Hikaru's senses screamed before her eyes registered anything.
The world around Vikka seemed to distort. Air rippled, and even the data-reality hummed with dread. She didn't need to see it—she felt it.
Death.
Not somewhere else.
Not in a far-off timeline.
Here. Now.
Her body tensed, katana ready even as her heart sank.
"Mia…" she whispered, reading the faint currents of probability.
The fox-spirit's threads were trembling—not fear of the enemy, but fear of something far worse: the impossible future Brush had glimpsed two years ahead. Hikaru's eyes narrowed. Something had already started to move against them. Something unstoppable.
Without hesitation, she ran.
Every step carried weight—not just for herself, but for the Chosen One, for the party, and for the fate that now rested in fragile hands.
As she approached, her sharp instincts caught the flicker of golden threads—the faint awakening of Mia Rika's inner name, Daji, surfacing under pressure.
Hikaru's chest tightened. She could feel it: the two of them were marked for a shared fate. If she didn't act, she would witness a massacre unlike any the world had seen.
Her katana sang as she readied herself. "Not today," she murmured, eyes fixed on the shadowed horizon. "I will not let anyone touch them. Not Brush. Not Mia. Not anyone."
The winds shifted, and in the distance, the first tremors of the impossible threat rippled through reality.
Hikaru's heart told her one thing clearly: this battle would decide more than their lives—it would decide the future itself.