Frosted light from the lone crystal-lamp hummed across the reinforced cell-block, pale and sterile. Kouki stood behind the metal table like a man trying to negotiate with a bomb that had politely taken human shape. Masaboru lounged on the other side, wrists loose, posture relaxed, eyes half-lidded as if daring the world to entertain him for once.
Kouki's voice cut through the room with the calm precision of a surgeon.
"I am not here to offer friendship or declare war," he said. "I am here to present a simple proposition."
His tone carried no warmth, no illusion of camaraderie. Only the law of necessity.
"You are forces of nature. I am offering you the one thing a force of nature desires most: a worthy target. I am pointing you at the source of this boring, orderly, world-killing decay. You can go there and prove that your vibrant, chaotic, living power is superior to their cold, dead machinery."
Masaboru's eyebrow twitched. Just barely.
He did not interrupt.
"So, Masaboru Hoshikage." Kouki met his eyes, unwavering. "The question is not if we are friends or enemies. The question is: are you and your power bored enough to be useful?"
For a heartbeat, there was stillness.
Then Masaboru's lips curled, wolfish and amused.
"Useful," he echoed. "That's the word, isn't it? Not partner. Not ally. Just… a tool with a pulse."
"This is not—"
"Don't lie," Masaboru snapped quietly. "You want to wield us, but not stand beside us. You want our strength, but not our presence. You want the legend, not the people."
Kouki's jaw tightened, but he didn't step back. Negotiators didn't retreat unless they intended to lose.
"Amnesty. Reintegration. Freedom under light supervision," Kouki said, layering the offer like stone on stone. "Your names cleaned. Your records sealed. New lives if you want them. Or old lives restored."
Masaboru laughed, the sound low and feral.
"Freedom under a leash," he said. "How merciful."
Kouki didn't flinch.
"The understanding is this: you go north. You break what you find. How you do it is your concern. But if you turn your 'entertainment' toward my people or my cities, the hunt ends. And you will find that a united Ostoria—even preparing for the end of the world—can make existence profoundly boring for you."
He leaned in. "Permanently."
Silence.
A silence that began to warp at the edges.
Black pressure bled from Masaboru's skin like ink spreading through water, bending the lamplight, making the walls groan. Kouki's eyes narrowed instinctively, posture closing, center of gravity lowering. His hand moved—slowly—toward his sword.
Masaboru rose, posture still lazy, but the air twisted around him like a living storm.
"You want to protect them?" he murmured. "Then try to protect them."
His pupils dilated until his eyes were pools of night.
Masaboru invoked False Reality – Temporal Echo.
The world convulsed.
Kouki staggered, blinked—
—and suddenly he was standing in a snowfield of corpses that had never existed.
Then he was kneeling before an altar where Masaboru, crowned in bone, blessed the dying sun.
A heartbeat later he saw the guildhall burning, Omina's silhouette walking out of the flames, blade red.
Then a version of himself with one arm, kneeling in the dirt.
Then a version of Masaboru chained in a throne room made of frost.
Then Reflynne swallowing itself in a paradox of collapsing time.
Things that had happened.
Things that would happen.
Things that could never happen.
All layered atop this room, each vision slicing through the next like broken film reels trying to play at once.
Kouki gasped as his mind snapped back into the present. His body moved instinctively, sword flashing free of its sheath as if the steel itself demanded clarity.
Masaboru smiled.
Negotiation collapsed in an instant.
The first strike landed. The battle began.