The wine cellar of "Tenran," bathed in the dim light of magical crystals and steeped in the smell of old oak, was a place of silence and solitude. Reiden Kagetori was sorting through collector's labels, trying to distract himself from the crimson glow of the Colonies on the horizon. And suddenly, silence was pierced by a needle—a mental summons over the Council's emergency channel.
Images invaded his consciousness uninvited: an archived signature, considered lost. Kuroi Sorato. Infiltration of the director's office. Clash. Now.
An icy crack ran through Reiden's soul. He didn't remember unclenching his fingers. An expensive bottle of Burgundy shattered on the stone floor, scarlet liquid spreading like blood. He was already vanishing in a golden flash of teleportation, but for a moment another image surfaced in his memory—ancient, almost forgotten.
Flashback. Five years ago. The dungeons beneath "Tenran." An old hermit-guard, Master Gen, his face furrowed with wrinkle-Scars, twitching in a nervous tic. He clutched the sleeve of the young Reiden, his root-like fingers trembling.
"He is not a demon or a god, boy..." the old man's voice was the rustle of dried leaves. "He is—the Worst of all who ever lived. Period."
The roar of teleportation gave way to the tomb-like silence of the director's office. The smell of incense, old wood, and... copper. Keiden Fujibayashi lay behind his massive desk. His wise, perpetually weary face was turned to the ceiling with an expression not of horror, but of bitter understanding. On his chest gaped a neat, almost surgical hole—not from a weapon, but as if the flesh and kimono themselves had decided to cease existing in that spot.
And standing over him, wiping invisible filth from the edge of his dark-purple kimono, was He. Kuroi Sorato. Or what wore his likeness.
"Just as I planned..." the voice was an exact copy, but the tone... held the cold, detached satisfaction of a scientist who had completed a calculation.
Narikawari raised his gaze. His purple eyes slid over Reiden's golden locks but lingered on the roots—on those strands that after the Colonies had turned platinum-white, as if burned out from within. A spark of unexpected, almost mundane curiosity flickered in his look.
"Did you dye it white or something?" he asked, tilting his head slightly. "Honestly... it doesn't suit you particularly well."
The gold in Reiden's eyes blazed, leaving no room for shock or grief. Only polar, merciless rage.
"Since you're in Sorato's body," Reiden's voice was low as a pre-storm rumble, "you think I'll have qualms about beating you? Wrong. I've had experience, you know."
"No, the strongest Majutsushi of modern times..." Narikawari parried with a light smirk. "I just think you'll be an obstacle to creating the Apocalypse Scar." He spread his arms as if presenting his future triumph. "Wouldn't it be more advantageous to kill you in direct combat?"
"You're so confident in your abilities?"
Reiden's first strike was lightning incarnate. Narikawari parried but was knocked back several meters, his blocking forearm going numb. He was stronger and faster than Sorato had been. Reiden noted this with a cold, analytical corner of his mind, even through the rage.
Narikawari, as if reading his thoughts, smiled, rubbing his wrist.
"You noticed?" he paused, examining his hand. "My innate technique transfers a dead body to me completely, on a cellular and spiritual level. However, physical indicators... That's something I cannot take. Don't know why you need to know that. Felt like sharing."
The Thousand-Faced Ghost of Nihon—Narikawari's unique innate Kokurō. Parasitic immortality. He doesn't resurrect—he seizes discarded shells, mastering them totally: memory, skills, Scars, personality. Everything except the crude physical form. His true visage remained a mystery, hidden behind thousands of stolen lives.
"Why?" Reiden hissed, closing the distance again, his blows a hail, but Narikawari parried with frightening, inhuman efficiency. "What's the point of this slaughter? Your philosophy, worm?"
"Motivation?" Narikawari laughed, blocking a kick to the head. "I've never had such a thing. It just seemed like it would be fun enough to endow all of humanity with a Kokurō-core. If you lived a thousand years, what would you do? So I think I've tried everything, including this."
Dialogues were meaningless. This monster spoke the language of eternal, all-consuming boredom.
And Reiden changed his approach. Hand-to-hand was useless—too long, too predictable for a being who had known thousands of styles.
Kagetori Reiden's brain was a unique organ. Any expenditure of Kei within it was instantly compensated by redistribution inside a closed system. He didn't expel energy outward—he circulated it along an internal, perfect torus, where the field's divergence ∇ · F = 0. External manifestations—techniques, explosions, lightning—were merely side friction, less than 0.0001% of the monstrous energy forever circulating inside him. His "1000 Kei" rating was not a limit, but the output of an infinite engine.
He retreated a step and soared into the air without visible effort—pure levitation. His palm extended forward. Index and middle fingers formed a sign of judgment.
"Form of Thunderous Void: Blue Lightning." (Raikyōshiki: Sodēn)
The principle differed from that of Purple (Shidēn). Collapsing the probability operator, he obtained not a negation of causality, but its absolute subjugation. Blue Lightning didn't erase matter—it destroyed structural bonds on a molecular level, leaving behind only chaotic, useless debris. A clump of cold, blue discharge, hissing with the silence of decay, shot towards Narikawari.
He didn't flinch. Fingers formed a counter-sign.
"Heaven's Gravestone."
An invisible, monstrous gravitational force concentrated in a microscopic point right before him. Space crunched and compressed, swallowing the Blue Lightning into a mini-singularity that immediately collapsed. But this was a diversion.
While Narikawari neutralized one threat, Reiden was already beside him, using "Tread of the Shattered Sky." His leg, carrying the crushing weight of an entire firmament, slammed into Narikawari's head.
BA-BOOOOM!
The explosion was not fiery, but golden, seismic. The body in Sorato's likeness shot out like a shell, carving a crater the size of a small hill in the earth beyond the tower. Dust rose in a column.
Reiden landed on the edge of the breach, his golden eyes scanning the epicenter. And he saw the impossible. From the churned earth, a figure rose. Shattered bones knitted with a crunch, torn muscles wove themselves anew. "Armor of the Earth Spider"—the spirit of an ancient yōkai—already enveloped Narikawari in living, stone hide that pulsed and regenerated before his eyes.
Narikawari's right arm, wrapped in this spirit, distorted, elongated, turned into a giant blade of compressed stone and darkness three hundred meters long. He swung it horizontally, roaring as it cleaved the air.
Reiden vanished, shifting micro-distances. The blade passed a centimeter away, and... purely by accident, on a tangent, touched a distant mountain range. A mountain three thousand meters high simply ceased to be whole. Its upper part slowly, with a grinding sound, slid down, raising clouds of dust.
"Blue Lightning!" Reiden shot out again, but this was a feint.
Narikawari, smirking, created a "Scarlet Maw of Absorption" before him—a rotating sphere that broke attacks into streams and absorbed them. The blue discharge vanished without a trace in the scarlet maw.
"Predictable, strongest..." Narikawari cried out.
And in that instant, his body exploded from within.
Red Lightning (Raikyoshiki: Kōden). A different operator. Localization of existence, where the Heisenberg principle played into the hand of force: uncertainty in time fell, in energy—soared. This was not destruction of bonds, but a forcible, crude assertion of power, a pure act of rage. Reiden released it simultaneously with the Blue, but along a different, hidden trajectory. The scarlet discharge, leaving cracks in the air, plunged into Narikawari's back and burned him out from within.
The stone armor burst. Sorato's body, mutilated, smoked. Narikawari collapsed to one knee, a stream not of blood but of black, tar-like substance gushing from his mouth. But he looked up at Reiden from under his brow. And smiled. A crooked, insane grin.
"Kokurō..." he rasped, and his voice became multi-layered, overlapping itself. "Thousand-Faced Ghost of Nihon... Perverted Archive of Disfigured Mouths!"
The earth around them heaved. Not with stones—with backs. From under the soil, with a quiet, nightmarish rustle, thousands of human figures began to emerge. Hunched, fused, woven into hills and paths. They were alive. Their mouths soundlessly opened, and from them oozed a thick, black whisper—a mush of stolen thoughts, prayers, curses, techniques.
And in the center of this hell, above Narikawari, It began to form. A giant, pulsating structure resembling a brain entangled with glowing veins. Across its surface ran, melted, and twisted in eternal agony myriads of tiny faces—all whose souls the parasite had consumed. The smell of old parchment, burned flesh, and the sweet rot of forgotten knowledge struck the nose.
Narikawari, leaking black ichor, knelt before this monument to his madness. His purple eyes, full of inhuman pain and triumph, stared at Reiden.
The air hummed. Not with sound. With the whisper of thousands of stolen mouths.