Chapter 21: The Eye of the Storm

We do not run like humans. We do not stop for traffic lights, which are all flashing ominous red anyway. We do not wait for crosswalks. We move as a single unit of supernatural force, leaping over gridlocked cars and sprinting along power lines.

The city beneath us is dissolving.

The Eclipse has turned Tokyo into a fever dream. The purple sky casts long, distorted shadows that seem to detach themselves from buildings and crawl on their own. Gravity feels inconsistent. Sometimes, when I jump, I hang in the air for a second too long. Other times, I land with a heaviness that cracks the pavement.

"Keep moving!" Yoshi shouts over the wind. He is a black blur ahead of me, his leather jacket flapping like wings. "Do not look at the shadows! If you look at them, they look back!"

"My head", Kenuji gasps. He is running beside me, clutching his laptop to his chest. His psychic aura is flickering, a pale grey light struggling against the oppressive violet atmosphere. "The static is unbearable. It sounds like a million people screaming in a tunnel".

"Block it out!" Muji yells. He is running on all fours for a moment, then switches back to two legs to vault over a bus. "Think about tuna! Think about chasing mice! Think about anything simple!"

"I am thinking about punching Kuro in the face", Inoe growls. She is usually the graceful one, but tonight she is running with savage intensity, her hair streaming behind her like a war banner.

We reach the edge of our neighborhood.

Usually, this place is a sanctuary. It is quiet streets, manicured hedges, and vending machines that hum softly in the night. It is the place where we learned to be a family.

Now, it is a battlefield.

The corruption has spread here too. The streetlights are flickering. The shadows under the cherry trees are writhing.

"The house!" I scream.

We turn the corner onto the Hoshi's street.

Our house stands at the end of the block. It is glowing. The barriers we reinforced-the ancient geometric wards Yoshi carved into the foundation and the psychic nets Kenuji wove over the roof-are holding. They form a shimmering, translucent dome over the property.

But the dome is under siege.

Hundreds of small, shadow creatures are crawling over the barrier like ants. They are scratching, biting, and spitting acid at the light. The barrier is crackling. It is straining.

"Get away from my house!" Yoshi roars.

He does not slow down. He hits the pavement with both feet and launches himself into the air.

"Geomancer Arts: Meteor Strike!"

He comes down like a missile. He slams his fist into the street right in front of the gate.

BOOM.

The shockwave rips up the asphalt. It sends a ripple of force outward that blasts the shadow creatures off the barrier. They fly backward, screeching as they dissolve into ink.

"Clear the perimeter!" Kenuji commands, landing on the roof of the neighbor's garage. He opens his laptop mid-air. "I will stabilize the barrier frequencies! You guys handle the pests!"

"With pleasure", Muji grins. His claws extend, gleaming silver in the purple light.

Muji lands in the middle of a swarm of shadows. He spins like a top.

"Silver Claw: Tornado!"

He becomes a buzzsaw of destruction. Shadow limbs fly into the air. The creatures try to overwhelm him, but he is too fast. He moves with the unpredictable, explosive energy of a cat chasing a toy, but the toy is death.

Inoe lands by the front door. A group of shadows shaped like distorted dogs lunges at her.

"Sit", Inoe commands. Her eyes flash neon pink.

The shadow dogs freeze mid-air. Their connection to the Eclipse wavers.

"Good boys", Inoe says coldly. "Now... destroy each other".

The shadows turn on themselves. They tear each other apart in a frenzy of dark matter.

I land beside Yoshi. I summon my light. It is dimmer than usual-I am exhausted from the fight at the market-but it is still pure.

"Divine Light: Flashbang!"

I throw orb after orb of light into the mass of shadows. Each explosion clears a five-meter radius. The shadows hiss and retreat from the brightness.

"They just keep coming!" I yell, blasting a shadow that looks like a giant spider. "Where are they coming from?"

"The ground!" Yoshi shouts, kicking a shadow monster in the face. " The corruption is seeping up from the earth! The ley lines are infected!"

"We have to seal it locally", Kenuji calls down from the roof. "Yoshi! The cornerstones! Reinforce them!"

"Cover me!" Yoshi orders.

He runs to the four corners of the property. At each corner, there is a buried stone marker. Yoshi kneels, placing his hands on the earth. He pours his green energy into the ground, stabilizing the trembling soil.

"Earth, hear me", Yoshi chants, his voice deep and resonant like tectonic plates shifting. "Be stone. Be iron. Be unmovable".

The ground shudders. The cracks in the street seal up. The flow of shadow monsters slows, then stops.

With the reinforcements cut off, we make short work of the stragglers. Muji shreds the last one, panting heavily.

Silence falls over the street. It is a heavy, unnatural silence. The purple sky swirls above us, indifferent to our struggle.

"Is the barrier holding?" Inoe asks, looking up at the shimmering dome.

"It is stable", Kenuji confirms, sliding down the drainpipe to join us. "For now. But the pressure from the Eclipse is rising. It won't hold forever".

"We need to check on them", I say, looking at the dark windows of the house.

We rush to the front door. Yoshi unlocks it with a touch of his hand. We slip inside.

The air inside the house is cool and clean. It smells like tatami mats and the faint scent of the curry we had for dinner last night. It feels like a different world.

"Quietly", Yoshi whispers.

We creep upstairs. We check Hajime's room first.

He is asleep. He is snoring softly, one arm hanging off the bed. The barriers blocked the noise of the battle outside. He doesn't know the world is ending.

We check Naomi's room.

She is asleep too. Her phone is on her pillow, glowing with notifications she hasn't seen yet. Probably news alerts about the riots and the fires.

I walk to the side of her bed. I look down at her sleeping face. She looks so peaceful. So innocent. She thinks her biggest problem tomorrow is a macroeconomics exam.

I reach out and gently touch her hand. Her skin is warm.

"I am sorry", I whisper. "I am sorry we brought this to your door".

"She is safe", Muji says quietly from the doorway. He is leaning against the frame, looking uncharacteristically serious. "We kept our promise".

"For tonight", Kenuji says. He is standing by the window, looking out through the curtains at the purple sky. "But look at the tower".

We go to the window. In the distance, rising above the skyline of Tokyo like a dark needle, is the Tokyo Tower.

It is beaming.

A massive column of dark energy is shooting straight up from the tip of the tower into the hole in the sky. It is widening. The corruption is spreading from that point, infecting the clouds, turning them into a swirling vortex that looks like a bruise on the face of the universe.

"It is the antenna", Kenuji says. "Kuro is using it to broadcast the Eclipse signal. As long as that tower stands, the corruption will keep growing. Eventually, it will break every barrier in the city. Including this one".

"So we cannot stay here", Yoshi says. He is standing in the hallway, his arms crossed. "If we stay to defend the house, we just delay the inevitable. We die here, and then they die".

"We have to go to the tower", Inoe says softly. "We have to shut it down".

"It is a trap", Muji says. "You know it is a trap. Kuro is waiting for us. He wants us to come. He wants to finish what he started in the tunnels".

"Of course it is a trap", Yoshi grins, but his eyes are hard as flint. "But traps are made to be broken".

He walks into Naomi's room. He looks at us.

"We leave now. We finish this before she wakes up".

"What about the house?" I ask. "If we leave, who protects them?"

"The barrier will hold for a few hours", Kenuji says. "I will divert all my remaining ambient energy into the wards. It will leave me drained, but it will buy them time".

"Do it", Yoshi says.

Kenuji closes his eyes. He places his hands on the wall. A grey light pulses from his body, flowing into the structure of the house. He gasps, his knees buckling slightly.

"Done", Kenuji breathes, adjusting his glasses with a trembling hand. "The house is a bunker now. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out".

"Let's go", Yoshi says.

We walk downstairs in silence. We pause in the living room. It looks so normal. The scratched sofa. The TV stand. The rug where we had the catnip incident just a few days ago. It feels like years have passed.

"I am going to miss this rug", Muji mutters.

"We will be back", I say firmly. "We will be back for breakfast".

We walk out the front door. We lock it behind us.

We step out of the sanctuary and back into the nightmare.

The street is empty now, but the air is heavier than before. The gravity distortion is getting worse. Small pebbles are floating off the ground.

"To the tower", Yoshi commands.

We start running again. We head east, toward the center of the storm.

The journey to the tower is a gauntlet. The closer we get to the city center, the thicker the corruption becomes. The air is no longer just air; it is a soup of negative emotions. I can hear weeping in the wind. I can hear anger in the rumble of the ground.

We fight our way through Roppongi. The streets are filled with possessed humans-people who didn't get to safety in time. They are wandering aimlessly, their eyes black, attacking anything that moves.

"Don't hurt them!" I yell as Muji knocks a possessed businessman aside. "They are victims!"

"I am just napping them!" Muji yells back. "Aggressive napping!"

Inoe uses her mind control to clear paths, parting the crowds of possessed like the Red Sea. "Move aside. You want to go home. You want to sleep".

We reach the base of the tower hill.

The Tokyo Tower stands before us. It usually glows a warm, inviting orange. Tonight, it is a skeleton of black steel wreathed in violet lightning. The air around it is crackling. The hum is deafening-a low frequency vibration that makes my vision blur.

Standing at the base of the tower, blocking the entrance to the observation deck elevators, is an army.

Not shadows this time.

Yakuza. Hundreds of them. The same clan we fought at the market, but reinforced. They are heavily armed-swords, bats, guns. And they are all glowing with the purple aura of the Eclipse.

And leading them, sitting on a folding chair right in front of the elevator, is a man.

He is huge. He is at least seven feet tall, a mountain of muscle squeezed into a tailored suit. He has no neck. His head is shaved. He is smoking a cigar that glows green.

"Another Lieutenant?" Muji asks, stopping to catch his breath.

"That is not a Lieutenant", Yoshi says, his voice turning icy. "I know him. That is Goro. The Ogre of Shinjuku. He is a legendary Yakuza enforcer. He died twenty years ago".

"Kuro resurrected him?" I ask, horrified.

"Resurrected", Kenuji corrects, scanning the giant. "And upgraded".

Goro stands up. He crushes the cigar in his hand. He smiles, revealing teeth made of gold and obsidian.

"Little cats", Goro booms. His voice sounds like a landslide. "The Master said you would come. He said you have claws".

He rips off his suit jacket, revealing a torso covered in tattoos. But the tattoos are moving. Dragons and tigers swimming under his skin.

"I eat claws for breakfast", Goro laughs.

The army behind him raises their weapons.

"We don't have time for this", Inoe says, looking at the sky. The hole in the clouds is widening. "The ritual is peaking".

"Go", Yoshi says. He steps forward. He cracks his neck.

"What?" I look at him.

"You four go to the top", Yoshi says. He does not look back at us. He keeps his eyes on Goro. "I will handle the doorman".

"There are hundreds of them!" Muji argues. "Yoshi, you cannot fight an army alone!"

"I am not fighting an army", Yoshi says calmly. He stomps his foot. The ground ripples. "I am fighting the earth. And I always win against the earth".

"Yoshi..." I start.

"Go!" Yoshi roars. "Haruka, you are the key! Get to the top and purify that beacon! I will hold the line here!"

Goro charges. The ground shakes with his steps.

Yoshi meets him.

"Geomancer Arts: Titan Armor!"

Rocks fly up from the pavement. They cling to Yoshi's body, forming a suit of stone armor. He grows in size, matching Goro's height.

They collide.

CRASH.

The impact creates a shockwave that knocks the Yakuza front line off their feet.

"Go now!" Yoshi yells from inside the dust cloud. He is grappling with the giant, holding him back.

"Come on!" Kenuji grabs my arm. "Don't waste his sacrifice!"

We run. We sprint past the fight. Yoshi creates a wall of stone to shield us from the gunfire of the Yakuza army. We slip into the service entrance at the side of the tower structure.

I look back one last time.

Yoshi is standing alone against a tide of enemies. He is glowing green. He looks like a king.

"Make it count!" he shouts.

Then the door closes, and we are inside the tower.

"He will be fine", Muji says, but his voice is shaking. "He is Yoshi. He is too stubborn to die".

"We have to hurry", Kenuji says, pressing the call button for the emergency elevator. It is dead. "Of course. Stairs again".

"Why is it always stairs?" Muji groans, but he starts climbing.

We climb. We climb toward the eye of the storm. We climb toward Kuro.

The final battle is not on the ground. It is in the sky. And we are one sibling short.