Prologue — Volume 2: Ashes Beneath the Glass

The city breathed.
Tokyo, reborn under the strange truce between Inverso and the real world, glowed with a light that was almost normal.The streets bustled. Neon signs pulsed. Trains came and went on time.And yet… every mirror held a faint delay, every shadow twitched half a second too late.
People ignored it.They wanted peace.
Akarui, Mira, and Yûna walked together through Shibuya Crossing, blending into the crowd.No weapons. No Lightrover.Just three survivors pretending to be ordinary.
But Akarui could feel it.Inverso was watching.Not hostile… not yet.Just waiting.


That night, in the heart of the city, a sound broke the fragile calm.
Glass. Shattering.Not from a shop window. Not from a car crash.
From the sky.
A ripple spread across the night like a black tide, and every pane of glass in a ten-block radius cracked — not outwards, but inwards, as if something had pressed through from the other side.
People screamed. Phones recorded.But the cameras showed nothing.
Only in the shards could it be seen — a silhouette moving on the other side, distorted, as if trapped beneath a frozen ocean.



Far away, in a darkened room lined with fractured mirrors, Saya stood before a single, untouched pane of glass.Her reflection smiled back… but it wasn’t hers.
— You thought balance was enough, Guardian, the reflection whispered.— But glass always breaks… eventually.
The surface rippled.And something pressed its hand against the inside of the mirror.



Akarui woke in the middle of the night, sweat soaking his shirt.He didn’t know why.
But in the corner of his room…the mirror was still vibrating.