Awareness didn't come all at once.
Awareness arrived step, by step.
I was dreaming of the smell of iron and the sound of crunching bone. the iron smell, on my skin. Then the smell shifted to floor wax and to something like death.
I opened my eyes.
The ceiling above me was white, but not the soft white of my bedroom. This was colder. Industrial tile. Too clean. I tried to lift my hand, but it felt like it was made of lead. My chest burned—a sharp, searing reminder of the Beast's claws.
"Don't move," a voice said.
It was calm, steady—but it carried the weight of a stone slab settling into place.
"You've lost more blood than most people have in their entire bodies. By all laws of medicine, you should already be a corpse."
I turned my head.
The man from the wreckage sat in a metal chair beside the bed. Up close, his hair was even redder—the color of a dying coal. The scar on his cheek cut down his face like frozen lightning. He wore a tactical vest over a black hoodie and scrolled casually through his phone, like this was a waiting room instead of a morgue.
"Who…" My voice came out as a dry rasp. "My mom. Hana. Where—"
I stopped.
The memories hit all at once.
The maw.
The weight of its foot.
The red wave.
The man looked up.
His black eyes weren't unkind—but they were honest. Too honest.
"They're gone, Ren," he said. "There was nothing left to bury. The Society's cleaners already scrubbed the site. To the neighbors, it was a gas-leak explosion. Pretty common in old 2010-era builds."
He stood. He was taller than he'd looked through the haze of blood and fire.
"I'm Ryujin Akuma," he said. "And I'm the man making sure you don't join them in the dirt tomorrow. You're in the Aegis Society headquarters—Tokyo branch."
"I don't care," I choked, the grief finally boiling up in my throat. "I want to go back. I want to—"
"You want to what?" Ryujin stepped closer, leaning over the bed. "Die?"
His voice sharpened.
"The Mirage that attacked you wasn't random. It was drawn to you. Your blood's been screaming for five hundred years, kid. You finally answered it."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass vial.
Inside, a single drop of crimson liquid floated—not resting at the bottom, but pacing the glass like a caged animal.
"That's a sample we recovered from your living room floor," Ryujin said. "It's not just blood anymore. It's King's Dominion."
My breath hitched.
"You're a direct descendant of one of the Hundred Kings," he continued. "Specifically—the Sanguine King."
The door slid open.
A girl with bright pink hair bounced in, holding a tray. She looked like she belonged in a pop-idol group, not a classified underground facility. High-waisted skirt. Oversized sweater. A smile that felt painfully out of place here.
"He's awake! Yay!" she chirped—then flinched when she saw my face. "Ah—sorry. Timing."
She set the tray down. "I'm Kara Morinaga. I kept your heart from stopping on the drive here. My poison Dominion's great at making it race when it wants to quit."
A massive blond guy followed her in, barely fitting through the doorway. His muscles were so dense they looked carved from granite.
"Kid looks like a twig, Ryujin-sensei," he rumbled. "You sure he's the one who leveled a whole house?"
"He's the one," Ryujin replied flatly.
I stared at them—the poison girl, the human boulder, and the man who smelled faintly of smoke and gunpowder.
"Why am I here?" I asked. "What was that thing?"
Ryujin exhaled slowly, pulling a Zippo lighter from his pocket.
Click.
Clack.
"Five hundred years ago," he said, "a Demon King rose from Hell. He didn't come to negotiate—he came to conquer. To stop him, the god of this world bestowed unique divine blessings upon one hundred human kings."
The flame reflected in his eyes.
"Those powers—King's Dominion—let humanity fight back. Eventually, they sealed the bastard away."
His expression darkened.
"But you don't kill a god-tier demon that easily. He's trapped, not dead. His aura still leaks through the seal, and that corruption manifests as Mirages."
My stomach twisted.
"Those eight-foot freaks," Ryujin continued, "are his scouts. Mindless constructs born from leftover malice. The one that killed your family was just doing its job."
"And yours?" I whispered.
"We're the secret society," he said. "We destroy every Mirage that crosses over. And when Dominion users go rogue—using their power for greed, domination, or worse—we hunt them too."
He paused.
"The gene usually stays dormant. It awakens under extreme stress… or exposure to another Dominion. For you—it was both."
I looked down at my hand. Focused on the vein in my wrist.
The vibration returned.
That low, humming power—the same force that had turned the Mirage into mist.
"I'll kill them," I said quietly. "All of them."
Ryujin's lips curled into a jagged smirk.
"Good," he said. "Because the world of 2016 isn't just Pokémon and pop songs anymore."
He tossed a black tactical jacket onto the bed. A silver crest was stitched into the sleeve—a crown split cleanly by a sword.
"Get dressed. You've met Kara and Grild—they're your squad. We leave for the training grounds in ten minutes."
He turned toward the door.
"Welcome to the end of the world, kid."