Chapter 3: Harvest

The sky over Tokyo pulsed with dull neon and distant sirens, but Aria heard none of it. She sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor, eyes closed, breathing slowly.

Her hands rested on her knees, palms upward.

Above her head, a faint ring of red light spun in silence. It was time.

She whispered a single word.

“Divide.”

The world around her split like glass under pressure.

Space folded inward and Aria was gone — pulled into the pocket between realities, into the Black Cage. The air was cold. The walls, seamless black stone. Chains stirred like snakes in a dream.

But tonight, she was not alone.

Seven figures were shackled to the wall.

Each floated inches above the floor, arms splayed, heads bowed. Some were crying. Some shaking. One still dared to scream.

She had chosen them carefully.

A teacher who beat his own child behind closed doors.

A man who set stray animals on fire for amusement.

A girl who filmed her classmates’ humiliation and laughed as they cried.

Each one selected not for their wickedness — that was common — but for the pain they would feel once their cruelty was turned against them.

Aria stood before them, her expression blank. The light in her eyes was cold, calculating.

She raised her hand.

Mana responded.

It flowed from her fingertips, shimmering in the air like heated glass. With a flick of her wrist, it wove into form: a dozen silver needles. A hooked flaying blade. A golden mirror framed by writhing thorns.

Each object manifested from thought, pure mana made physical.

She began with the teacher.

A single gesture, and his surroundings warped — the room became a twisted reflection of his home. The walls bled wallpaper. A child’s voice sobbed behind the door.

His fear tasted bitter.

She didn’t touch him — not yet. She made him watch. The mirror showed him his own eyes, as they would appear in his daughter’s memory: monstrous, monstrous, monstrous.

When she struck, it was not with fury — it was with control. Every nerve isolated, amplified. Pain tailored to guilt. His screams were honest. Mana flowed from his torment, spiraling up her arm and into her chest.

She stepped to the next.

The girl — smug, defiant — until Aria summoned a dozen phantom classmates. Each one speaking words she had once hurled at them. Each one crying. Each one watching.

Aria used no blade on her. Only silence and projection.

Her pride withered. Her voice cracked.

Mana spilled from her like fog.

On and on it went. Each torture personalized. Not mindless. Not random.

Pain was a science.

Suffering was a design.

And Aria was its architect.

As her victims writhed and wept, as they begged for mercy she would never give, Aria stood calmly at the center of it all, collecting the mana that pooled beneath her feet like ink.

When she had extracted all she could, she moved between them, one by one.

She touched each forehead gently.

Each body shattered like crystal.

Seven lives. Seven unique echoes of agony. Seven threads of mana, now hers.

She closed her eyes.

Her breath slowed.

The mana inside her pulsed — deeper, denser than before.

She was evolving.

And yet, something itched at the edge of her awareness. A flicker of a thought. An image — a boy, perhaps. His face blurred by time. A voice, low and warm, saying her name with no fear.

She frowned.

The memory wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. She dismissed it.

For now.

The Black Cage crumbled. The walls dissolved into the void. Aria returned to her bedroom.

A clock ticked softly in the background.

She stood in the dark, bathed in moonlight, and for the first time that day, smiled faintly.

Progress.

Tomorrow, she would need even more.