Chapter 7 : The Broken Departure
He didn't move, yet the air around him pulsed—violent, rhythmic. The heartbeat of the monster he had swallowed thudded through his ribs and into the stone beneath us.
He wasn't breathing. He was venting.
The liquid seeping from his eyes wasn't tears. It was thick, alive, crawling down his cheeks in jagged paths. Each exhale hissed against the floor, a cloud of red vapour spilling from his mouth."Reiji?" I whispered again. The name felt small, a fragile thing thrown into a deep, dark well.
He didn't blink. The crimson fluid leaking from his eyes wasn't like tears; it was thick, viscous, and moved with a life of its own, tracing jagged paths down his gore-stained cheeks. When he exhaled, a cloud of red steam hissed against the cold floor. He wasn't catching his breath anymore. He was venting pressure.
I saw his fingers twitch, the nails digging into the bone-dry basin until the stone began to splinter. That low, guttural growl from his chest grew louder, vibrating in my own lungs. It was a sound stripped of every ounce of human warmth, replaced by the wet, rhythmic tone of the Lurer.
"Mizuno, move!" Satoshi's scream was a jagged edge in the quiet, but I was paralyzed.
Reiji didn't just move; he launched. He was a blur of shredded fabric and dark red aura, two crimson blades appearing in his hands. I dove, the air above me whistling as he slashed in a wide arc, exactly where my chest would have been a second ago.
I saw my opening. I swung my leg in a desperate, low sweep, aiming to his feet, but it was like kicking a pillar of solid iron. He didn't even stumble. Instead, his head snapped toward me, that low, vibrating growl intensifying as he exhaled a thick, suffocating cloud of red mist.
I saw his arm blur as he threw one of the knives towards me. I scrambled to pull my sword up, bracing for an impact—but the blade never hit.
The moment the steel touched the expanding red mist, it vanished. I fell back, my heart hammering against my ribs, staring at the empty space where a lethal blade should have been. It was gone; hidden by the very air he was breathing out.
I didn't wait for the impact. My brain screamed refraction before the blade even vanished, but as I looked down, my heart plummeted. The pond was gone. The basin was a barren, bone-dry waste of grey film and cracked stone.
There were no more ripples to guide me. No more water to tell the truth.
I let my instincts take over, I threw myself sideways, my palms skidding against the dry floor. I didn't look for a splash; I listened for the wind.
Whoosh.
The invisible steel whistled so close I felt the cold displacement of air against my ear. It slammed into the stone where my head had been a second ago, the red veil finally dropping as the knife skidded across the dry rock with a shower of sparks.
"Reiji, stop!" I scrambled to my feet, my chest heaving. "It's me! It's Mizuno!"
He didn't acknowledge the name. He didn't even seem to hear it. He just stood there in that low, predatory crouch, his fingers twitching as he summoned the second blade back into his grip. The steam rolling off his skin was thicker now—a dark, suffocating fog that smelled like a slaughterhouse.
"Satoshi! Yasuto!" I cast a frantic glance toward the sidelines, my boots catching on a jagged crack in the floor. "He's not listening! He's—"
Reiji lunged again, but this time, he didn't throw the knife. He charged, exhaling a massive, pressurized cloud of that crimson mist. He didn't disappear—he was too big, too human for that—but the thick, swirling vapor acted like a physical shroud. He was a dark figure darting through a red blur, his exact position masked by the distortion.
The mist clung to him, bending the light around his body. My eyes couldn't lock on—one moment he flickered left, the next he was already on my right.
I tightened my grip on the old man's sword, shifting it to my left arm. My muscles were screaming, but I kept the blade levelled, waiting for the moment the distortion broke.
Then, the mist exploded.
He didn't come from the flanks. He burst through the centre of the cloud like a bomb, catching me completely off-guard. He hadn't been weaving at all; the mist had just been playing tricks on my depth perception. Before I could even finish bringing my guard up, he was in my space, his heat rolling over me like a physical wave.
I tried to snap the sword into a parry, but Reiji was operating on a level of raw speed I couldn't match.
With a brutal, efficient motion, he used his left dagger to bat my sword aside, the metal clashing with a bone-shaking ring. In the same breath, he lunged. I felt a cold, sharp shock before the heat followed—the second crimson blade buried itself deep into my stomach.
The air left my lungs in a choked gasp. Reiji didn't pull back. He stayed pressed against me, his face inches from mine, those drowned red eyes wide and vacant as the hilt of the knife vibrated against my skin. He wasn't even looking at the wound; he was looking through me.
I slumped against him, my hands trembling as I tried to keep my hold on the sword, but the world was already starting to tilt.
"Reiji..." I choked out, a thin trail of blood staining my lips.
He didn't move. He just stood there, his chest heaving with that maniacal hunger, the hilt of the knife vibrating against my skin.
Then, a heavy, familiar weight slammed into Reiji's side.
"Get off him!" Yasuto's roar was a jagged, desperate thing.
Despite being severely injured, Yasuto had launched himself across the dry basin, tackling Reiji with the last of his strength. The impact didn't knock Reiji down—he was like a pillar of iron—but it was enough to break his focus. The knife stayed buried in me, but the pressure shifted as Reiji was forced to stagger back, his snarl turning into a sharp, animalistic hiss.
Yasuto didn't let go. He wrapped his arms around Reiji's waist; his face pressed against the heat of the red aura. "Satoshi, do it now!" he screamed, his voice cracking.
I slumped against the dry stone, my hands shaking as I gripped the vibrating hilt of the knife still lodged in my gut. Every breath was a shallow, hitched gasp that pulled at the torn muscle.
Reiji wasn't looking at me anymore. He was looking at Yasuto, his fingers hooking into claws as the red mist began to swirl violently again, forming a new jagged blade in his free hand.
While Yasuto wrestled to pin Reiji's restless, vibrating frame, Satoshi didn't reach for a weapon. Instead, he dove into his bag and pulled out a small glass full of the blue drug—the same shimmering liquid the old man had used on Reiji, and the same one Leo had forced down my throat to stop the "misfire" back in the forest.
He jammed the needle into my neck without a word.
The reaction was instantaneous. It felt like the jagged tear in my stomach was being physically woven back together by invisible, icy threads. The cooling sensation of the drug hit my throat with a medicinal, metallic aftertaste that made my teeth ache. I gasped as a rush of artificial energy flooded my veins, forcing the sluggish, heavy exhaustion out of my limbs.
Satoshi pulled back, his face pale and slick with sweat. He stared at the empty glass tube for a heartbeat before crushing it in his fist.
"That's it," he rasped, his eyes darting to the struggling Yasuto. "That was the last one. The old man only gave us one doses this blue drug. I could've used it on others, but I have entrusted you with it so don't waste it."
I nodded, my eyes locked on the brutal struggle in the basin. Reiji had already buried a crimson blade into Yasuto's shoulder, but he wasn't letting go. He was forcing Reiji into a brawl, using his own weight to buy us every second he could.
I started to lunge forward, but Satoshi's hand clamped onto my arm. He wasn't looking at the blood; he was looking at the flow. His eyes were terrifyingly clinical.
"Wait," he said, his voice dropping into that cold, analytical hum. "When Reiji pulled the Convergence into himself, he didn't just stop the attack—he became the vessel for it. There's too much fluid packed into a human-sized space. He hasn't been possessed by the Lurer; he's just drowning in the pressure. He's a walking, breathing grenade, Mizuno. If we can force him to vent enough of that crimson fluid through his attacks, the pressure might drop enough for him to snap out of it."
"So I just have to drain him?" I summarized, my grip tightening on the hilt. "I have to make him bleed that red mist until there's nothing left but him?"
"Hopefully," Satoshi replied. It wasn't exactly a guarantee, but it was the only ghost of a chance we had.
I turned back to the fight. Yasuto was flagging, his movements growing heavy as Reiji's knives carved jagged red lines across his arms. I didn't hesitate. I charged, the old man's sword humming a low, steady golden note that seemed to anchor my feet to the stone.
Reiji was too focused on tearing Yasuto's throat out to notice me. I saw the opening—a wide, unprotected gap in his guard—and swung in a massive, sweeping arc. The blade didn't just cut; it pushed. As the steel bit into Reiji's left arm, there was a sharp, localized hiss of steam.
The crimson fluid didn't spray out like blood; it evaporated the moment it touched the sword's golden light, turning into a thin, foul-smelling mist. Reiji recoiled, letting out a jagged, hollow cry. It was the first time I'd seen him wince—not just from the pain, but like that single gash had drained off a gallon of pressure out of his system.
I felt a surge of hope, but I kept my focus sharp. I couldn't aim for his heart. I had to use the blade properly and drain enough of the crimson fluid out of him.
Reiji locked eyes with me, his gaze drowned in a sea of crimson madness. He didn't see a friend; he saw a target.
His fingers snapped into a familiar, jagged hand sign—the same one the Lurer's humanoid shells used. But instead of a blade, a sphere of pressurized crimson fluid churned into existence between his palms.
It didn't fire; it blasted.
The beam of red light was a blur. I tried to twist away, but it was too fast. It punched through my right arm like a hot needle through paper. White-hot agony flared, but I forced myself to swing my sword, the golden steel shearing through the tail end of the beam before it could sever the limb entirely.
"Reiji, stop!" Yasuto roared.
He lunged from the side, putting everything into a heavy punch aimed at Reiji's head. He was trying to knock the madness out of him.
But Reiji didn't even turn. A crimson knife shimmered into the air behind Yasuto. It moved with lethal precision, plunging into Yasuto's back before I could scream a warning.
Yasuto stumbled, a choked gasp escaping his lips as blood began to soak his shirt.
Reiji stood in the center of the basin, his chest heaving with a rhythmic, mechanical pulse. He wasn't a friend anymore. He was a weapon that had forgotten how to stop.
"Too... much..." he rasped, his voice a distorted, murderous growl as he suddenly started speaking. "Why won't you die?"
"REIJI!" I screamed, the sound tearing at my throat. "SNAP OUT OF IT! LOOK AT WHAT YOU'RE DOING!"
Reiji didn't flinch. He looked at me with those hollow, blood-slicked eyes, his expression carved from ice.
"You talk too much, Mizuno," he replied, his voice a low, murderous rasp. "Let me shut that mouth forever."
He exhaled a massive, pressurized cloud of crimson mist. It surged, swirling around us like a physical wall. I lunged toward the edge of the haze, but the vapor was so dense it felt like slamming into a barrier. I was trapped in a cage of his making.
"Reiji… is it worth it?" I gasped, my vision blurring as he stepped toward me through the red fog. "Killing all of us just for your sake?"
"If it ends this torture," he said, his pace slow and predatory, "then yes. I would carve the life out of every one of you."
"Why are you always so desperate to escape?" I shouted, my grip tightening on the hilt of my sword until my knuckles turned white. "I don't understand... Why do you always have to be the one to drag us into this? Why are you always the problem?"
Reiji stopped. For a heartbeat, the mechanical humming in his chest stuttered. Then, his face twisted into a sneer of pure, jagged resentment.
"You won't understand, Mizuno. None of you will," he hissed. "You're all too naïve to see my struggles. To you, I'm a problem. To me, you're all just burdens in my path. After I finish you, I'll finally get the chance to return.
""Return to what?" I spat, the metallic taste of the mist coating my tongue. "To being alone? To the same darkness that's eating you right now?"
Reiji's eyes flared, the crimson fluid leaking faster down his cheeks. "To a world where I don't have to look at your pitying faces!"
"Is that all we are to you?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper. "Just faces to be erased?"
"You're just ghosts of a life I don't want anymore," he snarled, his fingers twitching as the red aura around him spiked. "I have things I need to finish. Things you couldn't possibly understand."
"Then go ahead," I said, stepping forward even as my mangled arm screamed in protest. "If we're just burdens dragging you down, then finish it. But don't you dare pretend this is about survival. You're just a coward running away from the only people who actually—"
"SHUT UP!"
Reiji didn't just move; he exploded. The mist wall contracted inward with a violent crack, and he launched himself at me. A jagged crimson blade materialized in his grip before I could even finish the sentence, the air whistling as he swung a horizontal killing blow aimed straight for my neck.
I dropped low, the crimson blade whistling through the air where my throat had been a split second ago.
"You think you're the only one with burdens?" I grunted, my boots skidding on the stone as I swung my sword in a desperate, low arc.
Reiji didn't even try to dodge. He stepped into the strike, the golden steel clashing against his shin with a bone-jarring thud. He didn't flinch. Instead, he reached down and grabbed my collar, hauling me up until we were eye-to-eye.
"You have a home to go back to, Mizuno," he hissed, his breath smelling like scorched copper. "I have a debt I never paid. A cycle I never broke."
He slammed his forehead into mine. Stars exploded in my vision, and the world tilted. Before I could recover, he drove a knee into my gut, sending me tumbling across the dry basin.
"Is that why you're killing us?" I coughed, tasting blood. "Because you're guilty? Because you're scared that if you stay here, you'll forget whatever it is you left behind?"
Reiji's face contorted. The aura around him flared a brilliant, angry red. "I don't belong here! I was never supposed to be here!"
He raised both hands, and a dozen crimson knives formed in the air, all pointed directly at my chest.
"Neither was I!" I yelled, struggling to my feet, my mangled arm hanging limp. "None of us chose this! But Yasuto is bleeding out because of you, and Satoshi is out of medicine because of me. We're all dying for your stubbornness,' Reiji! Is that the legacy you wanted?"
Reiji's hands trembled. The blades in the air flickered, their sharp edges blurring for a fraction of a second.
"It doesn't matter," he whispered, his voice cracking. "It's already too late. The mist... it won't let me stop."
He threw his hands forward, and the invisible knives screamed toward me.
I didn't have the strength to dodge. As the crimson blades shrieked through the air, I planted my feet and swung my blade in a desperate, wide horizontal.
The golden steel collided with the first three shards, shattering them into a fine red mist, but the impact sent a bone-shaking vibration up my wounded arm. Two more grazed my ribs, stabbing through my clothes. I stumbled back, gasping, but I didn't let my guard drop.
"You're fighting a memory, Reiji!" I spat, wiping blood from my mouth. "Whatever you think you're returning to, it's not behind those blades!"
Reiji's silhouette flickered. He lunged through the thinning fog, his hand reaching for my throat again. I parried his wrist, the blue drug in my veins giving me just enough speed to twist his momentum. We slammed into the stone wall of the basin, the impact cracking the rock behind us.
"You know nothing!" he roared, his face inches from mine. The heat rolling off him was suffocating. "I had it in my hand! I was right there! And then... it was gone. Everything was gone!"
The rest mist curled around his arms as he drove a pressurized fist into my side. I felt a rib snap, the air leaving my lungs in a choked wheeze. He didn't stop—he raised his other hand, a jagged spike of fluid forming over his knuckles.
"Is this the 'return' you wanted?" I spat, coughing up a mouthful of copper-tasting blood. "Beating on your friends because you're too weak to face your own guilt?"
Reiji's face contorted. The red mist around him spiked, turning into jagged knives that hovered in the air. "I'm not weak! I'm the only one who's actually trying to leave this nightmare!"
He flicked his wrist. The blades flew.
I scrambled to my feet, spinning my sword in a frantic circle. Clang. Clang. Clash. I deflected most of them, but one buried itself in my shoulder, the heat of the fluid searing my skin. I didn't stop. I charged through the pain, closing the distance before he could reset.
We collided in a blur of gold and red.
I drove my elbow into his jaw, hearing a satisfying crack, but he countered instantly, driving a pressurized palm into my chest. The shockwave sent us both staggering back.
"You're just a ghost, Mizuno!" Reiji screamed, his eyes bleeding more of that thick fluid. "A ghost haunting a world that doesn't want us!"
He raised both hands, and the red mist began to solidify into a massive, jagged sword of pure energy. The air around him began to hum with a lethal, high-pitched whine.
"Then why are you still crying?" I whispered, my voice cutting through the roar of the wind.
Reiji froze, the massive blade trembling in his grip.
"If you're so desperate to leave, then leave the monster behind and come back to us!" I roared, the gold of the sword flaring as it drank in the last of the blue drug's artificial surge.
Reiji's scream was no longer a growl; it was a high, thin sound of absolute breaking. He lunged, the massive crimson blade in his hands vibrating with a lethal, high-pitched whine.
The golden sword hummed, but it wasn't a clean drain. As the steel bit into the air, the crimson fluid didn't just vanish—it fought back. It surged up the blade like a living vine, searing my palms.
"I'm not... letting you... bury us!" I roared, my vision tunneling.
Reiji's response was a guttural, mechanical shriek. He didn't just swing his blade; he detonated the air between us. A massive wave of pressurized red mist slammed into my chest, throwing me backward. I skidded across the bone-dry stone, my ribs screaming, but I kept my grip on the hilt.
The sword was glowing a violent, unstable orange, gorged on the Lurer's energy, but Reiji was still overflowing. The fluid was leaking from his pores now, turning the floor beneath him into a slick, red swamp.
He launched again. This time, he didn't use a blade. He became a blur of raw force. Every punch he threw carried the weight of a falling building. I parried a strike that nearly shattered my forearm.
The golden sword didn't just hum anymore—it shrieked. As Reiji lunged, a living hurricane of pressurized red fluid, I didn't pull back. I leaned into the heat.
Every inch of my body screamed as the crimson mist peeled the skin from my knuckles, but the old man's blade was hungry. It was a vacuum of ancient steel, and Reiji was the overflow.
He swung a fist of solidified gore at my temple. I dipped, the wind of the strike cracking the stone wall behind me, and I drove the sword upward in a jagged, desperate thrust.
SCHLICK.
The blade didn't hit bone. It sank into his chest like it was entering a pressurized tank.
For a heartbeat, time stopped. The sword's orange glow turned a blinding, violent white. The crimson aura didn't disappear—it imploded. The remaining fluid was forced back into his vessels with a sickening, wet thud. Reiji's eyes went wide, the red fading to a dull, shocked grey before his lids fluttered shut. He collapsed, hitting the stone with a heavy, limp finality.
I stood over him for a second, my lungs burning, before my knees gave out. I crawled over to where Yasuto was slumped against the basin wall.
"Is he...?" Yasuto coughed, clutching his mangled shoulder.
"He's alive," Satoshi observed. "But the sword couldn't take it all. He's still... he's still got that fluid in him."
Satoshi looked at the broken empty glass vial in his hand and then at Reiji's prone form. "He won't be the same, Mizuno. You didn't just drain the pressure. You broke the circuit."
Silence stretched for several minutes, broken only by the sound of dripping blood. Then, a sharp, ragged intake of breath echoed through the basin.
Reiji was awake.
He didn't move
for a long time. He just lay there, staring at his gore-stained hands with a look of profound, chilling detachment. Slowly, he pushed himself up. He didn't look at the wounds we'd given him. He didn't look at the blood he'd spilled.
He looked at me with eyes that were utterly empty.
"You think you saved me," he said, his voice a low, hollow rasp that made the hair on my neck stand up. "You just trapped me in a corpse."
"Reiji, we can fix this," I started, reaching out a hand. "The old man, he—"
"Don't touch me." The words were like ice. He stood up, his movements jerky and stiff. He didn't bother fixing his tattered clothes or wiping the blood from his face. He just let the shredded fabric of his shirt hang off his frame like a shroud.
He looked at Satoshi and Yasuto, his lip curling into a sneer of pure, jagged resentment. "You all look so relieved. Like you won something."
"We're your friends, Reiji!" Yasuto barked, his voice cracking with pain. "We almost died for you!"
"I never asked you to," Reiji replied. He turned toward the dark exit of the basin, his shadow stretching long and distorted across the floor. "You stayed because you wanted to feel like heroes. I'm leaving because I'd rather die alone than live as your project."
"Reiji, wait!" I shouted, trying to stand, but my legs buckled.
He didn't stop. He didn't even look back. He just walked into the shadows, his silhouette flickering like a ghost before the darkness swallowed him whole. He left behind nothing but the smell of copper and the heavy, suffocating weight of a debt that would never be paid.