The medical ward was bathed in the soft, medicinal glow of jade mana-crystals. Kuraido sat upright in his bed, his chest wrapped in bandages that pulsed with his own erratic, flickering energy. His "Sunside" and "Moonside" were finally stabilizing, but his eyes were hollow, haunted by the screams of the Academy's fall.
Shinji sat by his side. He didn't offer a platitude. Instead, he reached out and gripped Kuraido's shoulder.
"I saw them, Kuraido," Shinji whispered, his voice trembling with a weight that made the room feel small. "I saw our parents. In Lunaris."
Kuraido stiffened, his eyes snapping to Shinji's. "What are you talking about? They've been dead for Decade and half, Shinji. They were just names on a casualty list."
"No," Shinji replied, and for the next hour, he poured the silver truth of the lunar vision into the silence between them. He told him of Shin and Albert—the legendary captains who stood against a god-sized reaper. He told him of Rei and Hoshina, their mothers, who spent their final heartbeats not in prayer, but in a tactical sacrifice to ensure their sons lived.
"They were forced into that mission, Kuraido. The government of Limana threw them away like spent matches," Shinji's voice grew cold. "But they didn't die for a kingdom. They died for us. You aren't just an child with no parents. You are the son of the Solar Flame. And I am the son of the Abyss."
Kuraido stayed silent for a long time, tears carving paths through the dust on his face. He looked at his hands—one glowing with a faint golden warmth, the other with a cool lunar blue. "They gave us everything... just so we could breathe. And now the world wants to take that breath away too."
"Let them try," Shinji said, his eyes flashing with a new, violet-silver light. "We aren't just surviving anymore. We're the legacy they died to protect."
THE RUMBLING OF GONAYA
Two days later, the "Rumbling" arrived.
From the high battlements of the Ukyo Wall, the horizon was no longer a line of trees and earth. It was a tide of shifting, black meat. Thousands of Maiju—from the scuttling D-ranks to the mountain-sized S-rank behemoths—were marching in a rhythmic, earth-shaking unison. At their center, the seven Grotesque Maiju—the former students of 0-E—loomed like dark heralds of the apocalypse.
The air in Ukyo was thick with the scent of fear. Five thousand Sorcerer-Knights of the Jade Legion stood in formation, their spears trembling. They knew the math. They were outnumbered ten to one.
Emperor Menardius Zephyrin St. Cloud stepped onto the grand balcony overlooking the military plaza. He did not wear his ceremonial robes. He wore battle-worn silver plate, his cape snapping in the wind. He looked down at his soldiers, and for a moment, the Emperor was gone, replaced by a commander who had seen too much blood.
"Everything you thought had meaning!" Menardius's voice boomed, amplified by mana-siren until it shook the very stones of the city. "Every hope, dream, or moment of happiness you've cherished... None of it matters as you lie bleeding out on that battlefield! None of it changes what a speeding rock does to a human body!"
A heavy silence fell over the legion. The soldiers looked up, their faces pale.
"We all die," Menardius continued, his eyes burning with a fierce, tragic intensity. "Does that mean our lives are meaningless? Does that mean there was no point in being born? Would you say that of our slain comrades? What about their lives? Were they meaningless?!"
He slammed his fist against the stone railing. "They were not! Their memory serves as an example to us all! The fallen fathers, the sacrificed mothers, the brothers who held the line so we could sleep one more night—their lives have meaning because we, the living, refuse to forget them!"
The Emperor drew his sword, the blade glowing with a blinding, righteous light.
"As we ride to certain death, we trust our successors to do the same for us! Because my soldiers do not CLASP! My Sorcerers do not yield! When faced with the cruelty of this world, my Sorceres push TOWARD! My Sorcerers scream out! MY SORCERERS RAMPAGE!"
"FOR GONAYA! FOR THE LIVING!" the legion roared back, a wave of sound so powerful it momentarily pushed back the encroaching fog of the Maiju.
THE PHANTOM'S DEPLOYMENT
Amidst the roaring crowd, Menardius turned to the shadow standing behind him. Wan Harrison Fenris-Valkyr was no longer holding a scrapbook. He wasn't smiling. He wore the midnight-blue mantle of the St. Command, his eyes sharp as shards of ice.
"Commander Wan," Menardius said, his voice dropping to a low, imperial command. "The waves are too dense. If they hit the wall at full strength, the city falls within the hour."
"I know, Sire," Wan replied, his body already beginning to glitch in and out of the physical spectrum.
"You are the only one who can do this," Menardius said, placing a hand on Wan's shoulder. "Via your power, we can thin the herd. Go out without being seen. Kill the high-threat cores within the reach of your stride. Become the ghost that haunts their nightmares."
Wan nodded, the "Phantom Tourist" persona completely replaced by the Saint of the Void. "It is what it is, your Majesty. I'll make sure the 'Rumbling' feels a little more like a funeral march."
Wan stepped off the balcony, but he didn't fall. He folded into space with a sharp pop.
A hundred miles away, in the heart of the marching Maiju horde, a rift opened. Wan appeared in the center of a pack of Shadow-Stalker Maiju. Before they could even register his scent, he activated Void Mantle. To the monsters, he simply ceased to exist.
He moved like a scalpel through the meat. He appeared behind a three-headed Chimera-Maiju, his hand passing through its chest like smoke before solidifying to crush its mana-core.
Pop. He was a kilometer further, decapitating a winged horror.
Pop. He appeared atop the head of a mountain-sized Behemoth, placing a "Postcard" sticker on its eye. "Wish you were here," he whispered.
The Behemoth was instantly teleported ten thousand feet into the air, its massive weight crashing down onto the smaller Maiju waves below, crushing thousands in a single, localized earthquake.
Wan was a blur of "Zero-Point Energy," a singular assassin turning the tide of an army. But as he looked toward the center of the horde, he saw them—the seven Grotesque Maiju.
He saw the Silk Widow's threads beginning to glow. He saw the Iron Juggernaut turn its red eyes toward his flickering position.
"Oh," Wan muttered, a small, cold sweat breaking on his brow. "This is going to be a long night."
Back at the wall, Shinji stood beside Kuraido, his hand resting on the hilt of a new blade. He watched the explosions on the horizon where Wan was working.
"It's time," Shinji said.
"Yeah," Kuraido replied, his hands igniting with a combined solar and lunar aura. "Let's go show them what our parents bought with their lives."
[TO BE CONTINUED]