Assassinated.
The word was not a concept. It was a physical thing, a shard of ice that lodged itself deep in Aiko's chest, right beside the contained darkness of the Void.
Murdered.
Not a random tragedy. Not a cruel twist of fate. A hit. An execution.
Her entire life, the foundational trauma that had defined her, was not an accident. It was an act of war.
"Who?" Aiko's voice was a dead, hollow whisper. The grief, the shock, the thirteen years of misplaced guilt—it was all coalescing into something new. Something cold and hard and sharp. Rage.
Izanami's ancient eyes held hers. There was no pity in them now. Only a shared, ancient anger. "They have many names. The Unravelers. The Architects of Silence. The Children of the Void." "They are an ancient order, old as the mistake that created the Nox. They believe existence is a flaw. A painful, chaotic disease."
"They believe the only true peace is the perfect, silent emptiness of nothing." "And anything that strengthens the Veil, that promotes life and connection… is their enemy."
"Guardians," Zara interjected, her voice sharp with disbelief. "You're saying there's an entire cosmic faction dedicated to hunting down Aiko's family?"
"Not just hunting," Izanami corrected, her voice grim. "Eradicating." "The Tanaka bloodline is a threat to their philosophy. Our very existence is a testament to the fact that the Veil can be strengthened, that balance can be maintained." "We are proof that their entropy is not inevitable."
Aiko's mind reeled. The hunter. The Nox Lords. The attack on Heaven. It was all connected. A single, coordinated war against existence itself. And her family—her family—had been on the front lines.
"You said… my father was a scholar," Aiko said, latching onto a detail in the swirling chaos of her mind. "A keeper of history."
"He was," Izanami affirmed. "The burden of true power skips generations. My power is fading. His was one of study. Yours… yours is the strongest to manifest in a millennium." "He knew the risks. He chronicled them. He prepared for the day the enemy would come for his child."
The old woman turned, her gnarled cane tapping softly on the stone floor. She walked toward the shattered altar at the far end of the church. Behind it, half-hidden in the shadows, was a heavy stone lectern, covered in a thick layer of dust.
Izanami placed a wrinkled hand on the lectern's surface. "He left you a legacy, child." "A warning. A guide. A burden."
She blew a thin stream of air from her lips. It wasn't a normal breath. It carried a faint, silver shimmer. The dust on the lectern did not scatter. It dissolved, vanishing as if it had never been.
Resting on the stone was a book.
It was large, bound in something that looked like dark, cracked leather, but felt older. Much older. The cover was bare, save for a single, stylized symbol embossed in faded silver. A circle, with a vertical line running through it. The symbol for balance. The mark of the Guardian.
"What is it?" Aiko asked, her voice hushed.
"It is our history," Izanami said. "Our knowledge. Our pain." "It is the Grimoire of the Tanaka Clan."
Aiko approached the lectern slowly, as if drawn by an invisible force. She reached out a trembling hand to touch the cover.
The family grimoire was written in blood and bound in something that might have been human skin. Aiko decided she didn't want to know.
The moment her fingers made contact with the ancient binding, a jolt went through her. Not electricity. Not magic. Memory.
Flashes of faces she'd never seen. Whispers of a language she'd never heard. The feeling of standing watch on a shore of stars. It was the collective consciousness of her ancestors, sleeping within the pages.
She pulled her hand back with a gasp.
"It recognizes you," Izanami said, a faint, proud smile on her lips. "You are its rightful heir."
Zara stepped forward, her skepticism a tangible force field. "A book," she said flatly. "Our grand strategy against a cosmic death cult is a dusty old book."
"This book contains knowledge that your precious Council has forgotten," Izanami retorted, her eyes flashing. "It contains the true nature of the Veil. The patterns of the Nox. The weaknesses of our enemy."
She opened the grimoire. The pages were not paper. They were thin, preserved sheets of something else, and the script was drawn in a dark, reddish-brown ink that had not faded with the centuries. The script shifted as Aiko looked at it, the strange, archaic symbols resolving into the familiar lines of Japanese kanji.
"It can only be read by one of the blood," Izanami explained.
She turned the pages, her movements slow and reverent, until she found what she was looking for. "Ah," she breathed. "Here. The final entries of your father. Kenji Tanaka."
Aiko leaned forward, her heart pounding. She saw the script. It was a strong, steady hand, the strokes filled with a scholar's precision. Her father's handwriting. A connection to a man who was only a ghost of a memory.
She began to read aloud, her voice soft and trembling.
"Entry 734. The anomaly in the Veil is growing stronger. The patterns are consistent with the Void signatures I have studied. They are preparing to breach the boundary. I fear my time, and the time of peace, is running short."
"Entry 735. Izanami-sama has confirmed my fears. The whispers from the other side speak of a hunter. A specialist. They are not just testing the Veil anymore. They are coming for my daughter."
"My Aiko. Her light is so bright. She shines like a newborn star. They can see her all the way from the Void. How can I protect a star from the darkness that craves it?"
Aiko's voice broke. She pressed a hand to her mouth, a sob catching in her throat. He knew. He knew she was in danger. He had been terrified for her.
"He was a good man," Izanami said softly. "A better father."
Zara remained silent, her arms crossed, but her cynical facade was cracking. She was listening intently.
Aiko took a shaky breath and continued reading.
"Entry 736. I have finished the final warding sequence around the house. It will not stop the hunter, not for long. But it will slow it. It will give my wife, my beautiful, brave Hana, time to enact the escape protocol."
"She does not have the blood, but her spirit is stronger than any Guardian's. She argues with me. She wants to stay and fight. She does not understand that her fight is to get Aiko away. To give our daughter a chance at a life I was denied."
"My only regret is that I will not see her grow. I will not see the magnificent woman she will become. I pray she never has to read these words. I pray she lives a long, normal, boring life, blissfully ignorant of this burden."
Aiko couldn't read anymore. Tears streamed down her cheeks, dripping onto the ancient page. He hadn't wanted this for her. He had died trying to prevent it.
"He gave his life so you could have a choice," Izanami said, her voice thick with emotion. "The Council stole that choice from you. They forced you into ignorance, believing it was safety."
"But the blood will always call to the blood. Your power could not be contained." Izanami turned a few more pages. "Look here."
The script changed. It was older, more ornate. The page was not text, but a complex diagram. It showed the mortal world as a flat plane. Above it, a realm of light labeled 'Celestial'. Below it, a realm of shadow labeled 'Void'. And between them, a shimmering, fibrous barrier. The Veil.
"Your Council teaches that the Veil is a simple boundary," Izanami said, her words directed at Zara. "A wall between life and death." "That is a lie of simplicity."
She traced a line on the diagram. "The Veil is not a wall. It is an ecosystem. It lives. It breathes. It has currents and tides. Spirits are not just ghosts; they are the plankton of this ecosystem. The Nox are a disease, a cancer that grows in the weak spots."
Her finger stopped at a point on the Veil where a small, human-like figure stood. The figure had one hand in the mortal world and one hand in the spiritual, holding the fibers of the Veil together.
"This is a Guardian," she said. "Our power is not to talk to the dead. That is a side effect of proximity." "Our true purpose, our burden, is to maintain the health of the Veil itself."
"We are not mediums, Aiko. We are cosmic gardeners. We pull the weeds—the Nox. We nurture the soil—the flow of spiritual energy. We mend the tears caused by great tragedies or powerful rituals."
The twist from the outline landed, re-framing Aiko's entire understanding of her abilities. She didn't just help spirits. She was meant to be a pillar of reality.
"Your power isn't just about empathy," Izanami continued, her eyes burning with intensity. "It is about balance. You can feel the Veil's pain. And you have the power to soothe it."
"That surge of power in the station… you weren't just lashing out. You were instinctively trying to mend the damage the Praetorians were causing to the local reality. You were trying to restore balance."
"And Yuki?" Aiko asked, her voice a whisper. "And the rift?"
"A soul trapped outside the system is the ultimate imbalance," Izanami explained. "A wound that can never heal. Your instinct, your very soul, screamed to correct it. To put the lost piece back where it belonged."
It all clicked into place. Her power wasn't a curse. Her empathy wasn't a weakness. They were tools for a job she was born to do.
"The entity that killed my parents," Aiko said, her new rage a cold, hard stone in her gut. "The one that sent the hunter. You said it's the same one that's behind the Nox Lords."
"I did," Izanami confirmed grimly.
"How do you know?" Zara challenged. "What is the proof?"
Izanami didn't answer. She simply turned one final page in the grimoire.
It was the last entry. It was not written in her father's neat, scholarly hand. It was a single, jagged symbol, scrawled across the page with what looked like a dying, desperate strength. It looked like a black, twisted star.
The moment Aiko saw it, she felt a phantom pain from the scar on her chest. The symbol seemed to pulse with a familiar, ancient malice.
"Your father did not die instantly," Izanami said, her voice heavy. "When the hunter fell, he had a moment. Just a moment. He crawled to the grimoire." "He could not write. But he could draw. He drew what he saw in the hunter's mind in its final second."
"The sigil of its master."
Zara stared at the symbol, her face paling. "That's not possible," she breathed. "That sigil… it was sealed in the Celestial Archives. It belongs to a primordial entity. A being from before the Veil. Something that was supposed to have been defeated and erased at the dawn of time."
"Erased?" Izanami let out a dry, humourless laugh. "You cannot erase an idea. You cannot kill an opposite." "Your Council did not defeat it. They merely… imprisoned it. And now, its prison is cracking."
"This entity," Izanami said, her voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to shake the very foundations of the church. "It is the source of the Void's power. It is the architect of the Nox. It is the ancient enemy of my bloodline."
She looked at Aiko, her eyes filled with the weight of a thousand years of war.
"And it is the same being that created the crisis with the Nox Lords that sent your Reaper to find you in the first place." "It has been playing a long, long game, child. It manipulated Heaven. It manipulated the Nox."
"It orchestrated everything, all to bring the two of you together." "To create the very paradox the Council fears. To create a weapon powerful enough to tear down the Veil once and for all."
"It created you."