The battlefield had become a requiem of collapsing stone and screaming steel. The Silent Dirge had filled every crevice of the cathedral, its resonance breaking flesh and shattering will. Yet amidst the cacophony, Shinomiya Reiji carved a path of defiance. Each swing of his blade tore holes in the song, if only for a heartbeat, enough for his allies to breathe.
The enemy came in waves—cloaked figures whose faces dissolved into mist whenever struck, reforming with each note of the choir's chant. They were not flesh but echoes, fragments of despair bound into human shapes. Killing them was meaningless unless the song itself was broken. And the choir sang on, perched upon the fractured altar, their voices harmonizing into a single unrelenting dirge.
Reiji's chest heaved, his body heavy from wounds that had no time to heal. Yet his eyes did not falter. He had seen worse than this—a thousand deaths, countless betrayals, the weight of sins that refused to fade. The Dirge was nothing more than another cage, and he would shatter it as he had shattered every chain before.
"Reiji!" one of his companions cried, voice cracking under the pressure of the melody. Blood streamed from her ears, her body trembling. "The choir—cut them down! The echoes won't stop otherwise!"
He did not respond with words. His body became motion, a blur through the chaos. Shadows clung to him like a mantle, his movements sharper than thought, driven by rage and necessity. The figures of the choir turned their veiled heads toward him, and their pitch rose. The air thickened, cracking stone, bending steel, twisting the screams of the dying into part of their hymn.
One note struck him like a hammer. His body staggered, blood spraying from his mouth. His vision blurred, the world spinning as though the cathedral itself had become an abyss. And in that abyss, he saw them again—the faces of the dead. Friends, strangers, enemies, all merged into the endless chorus. They reached for him with pale hands, whispering his name not with malice, but with sorrow.
He almost faltered. Almost.
Then his grip tightened. No. You are not chains. You are proof.
Reiji roared, a sound raw and primal, his voice tearing through the hymn as his blade cleaved upward. The first choir member fell, veil split, the note collapsing into silence. For the first time, the song wavered. His allies gasped as though surfacing from drowning waters, strength trickling back into their limbs.
The remaining choir responded in fury. Their harmony sharpened, a weapon honed from grief itself. The sound ripped into Reiji's flesh, splitting skin, burning through muscle. His knees buckled, but he did not fall. He had long since abandoned the luxury of collapse. With every ounce of strength left, he surged forward again, cutting down a second, then a third.
The last stood alone, its voice rising higher than the rest, a solo that carried the sorrow of countless generations. The cathedral shook violently, stones collapsing as light bled through the cracks. The final veil turned to him, its face obscured, its voice piercing.
Reiji advanced, each step a rebellion against despair. Blood drenched his body, his vision narrowing to the single figure before him. The song tore at his mind, tried to unravel him, but he pressed on.
When his blade struck, it was not steel that cut—it was resolve itself. The veil tore open, the voice breaking into silence. The final note ended.
And with it, the Dirge was gone.
Silence reigned at last, but it was not peace. It was the hollow silence of survival, the kind that carried no victory, only the awareness that more battles would come. Reiji stood alone among the ruins, his allies too broken to stand. The cathedral was a grave now, just as he had known it would be.
But graves could not bind him. He looked to the horizon where crimson had turned to black. The war was not over. The Dirge was only the prelude.
And he would answer the next song with blood.