The sky was no longer blue.
It hadn't been for years.
A permanent aurora of sickly green light stretched across the heavens, pulsing faintly like the underside of diseased flesh. Spores drifted lazily through the air, glowing in the dark like embers that never died.
Osaka was unrecognizable.
What had once been a city of neon and glass had become a cathedral of roots.
Skyscrapers leaned against one another, strangled by vine masses thicker than train cars. Entire floors were missing, replaced by layered fungal growths that breathed faint clouds of luminous dust into the night. Highways had collapsed inward, swallowed by soil that hadn't existed twelve years ago.
The earth had risen.
Humanity had sunk.
And in the heart of what used to be Umeda, beneath a canopy of thorns and shattered steel—
A war was ending.
Arata Kisaragi stood atop the ruins of a collapsed office tower, blood soaking through the torn sleeve of his Dominion coat.
The green-thread insignia of the thorned crown across his back was almost completely blackened.
His breath fogged in the humid air.
Below him, the last soldiers of the Verdant Dominion were dying.
The battlefield stretched across what had once been a business district. Now it resembled a primeval jungle carved from architecture. Broken escalators jutted from soil like fossilized bones. Massive root pillars twisted between buildings. Bioluminescent moss coated everything in ghostlight.
And moving through it—
The Sovereign.
It was larger than the tower Arata stood on.
A fusion of insect and forest.
Its lower body resembled a mantis, but magnified beyond proportion, armored in layered plates that reflected green auroral light like wet jade. Six scythe-like limbs rested against the ground, each longer than a city bus, serrated edges dripping with acidic resin.
Its upper torso rose upright from the insect frame — vaguely humanoid, composed of interwoven wood and chitin. From its back extended branching antler-like structures that scraped against surrounding buildings.
At its center, embedded in a hollow of bark and plating—
A pulsing core of luminous emerald.
The Verdant Titan of Kansai.
The being that had erased three cities in one month.
The creature Arata had sworn to kill.
"Left flank is gone!"
"Retreat! RETREAT!"
The command echoed through cracked comm units before dissolving into static and screaming.
One of the Dominion's heavy assault units charged from beneath a collapsed monorail track — Daichi.
Or what remained of him.
Exoskeletal plating had consumed half his torso. Dark matte armor layered across his shoulders and spine, fused directly to bone. One eye was gone, replaced by a hardened chitin plate.
He roared as he drove a reinforced carapace spear into the Titan's front limb.
The impact sounded like artillery.
The spear shattered.
The Titan barely reacted.
One scythe limb moved — almost lazily.
Daichi disappeared in a spray of red and splintered armor.
Arata did not move.
He could not afford to.
Emotion was a luxury that had killed too many already.
Behind him, Ren staggered into view, forearms fully plated in blackened keratin, blood running from his mouth.
"Arata!" he shouted over the thunderous creaking of shifting root structures. "The eastern perimeter is overrun! We can't hold!"
Arata's eyes never left the Titan's core.
He had seen this moment before.
In strategy simulations.
In reconnaissance reports.
In nightmares.
"Twelve seconds," Arata said calmly.
Ren blinked. "What?"
"It takes twelve seconds for it to shift its center weight before a full strike."
Even now, his voice was steady.
That was why they followed him.
Not because he was the strongest.
But because he never trembled.
Below them, Mei knelt beside a fallen squad leader, green vein patterns glowing brightly along her wrists as she pressed her palms against a torn abdomen. Vines sprouted from her fingertips, weaving flesh back together in desperate stitches.
Her breathing was ragged.
She had exceeded safe mutation thresholds hours ago.
She looked up toward Arata.
Their eyes met across the battlefield.
In that glance was understanding.
This was the end.
The Titan moved.
The ground shifted beneath its weight, entire root networks snapping as its massive body adjusted.
Twelve seconds.
Arata inhaled slowly.
His right arm — fully evolved now — no longer resembled human flesh.
Black-green chitin encased it from shoulder to fingertips. Serrated protrusions ran along the forearm. Veins of emerald light pulsed beneath translucent plating. His fingers ended in clawed extensions capable of slicing through reinforced steel.
The final stage of his Apex Mutation.
The price of twelve years of survival.
He leapt.
The ruined tower crumbled beneath the force of his launch.
He moved through spore-choked air like a thrown blade, cloak snapping behind him.
The Titan's nearest scythe limb came down in a horizontal sweep.
Arata twisted midair.
The blade skimmed his ribs, carving through coat and flesh.
Pain exploded white-hot.
He did not scream.
He drove his mutated claw into the joint between the Titan's forelimb plates.
Emerald light surged.
The joint cracked.
The Titan shrieked — a sound like grinding stone and tearing metal amplified across kilometers.
For the first time—
It felt him.
He landed against its torso, claws digging into bark-chitin composite.
Up close, the scale was overwhelming. Each plate was the size of a car hood. Resin seeped from cracks like sap.
He climbed.
Below him, Dominion forces rallied at the sight of blood.
Ren roared and charged again.
Mei forced herself upright, supporting others.
For a moment—
Hope flickered.
The Titan adjusted.
Too fast.
A secondary limb unfolded from beneath its torso — one they had not seen before.
Intelligence.
Adaptation.
Natural selection did not stagnate.
The limb pierced through Arata's left thigh.
His body slammed against the Titan's torso, pinned.
Blood poured down bark-like armor.
His grip slipped.
The Titan's core pulsed brighter.
And suddenly—
He understood.
It had been evolving during the fight.
Accelerating under pressure.
Just as humans did.
This was not a static enemy.
It was the next step.
Below, Ren screamed Arata's name.
Mei tried to run toward him.
Arata looked down at them.
At the soldiers who believed in him.
At the city he had reclaimed street by street.
At the Dominion he had built from nothing.
And he felt something unfamiliar.
Not fear.
Not rage.
Regret.
He had united Kansai.
But he had been too late.
Too slow.
Too divided against the greater threat.
Humanity had fought itself for territory while creatures like this prepared silently.
If he had moved earlier…
If he had consolidated faster…
If he had killed certain warlords before they rose…
The Titan's limb twisted.
Bone cracked.
Vision blurred.
The core glowed brighter.
It was preparing a discharge.
He had seen it before.
A localized annihilation wave.
Nothing within 300 meters would survive.
Not Ren.
Not Mei.
Not anyone left.
Arata steadied his breathing.
He had one option.
A forbidden one.
His Apex Mutation had one final state — unstable, irreversible, lethal.
He had refused to use it before.
Because once activated—
There would be no return.
No control.
He would burn through his own life force to generate enough force to crack the Titan's core.
He would die.
But maybe—
Just maybe—
They would live.
He closed his eyes.
For the first time in years.
And he thought of Yuna.
Her laugh in the apartment kitchen.
Her sketchbook spread across the floor.
The way she had looked at him in the early days—
Before he hardened.
Before he became the Iron Thorn King.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Then he activated it.
His arm exploded in light.
Chitin split apart, reforming into jagged crystalline growth. Emerald energy surged through his entire vascular system, cracking skin along his neck and jaw. His heartbeat became thunder in his ears.
The Titan shrieked as Arata tore free from the impaling limb.
He drove his transformed arm straight into the exposed core.
Light consumed everything.
The sound was beyond sound.
A rupture of evolution itself.
Core fractured.
Energy destabilized.
The Titan convulsed.
Its massive body began to collapse.
Below, Ren shielded Mei from falling debris.
Buildings crumbled.
Roots snapped.
The Sovereign fell.
For a single, impossible moment—
Victory.
Then Arata felt it.
The backlash.
His body disintegrating from the inside.
Mutation spiraling beyond containment.
Cells burning out.
Vision fading to white.
He fell.
Through spores.
Through collapsing branches.
Through the ruins of the empire he built.
The last thing he saw—
Was green light swallowing the sky.
And then—
Darkness.
Darkness wasn't empty.
It had weight.
It pressed against Arata's eyelids like wet soil packed into a grave. Sound came first—distant, warped, as if he was hearing the world through a wall of roots.
A low groan.
Metal screaming.
Something enormous collapsing.
Then—voices.
"M-Mei! Over here!"
"Hold him—hold him down!"
"Arata—! ARATA!"
Ren's voice, raw enough to tear.
Arata tried to breathe.
His lungs did not answer.
Air scraped in anyway, shallow and hot, tasting of resin and iron. His chest convulsed and pain went everywhere at once—no single wound, no clear edge, just fire in the blood.
He forced his eyes open.
Green light flooded him.
He was lying in a crater of shattered concrete and shredded vines. Above him, the canopy of Osaka's new jungle trembled under the aftershock of the Titan's fall. Spores drifted down in slow spirals, glowing like funeral incense.
The Verdant Titan was on its side.
Not dead.
Dying.
Its limbs spasmed as if the earth itself was trying to swallow it back. The core in its chest—what had been a solid emerald heart—was now a spiderweb of cracks, light leaking out in violent pulses.
Arata's arm was… gone.
Not severed.
Worse.
His right side from shoulder to fingertips was a torn constellation of chitin shards and glowing fractures. His flesh was splitting along the seams where mutation had reinforced him. The final state had burned through everything it touched.
He could see bone.
He could see the faint green luminescence crawling through marrow like worms.
He exhaled.
It came out wet.
Ren slid into view, dropping to his knees beside Arata like gravity had finally won. His plated forearms were chipped and bloody. His face was gray, eyes wide and refusing reality.
"Boss," Ren said—then choked on the word. "Don't—don't you dare."
Arata tried to lift his hand.
His left fingers twitched, useless.
He managed a faint smile anyway.
It was a habit. A weapon.
The kind of expression that made people stop panicking, stop screaming, stop shattering.
"Did it… crack?" Arata rasped.
Ren's throat worked. He nodded once, violently.
"It cracked. It's—It's falling apart. You did it. You—"
Ren's voice broke. He looked down like he couldn't stand to see what was happening to Arata's body.
Arata followed his gaze.
His abdomen was caved in. Not from the Titan's blow. From the inside.
The mutation backlash was tearing him apart cell by cell, consuming the scaffolding that had kept his body functional. The Apex state wasn't just power.
It was a verdict.
Mei stumbled into the crater and fell beside him. Her hair was soaked with sweat. The green vein patterns along her wrists were blazing so brightly they looked carved into her skin. Her eyes—always calm, always controlled—were frantic now.
"Move," she snapped at Ren, then pressed both palms against Arata's chest.
Vines sprouted.
Not thick vines. Not violent growth.
Thin, trembling threads, like fingers searching for a pulse.
They slid under torn fabric and found flesh.
Mei's jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth.
"Stop it," she whispered—not to Ren, not to Arata, but to Arata's body. "Stop breaking. Stop—stop—"
Her vines glowed, trying to stitch ruptured organs, trying to reinforce arteries that were dissolving. But every place she repaired collapsed again behind her work.
It was like scooping water from a flood with bare hands.
Ren leaned in, voice shaking. "Fix him. You can fix anything, right? You—You did it before—"
Mei didn't answer.
Because she knew.
Because Arata knew.
This wasn't a wound.
This was evolution snapping its own spine.
Arata's gaze drifted past them, past the crater, to the battlefield.
The Dominion was still fighting.
Not the Titan—its presence alone was enough to break formations, but now it was writhing, failing, bleeding light.
They were fighting the aftermath.
Swarms of drones—wasps the size of dogs—burst from ruptured nests. Ant columns poured from the cracks of parking structures. A mantis lieutenant, half the size of a truck, climbed over fallen debris and cut soldiers in half with a single sweep.
And yet—
Dominion banners still stood.
Black cloth, green-thread crown.
A few.
Stubborn.
Refusing.
Arata felt something tighten in his chest.
Not pain.
Pride.
He had built this.
Not from ideology.
From necessity.
From bodies and choices and ruthless lines he refused to cross in public, even when he crossed them in private.
He had made them believe in order.
He had made them believe the weak could survive if the strong carried them.
He had made them believe that being human still meant something.
He swallowed.
Blood slid down his throat.
Ren's hand found Arata's shoulder, gripping hard enough to hurt.
"Boss," Ren pleaded. "Tell me what to do."
Arata's eyes flicked to him.
He saw Ren not as a soldier, not as a weapon, but as a boy who had once dreamed of a normal life. Baseball, laughter, summer sweat on a field.
Now his forearms were plated and his knuckles were stained with monster blood.
Arata's voice came out thin.
"Listen," he said. "You… you take them."
Ren froze. "What?"
Arata forced the words. Each one felt like dragging glass across raw flesh.
"Mei… you keep… the civilians… alive."
Mei's eyes squeezed shut. A tear cut through grime.
Arata looked at her anyway.
"You build… the clinics. You… don't let them… turn our people… into experiments."
Mei's lips trembled. She nodded hard, once, then again.
Ren shook his head. "No. No, you're not—"
Arata's gaze slid away from them and landed on the distant silhouette of Osaka Castle.
Or what was left of it.
Wrapped in thorn growth. Walls split by roots. But still standing, stubborn against the green.
He remembered that place.
He remembered planting the first Dominion flag there while people cried, not because it meant victory, but because it meant someone was finally claiming responsibility.
He remembered Yuna's voice from long ago.
"Arata… are we… going to be okay?"
The memory hit like a blade between ribs.
His sister.
He hadn't thought of her in the middle of battle. There hadn't been time for grief during twelve years of hell.
But now, with death waiting like a patient animal—
She was all he could see.
Yuna at seventeen, holding her sketchbook like it was a shield.
Yuna at fifteen, laughing at something stupid he said while trying not to show how scared she was.
Yuna on Day 3.
The supermarket.
The riot.
The scream.
The moment he turned and saw too late.
The moment that carved him into the man who could stand in front of a Titan without trembling.
Arata's breath hitched.
Mei leaned closer. "Arata… don't—don't go there. Stay. Focus. I can—"
"You can't," Arata said quietly.
Mei flinched as if struck.
He wasn't cruel.
He was honest.
Ren's eyes burned. "Then what the hell was this for? All of this—what was it for if you just—"
Arata's smile returned, faint and sharp.
"So you… don't die like me."
Ren's face twisted.
"Boss…"
Arata stared up at the green sky.
Spores drifted like snow.
He hated how beautiful it was.
He hated that the world could look like a dream while eating people alive.
The Titan's core pulsed again—fainter now, unstable, but still radiating. The light from it painted the battlefield in sick halos.
Arata's heartbeat slowed.
He felt the edges of himself slipping.
Not consciousness—identity.
As if the mutation backlash wasn't satisfied with killing him. It wanted to erase him.
He tried to speak again.
His throat refused.
So he did what he had done all his life.
He led with his eyes.
He looked at Ren.
A command.
A future.
Ren trembled, then straightened. His jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped.
"I'll… I'll hold it," Ren said hoarsely. "I'll hold everything."
Arata shifted his gaze to Mei.
She understood immediately.
She leaned down and pressed her forehead to his, gently, like a prayer.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry I wasn't enough."
Arata managed to breathe out a single word.
"You were."
Mei's vines dimmed.
Not because she gave up.
Because there was nothing left to stitch.
Ren made a sound like an animal wounded past anger.
He grabbed Arata's hand—the left one—and held it like an anchor.
"Don't go," he said. "Don't—please—"
Arata stared past him.
Past the crater.
Past the dying Titan.
The world blurred.
Green, then white, then nothing.
And in that nothing—
He felt it.
A pulse.
Not from the Titan.
Not from the battlefield.
From deeper.
From everywhere.
The air thickened, heavy with invisible pressure, like the moment before a storm breaks.
The spores around him stalled midair as if time itself had inhaled.
Arata's eyes widened.
Because he recognized the sensation.
Not from any battle.
From the ruins beneath Osaka, years ago, when he and a dying scavenger had crawled into an old subway vault and found an ancient growth—an impossible thing.
A Seed.
A small, black-green kernel embedded in concrete, pulsing faintly, surrounded by fossilized vines.
The scavenger had laughed, coughing blood.
"They say the world resets when the strongest dies," the man had wheezed. "Like the forest rewinds its own mistake."
Arata had called it madness.
But now—
He felt the same pressure.
The same pulse.
The dying Titan's core flared one last time, then imploded inward with a soundless flash.
Everything went silent.
No screams.
No metal groans.
No insect shrieks.
Only the sensation of something turning over, deep beneath the world's skin.
Arata's vision flooded green.
Not the aurora.
Not sporelight.
A different green.
Older.
Like the inside of a seed.
And then—
A voice that was not a voice.
A sensation that was not language.
A meaning pressed into his skull:
Return.
Arata's body convulsed.
Ren shouted, but the sound didn't reach him.
Mei's hands tightened on his chest, but her touch faded.
Arata felt himself falling—
Not through the air.
Through time.
Through twelve years of rot and blood and thorns.
He tried to grab something.
Anything.
A memory.
A promise.
Yuna's face flashed like lightning.
His empire.
His people.
His failures.
His death.
All of it ripped away like skin.
And then—
The world snapped.