K.C. (Kaiju Control) Main Headquarters. Sector "Zero".

  Silence reigned in the office, broken only by the rhythmic hum of servers. Zenkhald stood by the panoramic window, looking at the lights of Yokohama. He looked no older than fifteen—a slender teenager with an eternally sorrowful gaze.

  "Listen, I can't be around all the time," he said quietly, not turning around. "They need to become independent by now."

  "You are right," a woman's voice sounded behind him.

  Mira sat in a deep armchair. Her voice sounded broken. Zenkhald turned and looked at her. She was twenty-five. Over the last century alone, she had aged five years—a mere moment for an ordinary human, but for them, it was a wake-up call from Death itself.

  "How old are we now?" Zenkhald asked. "Ten thousand years? Roughly speaking."

  "Mhm... something like that," Mira closed her eyes.

  "You know my problem perfectly well," Zenkhald walked over to the desk, his fingers touching an ancient leather-bound tome. "Every fifteen years, I forget everything. Absolutely everything. And every time I return my memories with the help of this book... it hurts terribly. Ten thousand years of life, squeezed into one day. Emotions, feelings, faces... all the spectrums in an instant. Love, fear of loss, the horrors of wars... Everything mixes together. Even now, I can't properly string together the chain of events. It's hard for me, Mira."

  Mira stood up and walked over to him. She gently placed her palm on his head, stroking his hair.

  "I know, Zen. I know."

  "These Kaiju..." Zenkhald gritted his teeth. "They appeared after the tectonic shifts, when the Atlanteans finally disappeared underwater. Now it's an uncontrollable, incomprehensible force. I can kill them with ease, but... it only brings pain. A thousand years ago, when they first started crawling out, it was the same. Humans can't cope. I have to help, do all the work for them. Even that incident in Korea... I could have prevented it! I could have stopped that 'Dragon' in a second!"

  He slammed his fist on the desk, but the sound was muffled.

  "But what was I told? 'You can't just invade a foreign country.' Politics. Laws. Papers! They've even forgotten what mana is. The level of magic has dropped to a terrifying minimum; they look at us like anomalies, not understanding who we are. I'm sick of them. They won't even let me help properly."

  Mira continued to stroke his head like a small child, even though she knew he was more ancient than any city on this planet.

  "I promised I would always be with you and protect you," she whispered. "But I can't fulfill the first or the second. Look at me... time is slowly winning. I'm already twenty-five. And you... you're still the same eternally young Zenkhald."

  Zenkhald forced a smile. Seeing his "sister" age before his eyes was a torture worse than the return of memory.

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  "There's no one left who remembers those times," he sighed.

  "What about Lucida?" Mira asked.

  "Lucida doesn't count. I don't know how she survived all this and kept her sanity. She's the commander of the 8th Legion, constantly in battle... I have no idea how she hasn't gone off the rails yet."

  At that moment, the office door opened quietly. A young guy, looking about twenty-three, entered—Mira's new assistant. He froze at the threshold, shifting his gaze from the "teenager" to his "older sister."

  [Assistant's Monologue]

  'Mira is human. Or at least she seems to be. She has a younger brother, Zenkhald. Age unknown, but the "Zero" archives have notes about ten thousand years. Zenkhald always looks fifteen. Eternally young, forever frozen in time. His power... it's impossible to measure with sensors. They just go off the charts and burn out.

  Mira is aging. Slowly, five years per century, but aging. Right now she is twenty-five. Her power is also beyond comprehension. I look at them and it makes me uneasy. These aren't just people. And not even mages from ancient legends. This is something... worse than any monster that ever crawled out of a rift. Their power terrifies you down to your bones. But... fortunately for us, they are on our side. For now.'

  Zenkhald glanced briefly at the assistant. His blue eyes flashed with an otherworldly light for a moment, as if he read the guy's thoughts just as easily as Leon reads his classmates' minds. But he said nothing.

  He simply turned back to the window, waiting for the time of the next "oblivion" to come.

  The conversation was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. The assistant, out of breath, flew into the office, almost dropping his tablet.

  "Sorry to interrupt, but... Los Angeles! The magnitude jumped to 'Dragon' in a matter of minutes. The US authorities are requesting emergency assistance from 'Zero'!"

  Zenkhald didn't even look at him.

  Snap.

  The space in the room distorted, sucking the teenager into an invisible vortex. Less than a minute passed—snap—and he was standing in the middle of the office again.

  He was covered head to toe in thick, glowing blue fluid—the blood of a creature capable of erasing cities. Heat radiated from him like a red-hot furnace, and the air distinctly smelled of ozone and burnt flesh.

  "Are you... are you already done?" the assistant asked, stuttering, looking at his watch. Only forty seconds had passed. Forty seconds to eliminate a Dragon-level threat.

  Zenkhald didn't answer. He walked past, sat in the armchair by the window, and stared at the setting sun.

  "Mira," he called quietly.

  She looked at him questioningly, gesturing for the assistant to leave and close the door.

  "My cycle is ending," Zenkhald touched his hair. "It's been absolutely white for three years now. My eyes... you see how they glow blue. I feel that soon it will all start over again. Emptiness. Oblivion."

  He turned to her, and there was a plea in his gaze that Mira hadn't seen for centuries.

  "I ask only one thing of you. Don't let me touch this Book. Please. Unless there is a compelling reason, unless the world starts to completely collapse—do not return my memory. Let me live a normal life just once. Without this burden. Without ten thousand years of pain."

  Mira smiled sadly. She moved over to him, pulled his head into her lap, and began to slowly stroke his coarse white hair, staining her fingers with Kaiju blood.

  "Alright, Zen. I promise," she whispered.

  Zenkhald closed his eyes. The tension that had been building up in his body for centuries began to fade. He started falling asleep, drifting into a heavy slumber that would soon become eternal oblivion.

  There was another timid knock on the door. The assistant cracked the door open:

  "Lady Mira, there are reports on Korea and..."

  "Quiet," Mira cut him off sharply, without turning around. She continued to stroke her sleeping brother's hair, and such power flared in her eyes that the guy behind the door almost lost consciousness. "Leave. Everyone. If the Kaiju attack again—I will go against them myself."

  She smiled, looking at Zen's serene face. Now she was ready to become a shield for the one who had been a shield for all of humanity for ten thousand years.