Cantus Null: Silence (Part III)

[November 27th, 12:20 JST]

Tochigi Prefecture – Abandoned Industrial Zone

The light faded.

What followed was not silence, but a thin, piercing ring that clawed at Reina’s skull as she lay half-buried beneath the rubble. Her senses returned unevenly, as if the world itself was out of tune.

She coughed and forced her eyes open.

The glow of the musical tattoos along her skin was dimming. The sigils in her eyes flickered unstably. When she tried to steady her Cantus Veil, it responded a heartbeat too late, frayed at the edges.

Her haze wavered in the same way.

Something was wrong with the air.

The compound was gone — at least half of it. Concrete lay shattered into slabs, steel beams warped in twisted shapes. At the center of it all, the crater still glowed faintly white, its edges scorched raw. Nothing remained but the fragments of a broken D-Mic, the one used by the blonde ponytail girl.

“Girls...” Reina’s voice came out rough. “...answer me.”

Debris shifted nearby.

Nana shoved a collapsed beam aside and pushed herself upright, breath unsteady. Emi and Emiko stumbled through the drifting dust, one bracing the other. Misaki was down on one knee, fingers pressed hard into the ground, steadying herself. Momoko coughed nearby, her green twin braids now covered in dust and small debris.

None of their sigils shone cleanly.

Mika lay beneath the wreckage of a fallen metal frame. Blood traced down her temple, dark against the dust. She didn’t stir.

Reina’s gaze snapped away.

Another shape lay farther off, small and still amid the debris. Pink hair matted with ash. No movement.

Reina tightened her grip around her D-Mic.

Then she saw them.

Near the edge of the blast radius, four figures struggled against the broken ground. One dragged herself forward with trembling arms. Another tried to stand, only to collapse back onto her knees. A third lay against a fracture wall, chest rising shallowly, blood smeared across her face. The last one lay beside her.

They were breathing. Bleeding. Still alive.

Their heads lifted unnaturally slow. The eyes found Reina and her team — the same empty focus, no pain or fear on their faces.

The black smoke still lingered above the battlefield, thinner now, curling lazily through the ruined air.

One of the four moved.

The long-haired girl stepped forward, then broke into a run. Run wasn’t the right word. Her stride was uneven, one foot landing late, dragging slightly as if something inside her leg had already torn loose. Still, her body kept pushing, guided by something that no longer cared about damage or pain.

Like a puppet.

Reina inhaled and began to sing again. She felt the others join her instinctively, voices threading together, D-Mics humming as they forced their resonance back into shape. Yet, nothing changed.

The girl was already halfway across the yard. Her twisted D-Mic vibrated weakly in her grip, the broken musical tattoos along her skin flickering in and out of existence. A sigil formed near her palm, the air around it trembling as vibration rippled outward.

The attack tore through the empty space and struck the ground several meters short of Reina, shattering concrete in a dull, unfocused burst.

Nana moved on instinct. Flames flared around her fist as she stepped in to counter — but the fire thinned the instant it left her hands, sputtering out before it could land. The impact burst weakly against the ground instead of exploding forward.

“What—?” Nana didn’t finish.

The vibration came again, point-blank.

This time, it clipped her.

Not her body.

Her haze.

The protective field rippled violently, as if scraped by something invisible. Nana was thrown backward, boots skidding through rubble as she hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs.

Reina’s eyes widened.

That shouldn’t have happened.

It was then that the smoke surrounding them thickened. Black haze bled outward as another sigil flared near the far edge of the field. The purple twin-tailed girl was still humming weakly, the distorted tune never stopping, even as blood ran freely down her chin.

Nearby, the girl with short black hair manifested a sigil at the fire girl’s shattered hand. Stones crawled over it, slowly reforming into a crude, misshapen fist. A temporary patch at best.

Momoko and Emi rushed forward to engage. Misaki reacted first

Gravity slammed down on the fire and earth users. The earth spell died instantly followed by both girls dropping to their knees, pinned. But Misaki’s sigil flickered violently, giving them just enough room to wiggle.

Momoko and Emi were already closing in, one hand gripping their D-Mics, the other raised to cast—

And stopped.

Their movement froze. Their voices cut off mid-breath.

Sigils faded. The glow in their eyes vanished. Both D-Mics slipped from their hands and struck the ground with a dull, hollow sounds.

“Emi—? Momoko—?” Reina called.

No answer.

Nana was already back to her feet, charging again. This time, her punch connected squarely with the long-haired girl’s face. The force sent her flying several meters through the air.

But something felt... wrong.

The girl hit the ground and rolled once before going still. No recoil. No resistance. As if the impact never fully registered with reality itself.

Before Nana could process it, her breath hitched. Her voice faltered. The glow around her skin dimmed, then flickered, and died. Her Cantus Veil vanished instantly.

Misaki and Emiko moved instinctively, but neither took more than a step.

Both stopped halfway through standing, bodies locking in place as if caught between motions. Their voices vanished. Their sigils drained away, leaving them bent and unmoving amid the rubble.

The smoke was thicker now.

Reina turned slowly, her heart sinking as the realization struck her all at once.

She’d been watching the wrong enemy.

She forced her voice, dragging thunder back into her song. A sigil snapped into existence beneath her feet as lightning slammed into the ground with a sharp, concussive crack. The pressure wave shoved the smoke back in a flash, carving a brief pocket of clean air around her.

She pushed forward to strike the caster directly, but her vision blurred at the edges. The world warped, the battlefield stretching thin as sound bled into a hollow noise. Her voice faltered — failing her for the first time she could remember.

Then she heard it.

“Reina...”

Her breath caught, that voice... she knew it.

”My dear... it’s okay.”

Her hands trembled as the sound reached somewhere deep inside her, a voice she had thought she would never hear again. Warm and impossibly gentle, it lingered around her ears.

“Reina... you’ve done enough.”

Her knees weakened. The thunder sigil beneath her feet flickered, its glow thinning until it barely held. The smoke crept back into the space she’d forced open, curling around her ankles, her wrists, her throat.

“Mom...”

Heat welled in Reina’s eyes as the old scar in her heart split open once more.

The battlefield dimmed as the last remaining sigil of Tempesta Unit faded into nothingness.

“Come here,” the voice whispered again. “You don’t have to keep fighting anymore.”

Reina swallowed, trying to draw breath, to force sound back into her chest. Nothing came. Her D-Mic felt heavy in her hand, unfamiliar — like it no longer belonged to her.

The voice was so comforting.

Even knowing it wasn’t real, Reina found herself leaning toward it.

The smoke intensified, spreading wide, about to swallow the entire field.

And then—

A new, gentle sound cut through it.

Clear and steady, like a warm wind in the cold.

The smoke recoiled.

Reina gasped as the pressure around her chest loosened, the hollow ringing snapping like a broken string. The voice vanished mid-breath, torn away as if it had never been there.

“Reina-senpai...”

This voice was real.

She turned, breath hitching.

Yuzuriha stood unsteadily near the edge of the rubble, one hand braced against a broken beam, the other holding her D-Mic close to her lips. Her eyes were focused as her soft, steady voice echoed across the field.

Her voice didn’t rise like Reina’s thunder, nor surge like Nana’s flame. It slipped in quietly, carried on a slow, deliberate frequency that didn’t push against the smoke — but passed through it.

The hallucination broke.

The black haze wavered, then thinned, losing weight and intent, as if the air itself had been retuned to reject it. The distorted humming that clung to the battlefield began to fall apart, notes slipping out of alignment until they no longer carried force.

Yuzuriha took a step forward, still leaning against the beam. Her grip tightened around the D-Mic. Her voice grew firmer as she focused her intent, and the D-Mic answered.

Sigils flared in Yuzuriha’s eyes as her song steadied, faint musical tattoos surfacing along her skin and flowing upward in quiet alignment.

“Ars Aria: Silentia Cantus.”

The sound spread outward.

Sigils bloomed in the air — not sharp, not radiant. Simple forms traced themselves into existence behind each member of Tempesta Unit, settling against their backs like quiet anchors. Within that space, the smoke simply... stopped working.

One by one, the girls began to stir.

Breath returned. Focus followed, slow and uneven as they pulled themselves back from the edge. Mika’s eyes fluttered open beneath streaks of blood and dust, her brow tightening as Yuzuriha’s voice reached her.

Yuzuriha kept singing even as she stumbled forward. Her voice rose, gaining strength rather than volume, as it ground steadily against the twisted song ahead of her.

The four Diva in front of them faltered.

Their movements grew erratic as their own frequencies began to unravel, pulled apart by Yuzuriha’s song until the distorted harmony collapsed into silence.

Their humming broke.

Their voices dropped, one by one.

The four girls swayed where they stood, bodies trembling as whatever had been forcing them forward finally ran out of space to exist.

Reina rushed toward them.

Yuzuriha low and steady voice behind her, holding the field in check — ready in case any of them tried to force one last note.

None did.

The black smoke sagged all at once, thinning into harmless residue that drifted uselessly to the ground.

One of the girls collapsed first.

Reina caught her as her knees buckled. The weight surprised her... or rather, the lack of it.

The glowing tattoos along the girl’s skin had vanished completely, leaving only pale flesh beneath Reina’s hands.

The girl’s eyes were empty, light gone. Her chest jerked once, then stilled.

Blood ran freely from her nose and mouth, seeping from the cracks along her skin and the wound left behind by the fight, staining Reina’s uniform as she tried — instinctively — to steady her.

“Hey—” Reina said, voice tight. “Wake up. Don’t—”

No response.

The abnormal D-Mic slipped from the girl’s fingers and cracked against the concrete with a dull snap, its surface spiderwebbing as the last hum inside it died.

Reina felt it then.

The moment the breath never came back.

Around her, the other three lay scattered across the rubble, collapsed where they had stood, bodies twisted into awkward, final positions. 

No movement. No sound.

Behind her, Yuzuriha’s voice faltered and stopped.

There was no need to keep singing anymore.

Reina slowly lowered the girl in her arms to the ground. Her hands trembled as she pulled back, the cold weight of the body lingering against her skin long after she let go.

The battlefield was silent.

The fight was over.