Tokyo pretends until night tells the truth.
Trains pull in. Announcers apologize to nobody. A melon‑pan stall takes cash next to a roped Gate. If you have enough yen, you can eat beside the end of the world.
They named the first tear so the paperwork would feel complete: the Godhand. That was twenty years ago. Everything since has been maintenance.
Across the Suginami canal, a Gate hangs low like a bruise. Rope keeps it where it is. The streetlight dies a hand's length from the rim. A girl points. Her mother turns her chin away like she's closing a drawer on something sharp.
"Don't look," she says. "It remembers."
The guild board breathes chalk:
ACTIVE GATES
E‑21A — Gate Break in 12h
D‑14B — Gate Break in 8h
C‑09D — Gate Break in 31h
A‑12C (Nakano) — Gate Break in 72h
OPERATION LANTERN (KUROJIMA S‑GATE) — BRIEF IN 10 DAYS
Names move when someone comes home. The ones that don't get papered over.
Kaelen Dremeir counts coins into his palm. The rent slip cuts a crescent into his skin. He doesn't unfold it. He knows the number by weight.
Eat later. Work now.
He signs in at Guild Hall A. The front room used to host bingo. Now it's rope safety and quiet-feet posters. A kid with a box of mirror tiles weaves through boots like he's learning survival as a language.
"Clearance reporter," the clerk says, not looking up. "E‑rank. D‑fourteen‑B. You carry, you tape, you rope. Don't talk. Two percent hazard. Ten if your hands bleed."
"I'll take ten," Kaelen says.
She doesn't smile. "You always do."
He takes a cheap helmet. Rope. Chalk. Tape. Trauma shears. Mirror tiles. Nothing with his name on it. He wears a thrift coat and a scarf mask that cuts the same groove in his cheek when it's cold. In his hand, a short pipe wrapped in tape and wire. He calls it Compromise.
If it gets close enough to breathe on you, swing.
D‑squad waits at the glass doors.
A heavy set man with ash on his knuckles glances, then measures the room instead. "Reporter?"
"Yeah."
"Don't stand behind me," he says. "If it goes bad, I burn in sheets."
A woman with a thin scar under her left eye checks Kaelen's rope lines without asking. "If it goes bad, you don't run," she says. "Dens like when you run."
A rookie with bright hair keeps her hands shoved in her pockets like someone told her they cost extra. She meets Kaelen's eyes and doesn't blink.
"Jane," she says. "Glass."
He frowns. "What?"
"Logia," she says. "Glass. I hear cracks."
He nods like that's normal. It will be.
A man sits alone under the board, license lanyard with the Compact seal burned off. Rogue. Sells cores for cash. Two hunters see him and then pretend they didn't. Guilds don't talk to rogues. The city is big enough for both to starve.
Mika Reindart stands near the Gate like a clean knife nobody wants to use unless they have to. Hood down. Field coat. Matte‑black glaive. Her eyes say the room should behave.
She looks at Kaelen once. It isn't welcome. It isn't warning. It weighs whether he'll be another problem for people she's already buried.
"Rules," she says. "Speak once. Only once."
"If he needs help?" Jane asks.
"Then he dies correctly," Mika says. "Don't make other people go in after you."
Alright. Don't be brave. Don't be kind. Be useful. Breathe.
The Gate opens the way a bad decision does: from the middle, making you watch.
D‑14B smells like wet tile and cleaner—the kind you use when you want to believe something didn't happen. A dead FamilyMart opens into a school hallway. Machines hum apologies to nobody. Kaelen drops a chalk line at the threshold, marks left wall, tapes mirror tiles at shoulder height.
"Grid's thin," Jane whispers.
"How do you know?" he says.
"I hear it."
He believes her. Part of the job is letting somebody else's sense keep your legs under you.
They enter a square with scuffed game lines where normal used to live. The ceiling feels a finger lower than it is. The floor looks patient. That's never good.
Kaelen sets rope anchors at chest height. Good knots. Quick. Clean. He keeps breath short. Keeps Compromise down.
Something else arrives. Not heat. Not sound.
The air leans.
Forward. The way a face does when it recognizes a name and wishes it didn't.
Condensation pulls itself into a body. Cloth fused to skin. Joints where they shouldn't be. No eyes. A mouth sewn shut with a zipper prayer. The room tastes like a kitchen someone shouldn't remember.
Ash‑man—Tenji—rolls his shoulders. Gray powder slips like tired weather. He throws a curve and lays a blanket of ash. The thing stumbles half a step. Not enough.
"Paramecia," the scar woman says. "Don't let it touch."
It doesn't rush. It glides. It reaches for Kaelen like he's the answer to a question it's tired of asking.
"Back," Tenji says.
Kaelen lifts the rope line. Doesn't raise Compromise. He stops.
The thing freezes. Then bends.
It kneels.
Forearms down. Head to concrete. The chest opens. Slow. Clean. Not a tear—like it's done this for years.
A Core sits in the middle. Red. Alive. Offered.
Why me.
Air tastes like biting a coin wrong. A voice he knows fills the room inside his skull.
You didn't cry at her funeral.
You bought eggs the next morning.
She was still warm when you left.
Jane's breath goes tight. Tenji swears under it. Scar‑woman angles her knife like a thought is getting too close.
Kaelen's left hand tightens on rope. Right hand finds Compromise's balance. He leans forward a fraction without choosing to.
Don't. You lean, you fall.
His shadow leans harder.
The thing isn't looking at his body. It's looking at where his shadow just was. It reaches for his throat.
Move.
Two steps.
The second isn't a step. It's a fall that doesn't need a sky.
Compromise lands. Sound shows up late to apologize.
The thing folds and tries to hold. His fingers shift to a grip he hasn't been taught—hooked, mean. It feels like it's always been there.
Tenji drags a sheet of ash across the square. Scar‑woman cuts where a person would have been two seconds ago. Jane tilts her head, listening. "It's going to break," she says, to the room.
If this turns, they die.
Kaelen looks at the Core. Every warning he's ever heard sits under his tongue. Don't fuse in the field. Don't swallow alone. Don't turn into what you tried to control.
Ash trembles. Scar‑woman hisses, "Anchor's shifting."
Okay.
Kaelen drops the rope.
He steps to the Core.
Don't.
He grabs it anyway.
Bite or press. Pressing is a prayer. He doesn't pray.
He bites.
Heat bites back. Copper coats his mouth. A thread of fire hooks behind his sternum and pulls. For a handful of seconds, his breath isn't his. His ribs hurt like a lock turned the wrong way and kept turning.
Don't die. Not here.
The air changes. His shadow leans first. He sees where the thing will be and hates that part of him likes knowing.
He falls again. Short. Clean. Compromise cracks what passes for bone. Sound is late. He doesn't chase.
Don't mark what makes you stupid. Be cold until it matters.
White flecks cling to the base of the far wall.
She lands.
Hood lowered. Field coat. Knife that doesn't ask permission.
Mika cuts.
The thing becomes heat and nothing.
No scream. No struggle. Done.
Kaelen's knees remember standing. His throat decides to be his again. His stomach tries to collect on the bite; he swallows the bill.
Mika looks at him like a wall looks at rain.
"You fused," she says.
He nods. He doesn't pretend it was brave. It was refusing to watch names get papered over.
"What kind?" Jane says, too fast.
Mika's eyes take in his feet, the forward set, the shoulders that say line. "Zoan," she says, mostly to the room. "Bird."
"Don't lean unless you mean to fall," she tells Kaelen. "And if you mean it, finish."
She presses a palm to warm concrete where the head was. A small white feather floats in a slick near her boot. It steams. It's gone.
She speaks low, like the city is the only thing that needs to hear.
"D‑fourteen‑B. Overlord down. Civilian fused on site. Name: Kaelen Dremeir. Hold, Black."
Hold. Not prison. A hand catching a plate before it shatters near a child's legs.
"Do I still get paid?" he says.
"No."
"Compact cover rent?"
"That was never part of the job."
He nods like he's learned something about weather. Compromise taps his boot. He lowers it. Metal taste won't leave.
"I've got class tomorrow," he says.
"Not if you keep walking into Gates," Mika says.
They file out. Chalk ticks:
D‑14B — CLEARED
ACTIVE GATES
E‑21A — Gate Break in 11h
C‑09D — Gate Break in 30h
A‑12C (Nakano) — Gate Break in 72h
OPERATION LANTERN (KUROJIMA S‑GATE) — BRIEF IN 10 DAYS
A rogue stands under the board with a bag that clinks like glass cores. He smiles at the wrong time and walks out like the week won't finish with him alive.
Kaelen checks a window. His face reflects. The space behind him does not. A smudge with posture stands there. It tilts its head like it's counting doors. Then it leaves.
Keep moving.
Mika waits in the alley until the heat on the floor matches the wall. Only then does she walk.
Reiss Toudou leans near the hall door like a man persuading a building to stay up. Paper cup. Cold tea. Eyes that remember too many names.
"Report?" he asks.
"He bit it," Mika says. "Lived."
"Type?"
"Zoan. Bird."
Reiss looks toward where Kaelen went—on foot, empty‑handed, rent still due. "Start him at E. Reporter to E‑Hunter. Killhouse. Rooftops. No speeches."
"Don't be brave," Mika says.
"Don't be kind," Reiss answers.
Across the canal, the Gate tightens its rope like a throat deciding to swallow. The city keeps its manners. The board keeps its chalk. Money keeps feeling like blood.
Fine, Kaelen thinks. You wanted work.
He slides the rent slip deeper in his pocket, like that makes it weigh less.
He does not look back.
One floor up, a dull pencil circles an island on a map of the Inland Sea.
KUROJIMA — S‑GATE — OPERATION LANTERN
"Ten days," a voice says. "Make sure your Hunters can climb."
No one answers. The Gate outside hums once like a slow heart. The city pretends it didn't hear. That's how it survives.