The Silence of the Cherry Blossoms

Ken and Natasha emerged abruptly from the cave, breaking the barrier between the crystal world and reality. Dawn was near, but the darkness of the outside world was dense and oppressive. And they were not alone.

The night was alive. The moment they set foot in the forest outside the cave, shadows stirred. Invisible Kamaitachi whipped the air with their wind-scythes, and swarms of Iron Rats surged from the earth. "Don't stop!" Natasha yelled, decapitating a beast mid-leap.

The return journey, which should have taken a few hours, became a running battle. They had to fight their way through with fists and blades against an unusually aggressive tide of monsters. When the sun finally broke the horizon, they were exhausted.

Halfway there, Natasha raised a fist to call for a halt. They both slumped down near a cliff edge, panting, their cold sweat plastering clothes to their bodies. They hadn't eaten or slept since the assassins' attack in the cave.

As she caught her breath, Natasha surveyed the valley stretching below. Her eyes narrowed. "There are too many..." she murmured.

"Too many what?" Ken asked, massaging his legs.

"Creatures," Natasha pointed towards the lower forest. "Look at the movement pattern. They're not hunting. They're migrating. They're all moving in the same direction."

Ken looked, but only saw trees. "I don't see anything weird, just beasts running."

"Pay attention, idiot!" Natasha scolded him with a harshness that surprised him. "Stop looking like a civilian and look like a predator! Where are they going?"

Ken focused, using the senses he'd honed in the glass forest. He felt the vibrations in the ground. He heard the distant echo. His eyes snapped open. "They're all heading for the Fortress!"

"Exactly," Natasha said, and a chill ran down her spine. "I have a bad feeling. Let's move."

They ran again, ignoring the fire in their muscles. As they neared Hachioji, the landscape changed. Trees uprooted, craters from recent explosions, corpses of Calamity creatures torn apart by heavy weaponry. War had passed through here.

The mystery didn't last long. Just as they crested the final mountain overlooking Hachioji's valley, they both stopped dead. Their boots skidded on the dirt.

"No..." Ken whispered.

The Hachioji Fortress, their home... was in ruins. The great steel walls were breached in several places. Columns of black smoke rose into the gray sky, staining the clouds. The residential buildings were concrete skeletons. There was no sound of sirens. No screams. Only silence and smoke.

Ken and Natasha descended the hill without a word, moving like robots in a nightmare. They reached the main entrance. The reinforced gates had been torn off, not inward, but outward, as if something gigantic had pushed them.

The place was desolate. They walked through the main square. They saw bodies. Some were Kijin, others logistics personnel. They were mangled and unrecognizable. But there was no one alive. No allies, no enemies. It was a ghost town.

"Shinji! Yamato!" Ken shouted, breaking the silence. His voice echoed in the ruins, but no one answered.

Not waiting for Natasha, Ken ran towards the dormitories. His mind fabricated desperate lies with each step: They must have hidden. They're probably in my room waiting for me. It must be a drill. He reached his unit's hallway. The door to his room was slightly ajar.

"Guys, I'm back..." Ken said, pushing the door open with a trembling smile, hoping to see Yamato cleaning his glasses or Shinji eating chips.

But reality hit him. The room was empty. The beds were overturned. Clothes were scattered on the floor, boxes hastily opened. But there was no one. No trace of his friends. No note. No blood. Just emptiness.

Ken stood frozen in the doorway, arms hanging limply, watching dust dance in a shaft of light coming through the broken window.

Meanwhile, in the Command Center.

Natasha walked through the rubble of what used to be the fortress's brain. She searched for answers but found only chaos. Papers lay scattered on the floor, stained with dried blood. The giant screens were shattered. Natasha's frustration grew with each second. She felt helpless. She had failed in her duty to protect the base by leaving to train a single boy.

"Damn it!" she yelled, punching the main control panel with her fist. The metal dented. "Come on, Kyosuke! I know you're too paranoid to die without leaving me a Plan B! Leave me something!"

She punched it again, furious, cracking the plastic panel.

Something fell from the guts of the broken console. Natasha stopped. It was a small, military-reinforced USB drive. It had a red adhesive label with a single handwritten letter: "N".

Natasha picked it up with trembling fingers. She quickly searched for some functional equipment. She found a dead technician's laptop that miraculously still had battery and a working screen. She plugged in the USB.

The file opened. It was security footage. What she saw made her blood boil and freeze at the same time.

The video showed the attack. It wasn't a single siege. During the two weeks they were outside (which were months in the cave), the base had been hit wave after wave. She saw Kyosuke fighting like a demon in the plaza, his chains massacring hundreds of monsters. She saw Shinji and Yamato, back to back, using basic techniques to cover the civilians' retreat.

"Well done, boys..." Natasha whispered, feeling a painful pride.

But then, the image changed. The camera focused on the enemy line. Behind the hordes, walking calmly, was a female figure. She had waist-length purple hair and wore a white cloth blindfold over her eyes.

The video jumped to the end. The evacuation. Kijin fled in trucks, others on foot, as the defense collapsed. Kyosuke, wounded but firm, gave orders, pointing North.

"Damn it, Kyosuke..." Natasha growled, hitting the wall. "Why didn't you call for help?"

"Instructor..."

Ken's voice made her turn. The boy was in the command center doorway. His eyes were red, but his expression was one of terrifying coldness. In his hand, he clutched an old leather-bound notebook.

"Did you find something?" Natasha asked.

Ken held up the notebook. "It's Yamato's diary. I found it hidden under his bed, where he kept his comics," Ken said. He opened it to the last page, where Yamato's handwriting was scrawled in haste and fear. "He wrote down the coordinates of the emergency rendezvous point before they left."

Ken showed her the page. They were numbers. Geographic coordinates for a place a few kilometers away. An old air base.

"They're alive," Ken said, closing the diary firmly.

Natasha nodded, pulling the USB from the computer. "Then that's where we're headed. And then, we're going to kill the bastards who did this."