The Mirage of Hope.

Inside the walls of Yokota Air Base, in the Central Command Room, the operators worked frantically, but their faces reflected growing confusion.

"Commander..." said one lieutenant, looking at his monitor with disbelief. "The motion sensors in the Western Sector... have stopped blinking red." "Northern Sector too," reported another. "The tide of Oni is stopping. Hostile Essence readings are dropping."

Kaori, who was leaning over the holographic table, looked up. Her eyes were swollen from stress-induced blood pressure, but her mind was still calculating. Indeed, the constant roar of the beasts outside was diminishing. The pounding against the blast doors and the shrieks of the Karasu-Tengu were no longer heard.

A collective sigh swept through the room. Some operators loosened their collars; others smiled nervously. "Are they... retreating?" asked a young radar operator. "Did we win?"

Hope, fragile as a flower in winter, seemed to bloom in the room. They had withstood the siege. They had survived the Regent's first wave. But Kaori didn't smile. Her fingers tapped rhythmically on the cold metal of the console. This makes no sense, she thought. The Regent isn't someone who retreats mid-battle. If he stopped the attack, it's not because we won... it's because he's moving the chess pieces.

A wave of nausea washed over her. She felt she was forgetting something crucial. A variable Kyosuke had mentioned amidst the shouting hours ago, something her brain had forgotten in the panic of the moment. What was it? What am I missing in this equation?

"Ma'am!" shouted the radar operator, excited. "New readings on the perimeter! There are hundreds! And their thermal signatures... are human! They must be the reinforcements from Saitama Base!"

"Human?" Kaori froze. The missing piece slammed into her mind with the violence of a gunshot. "Humans behind the lines..."

"DO NOT OPEN THE...!" Kaori began to scream.

CRASH!

The huge reinforced glass window of the Command Tower shattered into a thousand pieces. Wind and black rain burst into the room, sending papers flying and knocking over chairs. But what silenced everyone wasn't the wind. It was what had come in with it.

A body slammed violently against the main console, sliding to the floor with a wet thud. It wasn't a monster. It was a Kijin soldier. He wore the uniform of the exterior guard. But his head was twisted at an impossible angle, and his eyes... his eyes were open, white, and empty. He held a grenade with the pin pulled tight in his dead hand.

"TAKE COVER!" Kaori yelled, throwing herself behind a metal desk.

BOOM! The grenade detonated. The explosion shook the tower, killing the main operator and filling the room with smoke and shrapnel. Fire alarms began to blare.

Kaori stood up, coughing, a cut on her forehead bleeding profusely. She looked around. Chaos had returned, but this time it was worse. "YOU FOOLS!" she shouted with a fury that made the survivors tremble. "Those aren't reinforcements! Remember Kyosuke's report!"

She approached the damaged console, wiping blood from the touch screen. The radar was full of green dots (allies). "The enemy is using the bodies of our dead," Kaori said, her voice trembling with rage. "They're saturating our sensors with human signatures to confuse us."

She grabbed the microphone of the general PA system, which screeched from the damage. "ATTENTION ALL UNITS!" her voice echoed throughout the base, distorted and metallic. "The enemy has deployed infantry in the form of puppet soldiers! I repeat, they are hostiles! Do not hesitate to engage! Anything that does not respond to the security code, even if it has a human face, must be eliminated! Shoot to kill! That is an order!"

She hung up the microphone and ran to the long-range communications station. Her hands trembled as she typed Ken's frequency. She knew the boy had gone into the city. She knew he was alone. And if the Regent was using this tactic here, he would use it there too.

"Ken!" she shouted into the headset. "Ken, respond!"

Kjjjjj... zzzzz... t...rapped... kjjjj...

"Damn it!" Kaori slammed the table. She had to warn him. She had to tell him to leave Natasha, that it wasn't worth it, to come back before he was surrounded. "Ken! It's a trap! Get out of there!"

But only the white noise of the storm answered her. Kaori dropped the headset, feeling a crushing weight on her chest. She looked out the broken window. Below, in the courtyard, she saw Kijin soldiers hesitating as humanoid figures approached... only to be stabbed or shot by their former dead comrades.

The base was falling. Not by the strength of monsters, but by the psychological cruelty of their leader. Kaori leaned on the console, feeling tears of frustration mix with the blood on her forehead. "Were we... arrogant?" she whispered, watching her home burn. "We thought we could defy the Calamity. And maybe now... we are paying the price."