Arc 5: The Last Codex
The world felt colder the moment Reiji opened his eyes.
Concrete dust drifted through the smoky air, swirling like ash from a broken battlefield. The remnants of the shattered hall behind him crackled under the dying flames, but the fire that once roared during his confrontation with the mirrored entity had almost burned itself out. The ground was stained with dark patterns—blood, shadow, something in between. His limbs trembled. His vision pulsed. His own breathing sounded foreign in his ears.
Everything felt wrong.
Reiji pushed himself up with a ragged exhale. "Still alive," he murmured, half mocking, half disappointed. His voice cracked. What stared back at him, reflected in a shard of broken glass nearby, wasn't the same person who had entered the hall. His eyes were darker. Sharper. Haunted.
The reflection blinked a split second after he did.
He staggered back.
The mirror shard fell, shattering into dust.
Good. He didn't want to look at it again.
The silence around him wasn't peaceful—just empty, like the world was holding its breath. He felt it: the shift in the air, the disturbance in the layers of shadow that clung to everything like fog. Someone was watching him.
No—more than one.
He stepped over rubble, one hand pressed to his ribs. Blood seeped through the fabric. His injuries from the last battle hadn't healed. They didn't even have time to begin healing. He could still feel every blow, every fracture, every scream echoing in his head.
That thing… that reflection of me…
He forced the memory aside. It was not the time to unravel.
His senses sharpened abruptly—footsteps approaching. Controlled. Synchronized. Not civilians. Not ordinary hunters. Something colder.
Then he heard it—the metallic click of cross-shaped clasps, the soft flutter of cloth, the rigid discipline of a unit trained for one purpose.
Reiji's heart tightened.
Codex Hunters.
The very name was a shadow whispered across dying empires and forgotten ruins. A faction older and more dangerous than most believed. They did not hunt people. They hunted truths—especially those that were never meant to surface. And when those truths were alive… walking… breathing…
They hunted them down.
Reiji pulled himself behind a collapsed pillar, hiding his presence as much as his trembling body allowed. But they were already close. Too close. The air temperature dropped; the wind stilled.
A calm male voice cut through the dust. "The resonance spike originated here. He's close."
Another voice, female, colder. "He's wounded. He won't get far."
Reiji frowned.
They weren't guessing. They knew.
His pulse beat faster.
More footsteps—six? Seven? No… eight. Their formation was tight, the way religious executioners would march when entering a shrine to kill a heretic.
He couldn't hide. Not from them.
A harsh light cut across the rubble, searching. Scanning. Their lanterns weren't normal—white flames that flickered without heat. Codex lanterns. They exposed lies, illusions, altered identities.
And shadows.
Reiji positioned himself low, pressing his back to the broken stone wall. Every breath he took burned.
They came faster than expected.
Too fast.
Maybe the battle with the mirror entity had drawn them. Or maybe they had been following him longer than he realized.
His fingers twitched as he reached for the handle of his blade.
It was then that a voice echoed—not from the Hunters, but from inside him.
A whisper.
A ghost of his own tone.
A presence that shouldn't exist.
"You're not ready for them."
Reiji froze.
His shadow stretched unnaturally across the floor behind him.
He tried to shake it off. "Not now…"
"You don't have a choice."
The voice grew clearer—a tone identical to his own but layered with something ancient. "If they capture you, everything ends."
He gritted his teeth. "Shut up."
But the shadow smiled.
Then the lantern light found him.
"He's here!"
Eight beams narrowed at once, converging on his position.
Reiji didn't wait.
He moved.
His body protested every motion, but instinct overruled pain. He dashed from his cover just as an arc of white flame cut the air behind him, scorching the stone into molten glass. The Hunters spread out with mechanical precision.
"Do not let him merge with his shadow," one of them commanded.
Reiji's heart slammed.
They know.
Three Hunters rushed ahead, forming a triangle formation. Their blades glowed with engraved scripture—symbols of sealing, symbols meant to strip power from the corrupted.
Two more flanked him from the sides.
The remaining three stayed behind, preparing something.
He drew his blade, breath sharp. "You really don't waste time."
One of them answered coldly, "The Last Codex has declared you a priority anomaly. Surrender now, Shinomiya Reiji. Your existence violates—"
He lunged before the sentence finished.
Steel clashed. Sparks burst.
But the Codex Hunters weren't like the Shadows he fought before. They were faster, more precise, and coordinated like they shared one mind. Their blades were not designed to kill—at least not instantly. They were designed to capture, to bind.
Their strikes targeted tendons, pressure points, nerves.
Reiji ducked another glowing arc and countered, slicing across the arm of the nearest Hunter. But instead of blood, a burst of white mist spilled out.
"Substitute units?" he muttered.
"No," the wounded one whispered, voice distorted. "Sanctified vessels."
Their bodies were reinforced with Codex ritual marks—pain suppressed, flesh hardened, souls "aligned" to a doctrine Reiji didn't understand.
But he didn't need to.
He needed to survive.
A Hunter leapt from above, stabbing downward with a scripture-coated spear. Reiji rolled, but pain shot through his side. His movement faltered. The spear grazed his rib, tearing skin.
He hissed. Blood spilled.
A second Hunter grabbed his arm, twisting it with brutal efficiency.
Reiji countered with a headbutt, breaking the Hunter's mask. Beneath it was a young man with pale eyes, expression empty—like he no longer recognized himself.
Reiji shoved him away, chest burning.
More lanterns ignited.
White fire danced in a circle around him.
They were closing in.
"Shinomiya Reiji," the lead Hunter said, stepping forward with a heavy codex chained to his left arm. Every chain rattled with an echo of forgotten laws. "You carry fragments of the First Shadow. It is our duty to reclaim them."
Reiji's blood ran cold.
First Shadow?
The voice in his head murmured, amused.
"You see? They know far more than you do…"
Reiji tightened his grip on his blade. "Get out of my head."
"Make me."
A migraine exploded behind his eyes.
The Hunters saw him falter.
That was their signal.
Six of them rushed him simultaneously.
Reiji met the first attack head-on, parrying a blade that crackled with scripture. Sparks scattered. A second blade slashed at his back—he twisted, barely dodging. A third Hunter aimed for his legs; Reiji leapt back, but another grabbed his collar, dragging him into range of a sealing strike.
The codex-bearing Hunter raised the chained tome. "Bind—"
Reiji drove his blade into the ground.
Shadow erupted outward like a violent pulse, the force knocking back three Hunters and cracking the earth beneath him. But the lantern light pushed against the darkness, weakening it.
His vision blurred.
Not enough… not like this…
One Hunter seized the opening and jammed a sealing spike into his shoulder.
Reiji roared.
Agony spread through him as his shadow convulsed on the ground, writhing like it was being torn apart.
He struggled, but the spike forced him to his knees.
His strength drained.
His vision dimmed.
The world narrowed to a single point of burning white.
The lead Hunter approached, expression unreadable behind his mask. "Do not resist. The Codex shall reclaim what was lost."
Reiji spat blood. "Go to hell."
The Hunter lifted the chained codex.
The moment the pages began to open, Reiji felt something rupture inside him—something ancient and buried. His shadow twisted, rising like smoke.
The whisper returned—louder, clearer, no longer a murmur but a second heartbeat.
"You're not dying here, Reiji."
His breath hitched.
"Because I won't let you."
The lanterns flickered.
The sealing spike cracked.
The shadow beneath him surged upward, enveloping his body in a violent eruption. The Codex Hunters staggered back as their lantern flames dimmed, struggling against the distortion of darkness.
The lead Hunter's voice trembled—just slightly.
"He's awakening—!"
Reiji didn't understand what was happening. He could barely breathe. His consciousness wavered. He felt both present and distant, as if something was pulling him from within.
His shadow moved without him.
And then it spoke.
"You want the First Shadow?" it growled, voice layered over his own. "Come take it."
The darkness exploded.
Bodies were thrown. Stone shattered. Lanterns burst into white sparks. The entire battlefield shifted in an instant. Reiji felt the pain, the power, the terror—but also a strange calm, as if the shadow was carrying him.
The Hunters scrambled to regroup.
"Reform the circle—!"
"Contain him—!"
"Do not let him merge completely—!"
Reiji's vision flickered. He felt himself collapsing.
The last thing he saw was his shadow standing tall, almost human-shaped, facing the Codex Hunters.
It smiled.
And darkness swallowed everything.