The air smelled like burnt thread.
Distant static, where the edges of Ka'ro fray against the realm-between-worlds—the Kuzureru Kōkai.
The rift.
And at its edge, beneath a dying sky bruised with false dusk, two figures stumbled toward silence.
One of them was already halfway into it.
Mazanka could feel the weight of the night pressing down on him, the silence around them deafening as they trudged through the dim, uneven terrain of the middle realm. His breathing was labored, his body trembling, not just from the strain of dragging his friend—no, his brother—through the rift that had severed the worlds, but from the pressure that was tightening in his chest.
He should have been dead. They both should have been.
"Hold on, Ryozenji," he muttered, his voice barely a whisper, his words swallowed by the jagged rocks and the pulse of unstable Ka'ro that hummed through the air. His fingers—numb and shaking—tugged along Ryozenji's bloodied form. He could feel the weight of his friend in his arms, his body slack and lifeless in a way that terrified him.
Not yet. Not yet, damn it.
Ryozenji's breath came shallow. Each step carved deeper into his ribs. His robe—once white, proud with the faint gold trim of the Kenshiki—was ruined. Drenched in blackened blood. His back hunched under pain, not shame, though it looked the same from behind.
The other—Mazanka—walked beside him, half-dragging, half-holding. His arm around Ryozenji's waist, his right wrist shaking from the tension of holding too much.
His left eye… wasn't there anymore.
What remained was sealed. Covered with the raw prototype of the Kōsen no Gantai, ruined yet meshed into something entirely new— torn from the device he initially created for Ryozenji and into patch of woven glass-thread wedged into his eye like a makeshift eyepatch, infused with a substance no Ka'ro user dared study.
Mutated Ka'ro. Illegal. Dangerous. Alive.
And it pulsed faintly, like a second heartbeat, under his skin.
The world around them seemed to shimmer, the rift between the two realms stretching like a tear in the fabric of existence itself. But it didn't matter. Mazanka had made his choice. He wasn't going back. Not without Ryozenji.
The rocky path seemed endless, the land shifting beneath him with every step. But his heart? It felt like it was dragging a mountain behind it. The weight of his decisions, of the consequences that loomed over them, made every step feel like a curse.
Ryozenji had been so sure of himself back there, so sure that it would all work out. The look in his eyes had been so full of life, so full of hope that Mazanka almost believed it, too. But now, all that was left was a man broken by the weight of his own choices. A man who had chosen love over loyalty. A man who had betrayed his own kind for the sake of something as fragile as human love. Love…
His thoughts slipped back to a familiar face, one who had helped him save what little family Mazanka had left.
Arashi…he wished she were here with them now.
Mazanka stopped, his muscles seizing with exhaustion and something else. He looked down at Ryozenji, the man who had once been his brother in arms, his partner in battle. And now, he was nothing more than a casualty of Mazanka's own broken heart.
Two fools over in their heads, two fools had forfeited their destinies, their souls…their lovers. And the world was punishing them for it.
Arashi… I'm sorry.
They had come far.
Too far.
They stopped near a jagged outcrop of scorched stone, some crumbling monument that once meant something before the laws of Ka'ro tore through this place. The energy here was unstable—Ka'ro lingered in the air like smoke, twisted by imbalance and betrayal.
Ryozenji slumped down, back against the stone. He winced.
Mazanka knelt in front of him, his hand hovering uselessly over the wound.
"…Still hurts?" he asked softly. The grin was crooked. But his voice cracked like glass.
Ryozenji didn't answer for a long time. His head tilted back, letting the dull violet light of the rift's sky wash over his face. It would have been such a beautiful sight if it were anywhere else, if he wasn't bleeding to death beside his friend, a hole in his stomach while a similar hole took up the space of Mazanka's left eye, both still bleeding and leaking vicious Ka'ro.
It's all his fault.
Then: "It hurts less than what I deserve."
Mazanka exhaled sharply. "You're always dramatic when you're bleeding out."
"That's because it's the only time you'll shut up long enough to listen."
A pause. Then both of them laughed.
It was short. Quiet. Choked by air too thick to breathe properly.
Mazanka sat down beside him, drawing his knees to his chest, watching the strange sky ripple above them like water trying to remember how to fall.
"I had plans today, you know," he muttered. "With Arashi, little picnic near the southern cliffs. Set it up a while back, before all this. You know she has a scar on her lip? It's small, almost too small to notice…but I noticed. I always did… I was gonna ask her about it. Thought it might give me an excuse to flirt. Real charming, I know."
Ryozenji coughed. Blood flecked the corner of his mouth. "Second base?"
Mazanka grinned. "I was hoping to skip to fourth."
Another laugh. Then silence.
Then Ryozenji whispered, "You should've gone. Arashi…she's…she's good for you."
Mazanka didn't answer. He reached to touch the device cutting into his face, covering his eye and he could feel the harsh sting of his ka'ro twisting in his eye's empty socket, trying to seep out —the same device that had taken a chunk from Ryozenji during the ambush after ricocheting ruined Ka'ro back into his own eye.
The reason his face now pulsed with corrupted force, the reason for the hole which once was his eye.
"I made this for you," he said, lightly touching the damaged eye. "To stop you from rotting in that world."
Ryozenji turned his head, slowly. "It nearly killed you."
Mazanka shrugged. "You think I haven't died already?"
For a moment, Ryozenji looked like he wanted to argue. But his strength was waning. His eyes fluttered. His jaw slackened.
Mazanka leaned forward quickly. "Hey. Don't you dare close your eyes. I didn't drag your heavy ass across two dimensions just to watch you pass out like a coward."
A smirk pulled at the edge of Ryozenji's mouth before another thought took his attention. "Hey, Mazanka…you still hate humans?"
"…Nah," Mazanka whispered. "One of them gave you a reason to be happy. Gave you your kid. That's more than our world ever gave you."
A wind passed. Cold. Empty. The kind of wind that shouldn't exist in a riftspace. It made the hair on Mazanka's neck rise. He turned his head to the side—his good eye flicking toward the edge of the rift.
"His name is Rakan," came to quiet voice of his friend.
"Hm?"
A resigned smile. "My son."
Rakan.
Silence rolled between the rift of the two worlds and between the two men.
The Ka'ro threads around Mazanka… were shifting. Stretching. Peeling back like a wound opening.
He didn't notice his own skin cracking—fracture lines of Ka'ro forming beneath the device lodged in his eye and climbing across his cheekbone. Didn't feel the thread drip from the corners of his seal like ink bleeding from a broken quill.
He only saw Ryozenji, even if he wasn't looking at him.
"I didn't mean to turn you in," Mazanka said suddenly.
Ryozenji looked at him. That look. So calm. So forgiving.
"I know."
"I trusted that old bastard. I thought he'd bring you back. Talk sense into you. Not… not send them."
"I know."
"…You should've stayed."
Ryozenji's eyes fell half-closed. "You should've let me die in that cell."
Mazanka turned away, fists clenched, jaw tight. "Shut up."
"You should've—"
"I said shut up!"
Ryozenji didn't flinch. Just smiled. That goddamn smile. Like he was already far away. Mazanka tuned away, never wanting to see it again; he swore to himself then and there that after they got to the human world, he would never let that smile take seed ever again.
Mazanka didn't realize how tightly he was holding the stone beside him. His knuckles pale. The cracks on his face widened slightly, Ka'ro-thread shimmering through the skin like veins made of light.
The corrupted energy pulsed once, twice—
—and nearby, a rotted pillar of corrupted Ka'ro disintegrated into ash.
Mazanka blinked. Slowly. And that's when he felt it—the rift was reacting to him. Not rejecting. Not destabilizing.
It was… cleansing.
But he didn't understand it. Not yet.
"Mazanka…"
Mazanka forgot to spawn genuine frustration in his voice. "What?"
Ryozenji could only smile. "Take care…of my boy."
He turned back to Ryozenji to say something—some sarcastic, bittersweet thing about how Ryozenji wouldn't want to die next to a guy who snores in his sleep. Something dumb. Something familiar.
But—
Ryozenji was silent.
Still.
His eyes, half-open. Staring at the oddity which was the sky. Unmoving.
Mazanka froze.
"…Oi."
He reached out. Touched his friend's wrist.
No pulse.
"…No. No, no, no, you bastard. You're not getting out of this with some poetic death. You hear me?"
He grabbed Ryozenji's shirt. Shook him once. "You don't get to die on a punchline."
Silence.
Mazanka's breathing trembled. He touched his forehead to Ryozenji's chest, still whispering. "You were supposed to be the hopeful one. You had a girl. A kid. You had something to live for, you idiot…"
The Ka'ro cracked further. A tear slid down his cheek, carrying with it a thread of light.
The ka'ro on his eye shimmered—violently. Shifting, evolving until no longer sat the shrapnel of a device long failed, but a seal.
Matured Ka'ro.
And all around him, the corrupted Ka'ro vanished. Vaporizedin an instant. Like it had feared him.
Mazanka's breath came in ragged gasps as he stared at his lifeless friend. The ground beneath him felt like it was slipping away, as if the very earth was betraying him, the cracks in his face tightening with the weight of the moment. His once sharp vision was clouded, the disorienting pulses of Ka'ro rippling through him like waves of heat from a dying flame. He reached up with trembling fingers, brushing them against his face, only to pull them back, smeared with the same dark energy he'd feared would claim him from the start.
Ryozenji was gone.
The light had already left his eyes, leaving only the cold, vacant stare of a man who'd lost everything—who had given everything to chase a fleeting dream that now lay in tatters at his feet. His lips, barely parted in the throes of death, whispered a final word that Mazanka couldn't hear—didn't need to hear. The moment had passed, like all the others, leaving nothing behind but an echo of what could've been.
Mazanka closed his eyes, forcing back the heat in his chest, the torrent of emotions threatening to burst from him. He didn't let himself cry—not yet. Not here. Not when everything felt like it was collapsing into nothing. But his heart clenched. Ryozenji's smile, his voice, the way he would argue over the smallest things, now gone—taken by his own decision. By a path Mazanka had tried, so desperately, to pull him away from.
But he couldn't save him.
He never could.
His hand clenched into a fist. His heart beat with a fury, a wild, frantic pulse that urged him to move, to tear the sky apart and demand that it give back what had been taken. He had failed. He had promised Ryozenji that they would find a way out of this, that they would escape together and his friend would live as he was meant to. Free. In love. Happy. But now… now the only thing left was the cold wind whistling through the rift that separated their world from the human realm, the echoes of distant life fading with each passing second.
The Ka'ro inside him churned. A sick, twisting thing. He could feel it, like an insistent pulse under his skin, spreading through his veins, corrupting him, turning him into something he didn't recognize. Something Ryozenji had feared. Something that would soon consume him entirely.
Maybe it's for the better, Ryozenji had once said. Maybe this is for the better.
The words cut into him like a knife, sharp and unforgiving. He tried to swallow them down, but they stuck in his throat, lodged there, twisting with every pulse of Ka'ro that sent his world spinning.
Mazanka took a trembling step back, the tremors in his body no longer just from the fatigue of dragging Ryozenji through the rift. His eye, the only one left, throbbed with the weight of the instability he had brought on himself. His device—the Kōsen no Gantai—had been meant to save them, to keep Ryozenji from becoming another casualty in the world of Ka'ro. But now, it had become a symbol of his failure. Sat in its place was something new entirely, something otherworldly, something symbolic of his loss, his perpetual misery.
A failure he couldn't escape.
He stood there for a long while, his breath shaky, his body unwilling to move, his heart unwilling to let go. The darkness of the middle realm wrapped around him, the in-between place between the worlds where Ka'ro couldn't follow unless given permission.
And yet, here he was—alone.
He couldn't leave Ryozenji. Not like this.
Mazanka bent down, his knees shaking as he knelt beside his friend's body. His fingers trembled as he reached out, brushing the dark hair from Ryozenji's face. He hadn't been able to protect him. The words stuck in his throat, choking him.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry."
But the wind didn't answer.
The world didn't answer.
The only sound was the distant hum of the rift, the soft pull of gravity, the feeling of being trapped between two worlds—one that had failed him and one that had never even known he existed.
He blinked, and for a brief moment, he thought he saw Ryozenji's eyes twitch. The slightest movement. The faintest hint of life.
But it was only his mind playing tricks on him. The echo of what had been.
Mazanka's hand fell, heavy, to the ground. His heart was suffocating him now. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. His vision blurred with the tears he refused to shed. He was suffocating on the weight of his own failure.
The cold, hollow emptiness began to spread. His Ka'ro was unstable. The cracks were spreading up his skin, slowly, methodically, with each breath. The mutating energy inside him gnawed at his insides, corrupting him like a poison, and Mazanka felt it.
You're becoming a monster, his mind whispered.
But he didn't care.
He didn't care about the corruption anymore. Didn't care about the Kenshiki. Didn't care about the titles, the expectations, the laws.
None of it mattered. Not anymore.
Ryozenji was gone. And with him, everything Mazanka had fought for.
All that remained was the bitter reality of his loss, the weight of the promise he'd failed to keep.
With a shuddering breath, Mazanka looked up at the sky, the faint stars above hidden behind the veils of dark clouds swirling in the distance. He thought of the girl—his girl—the one he had joked about. The one he'd never confessed to. The one who was always there for him. Always, she had said. The one who had stood by him through everything.
Arashi…Ryozenji…he's…he's dead…
Her face appeared in his mind's eye, a brief flicker of warmth in an otherwise cold and desolate world.
But he couldn't focus on her now.
Not with this weight pressing down on him.
Not with Ryozenji's body still so close, so real.
"I'm sorry," he muttered again. "I failed you…"
A deep breath. A forced breath. He stood. His body, though broken and trembling, refused to collapse. He couldn't afford to collapse.
Not yet.
There were things he had to do. But for now…
He let himself look at Ryozenji one last time. His friend. His brother.
The wind picked up, and for a moment, it felt as if the very sky was mourning with him, the cold air brushing against his skin like the ghost of a past he couldn't undo.
With his last ounce of strength, he bent over, pressing his forehead against Ryozenji's, feeling the weight of his friend's life slip away completely, replaced by the endless void.
"Take care of my boy."
Mazanka closed his eyes, and this time, he let the tears fall.
"Goodbye, Ryozenji," he whispered, his voice breaking.
"Goodbye, brother."
And with that, Mazanka began the long walk into the unknown. The rift was ahead. But he didn't know what awaited him on the other side. What remained for him now? What was left after everything had fallen apart?
All that mattered was the weight of the past.
All that mattered was the blood on his hands.
And the promise he would never get to keep.