The warehouse fight stayed in Seigi's bones long after the smoke cleared. The official report filed at the precinct was a hollow joke: Sting operation disrupted. Suspects fled. Several fatalities. Investigation ongoing.
Sanitized. Meaningless.
Renji had typed most of it himself, precise keystrokes erasing truths with the same calm efficiency he used to stir sugar into his coffee. When Seigi leaned over his shoulder, he saw a whole minute of body-cam footage vanish with the tap of a key.
"Glitch," Renji had said smoothly, not looking up.
Seigi said nothing. He had learned silence could be more dangerous than words.
Normal police work felt unbearable afterward. Burglaries. Petty assaults. Reports stacked on his desk like paper graves. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, white noise that made his teeth grind. Every time he glanced at the clock, his chest itched with the memory of the thread's hum in his veins.
So he trained.
Mornings in the precinct gym until his wrists screamed from pounding the bag. Evenings at the waterfront, striking steel until his knuckles split and bled onto the cold metal. He sprinted between shipping containers, heart hammering, forcing himself into exhaustion so complete he swore the air itself would bend for him again.
Sometimes it did.
The shimmer came like a mercy—just a second of slowed time, of motion that didn't quite obey the rules. His fist would trail faint light, his feet would hit the ground a fraction ahead of gravity.
But most times it slipped away, leaving only pain and a hollow ache that burned worse than bruises.
"What am I missing?" he hissed one night, voice tearing raw in his throat. His words echoed off the container walls and scattered into the river air, unanswered.
He bent double, sweat dripping into the dirt, the docks around him silent except for the occasional creak of steel and the cry of gulls that never slept. The place felt like a cathedral to failure, every shadow a pew filled with judgment.
"You won't master it like that."
The voice cut through the night like a knife.
Seigi spun, gun half-drawn, adrenaline exploding in his veins. His eyes locked on a tall silhouette stepping out from the shadows between two containers. Not the cloaked man. Not Wraith.
Sato.
The old detective's trench coat hung loose, its hem tugged by the cold breeze. A cigarette glowed faintly between his fingers, the ember illuminating lines carved deep into his face. For a moment, Seigi thought he looked ancient—like the smoke itself had been burning him hollow over the years.
"You knew," Seigi said, anger flaring hotter than fear. "You knew all along."
Sato's eyes didn't waver. "I warned you not to chase this."
"That's not an answer."
A long drag. A sigh of smoke. His gaze never left Seigi. "Because I walked that path once. Thought I could bend the thread. Thought I could make it mine."
Seigi froze. The night seemed to tilt. "You…?"
Sato flexed his scarred knuckles, the cigarette's glow tracing the ridges where old breaks had healed wrong. "It doesn't leave you. But it doesn't serve you, either. You think you're pulling it. But it's the one pulling you."
The words sank into Seigi's chest like stone weights dropped into deep water. He looked at his bruised fists, trembling faintly even now. They didn't look like his own hands anymore.
"No." His voice cracked, but he forced the word harder. "No. I can control it. I have to. I can be what they are. Stronger. Better."
Sato stepped closer, his voice low and rough. "You'll become a ghost, Seigi. Like them. Shadows in cloaks, killing in the dark. Is that what you want? To vanish into myth instead of living a life that's yours?"
The name thundered in Seigi's mind: Wraith. That impossible figure at the docks, calm as a storm given human shape. The memory of his voice—stand before you tremble—echoed like scripture.
His throat closed. He wanted to say no. Wanted to promise Sato that he would never become that. But he couldn't. Because a part of him already wanted to.
Sato's hand settled heavy on his shoulder, anchoring him to the earth. "Be a detective. Be a man. Don't let this thread weave you into something you'll regret."
The weight of it lingered long after Sato turned and walked back toward the city lights, trench coat swallowed by shadow.
Seigi stayed.
The gulls cried. The river lapped. His fists throbbed, raw and stinging, but the pain felt small compared to the war raging in his chest.
He knew. He had always known.
And what if Sato was right? What if the thread wasn't a gift but a chain? What if it used him instead of the other way around?
He laughed bitterly to himself. "Maybe I am going insane." His voice bounced back at him from the container walls.
But under the laughter came something sharper, more dangerous.
It wasn't justice driving him anymore. Not entirely. It wasn't even duty.
It was the need to prove—to himself, to the world, to the memory of a boy who once tried to fly from a tree branch—that he hadn't been wrong. That the impossible was real. That he hadn't wasted his life chasing shadows.
He stood there until dawn, fists aching, breath fogging in the cold air, staring at the