Chapter 25: The Ashes of Shiba Park

We are falling.

The wind roars in my ears, a deafening white noise that drowns out Inoe's scream. The air is cold, biting at my exposed skin, but the heat from the explosion above us radiates down like an oven door opening. I see shards of glass falling with us, glittering like diamonds in the purple light of the Eclipse.

"Inoe!" Kenuji screams. He is tumbling through the air, trying to grab Muji's hand. "Catch us! Now!"

Inoe is terrified. Her eyes are squeezed shut. She is clutching Muji's arm so hard her fingernails are drawing blood. She is not focusing.

"Inoe!" I yell, angling my body to dive toward her. "Open your eyes! Look at the ground!"

She snaps her eyes open. She sees the park rushing up to meet us. The trees look like broccoli. The cars look like toys. Panic flares in her face, but then, instinct takes over.

"Psychic Net!" she shrieks.

Her aura explodes. It is a desperate, ragged burst of pink energy. It catches us.

It does not stop us—physics won't allow that without turning our bones to jelly—but it slows us. It feels like hitting a layer of thick, invisible gel. Our velocity drops. The wind stops tearing at my clothes.

We crash through the canopy of a massive oak tree in Shiba Park. Branches whip my face. Leaves blind me.

CRACK. SNAP. THUD.

We hit the ground.

I roll. I learned how to fall as a cat—relax the muscles, protect the head—and I do it now as a human. I tumble across the grass, bruising my shoulder, scraping my knees, but I do not break anything.

I come to a stop against a park bench. I gasp for air, my lungs burning.

"Sound off!" I yell, pushing myself up.

"Alive!" Muji groans from a bush nearby. He crawls out, spitting leaves. He is still clutching the bag of cookies, miraculously crushed but intact.

"Intact", Kenuji says, checking his laptop. The screen is cracked, but the light is still on. He is lying on his back, staring up at the sky.

"Inoe?" I ask.

Inoe is sitting on the grass, shaking. Her nose is bleeding profusely—a side effect of overusing her psychic power. "I... I caught us".

"You did good", Muji says, hauling her to her feet. "You saved our tails".

"Move!" Kenuji screams, pointing up.

We look up.

The Tokyo Tower—the symbol of the city, the beacon of hope—is dying. The explosion Kuro triggered has severed the main support pillars. The top third of the tower, the part we just jumped from, is tilting.

It groans. It is a sound like a dying whale, a screech of twisting metal that vibrates deep in the earth.

Then, it falls.

"Run!" Muji roars.

We sprint. We do not look back. We run away from the impact zone, toward the street.

Behind us, thousands of tons of steel and concrete crash into the park.

BOOOOOOM.

The impact knocks us off our feet. The ground jumps a foot into the air. A shockwave of dust, dirt, and twisted metal expands outward, flattening the trees.

I cover my head. The roar is deafening. It goes on for ten seconds, a continuous thunder of destruction.

Then, silence.

A heavy, suffocating silence.

I cough. The air is thick with dust. It tastes like copper and pulverized cement. I cannot see anything. The world has turned grey.

"Kenuji? Muji?" I call out. My voice sounds muffled.

"Here", Muji's voice comes from the fog. "I am here".

We find each other in the haze. We are covered in grey ash. We look like ghosts.

"Yoshi", Inoe whispers.

The name hangs in the air.

"He was at the base", Kenuji says, his voice devoid of emotion. He is wiping dust off his glasses, but his hands are trembling. "He was fighting Goro. Right under the tower".

We turn toward the ruin.

Where the tower stood, there is now a mountain of twisted red and white steel. It is a tangled mess of girders, cables, and elevator shafts. Fires are burning in the wreckage, casting flickering orange lights through the dust.

"Yoshi!" I scream.

I run toward the pile.

"Haruka, wait!" Muji grabs my arm. "It is unstable! The rest of the tower could come down!"

"He is in there!" I pull away. "He is buried!"

"He is a Geomancer!" Muji yells, shaking me. "If anyone can survive being buried, it is him! But we need to be smart! We cannot just dig with our hands!"

"Search", Kenuji commands. He closes his eyes, reaching out with his mind. "I am scanning for his bio-signature. It is faint. The interference from the crash is massive".

"Find him", Inoe begs. "Please find him".

We stand in the ash, waiting. The seconds tick by like hours.

"There", Kenuji points. "North quadrant. Under the main leg. I feel a pulse. It is slow. But it is strong".

"Let's go", Muji says.

We scramble over the debris. The metal is hot to the touch. We climb over jagged beams and shattered concrete.

We reach the spot Kenuji pointed to. It is a chaotic jumble of steel beams, piled twenty feet high.

"He is under this?" I ask, my heart sinking. "How do we move this?"

"We lift it", Muji says. He grabs a steel girder as thick as a tree trunk. "Help me".

"It weighs tons!" I say.

"Just lift!"

Muji roars. His muscles bulge. He strains, veins popping out on his neck. The girder moves an inch.

"Inoe! Help!" I shout.

Inoe adds her telekinesis. I add my light, forming a physical wedge. Kenuji pushes with his mind.

We heave. The metal groans. We shift it just enough to create a gap.

"I see green!" Inoe shouts.

We look into the dark hole under the debris.

Deep down, encased in a pocket of rubble, is a sphere of rock. It is perfectly round, glowing with a faint, pulsing green light.

"Titan Armor", Kenuji breathes a sigh of relief. "He encased himself. He made a bunker".

"Yoshi!" I yell into the hole. "Can you hear me?"

The rock sphere cracks. A piece falls away.

A hand reaches out. A hand covered in dust and blood, giving a thumbs up.

"Get... me... out...", a muffled voice groans from inside. "It... smells... like... socks... in... here".

We laugh. We actually laugh. It is a hysterical, broken sound, but it is real.

We spend the next ten minutes clearing the rubble. We pull Yoshi out of his stone cocoon.

He looks terrible. His leather jacket is shredded. His face is a mask of bruises. He is favoring his left leg, dragging it behind him. But he is alive.

"You look like trash", Muji says, offering him a shoulder to lean on.

"You should see the other guy", Yoshi coughs, spitting out blood. "Or what is left of him".

"Goro?" Kenuji asks.

"Buried", Yoshi points to the mountain of steel. "I trapped him in a sinkhole right before the tower fell. Then the tower fell on the sinkhole. He is probably flat now".

"Good riddance", Inoe says.

We help Yoshi away from the wreckage. We limp back to the park bench where we landed. We sit down, five battered siblings in a ruined park.

"We did it", I say, looking at the burning stump of the tower. "We stopped the broadcast".

"Did we?" Kenuji asks.

He points at the sky.

We look up.

The purple clouds are not dissipating. The hole in the sky—the Eclipse—is not closing.

In fact, it is getting bigger.

And something is coming through.

"I thought breaking the staff stopped it", Muji says, his voice small. "The crystal shattered. The magic stopped".

"We stopped the signal", Kenuji says, his face illuminated by the eerie violet light. "But Kuro said he rang the doorbell. Once the door is open... stopping the bell doesn't close the door".

A sound rolls across the sky. It is not thunder. It is a roar. A roar that sounds organic. Massive. Ancient.

From the center of the vortex, a shape begins to emerge. It is vast. It looks like a whale made of stars and darkness, swimming through the atmosphere. Tentacles trailing from its body drift down toward the city, miles long.

"What is that?" Inoe whispers.

"An Old God", Yoshi says grimly. "A cosmic horror. The thing Kuro was worshipping".

"It is manifesting", Kenuji says, typing furiously on his broken laptop. "The spiritual pressure is spiking again. If that thing touches the ground, Tokyo is gone. Physically gone. It will eat the city".

"We are tired", Muji says. He sits down heavily on the grass. "I have no energy left. My claws are dull. I have one cookie left".

"We cannot fight that", I say, staring at the monster in the sky. "It is the size of a mountain".

"We don't have to fight it", Yoshi says. He stands up, wincing as he puts weight on his bad leg. "We just have to close the door".

"How?" Inoe asks. "The staff is broken".

"The door is sustained by the corruption on the ground", Yoshi explains. "The atmosphere is saturated. If we clear the atmosphere, the door starves. The monster gets pulled back into the void".

"Clear the atmosphere?" Kenuji looks around at the purple smog choking the city. "That would take a hurricane. Or a miracle".

"Or", Yoshi looks at me. "A sun".

They all look at me.

"Me?" I ask. "I am empty. I used my Nova at the G-Cans. I used my Flashbang at the tower. I am running on fumes".

"You are the Divine", Yoshi says. He puts a hand on my shoulder. "You don't run on batteries. You run on faith. You run on the light that is already here".

He points to the city.

Even in the darkness, even under the Eclipse, Tokyo is glowing. Not with electricity, but with life. Millions of souls.

"Draw from them", Kenuji realizes. "A Spirit Bomb. Gather the ambient positive energy of the city. Hope. Fear. Love. Survival instinct. Channel it".

"That is dangerous", I say. "If I take too much, I could kill them".

"Take a little from everyone", Inoe says. "Just a spark. There are thirty million people in the Greater Tokyo Area. A spark from each of them is a supernova".

I look at the sky. The monster is descending. Its tentacles are brushing the tops of the skyscrapers in Shinjuku. Buildings are crumbling into dust where it touches them.

We have no choice.

"Cover me", I say. "This will take time. And I will be vulnerable".

"We got you", Muji says, standing up. He eats his last cookie. "Sugar rush, round two".

"Form a circle", Yoshi orders.

My siblings surround me. Yoshi facing North. Muji South. Inoe East. Kenuji West. They stand ready, their battered bodies tense.

I close my eyes.

I reach out. Not with my hands, but with my soul.

I feel the city.

I feel the fear. It is cold and sharp. People hiding in basements. People trapped in trains.

I push past the fear. I look for the light.

I feel a mother holding her child in a subway station, whispering that it will be okay. Spark.

I feel a firefighter pulling someone from a burning building in Tsukiji. Spark.

I feel Hajime, asleep in our house, dreaming of his wife. Spark.

I feel Naomi, her phone in her hand, worrying about her cats. Spark.

I pull.

"Lend me your light", I whisper. "Just for a moment. Please".

It starts as a trickle. Then a stream. Then a river.

Golden motes of light begin to rise from the city. They float up from the streets, from the houses, from the shelters. They swirl toward Shiba Park. They swirl toward me.

"Here they come", Muji whispers.

But the darkness notices.

The shadows in the park begin to reform. The remnants of the Yakuza army. The leftover constructs. They sense the threat. They sense the light gathering.

"Incoming!" Kenuji yells.

A wave of shadow monsters charges out of the gloom.

"Hold the line!" Yoshi roars.

He stomps his foot. A wall of earth rises.

Muji leaps over the wall. He fights with his bare hands, his claws gone, punching shadows into smoke.

Inoe screams, her psychic waves pushing the enemies back.

I focus. I ignore the sounds of battle. I ignore Muji's grunts of pain. I ignore the ground shaking.

The light enters me.

It burns. It is hot. It is too much. My skin starts to glow. My white dress turns into pure radiance. My hair floats, turning into strands of gold.

"Haruka!" Yoshi yells. "Hurry! There are too many of them!"

"Almost...", I grit my teeth.

The monster in the sky roars. It feels the buildup. It turns its massive, star-filled eyes toward me.

A beam of purple energy shoots down from its mouth. A death ray aimed right at Shiba Park.

"Kenuji! Shield!" Yoshi screams.

Kenuji throws up everything he has. Yoshi reinforces it with stone. Inoe reinforces it with telekinesis.

The purple beam hits their combined shield.

CRACK.

The shield buckles. My siblings are driven to their knees. They scream in agony as the weight of a god presses down on them.

"I cannot hold it!" Kenuji cries, blood pouring from his nose.

"Just... one... more... second!" I scream.

I take the last bit of light. I compress it. I shape it.

I open my eyes. They are no longer human. They are two miniature suns.

"Sacred Art: Tokyo Sunrise!"

I unleash it.

I fire a beam of pure, concentrated hope straight up. It punches through Kenuji's shield (healing them as it passes). It hits the purple death ray.

The purple beam dissolves. My light consumes it.

My beam shoots up. It hits the monster in the sky.

The monster shrieks. A sound that shatters windows across the Kanto plain.

The light burns it. It burns the corruption. It burns the clouds. It burns the very fabric of the Eclipse.

The purple sky cracks. White light floods in.

The monster dissolves into stardust. The vortex collapses. The hole in reality stitches itself shut.

The sun breaks through.

Real, morning sunlight.

The shadows on the ground vanish instantly, burned away by the dawn.

I fall.

The light leaves me. I am empty. I am just a girl again. A very tired girl.

I hit the grass.

"Haruka!"

Yoshi is there. He catches me.

"Did I... get it?" I whisper.

"Yeah", Yoshi smiles. A tear cuts a track through the dust on his face. "You got it. You punched god in the face".

I smile.

Then, darkness takes me.