The carcass of Shin-Ōsaka Station groaned beneath the weight of its own memory. Once a symbol of modern grace—glass, speed, and quiet efficiency—now it stood like a mausoleum of twisted steel and ghosts. Acid rain hissed through the shattered ceiling panels, the droplets glowing faintly as they steamed in contact with the Hollowing spores that veiled the structure like fungus on a corpse. Pools of that hissing water had gathered in the artillery-scarred craters across the platforms, their surfaces catching dim, fractured reflections of the past.
Ren crouched behind the wreckage of a derailed Shinkansen, its sleek silver frame now warped into a grotesque violet hue, rusted and hollowed by time and spore exposure. He pressed his back to the cold hull, listening to the soft thrum of his own blood. Just meters below them, nestled in the platform's shadowed heart, the convoy waited. A dozen armored trucks idled in silence, exhaust curling like breath from steel beasts. Around them, enforcers in towering biomechanical exosuits stood sentinel—monsters shaped in man's own image, silent and unblinking.
But none of them compared to her.
Shinobu stood in their center, poised like an idol sculpted from nightmare. What remained of her humanity clung in tatters—a half-disintegrated GHU lab coat fluttering around a frame transformed by Argwan graftwork. Her arms terminated in serrated bone blades that shimmered with a wet sheen, each movement slow and deliberate. And beneath her helm—an obscene crown woven from fused human skulls—golden eyes pulsed, twin suns staring into oblivion.
Ren's breath hitched. Somewhere beneath that armor and ichor… there was a woman he once knew.
"Haruto," Ren whispered into the earpiece, his voice taut as piano wire. "Lights."
A heartbeat later, a sniper's round cracked across the air and shattered the last floodlight above the platform. Darkness swallowed the world like a curtain falling on the end of history.
Koji exhaled a slow grin, fingers dancing over his holographic display. "Drones are blind. Ninety seconds of static."
Hiroshi's rifle clicked as he chambered a round. "Mika. Serena. Flank the rear. Hajime, you're with me."
Mika's hand brushed the photo hidden in her vest—a boy and a girl laughing in a summer field. Her voice was steel wrapped in mourning. "Thermals show the kids in Trucks 3 and 4."
Ren stared at the platform below, eyes locked on Shinobu's glowing silhouette. "I'll handle the commander."
What followed came not like a thunderclap—but as a shiver.
An explosion bloomed behind Truck 6, Serena's charge sending rails skyward in a plume of flame and steel. Enforcers were hurled like ragdolls into the wet glass of the terminal's ruin. Gunfire burst from Hiroshi's side, streaks of red lancing the dark. The Kagerou fighters moved with brutal precision—ghosts in the chaos, driven by loss and need.
Mika leapt to Truck 3, slashing hinges with her plasma torch. Sparks danced like fireflies.
"Stay down!" she shouted to the children inside, her voice slicing through the panic. "We're getting you out!"
But in the shadows, death began to move.
Shinobu stepped into motion—graceful, inhuman. Her blades sang through air and flesh alike. One of the youngest—Riku, seventeen, bright-eyed and dreaming of books—was sliced clean in half mid-sprint, his body folding into the tracks with a soft, wet thump.
Ren felt the scream build in his chest but buried it beneath resolve.
He stepped into her path.
"Shinobu," he called, his voice trembling not with fear—but with memory. "Look at me."
She halted.
For a fraction of a second, the gold in her eyes flickered—something behind the light shifted. A memory, a question, a breath.
"…R-Ren…?" she rasped, voice warping between distortion and sorrow.
The helm hissed. Black ichor surged through her veins, veins that pulsed visibly beneath translucent skin. The hesitation died. Her blade surged, cutting through air where Ren's head had been a moment before.
He rolled aside, dust and rain kicking into his lungs.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you!" he shouted, barely dodging the next strike.
Her laugh split the darkness—a sound not fully her own. "You didn't save me. You remade me. I'm what you couldn't be. What you were too afraid to become."
As they fought, elsewhere, another miracle unfolded.
Yui crouched beside Truck 3, her hands trembling. Rain streaked through her hair, plastering it to her face as her pupils flared with that uncanny golden light. She touched the lock. The metal screamed, then melted like wax under a sun that should not exist.
Inside, children huddled in silence—filthy, bone-thin, and too afraid to hope.
From the ventilation shaft above, Ami's voice rang out. "Yui! Hurry!"
An enforcer emerged from the shadows—his armor groaning, baton crackling with electric venom. He raised it over Yui's back.
She screamed.
Not in fear.
In rejection.
The scream wasn't a sound—it was a shattering. Glass cracked. Steel groaned inward. The enforcer's armor collapsed like foil around him, bone and machinery crushed in an instant. He died without even falling.
Yui stared at her own hands, eyes wide with horror.
"I-I didn't mean to…"
Ren's hand grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back from the edge of herself. "Later," he whispered. "We move now."
But Shinobu wasn't done.
She pinned Ren against the wrecked train car, ichor dripping from her mouth like venom. Her blade hovered at his throat.
"Mother wants the girl," she whispered, breath thick with rot. "Your precious Yui. She's ready."
Ren's hand moved faster than thought.
The syringe plunged into her neck—milky blue fluid rushing into corrupted veins. The Eclipse serum.
Shinobu convulsed.
The helm burst apart with a screech, shards of skull clattering to the floor. Her face emerged from beneath—the rot unmistakable, but hers. A human face, weeping.
"…too late," she whispered, collapsing in his arms like a dying leaf. The ichor pooled beneath her like spilled ink.
From the edge of the platform, Koji screamed. "Truck 5's on the move! There's a payload—20 argwan confirmed!"
The world narrowed. The roar of engines, the blur of panicked motion. Ren's heart stopped. That truck would vaporize what was left of the station… and every child within it.
Ren turned to Yui.
"Can you stop it?"
She shook her head violently, tears tracing lines through dirt and blood. "I—I'll try…"
She closed her eyes. Her breath stilled.
The truck's wheels crumpled beneath unseen pressure, screeching as they locked. It groaned to a halt a hundred meters out..
Harato moved.
He didn't hesitate.
"Take the kids and go _ I will stop them," he growled.
Ren grabbed his arm. "You'll die."
"Better than rotting underground," harato said with a smirk, he grabbed the bombs and ran to them.
Ren didn't watch him go.
He ran
He ran and then he .
The explosion tore through the station like a sun trying to be born. The roof ripped apart in molten pieces. For a moment, the moon shone clearly through the smoke and ash, silver and serene, as if watching from some unreachable heaven.
No trace of harato was ever found.
In the aftermath, the silence felt almost sacred. Like the station was holding its breath for those who never left.
Twenty-three children survived. Eight Kagerou fighters did not. Among the bodies was Shinobu—her eyes open, staring not in rage, but in release. Her final words carved themselves into Ren's thoughts, as if she had spoken them directly into his marrow.
"She's already in Yui… Mother is… everywhere…"
And then… only rain.