Maya’s stomach flipped violently into her throat as the concrete dropped away. One second they were in the charred shell of the abandoned house; the next, the freezing night air was roaring past her face. Aiko’s arm was a band of coiled steel around her waist, holding her as effortlessly as if she weighed nothing. Maya’s legs dangled uselessly, her sneakers kicking empty space over a fatal drop.
Pico, perched on her shoulder, dug his tiny talons in so hard Maya felt the sharp pinpricks through her hoodie.
"PICO HOLD ON!" Maya screamed, the wind snatching the words from her mouth.
The parrot’s tiny body puffed up until he looked like an aggressive, neon-green pinecone.
"I DID NOT CONSENT TO THIS!" he shrieked at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking with pure, unfiltered avian panic.
Aiko landed on the next rooftop twenty meters away without a single sound. Her combat boots barely kissed the gravel before she was moving again—another impossible, gravity-defying leap, her jet-black ponytail and crimson ribbon streaming behind her like a war flag. Faint violet sparks flickered around her boots where ancient runes glowed against the dark.
Maya’s eyes watered from the biting wind. Below them, the city was bleeding. It burned in chaotic patches: cars flipped like discarded toys, severed power lines whipping and sparking like angry snakes, and distant screams rising with the thick black smoke. From up here, the absolute destruction possessed a terrifying beauty—blooming orange flowers of fire spreading across the dark grid of the streets. She could see everything. The highway was a graveyard of abandoned vehicles. A colossal, dragon-shaped shadow wheeled over the downtown financial district, and to the east, that massive sapphire column of light stabbed upward into the bruised clouds like a broken finger.
"CAR ON FIRE!" Pico screeched, his head swiveling erratically. "CAR! CAR! CAR ON FIRE!"
"YES PICO, I SEE IT!" Maya yelled back, her voice a fragile mix of a laugh and a sob. "Not helping!"
Aiko’s voice brushed her ear—low, velvet over steel, utterly undisturbed by the chaos. "Your bird is loud."
"He’s terrified!" Maya managed to gasp, clutching the parrot closer. "We’re all terrified!"
Another leap. The world tilted sickeningly. Maya’s hoodie flapped wildly against the chill. Pressed tight against her rescuer, she felt Aiko’s heartbeat—slow, steady, practically asleep compared to the frantic jackhammering in Maya's own chest. The warrior’s pristine white blouse didn’t even bear a smudge of ash. How was any of this real? The woman smelled of pine needles, old blood, and the heavy static of an impending storm.
Then, Aiko’s fingers tightened incrementally against Maya’s ribs. A tiny, almost imperceptible frown creased her perfect porcelain brow.
"Strange…" Aiko murmured, the word meant only for herself.
Maya twisted her head, her neck aching. "What?"
Aiko’s amethyst eyes flicked down to her for half a heartbeat. "Nothing."
But beneath the Crimson Warden's absolute calm, a warning bell tolled. That aura… why does this young soul carry the scent of the Void? It clung to Maya like the residual smoke of a shattered seal. She was not a monster. She was clearly human. Yet, something ancient lingered on her skin.
Aiko pushed the thought aside. Duty first. The sapphire column pulsed ahead. They were getting closer.
They landed heavily on the top deck of a concrete parking garage. Aiko paused for the first time, her violet aura pulsing outward like a sonar wave, testing the corrupted air.
Maya’s legs immediately buckled when Aiko set her down. She hit her knees, grabbing Pico with both hands and pressing the trembling parrot to her chest. "You okay, buddy?"
Pico blinked, his feathers still aggressively puffed. "THIS IS A WORKPLACE VIOLATION!" he declared to the empty roof, before immediately burying his head under Maya's chin like a frightened toddler.
Aiko’s gaze snapped sharply to the left. A low, wet growl rolled up from the dark alley three stories below.
Not a dog. Too large. Too unnatural.
A hellhound—coal-black, its heavily muscled shoulders level with the hood of a nearby sedan—prowled out of the shifting smoke. Its eyes were burning red coals. Corrosive saliva hissed and popped where it dripped onto the asphalt. Backed against a brick wall and a dumpster were three terrified civilians: a woman clutching a useless grocery bag, a teenage boy, and a little girl no older than seven, paralyzed by shock.
The hellhound lowered its massive head, its hind legs bunching to spring.
Aiko moved before Maya could even draw breath to scream.
One step off the ledge. Flash-Step of the Ghost.
Reality stuttered. She was suddenly in the alley, materializing directly between the beast and the civilians. Tsukihana was already half-drawn, painting the brick walls in a flare of violent violet light. The hellhound lunged, its jaws unhinging wide enough to snap a man in half.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Tsukihana sang once—a pure, metallic hum.
The blade didn’t even seem to move quickly; it simply existed in the exact place it needed to be. The hellhound’s head separated flawlessly from its neck before its front paws ever left the ground. The massive body crashed forward into a heap of smoking, foul-smelling meat. The severed head rolled once, the red eyes flickering out like crushed embers.
The execution took less than two seconds.
Maya stared over the ledge, her mouth hanging open. The civilians were already scrambling away into the smoke, sobbing breathless prayers of gratitude.
"You…" Maya breathed as Aiko effortlessly scaled the side of the building, landing back on the roof without being winded. "You didn’t even try."
Aiko sheathed her sword with a soft, final click. "It was an aberration. It was already dead."
She turned, ready to resume their path across the rooftops.
Then, Maya saw quelque chose.
Half a block down the street, a silver sedan lay flipped on its side, one front wheel still spinning lazily in the air. Pinned beneath the crushed rear door was a small boy—maybe ten years old—crying silently, his face a mess of soot and tears. His leg was trapped under the twisted steel. The heavy chassis groaned dangerously, threatening to collapse entirely every time he struggled.
Aiko stepped to the edge of the roof, her eyes locked strictly on the distant sapphire column.
Maya’s feet rooted themselves to the concrete. "Wait."
Aiko paused mid-step, looking back over her shoulder.
"We can’t just leave him!" Maya pointed frantically at the street.
The warrior’s amethyst gaze followed Maya's trembling finger to the boy, then shifted back to the teenager. For the first time, genuine hesitation crossed her flawless features. Aiko hunted demons; she culled the unnatural to maintain the balance of the world. Gravity, twisted metal, mortal accidents—these were the tragic, ordinary machinations of a human world she did not belong to.
"He is not our charge," Aiko said quietly, stating a universal fact rather than a cruelty. "He is not hunted by the dark."
Maya’s voice cracked, a wave of raw desperation hitting her. "He’s someone’s charge! He’s scared, he's alone, and he's going to die down there! Please."
Aiko studied the absolute terror and fierce empathy in the seventeen-year-old’s eyes. A long, heavy second passed. Then, without a single word of confirmation, the Crimson Warden dropped over the edge of the roof.
She landed beside the overturned car with the impossible grace of falling snow. One slender palm pressed flat against the crumpled metal frame. The violet aura flared intensely around her arm. The entire sedan groaned, the suspension snapping as tons of steel were lifted upward as easily as if Aiko were opening a door.
The boy frantically scrambled free, sobbing in agony and relief. Aiko set the car down gently, then knelt in the glass-strewn street, running careful, glowing fingers over the child’s mangled leg to stabilize the bone.
"You are safe now," she told him, her velvet voice devoid of its usual lethal edge. The boy stared up at her through his tears, looking at her as if an angel had just stepped out of a stained-glass window.
Maya was already halfway down the building's rusted fire escape, Pico clutched tightly in her hoodie. "Thank you," she whispered breathlessly as her sneakers hit the pavement beside them.
Aiko only nodded once. But as she stood, her eyes lingered on Maya a fraction of a second longer than necessary.
They kept moving—on foot now, navigating the treacherous, debris-choked streets. Aiko stayed agonizingly close, one hand resting lightly on Maya’s shoulder to physically guide her through the thickest banks of smoke. Every few steps, Maya felt that same tiny pressure, as if Aiko were probing her aura, searching for the source of that lingering Void scent.
But the warrior remained silent.
The sapphire column grew blindingly bright, casting harsh, elongated shadows across the northern district. The wailing sirens were dying out, replaced by an eerie, apocalyptic quiet. The air tasted entirely of ozone, copper, and ash.
"Your world is not prepared for this," Aiko stated evenly, stepping over a shattered traffic light.
Maya swallowed the lump in her throat. "Is this happening everywhere?"
"…Yes."
They rounded the corner of a gutted electronics store. Miraculously, the display window TVs were still running on a backup generator. The same news anchor from earlier was plastered across twenty screens, her professional facade completely shattered, her voice trembling violently:
"—confirmed reports of a glowing artifact fragment near the old industrial park. Authorities warn all remaining civilians to stay away—unidentified creatures appear to be drawn to the stone like moths to a flame. I repeat, the glowing stone—"
Aiko stopped dead.
Her hand clamped down on Maya’s shoulder. Not hard enough to bruise, but with the sudden, rigid tension of a triggered trap.
Maya followed her frozen gaze down the avenue.
In the dead center of the intersection, bathed in the pulsing blue light of the column, stood a werewolf. It was the same breed Aiko had slaughtered by the dozen in her forest—a nightmare of muscle, fur, and rage. But this one was wrong. Sickly, glowing cyan veins pulsed beneath its matted fur like toxic circuitry.
In one massive, clawed hand, it clutched a jagged tetrahedron shard—a fragment of the shattered Keystone—humming with raw, dimensional power.
Before Aiko could draw her blade, the beast's jaws snapped shut around the relic.
Crunch.
The ancient shard disappeared down its throat.
For one suffocating heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then, the werewolf threw its head back and unleashed a roar that physically vibrated in Maya's teeth. The sound shattered every remaining window for three blocks. The beast's body violently convulsed. Bones cracked, snapped, and re-knitted themselves louder than heavy gunfire.
Unnatural muscle mass bulged outward until the creature's skin literally tore open, revealing glowing blue tissue beneath. Cyan energy exploded outward in a shockwave, coating its elongated claws in crackling, volatile lightning.
Its eyes burned with the exact same toxic, blinding blue as the portal. It grew—four meters, five meters—until it dwarfed the streetlights, a literal god of slaughter towering over the modern asphalt.
The colossus stopped thrashing. It slowly turned its massive, heavy head.
Its burning gaze locked straight onto them.
Pico took one look at the five-meter-tall glowing deity of death, his feathers exploding outward until he was perfectly spherical, and let out the loudest, most profoundly terrified sound Maya had ever heard a living creature make:
"SHIIIIIIIT—RUN! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"
Aiko’s hand was already wrapped tight around the hilt of Tsukihana.
But for the first time since the sky tore open, the Crimson Warden's amethyst eyes narrowed—not in her usual calm, clinical calculation, but in something far colder. Something that looked dangerously close to dread.
The monster took one step forward, and the asphalt shattered beneath its foot.
Aiko’s grip on Tsukihana tightened until the leather creaked.
For the first time since the sky tore open, the Crimson Warden whispered two words Maya had never expected to hear from her:
"…Sovereign-class."
The first Sovereign?class has appeared.
If a single Keystone fragment can empower such destruction…
what revelations await in the chapters to come?
See you next week for more chapters!