POV: Split — Kaito (Past) / Haruki (Present)
Locations: Sector 8 – The Old Rings / Sector 6 – Metroline Crosshub
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"One brother burned so the others wouldn't have to kneel."
— Unknown, Unclassified Anchor Fragment
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Kaito – Final Match, Sector 8 Underground Ring
They told him the opponent was new.
They told him the odds were fair.
They told him no Aura-class weapons were allowed.
They lied.
Kaito Takeda walked barefoot across the padded metal ring.
No cheering. No bets being shouted. No smell of oil or spice from the vendor stalls.
Just silence.
And eyes.
He recognized at least three TitanTech observers in the upper rafters.
MIRAGE units buzzed beneath their jackets.
He had already signed the waiver.
"You're not supposed to win this one," the old fight medic whispered.
"Walk out when you can. Or don't."
Kaito didn't answer.
He stepped into stance.
The crowd pulsed low and dim — fake cheering piped through old speakers.
His opponent entered from the west gate.
Too tall. Too still. Too… perfect.
One of those engineered fighters. Probably laced with threadcode—recursion-resistant muscle, fast-twitch enhancement, directional vision overlays.
And a flicker of orange flame in the corner of one eye.
Kaito sighed.
"Figures."
The bell rang.
He didn't wait.
His style wasn't flashy. No wasted movement.
Feints that led into locks. Elbows with follow-through. Low kicks designed to break rhythm, not bone.
But the other fighter didn't break rhythm.
He absorbed it.
Analyzed it.
And then—downloaded it.
Two minutes in, Kaito recognized the pattern: adaptive phase mimicry.
A match wasn't being fought.
It was being recorded.
He dodged a strike.
Rolled under another.
Then felt it.
The delay.
Not his. Theirs.
A pulse of command-line input behind the strike.
The opponent hesitated, then moved—not out of instinct, but from script.
And in that moment, Kaito knew.
They weren't testing him.
They were deleting him.
The final strike came without grace.
A knee to the ribs. Lifted. Slammed.
But Kaito's eyes never left the rafters.
He saw the corporate observer take one note.
Then look away.
And in that second — as his vision filled with heat, as the world faded — Kaito smiled.
"At least Ryuu's not here."
And the fire took him.
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Haruki – Sector 6 Courier Hub, Seven Days Ago
(This was a memory. A sliver of light before the silence.)
Haruki Takeda liked early mornings.
The tram lines were still asleep.
The streets didn't talk yet.
And the sky hadn't remembered how to be grey.
He worked solo shift today. Cargo-cycle and a handheld beacon scanner. No Core enhancements, no Aura protocol. Just muscle and pedals.
It suited him.
Some days he missed his brothers.
But he had learned not to ask too often.
Ryuu didn't like to talk unless it was important.
And Kaito...
"He's gone," Ryuu had said.
"Let it stay quiet."
So Haruki did.
Mostly.
He pedaled up to Metroline Gate 22.
The scanner flickered.
Then glitched.
Just a frame.
Just long enough for the city to hold its breath.
His datapad buzzed.
A system tag:
[RECURSION DISTORTION: LEVEL 2 — TAGGED UNKNOWN]
[ZONE: 13A]
He blinked.
"Ryuu?"
No message came.
He delivered the parcel anyway.
And as he turned down the final street, he caught his reflection in the mirrored plating of a parked drone hauler.
His eyes glinted.
Not gold.
But close.
And behind him, for just a second, he saw—
A knight.
Standing where his shadow should've been.
"Keep pedaling," he told himself."We're not there yet."
The tram buzzed past overhead.
And in its windows—reflected in ten layers of metallic sheen and glitch—
The Firebird and the Springtree watched the city forget them.
(It was the last confirmed time anyone saw him. The city just didn't realize it yet.)
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"We don't die when we fall," someone once said.
"We die when they stop remembering what we stood for."
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