The Mugen Jigoku was shattered. Ren Hanshin stood at the center of the vacuum bubble, his boots heavy on the moss-covered floor of the Ginza Station concourse. The translucent sphere of air was flickering like a dying candle. Every inch it shrivelled brought the freezing, crushing force of the deep sea closer to his skin.
[Divine Mana: 0.1 / 150]
[Synchronization: 49.0% (LOCKED)]
His lungs felt like they were filled with hot lead. His blackened right arm, though mostly healed of its char, was spasming uncontrollably. He was pushing the Kusanagi-Vessel to its absolute limit, but the hilt was a tool of the Earth, it wasn’t ant to hold back the infinite volu of a dying ocean.
"Niisan... the air is getting thin," Haru whispered. She was pale, her sapphire core thumping weakly. The blue light was being suffocated by the grey miasma of the station.
"Stay behind , Haru," Ren rasped. He could barely hear his own voice over the groaning of the concrete walls around them.
They stood before the energy sign, the heart of the Sunken Library. Thousands of mory jars, glowing with a sickly silver light, floated in the stagnant water. In the center, the Archivist sat silently. He was a spindly, ten-foot-tall horror in a shredded suit, his face a smooth expanse of grey skin with two smoking pits for eyes.
"You are persistent, little porter," the Archivist’s voice vibrated in Ren’s skull. "But you are trying to hold back the tide with a toothpick. Why struggle? In the silence of the deep, there is no pain. No Weaver. No hunger. Only the long, grey sleep."
"I don’t like... sleeping in," Ren said, his voice cracking.
He lunged forward. It was the desperate, rigid lunge of a man. He swung the vacuum blade of the Kusanagi-hilt at the Archivist’s neck. The Archivist didn’t even move. He simply waved his silver quill. A wall of pressurized saltwater slamd into Ren’s vacuum bubble.
SHATTERR!!
The bubble imploded vehently. The weight of three hundred feet of water hit Ren like a mountain. The force crushed him into the tile floor, the air lunged out from his lungs in a single, agonizing burst of bubbles. He felt his ribs groan, the pressure trying to turn his internal organs into a red slurry.
Haru was thrown back, her sapphire light spinning out into the dark. She was drowning. Ren saw her hand reaching out, her eyes wide with terror as the grey water rushed into her mouth.
[Divine Mana: 0.0]
[Condition: FATAL PRESSURE DETECTED]
[DEATH IMMINENT]
Ren lay pinned to the floor, his face pressed into the cold, necrotic moss. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. The Kusanagi-Vessel lay inches away, useless without mana. The Archivist hovered over him, the silver quill poised like a needle.
"The story ends here, Ren Hanshin," the Archivist whispered. "A tragic footnote. The man who saved the sun, drowned in a subway station."
’Nooooo!!’ Ren’s mind was screaming. He looked at Haru. She was fading. The sapphire light was turning grey. This was the helpless reality he had feared since the reset. He had chosen the mud, he had chosen the dirt, but the ground was always betraying him. The human path had reached a dead end.
’I need it.’ Ren looked into the dark water. He looked for the thread.
The God of Fate is waiting. Her voice is a triumphant roar that vibrates in the marrow of his bones.
[God of Fate letting out a triumphant roar of anxiety]
[God of Fate]: SEE? SEE WHAT YOUR DIRT IS WORTH? It cannot hold back the sea! It cannot save the girl! YOU NEED , REN! CALL MY NA!
’Weaver...’ Ren thought, the word a bloody prayer in the back of his mind. ’Give the thread.’
[Synchronization: 49.0% -> 49.5% -> 49.9%]
The locked status on his status window slowly disintegrated into nothing. A single, thin crimson line appeared in the dark water. It was so bright it made the sapphire core look like a candle. It was a thread of absolute, legendary Fate.
Ren’s right hand, the blackened, broken one reached out. He grabbed the thread.
BOOMM!!
The water around Ren instantly vanished. A ten-ter sphere of void erupted around Ren, vaporizing the saltwater instantly. The pressure was gone. The cold was gone. Ren stood up, his silver hair erupting into long, flowing strands of starlight that defied the ocean’s weight. His eyes were no longer obsidian. They were twin whirlpools of crimson and gold.
[Divine Mana: 100 / 150 (OVERLOAD)]
[Current Form: The Weaver’s Partial Descent]
Ren didn’t look human. He looked like an unfinished god. Crimson silk wrapped around his arms like bandages, and the Severance of Destiny, the blood-red scythe manifested in his hand, its edge shimring with the heat of a dying star and rage of Ren.
The Archivist recoiled, his grey mist hissing as the heat of Ren’s aura touched it. "No! You rejected her! You chose the ground!"
"The mud is where I stand," Ren said, his voice echoing with the dual-tone resonance of the Heavens. "But the thread is what I use to hang you."
Ren commanded in pure rage. "Sixth Form - Weaver’s Needle."
The archivist is in front of the energy sign of seal. Ren moved. He skipped through the space between monts. He appeared behind the Archivist. He lethally pierced the scythe forward. The red needle of the scythe went through the Archivist’s chest and into the seal of the deep stone pillar behind him. Ren wasn’t just killing a pawn. He was stitching the God of Death’s anchor to the Weaver’s fate.
"I am the Law of the Executioner," Ren roared. He twisted the scythe. The crimson threads burst out from the point of impact, wrapping around the silver mory jars, the mossy walls, and the Archivist himself.
"SEVER!" The entire Sunken Library was literally banished like it was never ant to there. The silver jars turned into harmless bubbles. The Archivist turned into a flurry of grey silk that vanished into nothing. The Seal of the Deep was forcefully closed by a command of Fate.
Ren grabbed Haru, pulling her into the crimson void of his aura. He looked at number in front of his vision. It was throbbing. The Weaver was clawing at the door, trying to push him to 50, trying to take the throne while he was vulnerable.
"Not... today," Ren gritted his teeth, his human ego fighting the tide of divine power. He used the last of the mana to launch himself upward. He didn’t need a platform. He beca a crimson bullet, thrusting through the dark water, through the layers of grey silt.
SPLASH!!
Ren exploded out of the surface of the ocean, landing on the deck of the Kashima Maru with enough force to dent the steel. The crimson light vanished. The starlight hair turned back to black. The scythe dismissed into his hand. Ren fell to the deck, his body smoking, his skin covered in a web of fine, red cracks. He had touched the thread. He had saved Haru, but the price was carved into his soul.
[Synchronization: 49.9% (VOLATILE)]
[Condition: Weaver’s Mark]
Haru lay beside him, coughing up grey water. She looked at him, her eyes wide with fear. She had seen God in his eyes. She had felt the cold infinity of the Weaver.
"Ren-niisan... you touched it," she whispered.
Ren didn’t answer. He looked at the sky. The slow rot was retreating from the harbor, the seal having done its work. But the air around Ren now slled of lavender and smoke. The God of Fate was no longer a silent observer. She had a grip on him again.
Kaito and Tanaka ran toward them, but they stopped several feet away. They saw the red cracks on Ren’s skin. They saw the way the air seed to warp around him.
"Ren?" Tanaka asked, his voice trembling.
Ren looked at his hand. He could still feel the thread. It was humming in his blood, a constant, seductive vibration. He had won the battle of the library, but he had lost the war for his humanity.
"The library is closed," Ren said, his voice a ragged shadow of its forr self. "But the ocean... it’s still there, and so is she."
[God of Fate is so happy and screaming in anxiety]
[God of Fate]: Finally!! Ren... You understand the nature of the dirt you are protecting. Just believe and let us beco one! We will destroy the ego of every Sovereign who will underestimate you!
Ren ignored her words. Ren Hanshin stood up, but he didn’t use his staff. The Weaver was holding his bones together now. He looked at the grey horizon. The sunken library was destroyed, but the Age of the Grey Horizon had just beco much more dangerous. The Executioner was back, but the man was fading. The imnse fuse was lit brighter than ever, and as the Kashima Maru turned toward the open sea, Ren Hanshin knew that the next ti he touched the thread, there might not be a "Ren" left to co back.
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