Neo-Tokyo Skyline — 11:55 PM
They didn't go back to the arcade. Renji said it was a death trap.
Instead, they were perched on top of a weather tower in District 1, the highest point in the city, huddled under a thermal blanket to hide from drones.
The rain had stopped. The city below was a sea of neon and silence.
"Five minutes," Renji whispered, looking through a high-powered scope attached to his rifle. He was aiming at the coordinates The Silencer had transmitted—the huge public plaza in the City Center.
Kazuki sat with his back against a satellite dish, clutching the Fulcrum Staff.
"Renji," Kazuki asked quietly. "You fought the Fracture Hounds. You killed Dr. Aris. You're not scared of anything. Why are you shaking?"
Renji lowered the scope. His hands were shaking.
"Kaelen Rhyne isn't a soldier, Kazuki. He's a biological experiment gone wrong. In my timeline, he single-handedly leveled the entire Eastern Seaboard."
"Does he have a better suit than me?"
"He doesn't wear a suit," Renji said grimly. "His body was genetically spliced with Fracture Energy. He can cut through space itself. He can sever gravity. He can cut the distance between two points to zero."
Renji looked Kazuki in the eye.
"If he sees you, do not fight. You turn around, and you run until your heart explodes. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Kazuki lied.
12:00 AM.
It started with a sound.
Not a boom. A tearing sound. Like a piece of thick canvas being ripped next to a microphone.
In the City Center plaza below, the air split open.
A vertical black line, thin as a hair, appeared in the sky.
It widened.
Space itself peeled back like skin. The edges of the tear bled purple energy. Streetlights exploded. Cars stalled. The gravity in the plaza reversed—benches and statues floated up into the air.
From the darkness of the tear, a figure stepped out.
He didn't look like a monster. He looked... royal.
He was tall, with pale skin and long white hair tied back loosely. He wore simple, loose-fitting black robes that fluttered in the gravity distortion. He was barefoot.
Kaelen Rhyne. The Cursed King.
He stood in the middle of the floating debris. He took a deep breath of the Tokyo air.
Then, he looked up.
He didn't use binoculars. He didn't use a scanner.
He just looked directly at the weather tower, three miles away.
Renji gasped. "He sees us."
"That's impossible," Aeva whispered. "We're three miles away. We're cloaked."
Kaelen raised his right hand. He made a simple chopping motion with two fingers.
"MOVE!" Renji screamed.
He tackled Kazuki and Aeva off the edge of the tower.
They free-fell into the night air.
Above them, the weather tower—a structure made of reinforced steel and concrete—slid apart.
It had been sliced diagonally in half.
The top half of the building slowly slid off and crashed into the street below with a sound like the apocalypse.
BOOM.
They landed on a lower rooftop, rolling to absorb the impact.
Kazuki stared up at the ruin of the tower they had been sitting on five seconds ago. The cut was perfectly smooth. Mirror-polished.
"He cut the building," Kazuki stammered, his voice trembling. "From three miles away. With his fingers."
"He missed on purpose," Renji said, scrambling to his feet. "He's playing with us."
Suddenly, a voice boomed across the entire city. It wasn't over a loudspeaker; it was projected directly into the atmosphere by the vibration of the air.
"Citizens of this timeline," Kaelen's voice was smooth, deep, and terrifyingly calm. "I am Kaelen Rhyne. I am looking for a thief. A boy who stole something that belongs to the future."
Kazuki froze.
"Bring him to me," Kaelen continued. "And your city survives. Hide him... and I will cut this island off the map."
Renji grabbed Kazuki's arm.
"We're leaving. Now. We need to get underground. Deep underground."
"Where?" Aeva asked. "The subway is compromised. The Arcade is compromised."
Renji looked at the burning skyline.
"There's only one place left. The place where I found the suit in my timeline."
"Renji, no," Aeva warned. "That place is a tomb."
"Exactly," Renji said. "The dead don't talk. We're going to the Old Tokyo Ruins."
[To Be Continued…]