The meeting was set for 9:00 p.m. the following night in a sub-basement level even deeper than the crash pods—accessed through a nondescript service elevator guarded by biometric scanners and a silent vessel who never spoke.
Ren and Aoi rode down together in silence. The elevator hummed softly. The Anchor rune over Ren's heart pulsed in slow rhythm with Aoi's heartbeat through the Echo—calm on the surface, but both of them felt the undercurrent of something bigger waiting below.
The doors opened onto a long concrete corridor lit by single strips of cool white light. At the far end: a heavy steel door, no handle, no keypad. Just a small retinal scanner embedded in the wall.
Rin was already there, waiting.
She pressed her cybernetic palm to the scanner. A soft chime. The door slid aside without sound.
"Founder doesn't take visitors often," she said quietly. "Consider this a privilege. Or a warning. Depends on what you make of it."
They stepped inside.
The room beyond was nothing like the utilitarian chaos of the upper levels.
It was circular, domed ceiling painted matte black, floor polished dark concrete that reflected the single source of light: a floating orb of pale violet essence suspended in the center, no bigger than a basketball. The orb cast long, shifting shadows across the walls—shadows that sometimes looked like wings, sometimes like chains, sometimes like nothing at all.
And sitting cross-legged directly beneath the orb was the founder.
A woman.
Late forties, maybe early fifties—impossible to tell exactly. Long black hair streaked with silver pulled into a loose braid that reached her waist. Simple gray linen tunic and pants. Bare feet. No visible runes, no weapons, no jewelry except a thin silver chain around her neck holding a cracked piece of jade no larger than a fingernail.
She opened her eyes as they entered.
They were the color of storm clouds—gray threaded with faint violet.
She smiled—small, knowing, tired.
"Ren Ito. Aoi Mizuki. Vessels of Kurogami and Luminara. The boy who refused to become a monster, and the girl who refused to kill him. Sit."
Two cushions materialized from the floor—essence constructs, soft and warm.
They sat.
The founder studied them both without hurry.
"You've come for the Eclipse Shard," she said. Not a question. "And you've already agreed to Rin's terms. Good. But before you walk into that forest, there are things you should know. Things the Current's records don't contain. Things even Saint Kurosawa has forgotten—or chosen to forget."
Aoi leaned forward slightly.
"You know about the Shard."
"I sealed it there myself."
Ren felt the Anchor flare—sharp, almost warning.
The founder noticed.
"Your relic recognizes me," she said softly. "It should. The Soul Anchor you wear is one of three originals I helped forge eighty years ago. The other two are lost. One was destroyed. The third… is inside the Eclipse Shard."
Aoi inhaled sharply.
"You're—"
"Former Miracle vessel. Seraph-grade. Name was Hana Takahashi once. Now I'm just Hana. Or 'Founder,' if you prefer titles." She touched the cracked jade pendant at her throat. "This is all that remains of my own anchor. It broke the day I sealed the Shard. I've been unmoored ever since."
Ren's voice came out rougher than he intended.
"You were a Miracle. And you built the Current."
Hana's storm-cloud eyes met his.
"I was Luminara's vessel before Aoi was even born. I watched the first rifts tear open in the 2040s. I watched friends become monsters. I watched the Purification Order decide that mercy was weakness. I decided mercy was the only thing worth fighting for. So I left. Took what I knew. Built something that didn't force people to choose between heaven and hell."
Aoi's hands clenched in her lap.
"My mother… she spoke of you. Once. When I was small. She called you 'the Lost Seraph.' Said you disappeared after the Tokyo Rift Incident. Everyone thought you were dead."
Hana's expression softened—just a fraction.
"Your mother was my second. Elara Mizuki. She carried my spear when I could no longer hold it. She was the one who convinced me to leave instead of fighting a war I knew we'd lose. She never told you?"
Aoi shook her head—slow, stunned.
"She died three years ago. Rift incursion in Kyoto. Purification classified it as 'acceptable losses.'"
Hana closed her eyes for a moment.
"I know. I felt it through the old resonance link. Even after I left, some threads never fully severed."
Ren reached over and took Aoi's hand. She gripped him hard enough to hurt.
Hana opened her eyes again.
"The Eclipse Shard was born from the same incident that broke my anchor. A convergence of two primordial forces—light and void—trapped in a single vessel who couldn't contain them both. The vessel begged me to end it. I refused. Instead I split the power, sealed half in obsidian, half in jade. The jade became the Soul Anchors. The obsidian became the Shard. It equalizes polarity because it remembers what it was: one being, torn in two."
She looked between them.
"You two remind me of what that vessel could have been… if someone had given them time. If someone had believed balance was possible instead of erasure."
Ren swallowed.
"Then why seal it away? Why not use it to prove your point?"
"Because the Shard is hungry," Hana said simply. "It wants to reunite what was split. If you carry it too long, it will try to merge your essences—Kurogami and Luminara—into something new. Something neither heaven nor hell has seen before. And it may not ask permission."
Aoi's voice was barely a whisper.
"Will it kill us?"
"It might. It might remake you. It might do nothing at all. The only certainty is uncertainty. That's why I sealed it. And that's why I'm asking you to retrieve it—not to wield it, but to guard it. Because if the Order or Mei ever claim it… the war ends. One side wins. Permanently."
Silence filled the domed room.
The violet orb above Hana pulsed once—slow, mournful.
She rose—graceful, unhurried.
"You leave in thirty-six hours. Rin will have your gear. If you decide not to go… tell her. No penalty. No exile. You walk out the same way you walked in."
She turned toward a shadowed alcove in the wall.
"One last thing."
She paused without looking back.
"If you do bring the Shard out… and if you ever feel it pulling too hard… come back here. I'll end it cleanly. For both of you. The way I should have ended it eighty years ago."
The alcove swallowed her.
The door slid shut behind her.
Ren and Aoi sat alone under the floating orb.
Neither spoke for a long minute.
Then Aoi leaned her head against Ren's shoulder.
"My mother knew her," she whispered. "All this time… and she never said."
Ren wrapped an arm around her.
"We don't have to do this."
Aoi lifted her head.
"Yes. We do."
She met his eyes—sunrise gold steady despite the tremor in her voice.
"Because if we don't… someone else will. And they won't hesitate to use it. Or destroy it. Or let it destroy them."
Ren nodded slowly.
"Then we go in. We see it for ourselves. And we decide—together—what happens next."
Aoi pressed her lips to his—brief, fierce, grounding.
"Together."
They rose.
The violet orb dimmed slightly as they left—as though it too had been listening.
And somewhere in the dark above the city, in a sealed forest no one dared enter, the Eclipse Shard waited.
Patient.
Hungry.
Remembering.
End of Chapter 16