The city was silent now.

  The screams had faded. The cshing of steel, the frenzied cries of soldiers and civilians, the futile st stands—all of it had been smothered beneath Reika’s presence.

  What remained was only ruin.

  I stood in the middle of it, my chest rising and falling unevenly, my knees barely able to hold me up. My clothes were torn, my face smeared with dust, sweat, and blood—not my own, but from the people I had tried to save.

  People who were now nothing but red stains on the streets.

  The air was thick with the scent of ash and blood, the metallic tang of death clinging to my throat like a sickness I couldn’t swallow away. The fires crackled around me, burning hungrily through the wooden structures that had once been homes, marketpces, pces of worship. Gone now.

  All because I had dared to challenge her.

  All because I had refused to accept her version of the world.

  And now, I was forced to see it exactly as she did.

  Reika’s Cold Satisfaction

  "Look at them, Jin."

  Her voice was calm, almost soft, but it cut through the night like a bde.

  I swallowed hard and turned my head upward.

  She stood above me—towering, her bck kimono rippling gently in the wind, its gold embroidery shimmering against the glow of the destruction beneath her. Her bare foot pressed lightly into the remains of a colpsed building, its foundation caved inward beneath her weight, the broken beams and shattered roof a stark contrast to the effortless way she carried herself.

  Her hands were still faintly glowing with the residual bck energy tendrils that had ripped apart this city, though they flickered now, dimming as if she were finally losing interest in the spectacle before her.

  She wasn't angry.

  She wasn’t gloating.

  She was simply watching—her expression unreadable, detached, as though she were inspecting the ruins of an anthill she had accidentally stepped on.

  "Do you see now?" she murmured, her massive fingers tightening slightly around me as she lifted me up to her face.

  I barely realized I had been picked up again until I felt the cold wind rushing against my skin, my feet dangling uselessly in the open air. Her fingertips pressed firmly into my sides, pinning my arms to my body, but not painfully—just enough to remind me that resisting was pointless.

  She brought me closer, her enormous, amethyst eyes locking onto mine, and in that moment, I understood exactly what she wanted me to acknowledge.

  This city had been nothing to her.

  It had never been a battle.

  It had never even been a challenge.

  It was just a reminder.

  "Do they still look strong to you?" she asked, tilting her head slightly, her long, dark fringe shifting with the motion.

  I didn’t answer.

  I couldn’t.

  My throat felt tight, my stomach churning with something too heavy, too sickening to name.

  I had seen war before.

  I had seen soldiers fight and die, seen blood spill on the battlefield.

  But I had never seen this.

  Never seen an entire city crushed beneath a single person’s presence, reduced to nothing but debris and corpses without even the need for a true battle.

  Reika had proven her point.

  The worst part was—she hadn’t even tried.

  This wasn’t a war.

  It was a demonstration.

  A lesson.

  And the lesson was that I had no power in this world.

  Neither did anyone else.

  A City of the Dead

  She finally set me down.

  I barely felt my legs take the weight.

  I stumbled forward, my eyes darting around, taking in what was left of the city—the twisted ruins, the broken bodies half-buried in debris, the blood that pooled in the cracks of the shattered stone paths.

  Somewhere in the distance, I could still hear a faint sobbing, the whimper of a survivor trapped beneath the rubble.

  But no one came to help.

  Because there was no one left to help.

  I swallowed down bile, my breath coming in ragged bursts, my chest aching with the sheer weight of what had just happened.

  I clenched my fists.

  "Why?" I asked hoarsely.

  Behind me, Reika exhaled slowly.

  "You already know why."

  I turned to face her, my vision blurring with fury.

  "You didn’t have to do this," I snarled.

  "Yes, I did."

  "No, you didn’t!"

  I staggered forward, my voice rising.

  "You say you’re stronger than humans, that we’re nothing to you—fine! You’ve already proven that a thousand times over! But you didn’t have to do this! You didn’t have to kill all of them—"

  "They were never alive to me, Jin."

  Her voice was soft, almost tired, but it silenced me instantly.

  I stared at her, struggling to breathe, my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

  "You’re lying."

  She shrugged slightly, tilting her head as if considering my words.

  "Does it matter?"

  Something inside me snapped.

  Jin’s Breaking Point

  "You really are a monster," I whispered.

  Reika’s expression didn’t change.

  "If that’s what you want to believe," she murmured, unconcerned.

  I gritted my teeth, my nails digging into my palms, my entire body trembling with helpless rage.

  "You keep saying humans are nothing to you, that they don’t matter, but they do!" I shouted. "They matter to me!"

  Her eyes flickered slightly, the first hint of something unreadable.

  "Then perhaps you shouldn’t have come here."

  "I DIDN’T HAVE A CHOICE!"

  The words ripped out of me before I could stop them.

  I wasn’t sure if it was anger, grief, or pure exhaustion that pushed me over the edge.

  "I never wanted this! I never wanted to be in this world! I never asked to be thrown into this insane war between gods and demons! And I sure as hell never wanted to watch you do this!"

  My voice broke.

  "I never wanted to see you become this."

  Silence.

  For the first time, Reika didn’t respond immediately.

  She just… looked at me.

  Her head tilted slightly, her gaze lowering as if studying something far smaller than me.

  Maybe that’s all I was to her now.

  Something small.

  Something insignificant.

  Then—finally—she sighed.

  "You’re being dramatic, Jin."

  My fists shook at my sides, my nails nearly drawing blood.

  I turned away from her, my breath shuddering.

  "I can’t do this anymore."

  A pause.

  "Then go," she said simply.

  I froze.

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure if I had heard her correctly.

  I turned back, meeting her calm, unreadable gaze.

  "You don’t care?" I asked.

  "No," she admitted. "But you will."

  She took one final step away from the ruins, her presence lingering like a specter over the city she had erased.

  "When Mayume comes for you again," she murmured, her voice almost amused—

  "Don’t expect me to save you."

  And with that—she left.

  Leaving me alone in a graveyard.