The sun never rose.
It wasn't night, not exactly — but a half-world caught in perpetual eclipse. The sky glowed with a bruised amber hue, like twilight's ghost had bled across the horizon and refused to die. Buildings loomed like broken teeth. Pavement lay cracked and yawning with black veins. Wind moved, but there was no sound. No scent. Just motion without meaning.
Rin followed Kuroha through the remnants of a city that had no name. They walked in silence, footsteps quiet against the dust, like they were trying not to wake something sleeping underneath it all.
"Where are we going?" Rin asked finally.
Kuroha didn't turn. "Nowhere in particular. Everywhere's dead. This just feels less haunted."
Her voice, like always, was sharp and dry — but beneath it, something shook. Rin couldn't tell if it was fear or anger. Maybe both.
They passed the husk of a bus — half-melted, twisted around a tree. The frame looked disturbingly familiar. Rin's gut twisted.
"Was that…?"
"Probably yours," Kuroha said. "Things you remember tend to cling to you here. The Void isn't just a world. It's a memory. One that doesn't want to let go."
Rin looked away. The silence returned.
Above them, the countdown still glowed on the monolith.
[50]
"What happens when it hits zero?" he asked.
Kuroha stopped. Turned to face him.
"The Tournament begins."
"You said that before. But what does that actually mean?"
She studied him for a moment. Then sighed, brushing strands of white hair from her face. Her gaze wandered to the tower's reflection in a cracked window beside them.
"Alright," she said. "You want answers? You get them."
She sat on a concrete slab and gestured for him to do the same. Rin obeyed, unsure if he was ready to hear what came next.
Kuroha's tone changed — slower now, more deliberate. Like she was reciting something too heavy to carry casually.
"Everyone in this place… every one of the hundred who will make it to the Tournament… was meant to die. Not naturally. Not peacefully. Violently. Unexpectedly."
Rin frowned. "So we're all… what, unfinished business?"
"More like unfinished fate," Kuroha said. "There's something wrong with us. Something that pulled us back. And the Void noticed."
She looked up at the sky.
"No gods here. No heaven. No hell. Just this... thing. A system. A mind maybe. Some force we don't understand. It doesn't save people. It selects them."
"Why?"
Kuroha's eyes narrowed.
"To test us. Break us. Rebuild us. Whatever the Tournament is… it isn't about survival. It's about transformation. You can't stay who you were and make it through. That's the only rule."
Rin stared at his reflection again in a pool of still water.
"Do you remember how you died?"
"…Yes," he said softly. "Bus crash. Black ice. Screams."
She nodded slowly. "You were supposed to stay dead. But something rejected that."
A faint hum cut through the silence.
Rin looked around. "Do you hear that?"
Kuroha's eyes narrowed. She stood suddenly. "Shit. No, no, no—"
The hum rose. Not mechanical — organic, Like a throat opening beneath the world. The air grew thick, charged, pulling at the hair on their skin.
From the far end of the avenue, something shifted.
Rin saw it — a dark shape falling from the sky.
A coffin.
It slammed into the earth like a dropped anchor, kicking up a cloud of dust and ash. And then another. And another. From the sky, they began to fall — black, metal coffins like artillery shells.
*KRA-KUM.*
*KRA-KUM.*
*KRA-KUM.*
Each hit with a shockwave, leaving deep craters in the ground.
Rin shielded his eyes. "What is this?!"
"They're falling," Kuroha whispered. "The souls that didn't make it. Caught by Wardens. Marked unworthy. Now they fall… one by one."
Rin watched as one of the coffins cracked open.
The corpse inside was burnt, unrecognizable, bound in iron. Runes shimmered across its skin, flaring once — and then going dim.
"Why show us this?"
Kuroha's face was grim. "To remind us what happens to the rest."
The coffins kept falling. One. Two. Three more. Some shattered. Others remained sealed. No screams. Just impact. Like judgment raining down.
And then — silence.
Rin stared at the smoldering remains of one near his feet. "They're all really gone…"
"Dead in every sense now," Kuroha murmured. "Erased. Not even the Void wants them."
A deep, resonant bell tolled in the distance. Once. Twice.
The counter ticked.
[49]
Something inside Rin shifted. His chest felt hollow, yet heavier than before. "So we only get one shot?"
Kuroha looked at him. "That's what makes it matter."
They didn't speak for a while after that.
They walked instead, past the ruins, toward an old cathedral swallowed by ivy. It was half-collapsed, but the stained glass remained — a fractured depiction of a war between black-winged angels and robed giants. None of it made sense.
Inside, they sat beneath a cracked arch.
"There's more you should know," Kuroha said.
She reached into her coat and pulled out a stone — smooth, obsidian, shaped like a fang.
"This marks us," she said. "Each contestant carries one. If you die in the Tournament, it shatters."
She handed it to him. Rin felt it thrum against his palm.
"It's warm."
"It'll get hotter as your time runs out."
Rin studied the stone. "So what happens if you survive the Tournament?"
Kuroha hesitated.
Then: "You ascend."
"To where?"
"No one knows. No one's ever made it through. Or if they have… they never came back."
Outside, the sky trembled again.
But this time, it wasn't a fall. It was a ripple.
Rin stood. "What now?"
Kuroha stepped toward the broken doorway, eyes scanning the horizon.
"Shift," she whispered. "The Void is shifting."
The wind howled. Buildings groaned. The sky itself seemed to bend*toward a distant point — a pinprick of gold in the dark.
And then they saw it.
A figure walking across the air — above them all, robes trailing behind like wings of ink.
Not a Warden.
Something else.
His feet didn't touch ground. He hovered — eyes closed — hands folded in front of him like a monk.
From his mouth came no words.
Only sound.
A name. Rin's name.
It wasn't spoken.
It was sung into the bones of the world.
Rin dropped to one knee. The air around him was too heavy to stand in. His thoughts blurred. Every memory burned like it was being rewritten.
Kuroha shouted something — but it didn't reach him.
The golden figure turned slowly.
One eye opened.
It was hollow.
And inside it — Rin saw himself.
Bleeding. Laughing. Dying. Living. Again and again. An endless loop of futures.
"Enough!" Kuroha threw a blade — a shimmering arc of steel and light.
The figure vanished.
Just—gone. Like smoke swallowed by wind.
Rin collapsed.
The air returned to normal.
Kuroha was at his side. Her face pale. Eyes wide.
"Did you hear what it said?" she whispered.
"I didn't… hear it. I felt it," Rin rasped. "What was that?"
"Something old," she said quietly. "And far too interested in you."
They sat in the ruins until the silence felt safe again.
Far above, the counter ticked once more.
[48]
And for the first time, Rin realized something:
This wasn't just survival anymore.
It was prophecy.
And it had already begun to unfold.