8. Defenestration

“Boss. The mission’s well underway. I’ve tracked the Ascension Blade’s whereabouts to Senketsu High School, Chiba City. Rejected have been deployed, six total. They should make short work of the situation. My team will move in to collect once the commotion has died down. A few teething problems on release but it seems the Queen now has them under control.”

“Excellent work, Hakana,” Gus Ishimatsu growled into the receiver. “Keep watch, as instructed. I expect full recordings of the situation on your return.”

“Roger that.”

A click, and the line cut out. The CEO clenched his jaw, slamming the phone down onto the leather coating the top of his desk. Powerful hands raked fervently through close-cropped white hair, massaging a scalp with far too many kinks embedded into the skin and bone. The man leaned forward in his chair—wooden frame creaking under his bulk—and began kneading his forehead with his knuckles. His vision continued to swim. The wrathful hands eternally grasping at his soul didn’t relinquish, but he would not falter. His flow would never cease.

He would maintain sovereignty at all costs.

Sweat dripped down the side of his face, as the muscles in his face began to hurt from tensing so intently.

“It has been over twenty years, two decades of humiliating stagnation.” Gus’ voice was strained. Sinews in his throat flexed with every compromised sound that rumbled from his clenched jaw. “Fruitless as it may be, yet again I ask you—”

He stood from his desk with a jolt, the chair shooting out from underneath him. Steadying his swaying stance, both hands pressed resolute into the tabletop, Gus turned a maddened gaze over his shoulder, angry forks of blood coursing through the whites of all three eyes.

“How long do you intend to spite me so, Tyrant?!”

“You will never be rid of me, Gus Ishimatsu. Your efforts will ultimately be in vain.”

Equally matched in both height and stature, the Tyrant—a towering spectre of a man—loomed in the corner of Gus’ office.

The angular mask of a falcon obscured both eyes and nose, carved and bevelled rubies set into the gold. The mask expanded into an ornate war helm the shape of a Pharaoh’s Nemes, striped with deep, stygian blue. His bare chest was clad in thick bangles of gold. Light paradoxically both passed through the spectre, as well as glinted from the glorious metal. From sapphire gem at his waist sprouted a pair of golden decorative wings, and his skirt was bedecked with further needless royalty. The figure had his arms folded, mouth warped into perpetual frown.

“You stand atop a mighty army and yet must delegate even the smallest of tasks to your pitiful underlings. You are a pathetic excuse of a man.”

“Silence!”

The Tyrant drifted over to the centre of the room.

“At long last you uncovered my brother’s tomb, but to what end? The fragment of the Ascension Blade slipped through your fingers. And so still you struggle to unite them, forced to rely on the flailing of lesser men to achieve your goals. Weak.”

“You are a scourge above all else!”

Gus seized and flung his desk aside. Wood splintered, leaving a dent in the stone. Striding up to the spectre, Gus squared his shoulders and scowled. “Had you not dedicated your meaningless existence after death to becoming the eternal thorn in my side, I would have united the Ascension Blade myself long ago. I would not need to rely on anyone else. How cruel and pathetic must you be, such that you’re subjecting me to that which I wish to eradicate? What kind of King can you call yourself, one that revels in a humanity plagued by weakness, and cannot see past his own faded reflection.”

He clenched a fist in front of the Tyrant’s face. The spirit didn’t so much as flinch.

“Mark my words: I will rip this power—my power, that I have risked every fibre of my being to attain—away from you,” a demented grin overtook the man’s face, “and oh, how I will smile when I cast you into the void.”

“You are only human. You are unfit to rule.”

“And you are a fragment of the past! You are already dead! Your opportunity has passed! How arrogant, to think you can wrest control over my body when you have already failed to claim ultimate sovereignty. Had it not been for your debilitating influence, I would have already won. You insist on working against me, when we could have worked together from the start. We are angling for the same goal! Cease your pride and secede so that I may succeed where you have already failed!”

“There will only be one God-King.”

Gus snarled. “And it will not be you!”

---

The shock of the stab imposed an oppressive silence on that corridor in Senketsu High. For far too long, nothing moved.

Soaked in blood, cut up and dusted in the commotion, the student body stood stock still. The Rejected loomed, hulking, unnatural figures animated without autonomy. They were vessels of another, singular will. Unnatural quantities of muscle rippled beneath skin stretched taut. Odd twitches jerked their heads to the side. Every single solitary eye focused in on the boy at the centre of the classroom, the hilt of a knife protruding from his forehead.

Dentaku Bango took a step forward, reaching out. His mind reeled, grasping for any possible semblance of logic. Rinkaku Harigane, the prodigy, his esteemed rival, couldn’t possibly have succumbed to suicide. The thought clashed violently with the manic, chilling laughter of moments ago. He could parse panic, even hysteria—but the Rinkaku Harigane he knew wouldn’t have ever succumbed to the death drive.

Or would he?

He took a step forward. Someone seized his arm, a pair of cold, clammy hands fastening just above the elbow. He turned. The girl’s grip was tenuous, desperate, weak. The cold sweat on her fingers soaked through his blazer. Her skin was ashen, lips trembling, pupils vibrating.

“Don’t!” She whimpered. “Don’t go…”

Bango couldn’t even remember her name.

Her hand shook. Her grip tightened.

Freely flowing tears glimmered under the relentless fluorescents. In all the stunned silence, the electronic humming worsened to deafening point.
She didn’t dare raise her voice, unless it cost her own life.

“You’ll die!”

Bango shook himself free and took another step forward.

“I need to—”

He hadn’t finished his sentence.

What did he need to do?

He wasn’t sure. He just wanted to get there in time.

In time for what?

That didn’t matter.

He needed to get to Harigane, whatever it took. Every step carried with it a hundred miles of effort. Denial ran rampant through his veins.

Harigane couldn’t be dead.

He couldn’t be.

His heart pounded in his throat.

Rin stood motionless, his arms limp at his sides, knife protruding stoutly from forehead. Blood trickled slowly from the wound, but still he stood.

Dead men didn’t stand.

Bango edged closer, step by tentative step. The closer he came, the further he had left to go.

Move. Move!

Gravity only intensified the closer he came. His reaching arm crossed half the distance, then half of that, then half again. But Xeno’s paradox was fundamentally faulty, no matter how hard it tried to immobilise him. With insurmountable effort, he was finally in arm’s length of the boy. His hand hovered above the boy’s shoulder for just a moment, before life and movement of an inexplicable shade rippled through Rin’s body, an uncanny wave of motion.

Before he could make contact, a sonic boom cracked within the four walls. A wave of force threw Bango and those nearby away with intent, colliding with other students and debris. Some of the Rejected were even forced half a step back.

Just as Bango got back to his feet, an overwhelming presence descended from above, weight on the ocean floor on their shoulders, forcing them into fealty. Bango winced, unable to take his gaze away from the floor. His knees buckled, and he sank. His knuckles went white with the strain of pushing himself off the floor. The other survivors had crumpled under pressure. The hair on his neck stood on end. Sweat beaded his face. The air crackled with static, the faint tang of ozone biting at the back of his throat.

Rin’s hands twitched. His right arm rose, fingers grasping the embedded ritual knife. With a grotesque, deliberate motion, he wrenched it free with a thunderous two-tone howl. The room rumbled, the glass resonated, and the Rejected began to scream, more unholy noises to join this wicked chorus.

But then, an eerie silence.

Bango’s gaze darted to the mirror on the far wall—and he froze. Rin’s face had changed. Maybe the sudden absence of his resting contempt was too jarring, but everything looked older. Both eyes were closed, leaving a serene expression. Black markings etched themselves under his left eye. Worst of all, from where the knife had protruded moments ago, a gleaming third eye parted the skin. The supernal organ pulsed, twitching, its glare roving the room.

A tide of nausea swelled in Bango’s throat. Questions flooded his mind, unceasing. Before he could voice a single one, Rin’s eyes snapped open, and a voice—not his own—spoke, reverberating through the space with chilling authority.

This couldn’t be Rinkaku Harigane anymore.

“And so, I am reborn into a world of stagnation and vice. Thousands of years of progress, yet still they labour under the same old sky.” The Architect’s thin mouth curled into a snarl. “What a crying shame.”

The reject tilted its head back with a scream, then lunged. The students all cried out, but the Architect didn’t look fazed. He raised a hand, fingers twisted. The outline of a cube materialised around the reject’s head.

Snap.

The cube solidified, slicing right through the creature’s neck. The reject stopped in its tracks; the encaged head slid from its shoulders. The body fell forward and hit the ground with a thud that made the floor shake and dislodged a cloud of plaster dust from the ceiling. The body then began to disintegrate, dissolving into soot and ash.

The Architect reached above his head, stretching both arms. “Not a bad vessel, although I wonder how long my control will last?” He mused, looking his new body up and down. Alas, even with such miniscule expression of power, the boy’s muscles were straining at their seams. Tendons twitched at every joint. Even the bones ached from the pressure. This body was fragile; its flow, limited. His expression soured. “Vexing, but no matter.”

The two remaining Rejected couldn’t stand still for long. They twitched and writhed on the spot, twisting themselves into a furious rage before hurling themselves at the Architect. Their fists never reached him. Heavy thuds resounded from behind a transparent wall marked by a glowing white outline.

The wall stopped their punches dead. The resultant force shook the room.

The bystanders all suffered a sharp intake of breath.

The Architect looked at the Rejected, and his eyes narrowed.

“Vile abominations. Begone.”

Another snap of his fingers, and the second met the same fate as the first. The severed heads hit the ground, and the corpse disintegrated, burning away into that same, blackened ash.

The third reject delivered another hefty blow into the barrier, and the ethereal glass shattered. The fragments glittered a moment in mid-air and faded into nothing.

The Architect turned around. “Tch.”

The reject roared, lunging for his face. The possessed body showed no fear. He moved with uncanny grace, weaving underneath the arm. Leaping into a backwards somersault, the Architect flicked two searing kicks into the reject’s chin, sending it reeling.

Landing with space and grace to spare, the Architect wound back his arm, a glittering glaive-like gauntlet forming around the forearm. The next moment, he surged forward, spearing his hand into the reject’s chest and carving a clean hole through the sternum. He withdrew the fist, and the gauntlet splintered away into more glittering dust. The creature roared in further agony, but the Architect had already left the ground, swivelling at the hip into a floating roundhouse kick to the side of the head, strong enough to shatter bone.

The reject stumbled around in infant rage, putting its fist through the wall just to stabilise itself. Now with a suitable opening, the Architect squared his arm, pointed straight, and clicked his fingers.

Just as before, the cube chopped cleanly around its pulverized head. It disintegrated the moment it hit the floor. More soot to coat the blackened floor.

And then there were none.

It had all happened so fast.

The monsters were slain, and by the body of their classmate.

A few still murmured Rin’s name, in blind shock and awe.

The Architect surveyed his stunned audience with complete apathy. When his eyes locked onto Bango, the boy felt very soul was laid bare. A primordial fear chilled him to the bone. He shuddered, unable to break the connection.

“Harigane, what the hell did you just do?”

The Architect stared right through him. Without a word, he turned on his heel, stepping over the debris of the ruined wall and into the corridor beyond. The students from the other rooms on the third floor—packed up against the stubborn double doors—had witnessed everything in silent shock. They all stared at the Architect. A few muttered Rin’s name, recognition dawning on their faces through the clouds of panic.

They may as well have not existed. He walked past them all in regal ignorance, only to halt.

The sensation was unmistakable. A dormant signature. The steady plink of water onto the still surface of a lake. The Architect listened in for a sound that did not exist. Could it be her? He listened a moment longer. It was near. The floor below, in fact.

He clasped his hands together, drawing them apart to form glowing white lines in the shape of a square. With a flick, the frame descended, carving a hole in the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation, he jumped on through, leaving both the crowds and ashes of the Rejected in his wake.

---

Never before had Kinuka Amibari known such paralysing fear.

A blur of chaos—shouts, crashing debris, and the piercing cries of the dying. The second-floor corridor had turned into a slaughterhouse, the air heavy with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid stench of destruction. Three monstrous figures, grotesque beyond imagination, rampaged with a single-minded purpose. Anything—or anyone—in their path was reduced to mangled remnants.

She and a group of seven others were all that remained.

The rest lay decimated across the floor. A few had been caught in the warpath, and a few brave idiots had thrown themselves to the lions. Those alive were all backed against the fire exit. The door was jammed. They were trapped. The monsters only drew closer.

Kinuka wanted to run, her legs were leaden; she wanted to scream, her vocal cords had snapped. The others cowered behind her. Some of her classmates had sunk to their knees, faces buried in trembling hands. Others cowered behind her, whimpering prayers to gods they’d long stopped believing in. But Kinuka couldn’t close her eyes, couldn’t look away. Those horrible, solitary eyes: the Rejected’s cavernous, empty gazes bore into her soul, unseeing.

Between them, however, a square hole cut through the ceiling. A boy descended slowly through along with wisps of plaster. Deliberate, graceful, he landed on his feet. Clutched in one hand was the fragment of a knife. The three Rejected froze at the sight. He was looking down. Curtains of messy black hair obscured his face. Kinuka’s heart jolted. That appearance could only belong to one person.

“Rin!”

The boy raised his head. Kinuka’s relief curdled into a scream.

“What happened to you?!”

The grotesque third eye blinked from Rin’s forehead, and beneath his left eye, an ominous black mark had etched itself deep into his skin.

“Answer me!”

Far deeper than she could remember, the voice that spilled from her friend’s lips made the bone marrow in her legs melt and ooze out over the floor.

“Five-thousand years.” Each syllable chimed with authority, a church bell. “Do you know the significance of that number?” The invocation was only met with silence, but the sermon wasn’t over. “That is how much time has passed since I last felt the heat of the sun on my face or taken a breath of fresh air. Five-thousand years since I was denied the very paradise I sought to create, punished for my transgressions.”

The Architect’s voice swelled with a bitter fervour. The three remaining Rejected loomed behind him, their guttural growls echoing in their jaws.

“To what end?” He asked. “What purpose did it serve imprisoning me in that hell beyond—”

One of the creatures lunged, its massive fist arcing toward the Architect’s unprotected neck. The students screamed, pointing, but the Architect didn’t flinch. The moment before impact, flesh was severed. The severed limb flew across the room, spraying viscous black blood that splattered the walls. The Architect looked over his shoulder with a gaze that could freeze hell twice over.

“How dare you interrupt me,” he seethed, venom dripping from his teeth. “Worthless scum.”

A shimmering plane of light, an impossibly thin knife, split the reject in two. Liberated from its mangled prison of flesh, the halves of the reject crumbled, disintegrating before they hit the floor.

The Architect turned around to stare down the other two. His lip curled.

“There is no room for you in my world. Miserable, unsightly. Cease your desperate clinging to life, you Rejected.”

Bringing his hands together, he executed a complex gesture. Thin white lines connected his fingers; he wove them with a master’s ease. A second later, the lines sparkled and fizzled out. A growl rolled in the Architect’s chest. “Must I perform full incantation too? Utterly humiliating. My constructs are feeble, my movements limited. Truly, this body is a prison.”

He repeated the gesture and chanted aloud, “The world that turns on three, I spin it into six. Front and back, I regard you not. Carved at the crossroads, the intersection of four. The black-headed ibis raises its head and looks beyond the window—”

With a clap of his hands and a snap of his fingers, he created an intricate gauze between his fingers. With a malevolent glare, the Architect raised it to eye level and beheld the Rejected through the grid.

LATTICE

欞 RENJI

The air was alight with the singing of blades, and the awful dicing of flesh. A thousand thin white lines slashed into the Rejected, dividing them up into smaller and smaller cubes. Suspended in the air a moment longer, the cubes lost their arrangement and spilled out over the floor, charring as they dissolved into ash.

Kinuka trembled as Rin—no, not Rin—turned toward her. His movements were measured, regal. His stature was unchanged, yet he carried himself with a timeless poise and gravity.

When she whispered his name, her voice cracked. She didn’t have time to think. The next moment, the Architect had swept her off her feet. Dropping to one knee, he held her head in one hand, a finger held against her lips.

“There is no need to say anything.”

In the blink of an eye, he held the blade above her face, tip of the blade gently poised above her forehead. Kinuka was frozen in fear, too shocked to move, let alone speak. With the precision of a surgeon, the Architect plunged the blade deep into Kinuka’s forehead. She gargled out a cry, before her eyes rolled back in her skull.

Screams of disgust, shock and horror rang out from the observers to this gruesome spectacle, but the Architect took no notice. Laying her out on the floor, he withdrew the knife from her skull. It made a horrible, wet sound, and blood—Kinuka’s blood—stained the pearlescent metal. With a flick, all traces of red slid from the blade and flecked the walls.

The Architect stood and sheathed the blade in his pocket. The man stared out of an adjacent window. Further ripples echoed through the surrounding space—fainter, but there still. The Architect could feel them approaching. The sounds of sirens on the horizon grew louder too. It’d be unwise to remain here.

He snapped his fingers. A cuboidal frame appeared around Kinuka like a coffin.

The girl’s chest, steadily rising and falling with each breath, froze. The faces of the box shimmered. The Architect effortlessly lifted the box by one corner, as though it weighed nothing at all, and shrank it the size of a matchbox in his palm. Putting it away, the Architect stood. He looked down, forlorn. Would she even—

“Harigane!”

A voice from earlier interrupted his train of thought. The Architect turned. The fire exit had opened from the other side. A crowd from the third floor stood bunched near the doorway. At the front was Dentaku Bango. “You had better have an excellent explanation for what you’ve just done.”

The Architect glared right through him. He raised the blade briefly, before deciding against the thought and turning back to the window.

Bango took a step back, unnerved. “Don’t ignore me!”

Casting that same glowing outline, the Architect’s mysterious technique cleaved a rectangle into the wall. Driving his foot into it, glass shattered, and the brickwork fell through.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Bango shouted, but there was no stopping him.

With the cube containing Kinuka in one hand, the Architect dove from the second story window. He hit the ground running, landing with extraordinary grace, and pelted across the field at speed. It didn’t take long before the man had disappeared through a belt of trees and into the city’s concrete expanse.

Everyone shuffled closer to the hole in the wall and stared out over the field. Shocked reactions of bystanders echoed in Bango’s ears.

Bango screwed his eyes shut, but Harigane’s glare was seared into his retina. The sirens became louder. The police cars and ambulances drew nearer.

They wouldn’t be able to answer his questions.

The only one who ever could have was gone.