The hot beam of the Purification Protocol had been swallowed by the void, leaving the sky over Shinjuku in a state of eerie, unnatural calm. The iron dust, the Blood-Rust was still falling, but it no longer hummed with divine static. It was just cold, dead metal, coating the ruins of the city in a funeral shroud of grey.
Ren Hanshin stood on the rooftop, his chest heaving. His silver hair, a side effect of the weaver's growing influence, was plastered to his forehead with sweat and rain. Beside him, Jubei leaned heavily on the Kusanagi-Vessel. The old man's presence was thinning. To Ren's 'Divine Perception', Jubei looked like a charcoal drawing being slowly erased by the wind.
"Don't look at me like that, brat," Jubei wheezed, his blind eyes fixed on the golden fleet above. "I've had a good run. I taught the world's most dangerous man how to hold a spoon. That's enough for one lifetime."
"You used your soul as fuel," Ren said, his voice thick. "Why?"
