“Excellent work, Hakana,” Gus Ishimatsu growled into his phone. “Keep watch, as instructed. I expect full recordings of the situation on your return.”
“Roger that.”
A click, and the line cut out. The CEO clenched his jaw, slamming the phone down onto the leather coating the top of his desk. Powerful hands raked fervently through close-cropped white hair, massaging a scalp with far too many kinks embedded into the skin and bone. The man leaned forward in his chair—wooden frame creaking under his bulk—and began kneading his forehead with his knuckles. His vision continued to swim. The wrathful hands eternally grasping at his soul didn’t relinquish, but he would not falter. His flow would never cease. He would maintain sovereignty at all costs. Sweat dripped down the side of his face, as the muscles in his face began to hurt from tensing so intently.
“Twelve years. It has been over a decade, a decade of humiliating stagnation.” Gus’ voice was strained. Sinews in his throat flexed with every compromised sound that rumbled from his clenched jaw. “And so again I ask myself, as there’s no use in asking you—” He stood from his desk with a jolt, the chair shooting out from underneath him. Steadying his swaying stance, both hands pressed resolute into the tabletop, Gus turned a maddened gaze over his shoulder, angry forks of blood coursing through the whites of all three eyes. “How long do you intend to spite me so, Tyrant?!”
“You will never be rid of me, Gus Ishimatsu. Your efforts will ultimately be in vain.” Equally matched in both height and stature, the Tyrant—a towering, armoured spectre of a man—loomed in the corner of Gus’ office. His eyes was hidden by an ornate war helm, body clad in plates of resplendent gold. Light paradoxically both passed through the spectre, as well as glinted from the glorious metal. The figure had his arms folded, mouth warped into perpetual frown. “You stand at the top of a mighty army, and yet must delegate even the smallest of tasks to your pitiful underlings. You are a pathetic excuse of a man!”
“Silence!”
The Tyrant drifted over to the centre of the room. “At long last you uncovered my brother’s tomb, but to what end? The fragment of the Ascension Blade slipped through your fingers. And so still you struggle to unite them, forced to rely on the flailing of lesser men to achieve your goals. Weak.”
“You are a scourge above all else.” Gus threw his desk aside, striding up to the spectre. “Had you not dedicated your meaningless existence after death to becoming the eternal thorn in my side, I would have united the Ascension Blade myself long ago. I would not need to rely on anyone else. How cruel and pathetic must you be, such that you’re subjecting me to that which I wish to eradicate? What kind of King can you call yourself, one that revels in a humanity plagued by weakness, and cannot see past his own faded reflection.” He clenched a fist in front of the Tyrant’s face; the spirit didn’t so much as flinch. “Mark my words. I will rip this power—my power, that I have dedicated every fibre of my being to attain—away from you,” a demented grin overtook the man’s face, “and oh, how I will smile, watching you fade away into meaningless oblivion.”
“You are only human. You are unfit to rule.”
“And you are a fragment of the past. You are already dead! Your opportunity has passed! Furthermore, your pride underscores your arrogance. After all, we are angling for the same goal! Cease your grabbing at my soul so that I may succeed where you have already failed!”
“There can only be one God King.”
Gus snarled, “It will not be you.”
* * *
For a moment, all was still. The students, terrified out of their wits, stood in shock. The Rejected loomed—hulking, unnatural figures whose movements betrayed no trace of autonomy. They were vessels of another, singular will. Unnatural quantities of muscle rippled beneath skin stretched taut. Odd twitches jerked their heads to the side. Every single solitary eye focused in on the boy at the centre of the classroom, the hilt of a knife protruding from his forehead.
Dentaku Bango took a step forward, reaching out. His mind reeled, grasping for any possible semblance of logic. Rinkaku Harigane, his esteemed rival, couldn’t possibly have succumbed to suicide. The thought clashed violently with the manic, chilling laughter of moments ago. Panic, yes. Even hysteria, he could understand. But the Rinkaku Harigane he knew wouldn’t have ever folded under such pressure.
“Bango, no—don’t!”
A girl clutched at his arm. Her hand shook, her grip tightened. Bango turned. Tears freely flowed down her cheeks, skin paler than snow.
Worse still, he couldn’t remember her name.
“You’ll die!” She didn’t dare raise her voice, lest it cost her own life.
“I need to—” Bango shook himself free and took another step. He hadn’t finished his sentence.
What did he need to do? He wasn’t sure. He just needed to get there in time. In time for what? That didn’t matter. Every step carried with it a hundred miles of weight. Denial ran rampant through his veins. Harigane couldn’t be dead. The knot of dread twisted tighter.
Rin stood motionless, his arms limp at his sides. Blood trickled slowly from the wound, but still he stood. Dead men didn’t stand. And yet—Bango edged closer, step by tentative step. His hand hovered above the boy’s shoulder. Before he could make contact, a mighty wind picked him up and threw him against the back wall.
Life and movement of an inexplicable shade coursed through Rin’s body.
An overwhelming presence descended; supernal pressure from above, like the weight of a hundred miles of ocean above. Bango winced, unable to take his gaze away from the floor. His knees buckled, and he sank. His knuckles went white with the strain of pushing himself off the floor. The other survivors had crumpled under pressure. The hair on Bango’s neck stood on end. The air crackled with static, the faint tang of ozone biting at the back of his throat.
Rin’s hands twitched. His right arm rose, fingers grasping the knife embedded in his forehead. With a grotesque, deliberate motion, he wrenched it free with a thunderous two-tone howl. The room rumbled, the glass in the windows made a resonating chime, and the Rejected began to scream: more unholy noises to join this wicked chorus.
But then, an eerie silence.
Bango’s gaze darted to the mirror on the far wall—and he froze. Rin’s face had changed. Everything looked older. Both eyes were closed, a serene expression. Black markings etched themselves under his left eye. Worst of all, from where the knife had protruded moments ago, a gleaming third eye parted the skin.
A tide of nausea swelled in Bango’s throat. Questions flooded his mind, unceasing. Before he could voice a single one, Rin’s eyes snapped open, and a voice—not his own—spoke, reverberating through the space with a chilling authority.
This couldn’t be Rinkaku Harigane anymore.
“These signatures… I wasn’t the first to awaken after all.” The Architect’s thin mouth curled down into a snarl. “What a crying shame.”
The centre reject tilted its head back with a scream, then lunged. The students all cried out, but the Architect didn’t look fazed. Raising a hand, he snapped his fingers. The outline of a cube materialised around the reject’s head.
CAPTURE
The cube solidified, slicing right through the creature’s neck. The reject stopped in its tracks, and its head fell from its shoulders. The body fell forward and hit the ground with a thud that made the floor shake and dislodged a cloud of plaster dust from the ceiling. The body then broke apart, flaking and dissolving into brimstone, soot and ash.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The Architect reached above his head, stretching both arms. “Not a bad vessel, although—” he mused, looking his new body up and down. “I wonder how long my control will last?” Muscles strained at their seams. Tendons twitched at every joint. Even the bones ached from the strain. This body was fragile; its flow, limited. His expression soured. “Vexing, but no matter.”
The two remaining Rejected couldn’t stand still for long. They twitched and writhed on the spot, twisting themselves into a furious rage before hurling themselves at the Architect. Their fists never reached him. Heavy thuds resounded from behind a transparent wall marked by a glowing white outline. The wall stopped their punches dead. The resultant force shook the room.
The bystanders all suffered a sharp intake of breath.
The Architect looked at the Rejected, and his eyes narrowed.
“Vile abominations,” he growled. “Begone from my sight.”
Two snaps of his fingers later, and they met the same fate as the first. Their severed heads hit the ground. Both corpses began to disintegrate, burning away into that same, blackened ash.
The Architect turned around. He met the fearful gazes of the silent students with ambivalence, perhaps even a little pity.
When his eyes locked onto Bango, his very soul was laid bare. A primordial fear chilled him to the bone. He shuddered, unable to break the connection. “Harigane, what the hell did you just do?”
The Architect did not reply. Without a word, he turned on his heel, stepping over the debris of the ruined wall and into the corridor beyond. The students from the other rooms on the third floor—packed up against the stubborn double doors—had witnessed everything in silent shock. They all stared at the Architect. A few muttered Rin’s name, recognition dawning on their faces through the clouds of panic. The Architect paid them no mind but stopped all of a sudden.
The sensation was unmistakable. A dormant signature. The steady plink of water onto the still surface of a lake. The Architect listened in for a sound that did not exist. Could it be her? He listened a moment longer. It was near. The floor below, in fact.
He clasped his hands together, drawing them apart to form glowing white lines in the shape of a square. With a flick, the frame descended, carving a hole in the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation, he jumped on through, leaving both the crowds and ashes of the Rejected in his wake.
* * *
Never before had Kinuka Amibari known such paralysing fear. A blur of chaos—shouts, crashing debris, and the piercing cries of the dying. The second-floor corridor had turned into a slaughterhouse, the air heavy with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid stench of destruction. Three monstrous figures, grotesque beyond imagination, rampaged with a single-minded purpose. Anything—or anyone—in their path was reduced to mangled remnants.
She and a group of seven others were all that remained.
The rest lay decimated across the floor. A few had been caught in the warpath, and a few brave idiots had thrown themselves to the lions. Those alive were all backed against the fire exit. The door was jammed. They were trapped. The monsters only drew closer.
Kinuka wanted to run, her legs were leaden; she wanted to scream, her vocal chords had snapped. The others cowered behind her. Some of her classmates had sunk to their knees, faces buried in trembling hands. Others cowered behind her, whimpering prayers to gods they’d long stopped believing in. But Kinuka couldn’t close her eyes, couldn’t look away. Those horrible, solitary eyes: the Rejected’s cavernous, empty gazes bore into her soul, unseeing.
Between them, however, a square hole cut through the ceiling cut. A boy descended slowly through along with wisps of plaster. Deliberate, graceful, he landed on his feet. Clutched in one hand was the fragment of a knife. The three Rejected froze at the sight. He was looking down. Curtains of messy black hair obscured his face. Kinuka’s heart jolted. That appearance could only belong to one person.
“Rin!”
The boy raised his head, and Kinuka’s relief curdled into a scream. “What happened to you?!” The grotesque third eye blinked from Rin’s forehead, and beneath his left eye, an ominous black mark had etched itself deep into his skin. “Rin! Answer me!”
Far deeper than she could remember, the voice that spilled from her friend’s lips made the bone marrow in her legs melt and ooze out over the floor.
“Five-thousand years.” Each syllable chimed with authority, a church bell. “Do you know the significance of that number?” The invocation was only met with silence, but the sermon wasn’t over. “That’s how much time has passed since I last felt the heat of the sun on my face, or taken a breath of fresh air. Five-thousand years since I was denied the very paradise I sought to create, punished for my transgressions.”
The Architect’s voice swelled with a bitter fervour. The three remaining Rejected loomed behind him, their guttural growls echoing in their jaws.
“To what end?” He asked. “What purpose did it serve imprisoning me in that hell beyond—”
One of the creatures lunged, its massive fist arcing toward the Architect’s unprotected neck. The students screamed, pointing, but the Architect didn’t flinch. The moment before impact, flesh was severed. The severed limb flew across the room, spraying viscous black blood that splattered the walls. The Architect looked over his shoulder with a gaze that could freeze hell twice over.
“How dare you interrupt me,” he seethed, venom dripping from his teeth. “Worthless scum.”
A shimmering plane of light, an impossibly thin knife, split the reject in two. Liberated from its mangled prison of flesh, the reject crumbled and disintegrated before it hit the floor.
The Architect turned around to stare down the other two. His lip curled.
“There is no room for you in my world. Miserable, unsightly. Cease your desperate clinging to life, you Rejected.”
Bringing his hands together, he executed a complex gesture. Thin white lines connected his fingers; he wove them with a master’s ease. A clap of his hands and a snap of his fingers later, he had created an intricate gauze between his fingers. The Architect raised it to his eye level and stared at the rejects through the grid.
LATTICE
欞 RENJI
What followed was the awful dicing of flesh. The air was alight with the singing of blades. A thousand thin white lines slashed into the Rejected, dividing them up into smaller and smaller cubes. Suspended in the air a moment longer, the cubes then lost their arrangement and spilled out over the floor, charring as they dissolved into ash.
Kinuka trembled as Rin—no, not Rin—turned toward her. His movements were measured, regal. His stature was unchanged, yet he carried himself with a timeless poise and gravity.
“Rin,” she whispered, her voice cracking as she reached out. She didn’t have time to think. The next moment, the Architect had swept her off her feet. Dropping to one knee, he held her head in his arms, a finger held against her lips.
“You don’t need to say anything.”
In the blink of an eye, he held the blade above her face, tip of the blade touching gently her forehead. Kinuka was frozen in fear, too shocked to move, let alone speak. With the precision of a surgeon, the Architect plunged the blade deep into Kinuka’s forehead. She gargled out a cry, before her eyes rolled back in her skull.
Screams of disgust, shock and horror rang out from the observers to this gruesome spectacle, but the Architect took no notice. Laying her out on the floor, he withdrew the knife from her skull. It made a horrible, wet sound, and blood—Kinuka’s blood—stained the pearlescent metal. With a flick, all traces of red slid from the blade and flecked the walls.
“What did you do to her?” one student cried in outrage.
The Architect stood and sheathed the blade. The man stared out of an adjacent window. Further ripples echoed through the surrounding space; fainter, but there still. The Architect could feel them approaching. The sounds of sirens on the horizon grew louder too. It’d be unwise to remain here.
He snapped his fingers. A cuboidal frame appeared around Kinuka like a coffin.
CAPTURE
The girl’s chest, steadily rising and falling with each breath, froze. The faces of the box shimmered. The Architect effortlessly lifted the box by one corner, as though it weighed nothing at all, and shrank it the size of a matchbox in his palm. Putting it away, the Architect stood. He looked down, forlorn. Would she even—
“Harigane!” A voice from earlier interrupted his train of thought. The Architect turned. The fire exit had opened from the other side. A crowd from the third floor stood bunched near the doorway. At the front was Dentaku Bango. “You’d better have an excellent explanation for what you’ve just done.”
The Architect glared right through him. He raised the blade briefly, before deciding against the thought and turning back to the window. “I’ll have need of you yet.”
Bango took a step back, unnerved. “Answer me!”
Casting that same glowing outline, the Architect’s mysterious technique cleaved a rectangle into the wall. Driving his foot into it, glass shattered, and the brickwork fell through.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Bango shouted, but there was no stopping him.
With the cube containing Kinuka in one hand, the Architect dove from the second story window. He hit the ground running, landing with extraordinary grace, and pelted across the field at speed. It didn’t take long before the man had disappeared through a belt of trees and into the city’s concrete expanse.
Everyone shuffled closer to the hole in the wall and stared out over the field. Shocked reactions of bystanders echoed in Bango’s ears.
Bango screwed his eyes shut, but the glare Harigane had given him was burned into his retina. The sirens in the distance became louder; the approaching police cars and ambulances drew nearer. All Bango could think of at that moment were questions, questions he knew he could never expect an answer to. He would never forget what he had seen that day, or in the eyes—all three of them—of the boy he had once called his greatest rival.
"Senketsu Incident".