoke.
— ...How did you know.
Kotobe stopped.
— Your eyes were closed, Dante continued. You weren't looking at anything. And yet you placed your head at the exact spot. Not one miss. Not two. At the exact moment.
His voice trembled, almost imperceptibly.
— Tell me how you knew I was going to attack.
Kotobe turned his head slightly, just enough to show his profile.
— I didn't know.
Silence.
— What do you mean, "you didn't know"?
— I put my head in the right place, at the right time.
Kotobe shrugged.
— A guess.
The words fell like stones.
Dante felt something crack. Not his pride. Something deeper.
He clenched his fists.
— You mean you… felt nothing? No aura? No flow? No reading?
— No.
Dante took a step forward.
— Is it Ultra Instinct, then? How did you unlock it? Where did you learn it?
Kotobe finally turned around. His gaze was calm, almost tired.
— I didn't learn anything.
A pause.
— I just… didn't think.
Those words were worse than any insult.
Dante opened his mouth to reply. To shout. To deny. To exist.
— Enough.
The voice cracked through the corridor.
Dante's father stood there. Upright. Impeccable. Cold.
— Let's go.
He walked past his son without looking at him, then stopped in front of Kotobe.
He observed him for a moment. A long moment.
— You fought well. Congratulations on your victory.
Then he walked away.
Dante remained frozen for a second. Then he followed.
⸻
The Seijin Temple was silent. Too silent.
Torches illuminated pillars carved with ancient symbols. The entire clan was gathered. All of them. Elders, warriors, heirs.
Dante was placed at the center.
He didn't have time to speak.
The whip came down.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each strike echoed like a judgment.
— YOU HAVE HUMILIATED THE SEIJIN CLAN!
His father's voice thundered, amplified by the stone.
— You did not uphold our values.
Another strike.
— All hope rested on you.
Dante fell to his knees, breathless.
— You were meant to be the renewal.
The whip whistled again.
— The one who would surpass the Great Rain.
The word burned his ears.
Great Rain.
Always that word.
Blood flowed down his back. His vision blurred.
He bit his lip until he tasted metal.
— Ah… the Great Rain…
His voice was hoarse, almost a choked laugh.
— That's all they ever talk about.
The Great Rain.
A catastrophe.
That had occurred centuries ago.
during the era preceding the Hunters.
the era of the Slayers.
Demons literally falling from the sky.
The hunters of that time had given everything. Bodies, souls, entire clans annihilated.
No one had been able to stop the chaos.
No one… except one.
Sempaichiro Seijin.
He had lost a tournament. A single defeat.
The clan had banished him.
Six months later, he had returned.
Under another name.
Sempaichiro Naga.
But he was no longer the same man.
— He was empty… Dante murmured in his head.
He walked among the demons and struck them down effortlessly.
His flow was… invisible.
No waste. No expenditure.
As if his body acted alone.
He called it the Ultra Instinct Mode.
Within a few days, he had contained the threat.
But the final catastrophe was born.
A monster.
An amalgamation of all the daemons.
An entity capable of adapting to any human attack.
As long as there were humans on Earth… it regenerated.
Naga had understood.
He didn't win.
He sacrificed himself.
He sealed the creature with him.
Eternal silence.
— Since that day…
Dante's voice trembled internally.
— They have done everything to recreate me.
Arranged marriages.
Inhuman training.
Constant comparisons.
"You must reach his state."
"You were born for this."
"Do not disappoint us."
His father leaned toward him.
— You are the heir. You do not have the right to fail.
Dante gritted his teeth.
— I'm tired…
His mind screamed.
— I've spent my life trying to attain that state.
And today…
A stranger.
A broken kid.
Someone who didn't even want it.
Had achieved it.
— It's impossible…
The whip fell one last time.
The rain outside began to fall.
Gamilea, his nursemaid, the one who had raised him, stood there near him and said in a pained voice:
— You have the potential to surpass Naga. Believe in yourself.
And for the first time, Dante didn't think about becoming Naga.
He thought about destroying that myth.