The Awakening.

Natasha was a blur. Her lungs burned, not from physical exertion, but from the crushing sense of dread in her chest. She crossed the clearing where the Kappas had been slaughtered, ignoring the blood trail. Her heterochromatic eyes scanned the terrain, searching for a sign, anything. But there was only a profound silence.

"Hold on, Ken..." she muttered through gritted teeth, launching herself into the abyss of the ruin entrance without ropes, relying solely on her Kijin essence to cushion the fall.

Down in the pit, time had slowed to a crawl for Ken.

He was propped against the stone, pushing himself up with a weakness that made his knees tremble. Every gasp of air tasted of iron; his lungs were filling with blood. His vision fragmented, darkening at the edges, as the massive figure of the Warrior Regent glided toward him with eerie elegance.

A few meters away, Naomi's body lay motionless. Her eyes, once full of life, were fixed on nothing. Empty. Ken felt an identical void opening in his own chest.

I'm sorry... Ken thought, feeling consciousness slipping away. In that last flicker of lucidity, the faces of his friends crossed his mind. Shinji and Yamato, the friends he'd made. And then, Tanimoto.

He remembered him—the high-class boy's elegance, his natural Kijin strength. Ken had always denied it, but in that moment, facing death, he confessed it to himself: he was envious. Envious that Tanimoto had the power to protect, that he was "chosen" while Ken was just a kid from the slums. He had always wanted to be like him, to be on his level so he would never lose anything again.

He also thought of old man Saito, wondering if it would hurt him deeply if Ken were to leave this world right then.

But seeing the carnage around him, that desire to be a hero like Tanimoto rotted away. He no longer wanted to be a knight. He no longer wanted to be a noble Kijin.

The Warrior Regent closed the final distance. Beneath the Menpo mask, a silent laughter, a mockery of human frailty, could be felt. It raised its black sword, the tip aimed directly at Ken's heart. It was going to finish the job.

But when the blade was millimeters from his skin, the air exploded.

It wasn't a bright light or divine energy. It was a heavy, dark, viscous pressure that distorted reality around Ken. The Regent, for the first time, halted its attack and took three slow steps back, its red lights flickering as it assessed the threat. The ground beneath Ken began to crack.

Ken stood up. His movements weren't human; they were devoid of pain. His eyes were no longer brown: they were pools of incandescent fury that had consumed his reason. He was no longer Ken the leader, no longer Ken the friend. He was something completely different.

His leg sank into the stone from the pressure and he catapulted forward. It was a burst of speed that took the S-Class by surprise. Ken threw a punch straight at the creature's mask. The Regent, reacting on pure instinct, returned with a horizontal slash of its sword, this time applying its real strength—strength meant to kill an equal.

Ken, in an unnatural movement, contorted his body mid-air, dodging the blade by millimeters. The creature stopped laughing for an instant, surprised that an insect had evaded a serious blow.

Ken landed and attacked again, over and over, with a feral ferocity. He achieved the impossible: a blow landed squarely on the Regent's armor, making the giant stagger back.

For a second, hope flared—but it was false. The Regent hadn't staggered from pain; it had staggered from outrage. A mere human had touched it. An animal had stained it.

The creature didn't smile this time. It emitted a shriek that didn't come from a throat, but from the souls trapped within its armor. The shockwave was so potent that Ken was sent rolling across the ground, slamming into the remains of the Ushi-Oni, near where his comrades lay.

Gasping, Ken tried to recover. His gaze wavered for a second. Beside him, he saw a hand move. One of his friends was rising clumsily from among the corpses. Was someone still alive?

"...Sato?" Ken slurred, snapping back to himself from the shock.

But he didn't have time to check. An immense, sharp shadow fell over him. The Regent was before him again, but now its sword emanated that same black necrosis that had killed the others.

Before Ken could react, something flew from the darkness of a side tunnel. It wasn't Natasha. It was a presence Ken didn't recognize, but one that felt like a chill of imminent death.