The air in the Sunken Capital was thick with the scent of salt and ancient, rotting machinery. As the trio stood before the chrome-alloy gates, the sheer weight of the city's religious fanaticism pressed down on them as the citizen stood at the gate seemingly waiting on them. These weren't soldiers; they were grandfathers, mothers, and young men, all with hollow eyes and hearts filled with a terrifying, manufactured zeal.
"Stop there, you transgressors! You don't belong here!" a citizen screamed, stepping from behind a rusted barricade. He clutched a jagged harpoon, his knuckles white. Soon, dozens more emerged from the shadows of the crumbling high-rises.
"We just want to pass through," Kaito said, his hands raised in a plea for peace. "We aren't here for your city."
"You bring the 'Zero' with you!" the man spat, his finger shaking as he pointed at Kenji. "The Lords warned us of the hollow plague. You are a stain on the grace they gave us!"
The massive gears of the gate groaned, and a figure stepped out. He was lean, dressed in a short legged swim suit with goggles on his head . He carried no blade, but the flooded street groaned beneath his feet.
"Peace, my children," the Servant said, his voice smooth as silk. "I am Lycian, the Voice of the Tides. You made quite an impression on Oakhaven. My lords, Seth and Argo, were... not entertained. They've come up with what you might call a more sinister plan." He grinned, revealing teeth filed to sharp points.
"Where are they Sharky?" Kenji asked, his hand hovering over his hilt.
Lycian chuckled, gesturing to the mob. "They are everywhere. They are the air you breathe and the walls that protect these people. Why would they soil their hands with you when their loyal children are so eager to prove their love?"
"AMEN!!" the crowd roared in a singular, chilling voice.
"Behold!" Lycian shouted, his voice rising theatrically. "The demons who would kill the heroes who saved you from the deep! For the glory of Seth and Argo... cleanse the gates!"
The crowd surged forward like a tidal wave of flesh and rusted iron.
"I can't use my powers!" William shouted, dodging a flurry of harpoon thrusts. He used his arms to shove people back, but he refused to clench his fist. "The destruction would be too much! I can't kill them for being blinded!"
"Kaito! Try and aim something at the servant!" William urged, ducking under a swung lead pipe.
Kaito snapped his fingers, preparing a localized gravity Shift to crush Lycian's podium. But before he could release it, a group of citizens sprinted into his line of sight, locking arms to form a human wall.
"I can't hit him! They're blocking him with their bodies!" Kaito yelled, his hand trembling as he held back the blast.
Lycian threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing off the submerged ruins. "Having trouble over there? It's truly a shame. My children are so eager to see their lords' will be done that they would happily die just to stay in your way."
"You demons deserve death for trying to harm our masters!" the citizens shrieked, clawing at Kenji's cloak.
Kenji's eyes went cold. He saw Kaito's hesitation and William's bruises. He realized that their "morality" was the very cage Lycian was using to kill them. He stopped dodging.
"Kaito," Kenji said, his voice a jagged edge of ice. "They aren't blocking the air. They're only blocking the ground."
"Kenji, what are you—"
"Stop trying to aim that rocks at him," Kenji commanded, locking eyes with his friend. "Aim me."
"but what if you hit the peop—"
"Who cares about them right now!" Kenji roared, his voice cracking with frustration as he parried a rusted harpoon. "All we need to do is take him down!"
His eyes were dead serious and hollow pits of gray that had long ago stopped seeing people and started seeing targets.
"Okay... let's do this," Kaito whispered. His heart was heavy as he placed his hands on Kenji's shoulders. He looked at the wall of brainwashed mothers and fathers, then closed his eyes.
BOOM!
The air exploded. Kenji was launched like a living railgun, a blur of motion that ripped through the air above the crowd.
"This ends here!" Kenji shouted mid-flight.
Lycian's smug grin vanished. In a state of pure shock, the Servant tried to bring up a shield of swirling seawater, but it was too late. Kenji didn't just strike him, he sent the sword straight through his chest.
SPLAT.
kenji, standing on top of the Servant, held the sword tighter and slashed up, cutting lycian's shoulder open. The Servant of the adjons died, his swim suit stained crimson. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the sound of Kenji landing in the blood-stained water.
"Murderers!" a woman shrieked, breaking the spell.
The horror turned into a frenzied rage. The people surged forward again, throwing themselves at the trio with suicidal intensity. William and Kaito tried to push them back, but the crowd was too large. They began taking hits from stones and blades drawing blood from the heroes who refused to fight back.
"Enough!" Kenji snarled, his hand right on his sword hilt. "If you want to fight, then come!"
The people stood staring at him.
"Stop!"
An elderly Priest stepped forward, his robes tattered but his posture dignified. "The blood of the Voice of our lord has been spilled. I am one of the messenger of the gods, and I will take this fight upon my shoulders."
Behind him, a citizen clutched his arm, weeping. "Remember your son, he only has you," he whispered. The Priest looked at him with a tragic smile. "Dying for our lords is a worthy cause."
Kaito tried to lunge forward to stop the madness, but the citizens blocked him, a living wall of zealots. "Let them fight!" they chanted. "Let the gods decide!"
Kenji looked at the old man. "You're sure you want to do this?"
The Priest nodded nervously, his hands shaking as he gripped a machete and a harpoon. "If I lose... let these young men go through the city freely. No more violence."
A whisper traveled through the crowd. Someone muttered that the Priest was just making them walk through, a desperate gamble because he knew he wouldn't last a minute.
The fight began. The Priest lunged, swinging the harpoon with a clumsy, desperate strength. It missed by a mile. Before the old man could recover, Kenji's blade flashed, a single, surgical thrust to the heart.
The Priest collapsed onto the ground. "My life... for the life of the village," he gasped, his eyes glazing over.
The crowd stood in stunned silence. To them, it was anticlimactic. They didn't realize the old man had just bought their lives with his own.
Immediately, with angry hearts the people threw the priest's body in the sea.
The Priest's body hadn't even cooled in the dark water when the boat began to glide through the canals. The silence of the Sunken Capital was now filled with the weight of thousands of hateful eyes.
As they paddled, a high, thin wail broke through the mist. It was the sound of a child's soul shattering.
Kenji didn't say a word. He stood up, the boat rocking beneath him, and leaped onto a half-submerged wooden pier.
"Kenji! Where are you going?" Kaito called out, his voice hushed and anxious. "I'll be back soon," Kenji replied, his voice flat, not looking back.
He followed the sound to a small, rotting skiff tied to a doorframe. Inside, a boy sat huddled, his face buried in his hands. When the boy looked up, his eyes weren't filled with fear—they were filled with a burning, jagged fury that Kenji knew better than his own name.
the boy looked up, "You," the boy hissed, his voice trembling. "You killed my father. You killed the Priest."
Kenji stood over him. He saw it all in an instant: the years of hate ahead of this boy, the obsession with revenge, the thousand nights of reliving the blood on the cobblestones. He saw a mirror of himself, a new "Zero" being born in the ruins of the Capital.
"That look in your eyes," Kenji whispered, his hand tightening on his hilt. "I know it. It's a burden that never gets lighter. It eats you until there's nothing left but a hole."
The boy lunged, a small, pocket knife in his hand, screaming a curse at the man who ruined his world.
Kenji didn't dodge. He let the boy stab him and moved with a sickening, practiced grace. "I'll free you from that burden," he murmured.
Squelch.
"The only source of freedom for this pain is death."
The crying stopped. The fury died out of the boy's eyes, replaced by a sudden, hollow peace. Kenji caught the small body before it hit the floor of the boat, laying him down gently, as he looks at the boy. To Kenji, this wasn't murder; it was an act of 'Mercy' he wished someone had granted him years ago.
He walked back to the pier and stepped onto the boat where Kaito and William waited, their faces pale and questioning.
"What happened back there?" William asked, looking at the blood on Kenji's sleeve.
Kenji stared into the dark water of the canal, his expression as stone-cold as the city gates. "I made things better," he said. "Let's keep moving.