The world didn't settle after the truth shattered—if anything, it throbbed like an open wound.
Reiji stood in the dim corridor, breaths uneven, vision trembling at the edges as if the walls themselves were bending around him. The shattered fragments of the memory he had just witnessed still flickered inside his skull like broken glass catching the light. Every blink cut deeper.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there. Seconds? Minutes? Time collapsed into itself, warped by the weight of what he'd seen.
That voice… that face… why did it feel familiar?
He pressed a hand against the wall, grounding himself. His fingers shook.
Akari hadn't followed—she had been pulled away by the agents sweeping the lower hall, the aftermath of the Monarch's illusions forcing them to regroup. Reiji wasn't even sure if she could follow him anymore. Something in the air had changed after the memory surfaced—something in him had changed.
What the Monarch showed him… wasn't supposed to exist.
Half-truths. Half-lies. A past he couldn't recognize wearing a face he shouldn't have. The faint echo of a boy, his voice trembling as he asked a question no normal child should ask:
"If I disappear, will someone else become me?"
Reiji exhaled shakily. He hated how the memory made his chest tighten.
He hated how part of him recognized that voice.
Footsteps echoed from deeper inside the facility—slow, deliberate, as if someone wanted him to hear them.
Reiji straightened.
Then the lights overhead flickered violently.
Not illusions this time. Something physical. Something wrong.
From the corner of his eye, he saw security panels shutting down, one by one. Doors unlocked with metallic snaps. Mechanical barriers withdrew into the walls. It was as though the entire underground complex was bowing to the presence approaching him.
Then—
A voice crackled over the intercom. Calm, measured, but with a coldness that crawled under his skin.
"You saw it, didn't you?"
Reiji clenched his jaw.
The voice continued, unfazed.
"Good. It means you're finally ready to walk the path I carved."
Reiji forced his breaths to steady. "I don't walk paths made by ghosts."
A soft chuckle.
"Ghosts are often more honest than the living."
The lights flickered again.
The intercom cut.
The footsteps resumed.
Reiji reached for his blade—not the physical one, but the shadow-forged edge that answered his will. Darkness condensed at his palm, shaping itself into a sharp, humming form. The corridor dimmed as if absorbing the light around him.
He moved.
Every step echoed through the hollow underground maze, every sound bouncing off concrete and steel. The deeper he went, the colder the air became—like descending into the lungs of a dying beast.
What bothered him most, though, wasn't the cold.
It was the sense of familiarity.
He had walked this path before.
Not literally. Not physically.
But in the fractured memory the Monarch forced into him… something about this hallway matched the one in the boy's recollection—the boy with his voice, his eyes, but not his name.
Reiji swallowed hard.
He needed to keep moving.
—
The corridor opened into a larger chamber—circular, lined with broken observation screens and cracked mirrors. The floor was scattered with debris: shattered glass, torn restraints, dried streaks of something dark that had long turned black.
Reiji froze.
Something about this room—
A sudden surge of pain shot through his skull. Images bled in.
A child screaming.
Metal clamps closing.
A hand reaching for him—
Then another—
And another—
Then darkness swallowing everything.
Reiji staggered, grabbing the railing.
Not now. Not again.
But the memory refused to let go.
Then he felt it.
A presence behind him.
Reiji turned sharply.
A figure emerged from the shadows—hooded, porcelain mask cracked down the center, robes shifting like living ink. Yet the silhouette, the aura, the way the air warped around him—
Reiji knew without being told.
"Director."
He kept his voice steady, blade tightening in his grip.
The masked figure tilted his head, regarding him as though studying a specimen.
"You've grown," the Director murmured. "Even without all your pieces, you've survived."
Reiji's heart hammered once.
So the Monarch's revelation wasn't a trick. Something deeper was buried.
Reiji took a slow step forward.
"I'm done with your riddles. If you know who I was, then tell me."
The Director chuckled softly, almost pitying.
"My boy… you were not one person."
Reiji's blood ran cold.
"What the hell does that mean?"
The Director lifted a gloved hand. The room reacted instantly—mirrors hummed, their surfaces liquefying. Images flickered within them: Reiji as he was now, Reiji as a child, Reiji's shadow splitting, rejoining, splitting again.
Multiple versions of himself.
Each one slightly wrong.
The Director gestured toward the shifting mirrors.
"You call yourself Shinomiya Reiji. But that name… was only one of several prototypes chosen for you."
Reiji felt his pupils constrict.
"Prototypes."
"Yes. We were trying to build a singular identity—one stable enough to contain the shadow entity within you."
Reiji took another step, blade darkening.
"What entity?"
The Director didn't answer. Instead, he tapped one of the mirrors.
The surface rippled.
A small boy's face appeared—pale, trembling, eyes wide with fear.
Reiji felt his breath hitch.
The same boy from the memory.
The Director's voice softened—not kindly, but with something like ceremony.
"He was the first attempt. The first vessel. But he was too fragile. Too human."
Reiji's chest tightened painfully.
"And me?" he whispered.
"You are the last vessel."
The Director's tone sharpened.
"The one who survived the culling."
Reiji's pulse pounded in his ears.
Culling.
A word that tasted like blood.
"So all those children—"
"Were possible versions of you," the Director finished. "Fragments. Attempts. Echoes. Only the strongest could become the final identity."
The mirrors trembled violently. Some cracked. A few shattered completely.
Reiji's vision blurred with a surge of rage.
"You played god."
"We were merely trying to build one."
Reiji moved.
His blade erupted in shadow, the temperature of the room dropping instantly. The darkness around him sharpened, whispering, twisting, ready to tear through anything that stood in his way.
But the Director didn't flinch.
"Strike if you wish. But know this—every blow you land brings you closer to becoming what we made you to be."
Reiji's steps faltered.
The Director lifted his other hand.
Suddenly the floor beneath them shifted—the metal plates rearranging, exposing a circular platform descending into deeper darkness. The air became heavy, suffocating.
"Come, Reiji."
The Director's voice echoed from all directions.
"It's time you learned the truth of the Endgame."
The ground trembled.
Walls unfolded, revealing a spiraling descent of shadowed machinery, suspended bridges, and pulsating cables carrying light like veins.
Reiji felt his breath catch.
This wasn't a facility.
It was a womb.
A factory for creating identities.
The Director stepped backwards, descending onto the platform.
"You have questions. I have answers. Follow me… and choose who you will become."
Reiji stared down into the abyss.
His shadow writhed at his feet, reacting—not with fear, but with recognition. As if the darkness knew exactly what this place was.
He inhaled once.
Then stepped onto the lowering platform.
The last thing he heard before the chamber closed above him was the Director's whisper, soft but sharpened like a blade:
"This is where you were born… and where you may die."
The platform descended.
Darkness swallowed everything.