The operations room in the Sitri building was lit by a constant, white light—flat and undramatic
It wasn’t a war room.
It was a management room.
Sona Sitri paced from one end to the other with short, measured steps. There was no nervousness in her posture. No hurry.
It was the way someone moved when they were arranging consequences before they happened.
In front of the central table, several monitoring circles floated in overlapping layers:
— Perimeter barriers.
— Night transit seals.
— Temporal exclusion zones.
Everything was active. Everything was stable.
Tsubaki Shinra stood to her right, steady, the magic tablet braced against her forearm. Her eyes moved quickly—reading, verifying, recalculating.
Momo Hanakai sat on the side table with her arms crossed, swinging one leg with restrained impatience.
Reya Kusaka watched in silence, fingers pressed to her temple, her detection Sacred Gear active—humming in a constant murmur only she seemed able to hear.
Tomoe Meguri leaned her sword against the wall, arms folded, like an ancient statue that had decided to attend a modern meeting.
Tsubasa Yura, by the door, held the Twinkle Aegis deactivated—but close. Always close.
Saji sat slouched on a chair, yawning without bothering to hide it.
Kaelan remained standing, one step behind the group, his backpack hanging from one shoulder.
His Resonance was quiet.
Not shut down.
Quiet—like an animal that knows it isn’t time to move.
Sona stopped.
“Listen,” she said.
The murmur of the circles softened. Even Saji straightened his back a little.
“Today I have to go to the Underworld.”
No one reacted immediately.
Not because it was unexpected, but because saying it out loud made real what everyone had been avoiding thinking about.
Tsubaki was the first to speak.
“Official confirmation?”
“Yes,” Sona replied. “Attendance is mandatory"
The Gremory–Phenex wedding is no longer a private matter. It has become a political event.”
Kaelan tightened the strap of his backpack without realizing it.
Sona continued, in the same tone she would use to list a train itinerary.
“With the Gremory team absent tonight, Kuoh’s night protection falls under under Sitri jurisdiction in full.”
That did cause movement.
Momo stopped swinging her leg.
Tomoe turned her head slightly.
Yura adjusted her grip on the shield.
“I don’t expect major incidents,” Sona added. “But I do expect tension.
Rumors. Nervous students. People wanting attention—or wanting to feel relevant.”
She looked at Reya.
“Passive detection stays active all night.”
“It already is,” Reya answered. “Nothing out of the ordinary… for now.”
Sona nodded.
Then she turned to Tsubaki.
“While I’m gone, you’re in charge.”
She didn’t say it like a proclamation.
She said it like a transfer of weight.
Tsubaki didn’t smile. Didn’t hesitate.
She simply inclined her head.
“Understood, President.”
“Management, not confrontation,” Sona continued.
“Priority: territorial stability.
No unnecessary pursuits. No impulsive decisions.”
Her eyes moved across the team one by one.
“Kuoh doesn’t need heroes tonight.
It needs to stay standing.”
Saji raised a hand halfway.
“Quick question: if something blows up, can I still hit it?”
Sona looked at him without emotion.
“Only if it blows up first.”
“Great,” Saji muttered. “I love it when everything depends on semantics.”
Sona ignored the remark and turned to Kaelan.
The difference was immediate.
It wasn’t the gaze of a president evaluating a subordinate.
It was the gaze of someone leaving a hard-to-classify variable inside an equation she won’t be able to supervise.
“Arverth.”
Kaelan looked up.
“Yes, Sona-sama.”
“Patrol with Saji.
Outer perimeter.
No solo explorations. No improvising.”
She paused—just barely.
“If anything feels off, you fall back and report.
Don’t try to ‘solve it.’”
Kaelan nodded.
“Understood.”
Sona produced a sealed bracelet and set it on the table.
“Dimensional flow marker.
If it vibrates, you return to the Sitri building immediately.”
Kaelan took it.
It was warm—like it had absorbed something from the territory itself.
“Any questions?” Sona said.
Kaelan hesitated. Only for a second.
“Do you think…” he started, then stopped.
Sona watched him with neutral attention.
“Think what?”
Kaelan lowered his gaze.
“Nothing, Sona-sama.”
She studied him for one more moment, as if waiting for something that never came.
Finally, she said:
“This should be a long day. Nothing more.”
Nothing more.
She turned and started toward the exit.
Before crossing the door, she stopped.
“I trust you,” she added.
“Kuoh is in your hands.”
The door closed with a dry click.
For a second, no one spoke.
Then Tsubaki exhaled slowly.
“Alright,” she said. “Sitri team—we’re activating the full night protocol.
No excess. No ego.”
She looked at Kaelan and Saji.
“Patrol in five minutes.”
Kaelan nodded.
But as he left the room—with the bracelet already on his wrist—his Resonance didn’t react to Sona’s goodbye.
It reacted to the emptiness she left behind.
As if something, somewhere that didn’t exist yet…
had noticed that the person with the most control was no longer here.
And had decided it was the right moment.
Kuoh — Patrol
The rain had eased into a constant drizzle, almost lazy. The campus lights illuminated the wet paths with long, yellowish reflections. The windows of the buildings still showed activity: students studying, others chatting, some simply living.
Normal life.
Too normal.
Kaelan walked with his hands in his coat pockets, following the campus’s outer perimeter. Each step was measured—not out of discipline… but because his body was in constant alert.
Not from fear.
From too much information.
The Resonance was active.
Very active.
It didn’t scream.
It didn’t tug.
But it absorbed everything.
The emotional murmur of humans was deafening when you knew how to listen:
Exam anxiety.
Repressed anger.
Small jealousies.
Fear without a name.
Anticipation.
Too much anticipation.
Beside him, Saji walked with complete ease, kicking pebbles and puddles.
“I swear, if I have to hear ‘preventive patrol’ one more time, I’m reincarnating as a dog,” he muttered. “At least they have an excuse to piss on everything.”
Kaelan let out the smallest hint of a smile.
“You prefer dragons over students,” he commented.
“I prefer enemies that don’t pretend everything’s normal,” Saji replied. “This…”—he gestured at the campus—“is unsettling. Nobody should be this calm.”
Kaelan didn’t answer right away.
Because for the first time since they’d left, he agreed.
He stopped.
Not abruptly.
He simply stopped moving.
“What?” Saji asked. “You ‘feel it’ again?”
Kaelan closed his eyes.
The Resonance rose.
Not like a wave.
Like pressure.
Layered human emotions began to stack in his chest without order or hierarchy. Not one dominant feeling—everything at once.
As if something were pushing from underneath.
“Not yet,” Kaelan said. “But… it’s charged.”
Saji sighed.
“Great. The air’s in a bad mood.”
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They kept going.
They passed near the old auxiliary building. Not Rias’s club. The other one. The one nobody looked at twice. The one that existed only because it had to.
Nothing seemed strange.
That was what was strange.
And then—
The bracelet vibrated.
Not once.
Twice.
Very close together.
Kaelan looked down immediately.
“Saji…”
Saji was already pulling out the communicator.
“Sitri base, Pawn One here. What do we have?”
The reply came almost immediately—but not from who Kaelan expected.
“Reya reporting,” the voice on the other end said, tense. “I detected an anomaly… no, several. They’re not fixed. They’re moving.”
Kaelan lifted his head.
“They’re not moving,” he corrected under his breath. “They’re assembling.”
Saji looked at him sharply.
“What?”
Before Kaelan could explain—
The Resonance exploded.
Not outward.
Inward.
His chest flooded all at once with someone else’s fear—fear that didn’t belong to him.
Real fear.
Raw.
Not demon fear.
Human fear.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
At the same time.
Kaelan stepped back, one hand going to his sternum.
“Arverth!” Saji exclaimed. “What’s happening?”
“Something… started,” Kaelan gasped. “It’s not a point. It’s a badly-made collective ritual.”
Reya spoke again, no longer trying to sound calm:
“The signatures are converging. It’s not a standard summoning. It’s… clumsy. Disorganized.”
“That’s worse,” Kaelan said.
The air changed.
Not gradually.
All at once.
As if someone had pulled an invisible lever.
The temperature dropped several degrees. The campus lights flickered once. Twice.
And then—
THM.
A deep heartbeat ran through Kuoh.
Not from the ground.
From the space between things.
Kaelan bent forward slightly.
The Resonance was at the surface—saturated. Every nearby human emotion pierced his body like needles:
Sudden panic.
Confusion.
Screams that hadn’t left any mouths yet.
“Saji…” he whispered. “This is already out of control.”
The sky over the campus cracked.
Not literally.
The perception of space folded, as if reality had made a miscalculation.
A violet column began to form above the old auxiliary building—not descending…
but emerging from within.
The earth trembled.
Windows shattered in the north wing of the campus.
A secondary building partially collapsed, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris.
The first real screams filled the air.
“Barrier!” Saji ordered, activating his magic.
Kaelan didn’t move.
Not because he was frozen—
but because his Resonance was operating at the limit, reading everything at once.
This wasn’t an entity reacting to him.
This was a forced summoning, fed by raw human emotion—unfiltered, uncontrolled.
And only now…
It was beginning.
Kaelan clenched his teeth.
“Reya,” he said into the communicator. “Warn everyone. This isn’t containment. This is full emergency.”
The sky beat again.
THM.
And then, a thunderous crash that made the sky—still drizzling—release a storm.
The first mistake was thinking the sky was opening.
It wasn’t.
The sky was yielding.
The violet column emerging from the old auxiliary building had no defined edges. It wasn’t a clean portal, nor a correctly executed ritual summoning. It was an imperfect tear—like someone had forced reality open with trembling hands and incomplete knowledge.
And reality…
was losing the argument.
The ground shook again, this time with real violence. Not a warning. An impact.
An entire wing of the building collapsed inward, crushing itself like soggy cardboard. Dust rose in a thick cloud, loaded with human screams. Alarms began to blare all across Kuoh—overlapping, unsynchronized.
Saji raised both hands, demonic aura flaring in dark red as the barrier expanded.
“REYA, IMMEDIATE EVACUATION!” he roared. “GET THE HUMANS OUT OF HERE, NOW!”
“Understood!” Reya’s voice answered, already breaking up. “There’s interference, but I’m guiding them!”
Kaelan barely heard her.
The Resonance was saturated.
There was no silence between emotions. Everything was noise. Human fear in its purest form, concentrated, multiplied by hundreds. Every scream pierced his chest like an electric discharge. Every thought of “I don’t want to die” stole his breath.
His body wanted to react.
His mind wanted to collapse.
“Kaelan,” Saji said, lower, closer. “Look at me.”
Kaelan did. Barely.
“This isn’t prevention anymore,” Saji continued. “This is war. Do you hear me?”
Kaelan nodded once.
And then—
The core appeared.
Not descending.
Pushing up from below.
A dark, shapeless mass began to force its way through the violet tear. At first it was only a thick shadow, like compressed smoke. Then something more solid.
Scales.
Not gleaming.
Not noble.
Twisted scales, as if each one had been forced into existence without ever fully deciding its final shape. Some looked like stone, others like blackened flesh. All of them vibrated with an unnatural pulse.
THM.
The heartbeat echoed through all of Kuoh.
Kaelan dropped to his knees—not from the physical impact, but because the Resonance absorbed something new:
hunger.
Not biological hunger.
Conceptual hunger.
A desperate need to finish existing.
The monster emerged a little more.
A gigantic claw tore through the rift and drove itself into reality with a dry, horrid sound—like the world was cracking from the inside. The impact generated a shockwave that ripped through the nearby trees, tearing them out by the roots.
Human students were flung through the air. Some slammed into walls. Others… didn’t get back up.
Kaelan screamed.
Not with his mouth.
With his entire body.
The Resonance spiked to its limit.
Fear.
Pain.
Confusion.
Guilt.
All at once.
“YURA! TOMOE! INTERCEPT!” Saji ordered into the communicator. “TSUBASA, SHIELD ON THE NORTH AXIS!”
The air flooded with demonic energy.
Tsubasa Yura appeared first, planting herself in front of the monster’s advance with the Twinkle Aegis deployed. The shield shone with starlight, forming a solid wall between the creature and the dormitories.
“IT DOESN’T GET PAST HERE!” she shouted, driving her feet into the ground.
The dragon—because there was no other word for it anymore—turned its incomplete head.
It didn’t roar.
It watched.
And then it struck.
The claw came down with impossible force. The impact shook the shield as if it were glass. The Aegis’s light fractured into cracked lines.
Yura screamed in pain, blood spilling from her nose, but she didn’t step back.
“HOLD!” she roared. “HOLD, YOU BASTARD!”
Kaelan forced himself upright, swaying.
“Saji…” he gasped. “I have to—”
“NO,” Saji cut him off. “You’re not the wall. You’re the sensor. Tell me what it’s going to do!”
Kaelan closed his eyes for a second.
The Resonance tore through him like a storm.
He saw the next move before it happened.
“IT’S GOING TO TURN!” he shouted. “IT’S LOOKING FOR THE POINT WITH THE MOST EMOTION!”
As if it had heard him, the dragon twisted its incomplete torso toward the center of the campus—
toward the humans who were still running.
“REYA!” Kaelan yelled. “GET THEM OUT, NOW!”
“I’M TRYING!” she shouted back. “BUT THERE’S INTERFERENCE—NOT ALL OF THEM ARE RESPONDING!”
The dragon opened its mouth.
Not fire.
A pulse.
THM.
The blow of presence erased everything around it. Buildings cracked. Pavement caved. Saji’s barrier splintered like crystal.
Kaelan was thrown several meters, rolling across the ground until he slammed into a collapsed wall. The air ripped out of his lungs.
Real pain.
Real blood.
But he was still alive.
He pushed himself halfway up, vision blurred, the Resonance screaming so loudly he could no longer distinguish individual emotions.
Only one repeated truth:
This can’t be contained.
It can only be delayed.
And someone had to pay for that time.
Kaelan clenched his fists.
“Then…” he murmured. “We fight.”
And he moved toward the monster.
The first building to fall was the science wing.
It didn’t explode.
It folded.
As if gravity had decided to look away for a second. The walls bowed inward, windows burst into a rain of glass and screams, and the roof collapsed into itself with a dry, crushing roar.
Reya Kusaka was there.
Not to fight.
To get people out.
Her Scouting Persona was fully deployed—dozens of translucent projections sprinting in different directions, each one marking routes, exits, safe zones.
“THIS WAY!” she screamed. “DON’T LOOK BACK—RUN!”
A female student tripped.
A boy froze, staring at the violet sky.
Reya saw them before it happened.
She always saw them before.
Kaelan’s Resonance wasn’t the only alarm in Kuoh that night.
The dragon beat again.
THM.
The pulse tore through half the west campus.
Reya felt her magic shriek inside her mind—saturated, forced beyond its safe limit. Blood leaked from one ear, but she didn’t stop.
“KEEP GOING!” she screamed. “DON’T STOP!”
A gigantic shadow passed overhead.
The dragon’s tail—incomplete, malformed—came down like a hammer.
Reya shoved the last two humans out of the blast zone.
She didn’t have time to run.
The impact was brutal.
The ground sank several meters. The shockwave threw cars into the air. The Scouting Persona shattered into hundreds of crystals of light.
When the dust settled, Reya Kusaka did not get back up.
But no one she had seen died there.
At the far north, Tomoe Meguri fought as if tomorrow didn’t exist.
Because deep down, she knew it didn’t.
Her Darkness Samurai Sword was wrapped in dark energy, each slash carving real scars into the dragon’s impossible flesh. It didn’t truly hurt it. But it annoyed it. It forced it to react.
And that was enough.
“HEY, NATURE’S ERROR!” she shouted, launching herself back into the attack. “LOOK AT ME!”
She leapt onto a fragment of wing and drove the sword to the hilt. The creature convulsed violently, flinging her through the air.
Tomoe rolled, rose with one knee on the ground, spitting blood.
“Heh…” she smiled. “That hurt me more than it hurt you.”
The dragon turned.
And Tomoe understood.
It wasn’t going to kill her yet.
It was going to remove her from the board.
A blow came down from above—too fast, too heavy.
Tomoe raised her sword on instinct.
The impact snapped the weapon in two.
The dark energy dispersed like smoke.
Tomoe’s body was hurled into a collapsed structure. The sound of the impact was dry.
Definitive.
She didn’t move again.
But the dragon lost seconds watching her fall.
Seconds others needed.
Tsubasa Yura was still standing.
She shouldn’t have been able to.
The Twinkle Aegis was cracked, its light flickering, her body riddled with internal cuts. Every breath was a conscious effort.
Saji was beside her, holding the outer barrier, his arms trembling under the constant strain.
“Yura…” he growled. “Pull back. Now.”
“No,” she answered, not looking at him. “Not yet.”
The claw came down again.
This time, Yura knew she wouldn’t endure it.
She set her feet.
Clenched her teeth.
“Sitri…” she whispered. “…doesn’t fall today.”
The impact destroyed the Aegis.
Light burst into brilliant fragments that cut through the air like shattered stars. Yura was thrown backward, her body slamming into the ground with brutal force.
The barrier vanished.
Saji shouted her name.
No answer.
But the strike had done something important:
The dragon took a step back.
Involuntary.
Instinctive.
As if even it had felt that this wasn’t easy prey.
Saji breathed hard, his demonic armor cracking apart.
“Kaelan…” he rasped into the communicator. “If you’re alive… this isn’t containment anymore.”
The dragon beat again.
Stronger.
THM.
The violet core flared with sick intensity.
The ritual had advanced too far.
Kuoh was losing.
And in the middle of the chaos, Kaelan moved toward the monster with a broken body, his Resonance burning in his chest, knowing something none of the others knew yet:
All of this sacrifice…
wasn’t going to be enough.
Kaelan felt every death.
Not as visions.
Not as memories.
As pressure.
The Resonance no longer distinguished individual emotions; it was a compact tide—a mass of fear, pain, determination, and loss that hammered his chest again and again, as if the entire world were using his heart as a drum.
Reya.
Tomoe.
Yura.
He didn’t know their status with certainty.
But he knew something had gone out.
And still, he advanced.
Every step was an internal battle. The Resonance screamed directions, probabilities, intentions: you die here, you turn here, you run and survive thirty seconds more, you attack and it doesn’t matter, you retreat and someone else dies.
Too much information.
Too much truth.
“Shut up…” he gasped. “…please, shut up…”
It didn’t.
The dragon turned toward him.
Not by chance.
Not out of aggression.
Out of need.
Kaelan understood instantly: the core wasn’t complete. The ritual had failed at something essential, and the monster knew it. It didn’t have consciousness—but it had direction.
Him.
Not as a sacrifice.
As an anchor.
“No,” Kaelan whispered, clenching his fists. “Not with me.”
Saji appeared beside him, drenched in blood, breathing as if every breath were the last.
“Arverth…” he said. “This isn’t a fight.”
“I know.”
“Then—”
“Then someone has to do it anyway.”
The dragon advanced.
The ground cracked beneath its weight, already-damaged buildings collapsing like soaked cardboard. The violet core beat with a rhythm that no longer imitated the world—it was trying to impose itself.
THM.
Kaelan felt his vision blur.
The Resonance was at its maximum.
It wasn’t power.
It was overload.
Every nearby human emotion entered without filter: raw panic, a child’s crying, desperate rage, adult guilt. Kaelan trembled, bent slightly—then forced himself upright.
“No…” he murmured. “Not now.”
He remembered the tatami.
The incomplete steps.
Moving without anchoring.
He breathed.
For the first time since it began, he didn’t listen to the Resonance.
He used it.
He lunged forward.
He didn’t shout.
He didn’t charge energy.
He ran.
The dragon brought down a claw.
Kaelan didn’t dodge by reflex, but by reading—not the motion, but the intent before it. He rolled beneath it, feeling the air split where his head had been a heartbeat earlier.
The impact slammed him into the ground, snapping two ribs.
He got up anyway.
He jumped over an open fissure, driving himself forward with a leg that barely responded. He delivered a direct strike into a malformed scale, exactly where the Resonance screamed the pattern was failing.
He didn’t damage the dragon.
But the core wavered.
That was enough to confirm what he already knew.
“You’re not invincible…” he rasped. “You’re incomplete.”
The dragon roared.
Not with sound.
With existential pressure.
The air thickened. Kaelan felt his own body trying to synchronize with that external heartbeat. The Resonance screamed—this time not with information, but with raw pain.
He dropped to his knees.
Saji shouted his name from somewhere he could no longer place.
Kaelan lifted his head.
He saw the core.
He saw the flaw.
And he understood something terrible and clear:
If the dragon finished forming, Kuoh would never exist again.
Not in this line.
Not in any.
He smiled.
A small smile. Human. Broken.
“Then…” he whispered. “…I stop you here.”
He stood up one last time.
The Resonance was overflowing, but it no longer controlled him. Kaelan stopped trying to survive. Stopped calculating. Stopped asking whether he should.
He walked straight toward the core.
Every step was a conscious decision to die.
The dragon unleashed everything.
Claws.
Pressure.
Distortion.
Kaelan felt his body break in multiple places. Blood filled his mouth. The world went white at the edges.
But he reached it.
He extended his hand.
Not to touch the core.
To stand in front of it.
“Not today,” he said, with a voice that shouldn’t have been able to come out anymore. “Not here.”
The claw came down.
This time there was no dodge.
No reading.
Kaelan took the blow head-on.
The impact went through him.
No pain.
No darkness.
End.
Death.
There was no gentle transition.
No tunnel of light.
There was absolute silence.
And then—
A yank.
A violent, unnatural recoil, as if someone had grabbed time itself and dragged it backward without care.
Green.
A green flash—distant, desperate.
