The air in the Council Hall was thick as congealed soup. Light filtering through the high stained-glass windows with clan crests lay on the ancient parquet in gray, motionless stripes. The five patriarchs sat at the semicircular table of ebony, their faces carved from the same material—cold, impenetrable, eternal.
Ryūnosuke Morohashi stood before them, trying not to fidget. His own grandfather, head of the Morohashi clan, looked at him over steepled fingers, and in that gaze there was neither familial warmth nor pride. Only cold assessment of an asset.
"So," the voice of Patriarch Fujibayashi, the academy director, sounded dry as the rustle of parchment. "After the incident with the Tokyoites, your group... Kagetori's special class... has demonstrated a certain... usefulness. A controlled threat. The Council acknowledges your loyalty to the system. For now."
Akira, standing slightly behind, was silent. His empty eyes slid over the Council members' faces, reading not words but intentions. And the intentions were simple: they wanted to use them. And simultaneously—isolate them from real levers of power.
"As a token of this trust," continued another patriarch, an elderly woman from the Himeji clan with a face like a dried pear, "you are assigned a mission. Officially—protective. Akira Kiriyama, Ryūnosuke Morohashi."
Ryūnosuke tensed. When the Council says "officially," it means unofficially everything will be the exact opposite.
"Not far from the ancestral estate of the Kujō clan," interjected the patriarch from the Takatori clan, his long gray mustache twitching, "an anomaly linked to residual effects of the Colonization has activated. Particularly dangerous magical entities have begun seeping from the fissure. Second-class instructor level. Your task is to find the clan head, Kiyoya Kujō, and ensure his safety. Coordinates."
He nodded, and one of the faceless clerks in the shadows handed Ryūnosuke a scroll. He unfurled it. A map. Terrain in Izumo province. A point indicated—almost at the coast, in an area where a city called Matsue would stand in modern times, but in 1401 there were only wild cliffs, sacred groves, and ancient, god-forgotten precipices.
"The Kujō estate," Ryūnosuke muttered, memorizing the landscape. "Surrounded by a cryptomeria forest. Center—a traditional shoin-zukuri mansion, but the main feature... the Unzei Plateau. That's where these... pillars should be."
"Stone pillars," clarified Patriarch Kurosawa, his voice raspy as a crypt door. "Remnants of an ancient shrine dedicated to the wind. A place with a strong natural Scar. An ideal target for anomalies. Depart immediately. Use whatever is necessary."
Ryūnosuke nodded, already turning. Akira followed him. At the Hall's exit, Kagetori was waiting, leaning against the doorframe and fixing a fingernail.
"So, guys," he said, not looking at them. "They've entrusted you with walking an aristocrat's puppy. Don't lose the old men's trust. They might get offended."
Ryūnosuke snorted.
"What trust? They want to kill two birds with one stone. Clean up the entities, and send us to hell as a precaution. Or have this Kujō finish us off if we prove too unruly."
"Oh, our little heir is learning to think!" Reiden grinned, finally looking at them. "Well, basically, yes. Be careful. Kujō... he's not simple. And if the Council fears him enough to send you—it means they fear us too. An interesting combination."
He waved a hand.
"Alright, get lost. Just if anything—call. I like watching other people's card houses burn."
The air in the private quarters somewhere deep in the Tokyo Academy of Magical Arts was sterile and cold. Monitors flickered with blue light, reflecting off polished desk surfaces. A tall man with penetrating amber eyes and unnaturally bright, platinum-blond dyed hair stood before a mirror. His movements were unhurried, precise.
He pulled on a white long-sleeved shirt, buttoning it one by one, from wrists to throat. The fabric fit his lean, athletic build perfectly. Over it, he donned a dark teal kimono of the finest silk, its color shifting like ocean depths on a moonless night. Light gray hakama, waraji sandals. The image was complete—a blend of modern pedantry and ancient elegance.
An arrogant, cold smirk played on his face.
"So," he said, addressing a hologram projected from a device on his wrist. Data, photos, reports flashed on it. "'Tenran' makes a move. Sends its pups."
A synthesized, emotionless baritone answered from the device:
"Targets: Akira Kiriyama and Ryūnosuke Morohashi. Possible accompaniment: forces of Kagetori's special class. Probability: low."
"Ryūnosuke," the man drew out the name, savoring each syllable. "Ah, that failed-to-meet-expectations, chesty idiot who thinks loud growling hides how primitive his technique is?"
"Analysis of combat performance indicates excessive reliance on physical strength and low adaptability," confirmed the voice.
"Perfect." The smirk widened. He adjusted the folds of his kimono, his long, well-groomed fingers running over the fabric. "So the plan stands. Activate the 'Guests' at Unzei Plateau. Let the pups run around. And I... I'll oversee the performance personally. I wonder how long it will take that ox on wheels to realize he's already been herded into the slaughterhouse?"
He switched off the hologram, and silence fell in the room, broken only by the quiet hum of instruments. His amber eyes, cold and calculating, stared into the void, as if he already saw the drama unfolding in the distance, mentally checking boxes on an invisible script.
Teleportation using the "Scar of Great Stepping Transfer" was not what one would call a pleasant journey.
Ryūnosuke stood at the edge of a training ground in "Tenran," his face intensely focused. Akira—beside him, calm as ever.
"Hang on," Ryūnosuke gritted out. "This thing... it sucks you dry like a curse."
He formed his hands into a complex mudra, fingers weaving a pattern resembling a breaking bridge. The air around him swirled, glowing from within with the crimson light of an ancient, rarely used Scar. This wasn't an exact science; it was more like punching a hole in reality's fabric with pure Kokurō force—crude, energy-intensive, but over colossal distances.
The space before them compressed, then tore with a dull pop, like a punctured lung. A tunnel of distorted light and shadows appeared, leading to nowhere. Ryūnosuke stepped forward, pulling Akira with him.
The sensation was as if you'd been put through a meat grinder, reassembled, and spat out from a height of ten meters.
They landed—or rather, crashed—onto soft, damp moss. Air hit their faces—fresh, salty, smelling of pine, sea, and ancient stone. Ryūnosuke barely kept his feet, his chest heaving heavily. Using the "Stepping Transfer" had burned a hefty chunk of his reserves.
"Damn..." he exhaled, looking around.
They stood at the edge of a giant, almost mystical plateau. Unzei Plateau.
It was a place of power, about which legends circulated. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of massive stone pillars, each as tall as a five-story pagoda and thick enough for several arm spans, jutted from the earth like the fingers of a stone giant asleep under moss. They weren't crudely carved—they seemed to have grown from the bedrock itself, their surfaces covered in complex, natural erosion patterns, in places overgrown with bright green moss and lichen. Mist wound between the pillars, born from the proximity of the Sea of Japan. In the distance, beyond a forest of cryptomerias whose dark, spiky silhouettes stabbed the gray sky, the elegant roof of a traditional-style mansion was visible—the Kujō estate. It looked silent, almost lifeless.
The silence was deafening. And unnatural.
"Where... are those entities?" Ryūnosuke muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.
Akira was already surveying the area. His empty eyes slid over the pillars, the mist. He raised a hand, pointing deeper into the plateau, beyond the palisade of stone giants.
"There. Many. But... they aren't moving."
It was then that they felt it. Pressure.
Not an attack. Not a threat. Aural pressure, as inexplicable and pervasive as a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure before a typhoon. It came not from the forest, not from the mansion. It came from everywhere at once. The air froze. The mist stopped moving.
And all the "entities"—those monstrous, distorted clumps of magical energy they were supposed to see—simply... winked out. One by one. Like candles blown out by invisible lips. Their sinister, barely perceptible signatures dissolved into nothing.
From the mist, between two of the tallest pillars, He emerged.
A man. Tall, asthenic build with an accentuated narrow waist, emphasized by a perfectly fitting black suit. His skin was pale, almost porcelain, his features sharp, delicate, with high cheekbones and a narrow chin. Thick, medium-length black hair with a casually but carefully styled fringe partially covered his forehead. He wore an all-black ensemble: a fitted shirt with exaggeratedly broad shoulders, loose trousers falling onto massive glossy platform boots, and a long, flowing sleeveless cloak. Around his neck—a thin silver chain with a small cross.
He looked as if he'd stepped out of the pages of some decadent gothic novel, and his appearance here, among ancient Japanese menhirs, was as absurd as it was frightening.
He stopped ten meters from them, his dark eyes, the color of wet asphalt, studying them with mild, detached curiosity.
"Hi," he said. His voice was calm, slightly muffled, with a light rasp. "You guys aren't local, are you?"
Ryūnosuke tensed, his hand instinctively reaching for his sword.
"Who are you?"
"Kaido," the stranger introduced himself with a light, careless hand gesture. "Kaido Seiryu. Nineteen. Majutsushi. Sort of."
"Sort of?" Ryūnosuke frowned.
"Well," Kaido looked thoughtful, gazing somewhere over their heads. "From the perspective of your... mm... classification systems. I'm from Shinjuku. Tokyo."
Akira, silent until now, finally spoke.
"Shinjuku... didn't exist in 1401."
Kaido slowly shifted his gaze to him. Something like weary irony flickered in his eyes.
"Oh. So that's it." He sighed. "In my 2024—it did. Very much so. Skyscrapers, neon, crowds of people with pieces of glass in their hands, office workers perpetually dissatisfied with their salaries... All that boring trinketry."
Ryūnosuke actually recoiled.
"You... what, from the future?"
"Seems so," Kaido shrugged. "I was... experimenting with something one day. With my own, kinda... digital version of Kokurō. Blew up half a lab. When I came to—I was here. In this... game. With this stupid little counter over my head." He pointed a finger upward, where they now noticed the faintly glowing number "0."
Akira connected the facts in his head.
"Narikawari... scans temporal lines, historical Scars. Your signature... for his ancient, archaic system, it was like powerful but incomprehensible noise. He mistook it for a Scar and automatically issued the Pact. A system error."
"Bingo," Kaido snapped his fingers. "Summoned me as an uninvited guest. And you know what's funniest? I'm not even a particularly strong Majutsushi. By your standards. I just have... different tools."
"What kind?" Ryūnosuke asked, still disbelieving.
Kaido smirked.
"Speed. My Kokurō—it's about data processing, predicting trajectories, kinetics. I can... well, accelerate. To decent values. Seventy Machs if I push it. Eighty—already risking skeletal integrity."
Ryūnosuke whistled. Seventy Machs... that was on the level of monsters like Inazuma.
It was then they heard footsteps. Unhurried, clear, ringing on the wet stone. All three turned.
Atop one of the nearest pillars, twenty meters high, stood Him. That man with amber eyes and platinum hair. His dark teal kimono fluttered in the damp wind. He looked down on them with an expression of bored superiority.
"Why are there three of you?" his voice rang out, clear, resonant, with a lightly mocking note. "Ryūnosuke Morohashi and... Who?"
He made a theatrical pause, squinted, looking at Akira, and a light, caustic smile lit his face.
"Akira Kiriyama? How interesting... Honestly, I couldn't care less about you," he waved a hand dismissively towards Akira, "but since you're apparently buddies, I'll break your legs too while I'm at it. There's a bounty on you from the Council, right? So I'll carry out the death sentence. Two birds with one stone."
Kaido, standing nearby, raised an eyebrow.
"It would be polite to introduce yourself before making threats."
The man on the pillar theatrically threw his arms wide, like an actor stepping onto the stage.
"Kiyoya Kujō! Head of the Kujō clan, master of these lands, and, incidentally, your swift and inevitable demise!"
Akira, expression unchanged, said quietly:
"That's the one we were supposed to protect."
Ryūnosuke grabbed his arm, pulling him back, his face turning to stone.
"Protect? Akira, this is a trap. The Kujō clan was once on the Council. But they... left voluntarily. Too few in number. But they didn't vanish—they were taken under the wing of the higher clans. Not as vassals, but as... a useful tool. A quiet, sharp knife. They just lured us here so this sharp knife could cut us down."
Kiyoya laughed, his laughter light, guileless, like the ringing of a small bell.
"And you're clever, for such a... lame-looking one." He pronounced the last word with such contemptuous sweetness that Ryūnosuke's blood boiled.
And Kiyoya vanished from the pillar.
No flash. No sound of tearing air. He just wasn't there. And in the same instant, he was behind Ryūnosuke, his voice sounding right at his ear:
"However, thinking is one thing. Being fast enough is another."
Ryūnosuke instinctively lunged forward, but the blow was already coming. Not a powerful one. A precisely calculated uppercut to the kidneys. Pain, sharp and piercing, forced a groan from him. He stumbled, tried to turn, but Kiyoya was no longer behind his back.
He was to the left. And his leg, describing a short, incredibly fast arc, struck Ryūnosuke's knee from the side. Cartilage crunched. Ryūnosuke crashed to one knee.
Kaido reacted first. His body twitched, and he vanished. A true disappearance—with a sonic crack and a vapor cone. He accelerated. 80 Machs. He became a living projectile flying at Kiyoya from behind.
Kiyoya didn't even turn.
As Kaido covered the final meters, Kiyoya, with his back to him, raised a free hand and... adjusted a strand of his impeccable platinum hair. The movement was unhurried, graceful.
In the fractions of a second that Kaido was flying, Kiyoya managed to land ten blows.
It was impossible to see. It could only be felt. Ten micro-explosions of air at different points on Kaido's body. Ten precise, crushing finger jabs, edge-of-palm strikes, elbow blows. Each hit a nerve cluster, a tendon, a point disrupting balance.
Kaido, without even understanding what was happening, was thrown off trajectory, tumbled through the air, and crashed into a pillar with a deafening crunch, leaving a deep dent in the stone. He slid down, stunned, his advanced suit smoking in several places.
Ryūnosuke, gritting his teeth against the pain, rose. Fury, familiar, dark, boiled within him. He raised a fist, wrapped in the familiar leaden radiance, and charged forward with a roar.
Kiyoya smiled. He didn't retreat. He simply crouched, letting Ryūnosuke's fist pass a centimeter over his head, and at the same moment, threw out a sweeping leg.
The blow landed precisely on the ankle. Ryūnosuke, losing his footing, crashed heavily onto his back, the air knocked out of him.
The entire fight had lasted maybe ten seconds.
Kiyoya stepped back a few paces, looking at the three of them: the gasping Ryūnosuke, the struggling Kaido, and the motionlessly standing Akira, who still hadn't made a single move.
"What a disgrace?" Kiyoya uttered, his voice full of genuine disappointment. "You're already spent? You're supposed to be the outcasts of that gold-eyed one, what's his name... Kagetori Reiden, I think?"
Ryūnosuke, hearing the teacher's name, growled as he rose. Fury blazed in his eyes.
"Don't you dare..." he rasped.
"Oh? Defending your idol's honor?" Kiyoya smirked. "All his thunder is just the tantrum of a child denied a toy. I'm allergic to that."
That phrase was enough. Something clicked in Ryūnosuke. Shame from defeat, fury for his teacher, pain from wounds—all merged into a single, dark mass. His "Iron Oath," usually manifesting as veins under the skin, erupted outward.
The leaden radiance didn't just envelop him—it condensed, hardened. Across his body, changing shape with a crunch, crawled plates of dull, non-reflective metal. They covered his arms, chest, legs, head, merging into a single, frightening suit of armor. He became taller, bulkier. His eyes glowed with bloody-red light from beneath the metallic helmet. The power emanating from him was monstrous, crude, primitive—but incredibly concentrated.
"Iron Oath: Full Coverage," he growled, and his voice sounded like the grinding of stones deep in a mine.
He didn't even strike. He just swung his arm. Just raised it for a blow.
And the air howled.
A shockwave, born from the mere motion of his metalized arm, surged forward like the ram of an invisible giant. It wasn't directed—it was wide, sweeping.
Ten of the nearest stone pillars, each weighing dozens of tons, met this wave. And they did not stand.
A deafening, multi-layered roar, like a mountain collapsing, sounded. The pillars didn't crack—they shattered. Explosions of stone, clouds of dust, flying fragments the size of houses. The earth shuddered. The roar of destruction echoed across the entire plateau, reverberating to the very forest.
As the dust began to settle, a scene of apocalypse was revealed. In place of ten ancient menhirs gaped a huge, ragged wound. Stone blocks, some the size of carts, were scattered about like children's toys.
Ryūnosuke stood amidst this chaos, breathing like a steam engine, his metallic chest heaving heavily.
Kiyoya, standing unscathed to the side, looked at this destruction. His face showed neither fear nor surprise. Only... boredom. And slight irritation.
"Iron Oath?" he uttered aloud, his voice clear and calm, as if commenting on the weather. "Goodness, what a disgrace. Nothing dangerous about that technique, aside from your brute force. However, this won't be quick... Can you figure out the gist of what I'm saying? Checkmate, little heir. You're already a corpse."
He sighed, like a tired director having to explain the obvious to inept actors.
"Kokurō: 'Preset Causality'," he announced, and metallic, impersonal notes suddenly appeared in his voice. "Act One: 'Script'."
He raised a hand and pointed a finger at Ryūnosuke. Not to attack. Like an artist outlining a contour. The air between them wavered, and for a moment Ryūnosuke felt a strange, aching sensation—as if invisible ink had been applied to his armor, his body, the very space around him. It was a Scar, but not an ordinary one. It was an instruction. A brief, emotionless script: "Target maintains forward momentum. Center of gravity shifted to right foot. Left arm swing along arc A."
"Act Two," Kiyoya continued, and his figure suddenly... lost clarity. Not because he moved. Because all superfluity in his motion was cut out. "'Forced Execution'."
He didn't accelerate. He simply was beside Ryūnosuke. He didn't move—he skipped all intermediate frames. Time for him compressed, ejecting pauses, doubts, corrections. He was already at the perfect point, his hand already raised for a strike—not faster than physics allowed, but without the slightest hint of inefficiency.
Ryūnosuke, still in the inertia of his monstrous swing, tried to react. But his body, his armor, the very space around—everything was already programmed. It wanted to move along the predetermined path. He couldn't change trajectory fast enough. Couldn't dodge.
Kiyoya's blow landed not on the armor. It landed in the microscopic gap between plates on his stomach, at the point that, according to the "Script," was supposed to be there at that very moment.
It wasn't a power strike. It was a precise, penetrating finger jab, amplified by all the kinetic energy of a perfectly constructed motion.
Ryūnosuke's roar turned into a wheeze. His metal armor didn't protect him from this attack—it passed through like a needle through fabric, disrupting something inside. Strength left him. "Full Coverage" shattered with a crash, the plates evaporating into leaden vapor. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his stomach, his face beneath the helmet distorted in silent agony. He wasn't wounded. He was deactivated.
Kiyoya stood over him, looking down with an expression of deep disappointment.
"And that's all?" he asked quietly, almost to himself. "I expected... no, I wrote in the script something more impressive. I can't even be bothered to edit—I'll just cross out the whole paragraph with your participation."
He sighed, raised his foot, and delivered a light, almost careless kick with his heel to that same precise spot on the stomach.
Ryūnosuke's body left the ground. Not with a roar, but with a quiet whistle. It flew twenty meters through the rubble of destroyed pillars and crashed into a huge pile of stone debris with a dull, final thud. A column of dust rose.
The silence that followed was worse than any roar. On the plateau remained only Kiyoya, Akira, who still hadn't moved, and Kaido, struggling to rise from under the debris of his pillar.
Kiyoya Kujō brushed non-existent dust from the sleeve of his impeccable kimono and turned to them, his amber eyes shining with cold, businesslike interest.
"So, guests? Who's next in line for a script revision?"