Dan didn't move.

The keys dangled inches from his hand, swaying like bait. But it wasn't the bus that was the trap.

It was the man in the back row. Still seated. Legs crossed, like he belonged there. Like this was his domain.

A faded conductor's cap now rested on his head. Perfectly straight. Dust still settling in the aisle around him.

Dan gripped the blade tighter. "Who are you?"

The man smiled, polite and cold. "Akiyama-san. Auditor. Compliance Division. The enforcement branch of my Empress's domain"

No claws. No fangs. No horns. Just a crisp black suit, spotless shoes, and a face too calm to be real.

"You're a demon," Dan said. Not a question.

Akiyama dipped his head. "Correct. But more importantly—" he leaned slightly forward, voice lowering with satisfaction "—I am intrigued."

Dan kept the blade between them.

"You're uncontracted. Untethered. And yet…" Akiyama's gaze sharpened. "You burn bright."

He took a step forward, slow, measured. "Golden resonance. It's rare. Very rare. And very illegal."

Dan's heart pounded, but he held his ground. "What do you want?"

"To understand," Akiyama said, genuinely curious. "There's no mark on your soul. No sigil. And yet your aura is active. Potent." His tone darkened. "That's not supposed to happen."

Dan didn't respond.

Akiyama's eyes narrowed. "Someone did this to you. Who was it?"

Then, a flash of realisation. "Ah. The man with Hellfire. The anomaly. That would explain it."

He paced slowly down the aisle. "You were awakened by someone outside the system. You were never meant to survive this long."

Dan's knuckles whitened. "I'm not here for your system."

"Few are," Akiyama said, not unkindly. "But even fewer escape it." He gestured vaguely. "This city is changing. Compliance must be enforced. And you…" He smiled again. "You're already overdue."

Dan stayed silent. Watching. Waiting.

"I can offer you structure. Legitimacy. A Contract," Akiyama said. "Join willingly, and your soul remains intact. Your strength will be sanctioned. You might even live."

"And if I say no?"

Akiyama tilted his head.

"Then your soul is recycled. Disassembled. Filed under 'non-compliant anomaly.'" He gave a small shrug. "Not personal. Just process."

Dan finally spoke. "I've seen what demons leave behind. The bodies. The dead children. The broken cities."

He took a breath. "If you're part of that— then no."

The silence stretched. Thickened.

Akiyama sighed. "Pity."

He reached into his coat and withdrew a black passcard. Flicked it once with a finger. It vanished in the air.

"You've officially been warned," he said.

Then the lights in the bus dimmed – no power loss. Just pressure. Reality itself pushing in.

Dan raised his blade.

Akiyama removed his glasses. Folded them carefully.

And smiled.

"Non-compliance noted."

Then the pressure in the air shifted.

And Dan knew it was about to begin.

…………………

Dan's fingers flexed around the hilt of the blade.

The air thickened. Gold light shimmered around his body, crawling up his arms in threads – not flame, not lightning – more like a spider's legs, each one made of wire and resolve. His aura coiled tight, burning silently.

He hadn't trained for this. He hadn't even known the full extent of what he could do. But he wouldn't kneel.

Akiyama didn't roar. Didn't lunge.

He smiled.

Then, with a small flick of his wrist –

The bus twisted.

Dan stumbled sideways as gravity cracked. The vehicle tilted sharply, floor becoming wall, seats shuddering. Windows groaned. Reality buckled at the seams – not a spell, not force – just a change in rules, rewritten like an account ledger.

Dan gritted his teeth and righted himself, barely. But before he could move, Akiyama gestured again – one finger raised like a lecturer making a final point.

Something caught him.

His limbs snapped backward – arms pulled wide, legs yanked taut. He hovered half a foot above the bus floor, pinned mid-air. No chains. No wires. Just pressure.

"Soul compliance protocol," Akiyama said mildly. "Not elegant, but efficient."

Dan strained. Muscles trembled. His aura flared again – golden filaments arcing with raw resistance – but his body didn't move.

"I expected more resistance," Akiyama mused, walking closer. "But perhaps this is all you are."

"You are not military. Not clergy. You've seen death, but you're no soldier. So what drives you, Daniel-san?"

He circled, watching Dan's face. "Is it guilt? Grief? A woman? A child?"

Dan's jaw tightened.

"There's a pattern to anomalies," Akiyama continued, calm. "They suffer a break. A failure that splinters the soul just enough to let power in. Yours screams of loss."

He leaned close. "Shall I guess the shape of her face?"

Dan's aura spiked violently – gold arcs lashing against the invisible bonds. One thread snapped.

Akiyama blinked, intrigued. "Ah. There it is."

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Dan's eyes burned. His jaw clenched. He focused everything inward – not just rage, not just panic – but something older. The reason he kept going.

Liz.

Max.

Alyssa.

Chloe.

His fingers twitched.

One hand broke free.

With a guttural cry, Dan slammed his palm against the emergency release. The bus door hissed and slammed open. Alarms chirped – sharp, piercing, metallic.

He let himself fall.

The pavement rushed up. Dan hit the street shoulder-first and rolled, coughing blood. He clutched something hard in his hand.

The keys.

He had them.

He pushed up, barely. Then froze.

Akiyama stepped down the bus stairs with the calm of a man entering a lecture hall.

Then, without sound – he was behind him.

Dan spun too late.

A knife of black glass slid between his ribs. Thin. Precise.

It didn't bleed right.

The pain wasn't just in his side. It was in his lungs, his spine, his teeth. A creeping sickness – something that didn't just cut flesh, but peeled back soul. It bit into him from within. Like it was unmaking parts of who he was.

Dan gasped. Dropped to one knee.

His vision flickered. Colours ran sideways. The world tilted again.

But the keys – he still had them. Blood-slick, clenched tight.

Akiyama knelt beside him.

"Such rare material," he said softly. "Wasted on courage."

He placed one hand atop Dan's head.

It wasn't violent.

It was gentle.

Like a priest preparing for prayer.

"Now," he whispered, "let us begin the extraction."

The light began to fade. And Dan didn't know if he could stop it.

…………………

Alyssa froze. One hand still gripping the ledge, the other clenched so tight her knuckles cracked.

She didn't hear the radio static.

She felt it.

Low and wrong – like something had cut through the world and was bleeding sound into her bones. It wasn't noise. It was absence. Like something had stopped.

No. Not something.

Dan.

Her breath caught.

She snatched the binoculars, slammed them against her face, scanning west – faster, faster, too slow. Then she saw it. Not clearly. Just enough.

The bus. The street.

A body.

A man in a suit standing over him.

"No…" The word fell out of her like ash.

Haruto stepped closer. "What's wrong? What did you see?"

Alyssa didn't answer.

She was already shaking.

Her stomach lurched. Something inside her folded inwards – like the weight of it all had finally crushed down on her lungs. Chloe was gone. Liz was sleeping. Max hadn't come back.

And now Dan?

Her throat tightened. She couldn't breathe.

He was the one person left. Her person.

And now he was going to die. Out there. Alone. Bleeding. Because she let him go.

"No." Her voice cracked. "No. No. No— NO!"

She slammed the binoculars down. The rooftop shuddered.

"You okay?" Haruto asked, alarmed now. "Alyssa—"

Then the air changed.

The pressure around her shifted – heavy, violent, unnatural. Her feet dragged against the gravel. The wind turned against the building, pulling inward.

Alyssa's eyes burned.

"I'm not losing him."

Then she moved.

Her boots hit the edge of the roof. And she leapt.

The drop wasn't far – but it broke the earth.

She landed like a goddamn meteor.

The impact split the pavement in all directions – cracks webbing out from beneath her boots like lightning across glass. A thunderclap of force erupted outward, rattling windows three blocks away. Lampposts bent. A parked car near the corner rocked sideways, its alarm stuttering before it went dead.

Then the earth moved.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically.

The ground shifted.

A jolt tore through the bookstore foundations. Books fell. Shelves toppled. Survivors screamed and scrambled under tables as plaster rained from the ceiling. To them, it was an earthquake – real, sudden, and close.

Mari yelled, "Quake!"

"No—" Haruto hissed, eyes widening as the dust settled around him. "That wasn't tectonic."

He turned toward the window, just in time to see a shockwave ripple through the street – rippling asphalt, crumbling walls, debris being dragged sideways toward the epicentre like gravity itself had been rewritten.

Back outside, the crater at Alyssa's feet was still smoking. Her breath came hard and fast. Hair whipped around her shoulders like it was caught in a storm.

She didn't speak.

Didn't need to.

Every step she took forward dragged broken concrete and loose rubble in her wake, like she'd become the eye of some impossible gravitational cyclone. And she was still accelerating.

Dan was ahead.

And Alyssa was going to reach him – no matter what broke along the way.

She could feel it – the gravity rising. Pulling everything into her wake.

"I won't be too late again."

And then she ran. No— she flew.

Her feet barely touched the ground. Roads cracked open behind her, sewer grates tore free and spun in her wake. Lamp posts bent toward her path like metal flowers to a magnetic sun.

Windows didn't just shatter – they screamed. Traffic lights ruptured. At a nearby crossing, a vending machine buckled inward as its contents launched skyward like bullets.

Across Kyoto, tremors registered. Seismometers in Osaka spiked. News drones spun off-course. People dropped to their knees – not from worship, but from pressure.

And at the centre of it all, one girl ran like the world had tried to take everything from her – and she had decided to take it back.

Five hundred metres away, a man in a suit raised his head.

But Alyssa was already coming.

A bullet of rage, denial, and density – and this time, she wasn't holding back.

…………………

Akiyama-san tilted his head.

The wind changed as the ground shook.

Ash twisted sideways. Static crackled faintly along his sleeves.

He looked up the street, eyes narrowing slightly as the atmosphere buckled.

"Ah," he murmured. "A second anomaly—"

The sentence never finished.

BOOM!

A wall of mass and speed slammed into him like a freight train made of fury. Alyssa's fist hit dead centre – ribcage to spine – with a crack that sounded like the sky splitting.

A shockwave erupted.

The ground split again. Concrete peeled back in slabs. Storefronts on either side of the street exploded inward from the pressure. Glass didn't just shatter – it atomised. The remnants of a pedestrian bridge collapsed in a shriek of metal and dust.

The bus rocked violently, suspension screaming.

Akiyama didn't scream. He didn't get the chance. One second he was there – the next he was gone.

Launched.

A black-suited blur hurled across the skyline like a cannonball fired from hell. He tore through power lines, clipped a rooftop, spun through an old railway sign, and vanished into the smoke over the eastern wards – kilometres away.

Then…

Stillness.

The air took seconds to catch up. Debris hung mid-flight before gravity remembered its job. Smoke settled. Light bent the wrong way, rippling around Alyssa like she'd torn a hole in the pressure of the world.

She stood panting in the epicentre, arm extended, hand steaming from raw kinetic friction. Her knuckles bled. Her shoulder twitched like it wasn't ready for what she'd just asked of it.

She blinked. Once. Twice.

Then staggered forward.

The sound of her boots on cracked pavement was drowned by the roaring pulse in her ears.

"Dan," she whispered.

He was slumped on the asphalt beside the bus, chest rising in shallow bursts. One hand still clutched the bus keys. The other pressed feebly to the wound under his ribs.

Alyssa dropped to her knees beside him, shaking.

"Dan. Hey. Dan, talk to me."

He didn't speak. But his eyes fluttered – not all the way closed.

He was still alive.

A sob caught in her throat. She pulled him close, hand already glowing with pressure-shifted heat as she pressed it to the bleeding wound.

"You're okay. You're okay. I've got you."

Dust drifted. Sirens wailed, distant and unreal.

The monsters would come.

But right now, he was breathing.

And she was still standing.

And that was enough.

…………………

Alyssa pulled Dan's arm over her shoulder and hauled him up the bus steps, one staggering step at a time. Her hands trembled. Not from fear now – from too much strength too quickly spent.

"You're not dying," she muttered through gritted teeth. "Not now. Not like this."

Dan coughed, nearly sagging in her grip, but managed the shape of a smile. "Nice punch… felt it from the floor."

His voice cracked halfway through. The blood soaking his side told her why.

"Shut up," she said, easing him down into a seat near the back. "Save the jokes for when your organs are still inside you."

"Too late," he rasped. Then, softer. "Thank you."

Alyssa knelt beside him, jaw tight. "You idiot," she whispered. "Why didn't you want me to come with you?"

"Didn't want you to get hurt," Dan muttered.

"And look how that turned out." Her voice cracked. "I thought I was going to lose you."

He reached out, barely brushing her wrist. "You didn't."

"Not this time." Her eyes burned. "But next time, we go together."

Dan blinked through the blur. Then his golden aura stirred – low at first, like flickers around his fingertips, then spreading. His hand closed over Alyssa's burned palm, warmth flooding outward. Skin knitted. The bleeding stopped.

"You idiot," she whispered. "Heal yourself."

Dan grunted, but shifted the glow inward. The light crawled across his ribs, slowing the bleeding, cauterising the worst of the soul-burn. His breath steadied. Not perfect – but not dying.

Footsteps.

Both their heads turned toward the lot entrance.

Haruto. Mari.

The two sprinted full-tilt, winded and pale, but alive. Haruto had a crowbar, Mari a toolkit dangling from one hand. They slid to a stop at the edge of the cracked pavement.

Alyssa didn't move to greet them. She just kept her eyes on the skyline.

"He'll come back," she said. No doubt. No fear. Just steel.

Dan nodded, breath rough but clearer now. "Then we'll be ready."

Alyssa's voice dropped to a whisper.

"We'll be more than ready."

Dan leaned forward, turned the key in the ignition.

Click.

Whirr.

The engine rumbled to life.

Alyssa exhaled like she hadn't since the moment Dan left. Haruto and Mari climbed aboard, wide-eyed. No one spoke as they backed out slowly from the ruined rotary and rolled onto the cracked road heading home.

The bus moved.

Behind them, the wind twisted through empty alleyways and over broken rooftops.

And far across the city – deep beneath smoke and concrete and yawning sky – a voice whispered.

"…Non-compliance noted."

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