Sora had fallen asleep in his arms somewhere in the middle of a sentence she never finished. Kagekami tucked the blanket around her carefully, smoothed it at the edges the way Annie used to, and closed her door without a sound.
He found Saito on the sofa.
She was completely still — eyes shut, breathing even, the composed stillness of someone deeply asleep.
Kagekami looked at her for a moment. "Saito."
One eyebrow twitched. Almost imperceptibly. But it twitched.
"I know you're awake," he said.
Not a muscle moved.
"You're really committing to this."
He reached down and picked her up. Saito, to her credit, maintained the performance with impressive dedication all the way down the hall and into his bedroom, where he set her down on the bed and stepped back.
"Why," Saito said, eyes still closed, "have you brought me to your bedroom."
"And there it is."
She opened her eyes and looked at him with the expression of someone who has decided the pretense has served its purpose.
Kagekami turned toward the wardrobe and pulled his shirt off. Saito's eyes found the scar across his back before she could redirect them — long, deep, the kind of mark that doesn't come from anything ordinary.
"Where did you get that?"
"Arcturus."
He turned around. Saito became very interested in the wall behind him, her cheeks doing something she was actively trying to prevent.
Kagekami walked toward the bed. Saito shuffled backward. He kept coming. She ran out of mattress.
He reached past her and grabbed the spare pillow from behind her head. Then he stepped back, pulled a blanket from the shelf and dropped down onto the floor.
"You take the bed," he said. "I'll sleep here."
Saito stared at the top of his head. "You can't — this is your room. I'm not going to make you sleep on the floor in your own—"
"It's my room," he said reasonably, "which means I can sleep wherever I want in it." He pulled the blanket over himself and closed his eyes. "Goodnight, Saito."
Silence.
What just—
"Kagekami."
"Mm."
"Come back safely tomorrow."
A pause. "I will. Don't worry."
She listened to his breathing slow. Then she lay back on the pillow and looked at the ceiling in the dark for a long time before sleep found her.
The training hall at the Dragons Fang Association was lit at half capacity, the kind of lighting that exists for people who aren't supposed to be awake. Ms. Kasami heard the noise before she reached the door — the rhythmic impact of someone hitting something with sustained aggression.
She pushed it open.
Takomi stopped mid-swing and turned. She had the look of someone who had been at this for a while.
"Can't sleep?" Ms. Kasami asked.
"Not even slightly."
Ms. Kasami sat down on the bench along the wall and closed her eyes, settling into the stillness. Takomi went back to her training. The noise resumed — then stopped.
Ms. Kasami opened one eye.
Takomi was standing in the middle of the floor, water bottle in hand, staring at her.
"You're not making any noise," Takomi said. "Where's it coming from?"
Ms. Kasami opened the other eye. Looked at the water bottle on the floor that had clearly been knocked over twice already. Looked at Takomi.
"Come on then," she said, standing up. "Let's spar."
Takomi's expression shifted immediately. She dropped into her stance.
She came forward fast — fierce, direct, combinations thrown with the confidence of someone who fights for a living. Ms. Kasami moved around it all — stepping, redirecting, reading the weight behind each strike — until Takomi overcommitted to a kick and Ms. Kasami caught her leg.
She was lining up the counter when Takomi twisted away and reset.
"No powers," Ms. Kasami said.
Takomi exhaled. "Afraid you can't keep up?"
Ms. Kasami was behind her before the sentence finished.
Takomi spun and threw a punch. Ms. Kasami caught it with the flat of her foot — a precise block that redirected the force entirely — and drove her other foot into Takomi's gut. Takomi stumbled. Ms. Kasami closed the gap, caught her wrist and turned her smoothly, bringing her arm up behind her back until Takomi's free hand was slapping the floor in submission.
Ms. Kasami released her and offered her hand.
Takomi took it and stood, breathing hard. She rolled her shoulder and looked at her. "Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"Why did you become an S-Rank Protector? There are only a handful of you. Most people with your level of ability choose an easier life."
Ms. Kasami was quiet for a moment. She sat back down on the bench and looked at the floor.
"My father never agreed with it," she said. "He still doesn't, despite everything." She paused. "My mother had no powers. No abilities whatsoever. She was completely ordinary in every measurable way. And she spent her entire life trying to help people anyway — whatever she could do, however small."
Takomi sat down beside her.
"When I was young there was a Ripper attack on a newly opened building. Eight storeys high. My mother got out with the other civilians but her friend was still trapped inside. The first S-Rank Protectors weren't available." She stopped. Started again. "My mother went back in. She found her friend and got her out. And when a Ripper came at them—" her voice didn't change, but something behind it did, "—her friend pushed her toward it and ran."
The training hall was very quiet.
"The Ripper scratched her repeatedly. She fought it as long as she could. But she ran out of strength and it—" a pause, "—it began eating her leg. My father arrived and killed it. But the damage was already done." She looked at her hands. "She was in hospital for a month. She didn't make it out."
Takomi looked at her and said nothing for a moment. "I'm sorry, Kasami."
They walked out together, the building quiet and dark around them. Ms. Kasami's car was parked at the front. She got in and rolled the window down.
"It's alright," she said.
Takomi leaned against the door frame. "Her friend — I hope they faced consequences for what they did."
"My father almost killed him." The ghost of something crossed Ms. Kasami's face. "Grace stopped him. But he took the arm first."
The car pulled away.
Takomi stood in the dark outside the building and watched the taillights disappear down the road.
Grace, she thought. her father almost killed someone.
She turned the pieces over slowly.
Who exactly is your father, Kasami?
"Welcome back, brat."
Kagekami straightened up in the void and looked around. "Darkness." He located the two eyes hovering in the dark above him. "What do you want?"
"Is that all I get?" Darkness said. "After everything I've given you?"
Kagekami paused. "Right. The teleportation." He cleared his throat. "Thank you."
Darkness laughed — long, genuine, the sound rolling through the void like distant thunder. "Your world is endlessly amusing to me. It almost makes me feel something about destroying it."
Kagekami's fists closed. "Watch yourself."
Still as stubborn as the first time, Darkness thought, watching him. But let's see how long that holds.
"Why did you bring me here?" Kagekami looked up at him directly. "If you have something to say then say it. If you want to talk then talk. Stop pulling me into the dark every time and leaving me with nothing."
Darkness was quiet for a moment. Then he stepped forward out of the shadows — fully, completely — and let himself be seen.
Kagekami went very still.
The figure standing before him was his own face. His own build. His own hands. Every detail exact — but the eyes were wrong, hollow and vast and ancient, carrying the weight of something that had existed long before the concept of a human face.
Kagekami stared at himself staring back at him.
Then he woke up.
He sat up gasping, one hand pressed against his temple, the pain behind his eyes sharp and immediate. He sat on the edge of the floor where he'd been sleeping and breathed through it slowly.
What are you, he thought. What are you really.
He turned. The bed was empty, the blanket folded neatly at the foot of it — precisely, with the kind of deliberate tidiness that is its own form of communication.
She's already gone.
He sat there for a moment. Then muffled laughter found him through the wall — two voices, bright and easy, coming from the kitchen.
He stood up, washed his face, got dressed and walked out to find Sora and Saito side by side at the counter, flour on Sora's sleeve and something in the oven that smelled like it had been thought about carefully. Kagekami reached past them both, took a cupcake from the cooling rack and bit into it before either of them could object. He pressed a kiss to the top of Sora's head.
"I'll be back soon."
Sora grabbed his sleeve. "Come home safely." She said it the way Annie used to say things — like a fact she was choosing to believe into existence.
"I will."
Saito moved closer to Sora as he reached the door, her shoulder pressing gently against hers. He looked back once. Then he left.
The port was barely recognisable.
The crowd that had gathered stretched across the entire yard and out into the surrounding streets — S-Ranks, A-Ranks and B-Ranks all assembled together, the scale of it making the war feel suddenly, undeniably real in a way that briefings and strategy meetings hadn't quite managed.
Kagekami moved through it. Shoulders, voices, the low electric tension of hundreds of people trying not to show how afraid they were.
Two S-Ranks were walking in the opposite direction. One of them clipped his shoulder as they passed.
Kagekami kept walking.
A hand closed around his shoulder from behind and pulled him back.
"Apologise," the S-Rank said. "Or else."
Kagekami turned and looked at him.
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. Whatever the S-Rank found in his eyes made the grip on his shoulder release without any further discussion. The two of them walked away without looking back.
Kagekami turned and continued through the crowd.
"Kagekami!"
Emily appeared through a gap in the crowd, already smiling, already moving toward him with the particular energy of someone for whom a crowd is simply a mild inconvenience.
"How are you?" he asked.
"I'm great, actually! And you — you look like you didn't sleep, are you—"
"ALL CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO GO INDOORS IMMEDIATELY. THE WAR HAS BEGUN. ALL CITIZENS ARE ADVISED TO GO INDOORS IMMEDIATELY. THE WAR HAS BEGUN."
The siren tore through everything — conversation, thought, the last remnants of the morning's ordinary calm. It echoed off the buildings and across the yard and somewhere in the city beyond, and every Ranker in the crowd went silent at the same moment.
The war was no longer next week.
It was now.