Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a butcher’s corridor.

Walls buckled. Doors shredded. Men screamed.

Templars surged.

They didn’t wait for corners. They made new ones.

A breacher shouldered a compact ram through a drywall partition—wham!—opening a fresh flanking path into the server hall. His team rolled in behind, shield forward, muzzles tucked tight to cheek welds, stepping over cables and dropped gear with zero hesitation.

An Assassin popped from cover, stitched three rounds through the breach—

Only to be met with a full-auto response from the point man. His plate caught the first hit, but the second found the gap near his shoulder. Blood sprayed across a server tower.

“CONTACT REAR! CROSS, CROSS—”

The stack pivoted instantly, back man rotating low while the second man lifted over his shoulder, forming a staggered wall of fire that walked bullets backward through the breach.

From inside the control node, an Assassin fired a burst blind through the plasterboard—only for a grenade launcher to answer. Whomp. The room rocked. Shattered monitors screamed.

Smoke hissed in waves. Fire alarms barked.

And still the Templars pushed.

Down the reactor tunnel, Assassins bounded in reverse—one man held position, firing from a crouched lean near a column, while his partner sprinted five meters back, dropped into prone, and took over suppression.

“Fall back—next node—go!”

Another Assassin sprinted past—trailing smoke, dragging a wounded comrade by his carrier handle. They didn't stop. No one did.

The walls around them shook again—crack!—as a Templar slug shattered a vent, sending shards of metal skipping across the floor like shrapnel.

Then the smoke began to part.

Two shield-bearing Templars advanced, weapons braced tight over the Lexan plates, walking forward like a machine—relentless, fast. Behind them, another pair used the mobile cover to pivot and fire through angles too risky to cross clean. The stack flexed and flowed—overlapping, bounding, pressing.

An Assassin trap triggered—a tripline flicked and a tear gas canister snapped open, spraying the air with white fog—

Only for the Templars to fire through it.

Their shots punched through the blind and caught one Assassin mid-step. He dropped hard, convulsing.

Another Assassin took position behind a pipe junction, leaned out over a fallen comrade, and dumped five rounds into the right-side wall—knew from training where the Templars were behind it. A groan followed.

And then return fire blew a jagged hole next to his face.

Mamizou squinted through the haze.

“Washi’s seen boiler explosions with more grace,” she muttered, crawling under a toppled set of lockers. Her glasses were smeared with ash. Her tail was a puffball of raw stress. “What kind of mad monks do all their fighting inside pinhole corridors?!”

A shotgun blast ripped through the wall behind her—close enough to flap the back of her coat.

“All right, that’s it!”

She slammed both palms on the floor—sigils flared under her fingertips. Her form blurred, fractured, then reassembled into something shorter, stockier…

A fire extinguisher.

Then, with a subtle shimmer, she scooted across the tile—spinning, just slightly, each time a bullet passed overhead.

A Templar rounded the corner and tripped over the disguised Mamizou. He sprawled—and the “extinguisher” promptly morphed back, mid-air, into an irate tanuki wearing cracked glasses.

Mamizou straddled him, tail high. “Next time, try looking where you’re going!”

She slapped a talisman on his chest—it glowed, then pulsed, then turned the man into a ceramic pot.

“Now that’s better feng shui.”

Across the main hub, a Templar team prepped a full wall breach—C2 charges set at two points. Their squad stacked tight, rifles checked at high ready, ready to pour in.

But when the blast came—

Nothing waited behind the breach.

Just fog. Just quiet.

The first three men entered, scanning—

And found themselves staring down a full-length mirror.

No... not a mirror.

Eleven Mamizous.

Each posed like a different kind of bureaucrat. One held a clipboard. One chewed a pen. One wore a cheap business suit.

“Welcome to Gensokyo Bureau of Overkill! Please take a number!”

A grenade detonated behind them—the real Mamizou had dropped it from the ceiling above.

Chaos.

Two Templars collapsed. The illusions vanished like smoke. Mamizou dropped with a tuck-roll and scrambled away on all fours, tail bouncing like a fuzzy metronome.

“Bureau closed!” she cackled. “Lunch break!”

Back in corridor six, Templars breached another wall—only to catch another web of smoke grenades.

“Push through—GO!”

“Right side’s down!”

Assassins peeled off the rear, one by one, bounding past doors, slipping into side corridors. They laid another layer of traps—IEDs wired to fridges, weighted shelves ready to collapse, barbed coils strung across narrow choke points.

A shield unit smashed through regardless. Two Assassins dropped to coordinated volleys—but one rolled under a steel shelf and fired upward, right through a Templar’s thighplate.

“FIRE LEFT!”

Another shot came from inside a supply closet. A Templar turned to engage—only for the door to burst open and a disguised Mamizou whack him with a steel tea kettle.

“You boys really ought to knock.”

She vanished again—sliding under the floor with a glimmer and a taunt.

“CLEAR FOUR—PUSH FIVE!”

“Enemy bounding toward stairwell—watch high!”

The entire building was convulsing with motion now—Assassins flowing like ink down the hallways, Templars pressing like an unstoppable tide. No position was held. Every hallway was temporary.

A flashbang detonated just meters from Mamizou—she ducked, cursed, turned herself into a smoke detector for thirty seconds.

“Washi’s too old for this…”

She reappeared by the ceiling, dropped down in front of a stunned young Templar, and turned him into a tanuki statue with a tap.

“Much better.”

Bodies were stacking.

Assassins crawled to cover with limbs bleeding out. Templars slumped beside exploded drywall, armor cracked and twitching. Every move came with a cost. Every breath risked another round through the wall.

This wasn’t a war.

It was a demolition conducted by ghosts.

And the building wouldn’t hold much longer.

Chapter Text

The escalator groaned beneath its own weight.

Flickering emergency lights cast Komatsu Dokuohtei’s face in sickly flashes—yellow, then green, then darkness again. He stood in the middle of the next evac batch. Thirty people. Maybe more. Some barefoot. Most shaking. All of them trying not to remember who they’d been before.

Komatsu didn’t know what to call himself anymore.

Test subject was the label Abstergo gave him.

The Assassins hadn’t said a word.

He gripped the side rail harder than he meant to. Metal bit into his palm.

He told himself to breathe.

Behind him, someone muttered in sleep. Ahead, a man coughed so hard he spat blood into his hand and didn’t look surprised.

Komatsu looked straight ahead.

Calm, he told himself. You're not like the others. You’ve kept it together.

But the tile was wrong beneath his feet.

Too soft. Too loose.

Mud.

His boot sank. A tremor ran up his calf. His head snapped to the side before he realized it—looking for formations. Banners. A yell he couldn’t place stirred in his throat.

He blinked. Still here. Still modern. Still under mountain rock and flickering LEDs.

Still bleeding, a voice whispered. Not his. Not Yagi’s. But somewhere in between.

The air tightened in his chest. A hollow throb moved behind his eyes.

“No,” he muttered. “Not now.”

A woman brushed past—thin, sunken cheeks, bruised neck. She didn’t even see him.

Komatsu’s muscles tightened. His hand moved.

Not mine.

He grabbed her arm and wrenched.

“You don’t deserve to wear that face!” he roared.

The woman screamed as she hit the ground, wrist twisting beneath her. Gasps followed. A man shouted. Several stumbled back.

And one of them—one—moved.

Not fast. Not loud.

Just right.

An Assassin cut through the chaos like the blink of an eye—white hood scorched, boots soaked in soot. He didn’t yell. He didn’t demand.

He intervened.

Komatsu didn’t even see the setup—just the impact. A twist of his arm. A strike to the back of his leg. He dropped. Chin smacked stone. Light burst behind his eyes. His lungs emptied.

Cold hands pinned him, fast and firm.

“Stop,” the Assassin said. Not a warning.

A truth.

Komatsu thrashed once, maybe twice. Then stopped. Chest heaving. Head spinning.

The Assassin’s voice softened—not for him, but for the thing inside him.

“You’re bleeding through,” he said. “Stay with me.”

It wasn’t comfort. It was containment.

A long beat passed.

Then the Assassin looked toward the evac team leader. “Pull him. Now.”

Another Assassin approached from the edge of the corridor, already in motion. Komatsu didn’t fight as he was lifted, legs dragging. His mind fizzed and cracked—half here, half somewhere it shouldn’t be.

They turned into a service corridor—metal panels shaking from distant detonations. Hydraulic doors hissed open, revealing a narrow stairwell down to a dim-lit shaft. A flickering blue strip lit the wall. Secondary extraction, maybe.

Or just a place to put the broken ones.

Two other subjects already sat along the wall. One rocked back and forth, murmuring into bloodied hands. The other stared forward, lips mouthing something no one could hear.

Komatsu was dropped between them.

No one spoke.

The doors sealed.

He leaned against the cold wall and slid down. His legs folded beneath him.

For a moment—one, small, cruel moment—he saw banners again. A row of men in armor. Fire. Smoke.

And Yagi’s voice.

"You stood with me. And still you broke."

He choked back something between a laugh and a sob. His head tipped back, eyes burning.

None of the Assassins knew who he was.

None of them knew who he had been.

And not one of them noticed how his eyes flicked toward shadows that weren’t there—toward shapes walking battlefields that didn’t exist anymore.

Toward the mountain he had never climbed.

But remembered dying on.

The hallway twisted again.

A breach to the left—a roar of compact charges followed by the slam of boots. Lexan shields led the advance, soaking up the immediate return fire. The walls behind them cracked under the weight of it all, cords ripping loose, steel frames bending from stress.

Mamizou was already mid-scamper, half-dragging her tail behind her through ankle-high smoke.

Her ears were ringing again—no, screaming. With every trigger pull, the hallway folded in on itself. Sound wasn’t traveling—it was exploding. A dozen weapons firing at once inside a tunnel barely two men wide—each report more pressure than sound, hammering against the bone behind her eyes.

"Nggh—yareyare, did no one here consider acoustics before building this war maze!?" she snapped.

She ducked under a vent, turned into a mop bucket, rolled once—then snapped back to her tanuki form with a wild shake. Her fur was smudged with dust, her coat scorched at the hem, her tail practically bristling into a spear.

Another blast.

She dropped flat as the ceiling cracked above. Light bulbs burst from the shock. A Templar fireteam swarmed in—fast, overlapping, high-low stance, muzzles synced with shoulder pivots, clearing hard corners without hesitation. They weren’t pushing—they were swallowing.

One Assassin leaned around the corner, carbine braced tight to his cheek, knees staggered. He fired two controlled bursts, ducked, then slid back to cover. His partner knelt low, filled the same space, swept the angles in one fluid arc, then bounded past to the next door frame.

It wasn’t a retreat—it was a backward hunt.

Mamizou flitted behind a cracked server rack and popped her head out, squinting. The hallway ahead was glowing—muzzle flash strobes, fires catching in ceiling foam, strobes dancing off spilled coolant on tile. Shadows bent. Screams echoed.

Another Assassin went down—shoulder plate torn off, blood trailing as he clawed at his side. His comrade didn’t break stride—he grabbed the man by his belt, dragged him into a utility corridor, then snapped off return fire without blinking.

She saw it again.

Another breach—right side wall, this time. A fireteam flowed in with near-mechanical grace. One went prone immediately, checking underneath; the other covered high, rifle braced into the cheek pocket so tight his knuckles were white.

Another Assassin tried to flank, popping out from the far stairwell.

He didn’t make it.

The shield team shifted left. One crouched, the other raised, and both fired in synchronized arcs—two rounds through the rib, one through the throat.

Mamizou ducked again, heart hammering.

“Even oni aren’t this stubborn…” she grumbled, tucking behind a junction box. “Why haven’t you lot retreated already?! You’re clearly not winning!”

A nearby Assassin jerked his chin without breaking aim. “We’re here for the test subjects.”

“What?”

“We’re buying time for the evac team. If we can’t hold them off before the last batch clears the shaft, we drop the tunnel. Blow the funnel. Bury it.”

Mamizou blinked. “That’s your plan? Risk all this for a handful of poor saps with scrambled brains?”

“Orders.”

“Who gave them?”

The Assassin fired three more rounds through a crumbling wall, stepped back, reloaded in under two seconds.

“No idea,” he said.

She felt it—right in her old youkai gut.

Compartmentalization.

They were dying for secrets they didn’t even understand. They didn’t know what Gensokyo was. Didn’t know what the bleeding effect did. Didn’t know that deep below them, the Templars weren’t just chasing subjects—

They were looking for a key.

A belief.

The Apple of Eden, if found and misused, could fracture the veil forever. With enough fear—engineered and focused—the outside world could be bent. Gensokyo, revealed to the world, wouldn’t be worshiped or protected.

It would be weaponized.

Youkai would become state-sanctioned terror.

Belief redefined. Culture rewritten. Minds overwritten.

Mamizou gritted her teeth.

And here these Assassins were—young, half-trained, carrying rifles bigger than their torsos, bounding between collapsing servers, dying just to keep the lights off a little longer. They didn’t even know the name of the thing they were protecting.

They’d never even heard of Gensokyo.

Another flashbang went off.

Mamizou hit the ground and turned into a traffic cone just in time to avoid a sweep of suppressive fire. Two Templars rushed past, barely sparing her a glance. She morphed back, smacked one with a ledger scroll, and shoved him into the other like a drunk falling off a bar stool.

“Honestly,” she barked. “Washi’s dealt with less noise during cherry blossom festivals!”

A ricochet pinged off a panel near her ear. Her fur flared again.

“Except they didn’t try to shoot through the trees!”

She dropped low, scanned for an opening, then sprinted—clawed feet scrambling on linoleum—until she spotted another Assassin covering a junction behind a server rack.

He was shaking.

Blood covered his right glove. His chest was rising and falling way too fast. But he stayed on his feet, eyes fixed ahead.

Mamizou nudged him with the side of her tail.

“You’re the line here?”

He nodded.

“Well then,” she sighed, and disguised herself into a rolling chair beside him. “Scoot me down if I pass out. Washi needs to conserve her energy.”

He blinked, confused—then stifled a grin.

A beat later, another breach opened on the floor below. Dust showered from the vents.

“Hold line four!”

“Team seven is gone—six bleeding out in the stairwell!”

“Command says blow the funnel on your call!”

“Negative, evac’s not complete yet—delay!”

“Then keep buying!”

A bullet passed through two walls and hit a rifle sling near Mamizou’s shoulder. It snapped. The chair she’d disguised into wobbled and tipped over.

She righted herself, panting.

“Never again,” she muttered. “Next time someone asks for washi’s help, I’m charging overtime. In gold.”

And the storm kept coming.

Chapter Text

The Assassins had nowhere left to fall.

Every corridor behind them was either collapsed, booby-trapped, or painted in smoke and blood. A final hallway stretched ahead—lined with detonation cord, pressure plates wired to fallback triggers, IEDs zip-tied to doorframes. The walls hummed with the weight of it all. If this line broke, the entire structure would come down like a throat closing.

Boots shuffled in tight stacks. One team knelt low, rifles steadied over thighs, muzzles sharp and ready. Another crouched behind, barrels angled high—slicing vertical fields of fire down the tunnel. A perfect interlace. No gaps. Just discipline.

It was the last fallback. A killing funnel.

The radios clicked. Not with panic—just terse, cold sync.

“Line set.”

“Demo ready.”

“Final hold.”

A floor vent exploded.

Templars surged from below—one, two, five—flowing like oil through the breach. Their vanguard bore shields braced against their chest rigs, rifles anchored high, elbows locked, visors scanning for eye glint. Their rear flanked wide—checking angles, low ready, rolling between entry paths with honed aggression.

Two Assassins opened fire. One in a tight kneel, recoil dancing up his shoulder. The other shifted sideways into a cross-angle—firing under the first’s barrel. Their shots landed—staggered, fast, precise. Not a wall of bullets. A scalpel.

Still, the Templars pressed.

A shield bore the first burst. A helmet cracked from a follow-up. But another stepped over. Moved through. Trained. Conditioned.

More Templars funneled through the breach.

Smoke grenades hissed. Flashbangs popped. But the shield teams swam through them like predators, bounding in precise, microsecond rhythms.

Another Assassin fell. Hit in the lower chest, coughing hard before the second round ended it.

Behind a mangled desk frame, Mamizou squinted through powder smoke.

Her tail twitched violently.

“Washi’s seen bad kabuki shows with better exits than this…”

She ducked low, adjusted her glasses, and traced the length of the corridor. Then she saw him. The last rear guard Assassin—mid-twenties, face burned, eyes locked forward. Hands trembling on the grip of a smoke-stained rifle.

He didn’t blink when the next wave advanced. He didn’t flinch when the call came through:

“Evac team clear. Last group secured.”

“Det team, confirm.”

“Charges hot. Standing by.”

Mamizou stood.

“Kid,” she said, dusting off her coat. “Time to go.”

He looked at her like she was part of the hallucination. “What—what about the funnel—”

“Run.”

“What about—”

She stepped past him. Not fast. Not loud. Just firm.

“I said run.”

And for whatever reason—whether it was the raw authority in her tone, or the fact she was currently shifting her outline to match the width of the hallway and back—he obeyed.

He bounded back through the last turn. Two others followed him. The line began to break. Not in fear. In trust.

Mamizou alone faced the breach.

The hallway shook with gunfire—180, 190, 195 decibels in waves. Shell casings sparked as they bounced from concrete. Metal howled with each ricochet. Heat shimmered in the air.

She adjusted her glasses one final time.

“Well then,” she muttered. “Let’s give them a real ghost story.”

She stomped a foot—sigils lit the ground.

Then she vanished.

What followed was not subtle.

The first Templar turned the corner and saw himself—five times. Each mirrored copy braced in a different stance. All armed. All smirking. None flinching.

He opened fire.

The walls rippled. Two illusions fell. One charged.

Another Templar fired—hit a floating tray cart. It exploded into coins.

A third screamed as the floor beneath him vanished—replaced by a sinkhole of ink and smoke. His body fell flat onto tile a moment later—but his rifle was gone.

A dozen Mamizous emerged from side doors, ducts, vending machines, ceiling tiles.

One held a broom.

One wore riot gear.

One sipped tea.

“Welcome to the Tanuki Technical Institute of Tactical Troubleshooting!” they cried in unison. “You have failed the entrance exam!”

A flashbang detonated. When the smoke cleared—there was only one Mamizou left.

Holding the det cord.

Her eyes narrowed behind her soot-blackened glasses.

“Class dismissed.”

The last stairwell reeked of rust, sweat, and burned carbon.

Boots slammed metal rungs. Radio chatter bled into shrieks. One Assassin dropped his rifle as he descended, blood smearing down the grip—his partner caught it mid-air, tucked it, then hoisted him with one arm as they bounded past the next landing.

“Thirty seconds!” someone shouted.

Another voice: “Evac group is clear—confirming with overwatch!”

“Do it!” came the next call, harsher now. “Blow the funnel!”

A moment of hesitation.

Then—

The world shook.

The hallway behind them lit up with sudden white. A thousand screams of rock, metal, and fire collided into one. Dust howled up the shaft like a banshee. Lightbulbs burst. Concrete cracked in spiderwebs.

The floor jolted. The pressure hit first—a wave of force like a bear slamming into your chest—then the sound followed.

Not a bang.
Not an explosion.
Something deeper.

A detonation that roared through your spine and made your teeth grind.

The tunnel mouth behind them vanished in an instant, swallowed by collapsing steel and fire. Red emergency strobes flickered, then went dead. A rain of debris hammered the lower steps.

Then silence.

No gunfire.

No shouting.

Just the distant ring in everyone’s ears and the soft crumbling of concrete as the mountain tried to remember its shape.

The Assassins held their breath.

One reached the bottom first—fell to one knee, shoulder twitching. Another dropped beside him, coughing, eyes darting back up the stairwell where a bloom of smoke had replaced what used to be their fallback corridor.

Another Assassin—a grizzled one, grease and ash smeared across his collar—leaned against the rail, rifle hanging useless at his side. His lips moved.

“…She didn’t come.”

The others didn’t speak.

They knew who he meant.

No one had seen Mamizou after the final stack repositioned. She’d vanished into the fog and breach smoke. The last thing anyone heard was her shouting something absurd about “club memberships” and “free teapots with every skirmish.”

And then nothing.

She’d stayed.

Bought time. Held the line. Gave them the seconds they needed.

Now the tunnel was sealed, fire still licking at the collapsed mouth, and she was gone.

The Assassin next to the collapsed evac evac gate twisted the locking lever. The hydraulic seal groaned shut—six tons of alloy slamming into place.

“Funnel sealed,” someone murmured.

Another Assassin sat down against the wall, cradling his helmet. His face was blank. Just ash and blinking eyes.

“...How many of us made it?”

No one answered.

A few pulled out wound sealant. Others checked remaining rounds—one man quietly cried while reloading a magazine, thumb trembling. Another dropped to his knees and began muttering something between a prayer and a code phrase.

Their comms crackled.

The evac lift was ascending.

Over a dozen test subjects were inside. The most broken, the most dangerous. Survivors who didn’t remember their names. Or remembered too many.

And they had made it.

Because she’d stayed.

Chapter Text

Darkness moved behind Komatsu’s eyes.

Not shadows.

Not sleep.

Just the soft, distant murmur of things his body remembered but his brain refused to admit. Chainmail brushing over silk. Mud pressed between armored feet. A scream swallowed by wind.

Then silence.

And a pinprick.

The moment it hit his bloodstream—he knew.

Anesthesia.

Administered without a word. No warning. Just a hiss. Just pressure. Then cold.

Someone had grabbed his jaw. Tilted his head. A gloved hand tapped his cheek twice.

“Don’t worry,” said a voice far too calm. “You’ll be safe soon.”

Komatsu tried to answer. Tried to scream. Tried to remember why he was supposed to do either.

But sleep took him like drowning.

...

He woke up blind.

Three layers of blindfold wrapped around his head—tight, precise, professional. Cloth and gauze, not just for concealment, but compartmentalization. Assassin protocol. He’d heard rumors.

No one knows more than they need to.
Especially not test subjects.
Especially not liabilities.

His limbs felt heavy. Muscles sluggish. Veins itched like they hadn’t been used in weeks.

Something hummed above him. HVAC maybe. Or power lines. Somewhere in the building, a kettle whistled, then clicked off.

There were voices behind a wall. Distant. Muted. Measured.

He inhaled.

The air smelled like dust, antiseptic, tea.

And concrete.

He shifted, and metal cuffs whispered against each other.

His wrists weren’t bound—but his movement was definitely noted. A weighted blanket. Thin restraints sewn into the bed. Soft control. Like a psych ward without labels.

“Hey,” he croaked. His throat felt like it had been scrubbed raw.

No one answered.

He tried again. Louder.

“Hey.”

A door hissed. Footsteps. Slow. Careful.

Not boots. Bare feet.

He flinched.

The blindfold didn't move. But the presence sat in his periphery. Someone watching.

Then—finally—a voice.

Young. Tired. Masculine.

“You were out for thirteen days. You screamed through five of them.”

A pause. No emotion. Just facts.

“Had to sedate you three more times. Standard precaution.”

Komatsu tried to sit up. Something popped in his shoulder. His lungs resisted the effort like they hadn’t worked in a year.

“You’re in Osaka,” the voice continued. “Or something like it.”

Another pause. The kind that didn't ask for questions.

“Quarantine cell. Safehouse. Don’t bother trying to map it. You were blindfolded at extraction. That was on purpose.”

A cup clinked against something metal.

“I’m leaving water. You’re dehydrated. Your blood pressure’s a mess.”

Another pause.

Then—softer:

“You tried to kill a civilian during evac.”

Komatsu winced.

His memory sparked. A woman’s scream. Wrist twisting beneath his grip. The words:

“You don’t deserve to wear that face.”

Shame welled up in his chest. Old. Familiar. Not his, but not not his either.

He turned his head blindly toward the voice.

“…Yagi?” he asked. Weak. Fuzzy.

Silence.

Then:

“No. You’re Komatsu.”

Another long beat. Something about the way he said it made Komatsu’s stomach twist.

“You’re still Komatsu.”

The voice stood. Footsteps again.

Metal scraped against tile. A door hissed.

“You’ll get clarity eventually. Or worse.”

The lock clicked.

Komatsu was alone again.

...

The camera lens blinked.

A silent watcher in the upper corner of the quarantine cell—eyeing Komatsu Dokuohtei as he sat unmoving in the padded chair, draped in loose medical linens. One eye was barely open. The other twitched occasionally, half-dreaming, half-watching something that wasn’t there.

He hadn’t spoken in hours.

But his fingers kept moving. Subtle. Rhythmic. Like they were still holding a blade.

In the security control room—ten meters and three locked doors away—a row of monitors displayed every angle. The lighting was harsh. No warmth. Just grayscale surveillance and the hum of slow-turning fans.

The tech on duty—thin, hoodie half-zipped, finger tapping a tablet—didn’t look up as the door opened behind him.

The lead Assassin stepped in.

Not loud. Not hurried. Just heavy with the weight of command.

White hood down. Beard short. Sleeves rolled past scarred forearms. His eyes scanned the monitors with a quiet, calculating kind of stillness.

Komatsu’s cell was on the center screen.

He watched for several long seconds.

The tech finally spoke. “Vitals are holding. Brainwave interference is spiking, though. Last spike hit near-paranoia levels.”

The Assassin didn’t respond.

He leaned closer. Watched Komatsu flinch in slow motion as if reacting to something far away—then slump back into stillness.

“Still dreaming?” the lead asked, voice like gravel filtered through control.

“Near as I can tell,” the tech said. “Same muscle triggers. Same heat fluctuations. He mumbles sometimes, but we haven’t decoded anything meaningful.”

The lead Assassin straightened. Folded his arms. His gaze didn’t leave the monitor.

“Any external references?”

“No. No names. No cities. No clear historical locations. But…”

The tech hesitated.

“…but he keeps reaching for his left hip. Like he’s going for a sword that’s not there.”

The lead grunted. Thoughtful.

“He’s not gone,” the tech added. “Just... not here.”

Silence.

Then the Assassin finally spoke again—low, almost to himself.

“Yagi’s sequence is deeper than we thought.”

He stepped back from the console. Glanced at another screen—medical logs, pulse reports, EEG static that fluttered like moth wings.

“Keep him monitored.”

The tech blinked. “Same protocol?”

“Until further notice.”

He turned toward the door.

“Still think he’s a risk?” the tech asked.

The lead paused at the threshold.

“No. Not yet.”
A long breath.

“But don’t trust him either. Not until he remembers which side he wants to be on.”

His hand hovered over the door panel. Then stopped.

“He’s still bleeding. But if he stabilizes... we might still have a use for him.”

The door hissed shut behind him.

Back in the cell, Komatsu twitched again. His hand moved instinctively toward an invisible hilt. His lips parted.

“Dainagon… no, I—”

He coughed. Sank lower in the chair.

The camera didn’t blink.

Chapter Text

The hallway smelled like dust and stale antiseptic.

A single camera tracked his movement as he stepped toward the quarantine door. No sound except the soft press of his boots against tile. No announcement. No preamble.

Just the hiss of the lock unsealing.

The cell was low-lit, static-washed gray. Komatsu hadn’t moved much. He was seated upright now, barely. Sweat marked the collar of his medical tunic. His breathing was shallow, not panicked. A man who’d forgotten how to be calm.

The door slid shut behind the Assassin.

He said nothing at first.

Just crossed the room and stopped beside the chair.

Komatsu didn’t flinch.

That was new.

With practiced fingers, the Assassin unwrapped the blindfold—layer by layer. Cloth. Gauze. Cloth again. Each loop quiet, deliberate.

Light touched Komatsu’s eyes for the first time in two weeks.

He squinted. Blinked twice.

Didn’t thank him.

Didn’t curse him.

Didn’t speak.

Good, the Assassin thought. Let the silence get heavy.

“You know where you are,” he said at last. Not a question.

Komatsu stared forward.

"You know what you are," the Assassin added.

Komatsu’s mouth curled faintly. Somewhere between a smirk and a flinch.

“I know what I’m not,” he rasped. “Not a puppet. Not a machine. Not… a lab rat.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” the Assassin replied.

He circled once—slow, casual. Not looming. Just moving. Always in Komatsu’s periphery, never dead-on.

“I was told to brief you,” he continued. “But I don’t like lectures. So I’ll keep it simple.”

He stopped again, just off-center of Komatsu’s gaze.

“We have an Animus. You’re going into it.”

Komatsu laughed.

It was short, bitter, and joyless.

“You really don’t waste time, do you?”

“We’ve wasted enough,” the Assassin said.

Komatsu leaned back in the chair, slowly. His knuckles flexed—still twitchy. Still remembering things that weren’t happening.

“No.”

A pause.

“I’m not going back in. Not again.”

The Assassin didn’t blink.

“Why?”

Komatsu turned his head.

“You think I’m afraid?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not.”

“No,” the Assassin said evenly. “You’re broken.”

That earned silence.

Then—Komatsu’s voice, flat:

“Abstergo promised me control.”

The Assassin’s eyebrow twitched.

“They told me I could master it. Learn to harness it. I was supposed to fix the noise in my head.”

He exhaled.

“But that was a lie.”

Of course it was, the Assassin thought. But he didn’t say it. He let Komatsu keep talking. He needed to say it himself.

“They didn’t want to help me,” Komatsu continued. “They just wanted to see how far I’d crack before I shattered.”

He shook his head.

“They said I had the 'Assassin strain.’ Said I was good at hiding. At killing. That my ancestors were too loyal to be ignored. I was their—what’d they call it—'interference model.'"

The Assassin’s jaw set.

Komatsu’s voice dipped.

“I thought I could handle it. I was stupid.”

That was it.

That was the opening.

“No,” the Assassin said carefully. “You were human. You wanted to believe someone could fix what was broken.”

A pause. Measured.

“But the Templars don't fix things. They bend them. Until they break clean.”

Komatsu didn’t respond. But his eyes shifted—just enough to admit it wasn’t a lie.

The Assassin took a slow breath. Then stepped closer.

“Do you know why you’re still coherent?”

Komatsu didn’t answer.

“It’s because you’re not Templar. Never were. That part of you resisted—harder than they expected. You hid it well. But they saw it in you.”

He leaned forward, voice low.

“You’re more Assassin than you’ll admit.”

A flicker.

There it was.

Recognition. Anger. Maybe shame.

Komatsu scoffed.

“I almost killed someone during evac.”

“You didn’t.”

“I wanted to.”

“But you stopped.”

The Assassin circled again. Not pacing. Controlling the frame. Classic field psychology—shift angles, shift tension.

“You’ve seen the other subjects. They’re lost. Drowning in someone else’s blood. You’re not. You’re here.”

He tapped his temple.

“You remember Yagi. You feel him in your spine. But you're not him. Not unless you choose to be.”

Silence.

Then:

“And what? You want me to choose to be an Assassin?”

“I want you to choose to finish what Abstergo started.”

Komatsu looked at him then. Really looked. Brow tight, red-veined eyes dark with something between exhaustion and defiance.

“That sounds a lot like a pitch.”

“It’s not.”

“Then what is it?”

The Assassin’s voice dropped to a hush.

“It’s an offer.”

Another pause.

“You want control? You want answers? You want to stop bleeding every time someone breathes the wrong name?”

Komatsu’s jaw clenched.

“Then get in the chair,” the Assassin said. “Do it on your terms this time.”

He turned and walked for the door.

Just before the panel hissed open, he spoke one last time—without looking back.

“You’ve got ghosts in your blood. Time to learn how to fight them.”

The door slid shut behind him.

...

The corridor was narrow, silent, and polished like something that had been sterilized too many times.

Komatsu followed.

The lead Assassin didn’t speak. He didn’t look back either. Just walked ahead—steady, straight, the kind of pace that didn’t allow second thoughts. His footfalls were silent. His presence wasn’t.

Komatsu's bare feet padded behind him on cool tile. His medical tunic hung off his frame like borrowed cloth. Thin, but functional. He hadn’t asked for new clothes. They hadn’t offered.

A camera in the ceiling adjusted with a whisper-click as they passed.

Down one hall. Then another. Then a secure stairwell—more sensors, more locks.

Finally, they reached the double doors.

Cold steel. Keypad access. A retinal scanner embedded behind a dust screen. The lead Assassin keyed in without hesitation. Green light. The door hissed apart.

Beyond was the Animus chamber.

Wide. Industrial. Floodlit with overhead LEDs that buzzed faintly in the vents.

The Animus itself sat at the center—part medical cradle, part coffin, part altar. Cables spilled from its arms like veins. The chassis was newer than most—modular, upgraded in chunks. Sections stamped from separate vendors, none matching. Clean welds, custom add-ons. Komatsu caught logos he didn’t recognize.

“You’ll notice the parts don’t match,” the lead said without turning. “That’s intentional.”

Komatsu said nothing.

“Most of this was sourced off-grid. Through sympathetic backchannels—places we don’t name. I couldn’t tell you which ones if I tried.”

He finally turned. His eyes met Komatsu’s. Cold, calm.

“Compartmentalization protects the truth. Even from us.”

Inside the chamber, heads turned.

Three Assassins at terminals stood straighter at the sight of the lead. Two saluted with clenched fists to chest, then bowed—combat helmets gleaming under the lights, rifles slung tight against plate carriers. Tactical. Ready.

Another tech glanced up from a control bank, adjusted something on his tablet, and turned toward the Animus interface.

No one questioned Komatsu’s presence.

No one greeted him either.

They just moved.

Professional. Efficient.

Komatsu stopped at the base of the Animus rig. For a moment, he didn’t move.

The hum of the chamber tickled his ears. The floor felt too even. Too balanced.

He exhaled slowly.

Then stepped forward.

The lead Assassin gestured subtly. Two techs moved in sync—adjusting restraints, recalibrating the interface cradle, swapping in a new biometric suite.

One of them looked up briefly. “Vitals stable. No rejection signs yet.”

“Keep it that way,” the lead said.

Komatsu sat.

The interface arm descended over his shoulders. Cool metal touched the base of his skull—just enough to make him flinch. His eyes fluttered once, twice.

The breathing changed.

Not fear. Not surrender.

Recognition.

He looked at the Assassin one more time.

“This isn’t redemption.”

“No,” the Assassin said. “It’s exposure.”

“And if I break?”

The Assassin’s voice didn’t waver.

“Then at least we’ll know what parts of you were real.”

The Animus hummed louder. The lights dimmed slightly. The software boot sequence began—waves of data cascading across transparent displays like rain on glass.

The lead Assassin stepped back.

“Run it,” he said.

The techs moved as one.

Komatsu’s jaw clenched. The metal cradle shifted, locking him in place.

Then—

Light. Not flash.

But pull.

And the world began to dissolve.

Chapter Text

Komatsu dropped.

No weight.

No sound.

Just sudden descent—like falling without a body, like being remembered by something that had never known him.

Then—

Impact.

But not pain.

Just arrival.

His boots touched ground.

A flat, dark surface stretched outward in every direction—perfectly smooth, faintly glowing. A soft grid traced every meter like a digital echo of something ancient and buried.

Above him, the sky pulsed in slow waves of almost. Dark blue, but not night. Not clouded. Just infinite. Intermittently, glasslike shapes formed in midair—fractals, shards, vectors—then shattered without a sound, falling upward into nothing.

The air hummed. Electric. Cold.

He looked down.

The lines on the grid shifted gently as he moved, as though tracking him. As though they knew his weight. His shape. His hesitation.

A faint pulse ran underfoot. Once. Then again. Steady. Waiting.

His breath fogged even though there was no cold.

This was the Animus interface.

The between-space—not memory, not present. A staging ground.

Komatsu turned slowly. No walls. No doors. Just the slow-breaking of geometry overhead and the deep tone of something syncing in the far horizon. He could feel it now—static crawling up his spine. The system adjusting, reading, preparing.

Another shard of light cracked through the sky and dissolved.

His jaw tightened.

He hated this part.

Not pain. Not fear.

Recognition.

This was where the bleeding began. The edge. The place where Komatsu ended and someone else could begin.

He waited.

Hands clenched.

Komatsu stood still, every breath echoed by the pulsing grid beneath his feet.

Then—

A soft ding—like the sound of a bell at the end of a long corridor—cut through the silence.

Reality buckled.

The blue sky twisted like cloth wrung too tight. A curl of dreamstuff split the air above him, bleeding color into the Animus’ sterile digital space. Lines of code shimmered and distorted. A gap opened—not a glitch, not a feature.

A will.

And then she arrived.

Upside down at first. Floating.

Flipping once, lazily, before settling upright with the grace of a feather and the chaos of a dream deferred.

Her cape shimmered with starlight. The rim of her red nightcap twitched like it was listening. A thick blue book floated beside her, untouched by gravity, its D-stamped cover pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.

“Yaaaawn~.” Doremy Sweet stretched mid-air, then cracked open one glowing eye. “Still syncing, are we? Don’t mind me. I’m just here for the ambiance.”

Komatsu's jaw clenched. “You again.”

Doremy blinked, then tilted her head. “Oh~? You remember me! That’s sweet. Dreams usually forget their dreamers after a while.”

“You’re not a dream,” he muttered.

“Correct,” she chirped. “I’m the one managing your dreams.” She flipped upside down again, like a leaf in water. “And this one? Mmm. Messy. Sour aftertaste. Too much trauma, not enough closure.”

He took a step back, fists trembling slightly.

“Why are you here?”

Doremy’s smile grew. “Because you’re here. Or maybe... because I’m curious what happens when you dive deeper.”

She tapped her dream journal lightly. A glowing sigil spun across its spine.

“The Animus has rules. But dreams?” She leaned closer, and the grid beneath Komatsu cracked ever so slightly. “Dreams bend when I breathe on them.”

Komatsu narrowed his eyes. “This isn't your world.”

“Oh, hush.” She twirled midair, or maybe the space twisted with her. “I go where dreams cluster, and the Animus is full of bottled ones. Delicious.”

“I didn’t ask for you.”

She grinned, toothy now. “No one ever does. But you’re bleeding, Komatsu. In here, in there, in then. And I...” She gently floated down until her feet almost touched the grid. “I like watching the leaks.”

He flinched as another shard of fractured sky fell upward.

Doremy giggled softly, covering her mouth with one gloved hand.

“Let me guess,” she mused. “The Templars promised to fix the bleed, didn’t they? Oh yes. Sweet little control freaks. Always trying to dam rivers with duct tape.”

Komatsu’s jaw tightened. “They lied.”

“Of course they did,” she said brightly. “Why would they ever train someone like you to master your ghosts? You're too much like us."

She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Too free.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he demanded.

Her eyes flashed brighter for a moment—dreamlight cold and ancient.

“Because I'm a zookeeper,” she said softly. “And your dream self is trying to escape the cage.”

Then, back to her usual tone, she spun once more and pointed toward the endless sky.

“Well then, Yagi Komatsu—whatever you are now—let’s see what happens next.” Her smile widened. “If you really want control…”

She gestured with her dream journal.

“…you’ll have to dream deeper.”

With a glimmering bow, she winked out—becoming a spiral of orbs, then stardust, then nothing.

The Animus grid pulsed beneath Komatsu again. Louder this time.

The simulation was ready to load.

And for the first time in years, he wasn’t sure if he was waking up…

…or finally falling asleep.

Chapter Text

The sky above Osaka Castle was gray—not with storm, but with indifference.

Dust clung to the air like ash from a funeral that refused to end. The scaffolding groaned as more beams were brought down, each crash met not with cries, but with a dull silence that stretched across the courtyards. A silence that had outlived the battle.

Mayumi stood at the foot of the northern barracks, arms crossed behind her back, shoulders squared like a statue set in place.

One of the beams collapsed improperly, slamming into the stone with a fractured crunch. A Tokugawa officer barked orders for caution, but no one looked toward her for command.

They knew she wouldn’t interfere.

She wasn’t here for them.

“Mayumi,” Yagi said from beside her, his face streaked with sweat and soil. “You haven’t touched a shovel all morning.”

“I’m watching the load lines,” she said, her tone clipped. “That beam cracked where it shouldn’t have. If they bring down the southeast wall without support, it will collapse across the infirmary.”

Yagi blinked. “You’re protecting Tokugawa men now?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze followed the scaffold lines, tracing pressure points like a tactician reading a battlefield.

“I protect what’s left,” she said. “And what’s left is fragile.”

Yagi looked at her sidelong. “You mean the castle?”

Mayumi’s golden eyes narrowed slightly, but not at him—at a crack forming along the stone path near the old gate. Her voice was level.

“I mean memory. This structure is already dead. All that’s left is how cleanly it’s buried.”

A squad of Tokugawa workers passed them with ropes and chisels, muttering among themselves. One glanced at Mayumi and slowed—recognizing the armor, perhaps, or sensing something uncanny in the stillness of her presence.

She stared back without blinking until he looked away.

From a shaded rise beyond the inner courtyard, where the pine trees grew thin and the smell of sawdust lingered heavier than incense, a mikoshi stood.

Its carved gold shone not in brilliance, but like buried memory unearthed too late.

Within, seated upright in near-stillness, was Keiki Haniyasushin.

She said nothing. She had said nothing all morning. Her hands—elegant, sculptor’s hands—rested upon her lap, fingers brushing the rim of a worn magatama bead as if it alone could weigh judgment.

The distant thudding of dismantled stone did not shake her. Nor did the barking of Tokugawa foremen below. But her eyes—those cool, discerning eyes—watched everything.

She was not here for mourning. And certainly not for conquest.

She was here for balance.

Across the courtyard, her gaze lingered on a familiar silhouette in yellow lamellar. Mayumi.

Unmoving.

Alert.

Enduring.

Keiki's voice stirred at last—soft, not meant for those around her, but for the listening world itself.

“Still loyal,” she murmured, “even when the altar has cracked.”

A crow landed atop the mikoshi’s beam, silent. Dust curled in the air like incense from a ruined shrine.

“She wasn’t made to witness this,” Keiki continued, eyes never leaving her creation. “None of them were. But the shape of faith doesn’t choose where it survives. It endures where it must.”

Footsteps approached—heavy, deliberate.

Tokugawa Hidetada stepped into view, clad in full armor of blackened steel. His expression, chiseled from years of discipline, betrayed neither warmth nor suspicion—only duty.

He did not bow.

“My men tell me you’ve been here since dawn,” he said. “Watching. Saying little.”

Keiki inclined her head, just slightly. “Clay listens better than it speaks.”

Hidetada studied her for a moment longer. “Forgive the question, but your presence... it invites questions. One god in a ruined court—some might call that an omen.”

Keiki’s smile was thin, like a line scored in drying earth. “Only those who mistake gods for witnesses.”

“Are you one?” Hidetada asked. “A witness? Or a judge?”

“A correction,” Keiki said calmly. “But not here. Not yet.”

He frowned faintly. “Then I’ll ask plainly. Do you intend to intervene?”

Keiki turned her eyes—only slightly—to the southeast, where whispers still ran too fast between shadows, scrolls changed hands too easily, and names too old for banners lingered like ghosts.

“If they return,” she said, “if they seek again to make beasts of men or idols of fear—then yes.”

Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.

“I will not allow what was driven below to take root above.”

Hidetada’s hand flexed once at his side, then stilled. “You speak as if they’ve already begun.”

Keiki said nothing.

But the silence answered him.

After a long pause, he gave a slow nod and stepped back. “Then we are allies—for now.”

“For now,” Keiki echoed, her voice so soft it nearly disappeared into the wind.

Chapter Text

The war room smelled of old ash and damp paper. A braziery hissed faintly in the corner, unable to push the cold from the stone walls. Maps, once creased with promise and drawn in confidence, now sagged beneath weights of silence.

Sanada Yukimura stood at the table’s edge, gauntleted fists pressed against lacquered wood.

“We should have known,” he said, low and dangerous. “Ieyasu was never going to honor peace. He never has.”

Ono Harunaga exhaled sharply through his nose. “That’s a heavy claim, Sanada-dono.”

“Is it?” Yukimura snapped. “Ask the Ikko-Ikki monks. Ask the ones he greeted with letters and burned with fire. He negotiated peace with them too—then leveled their walls while they prayed.”

Goto Mototsugu, arms folded, gave a slow, grim nod. “Some said he waited until they disarmed. Until they left their gates open.”

“Of course he did,” Yukimura growled. “Peace is just another weapon to him. And now he’s used it to rip apart this castle without lifting a single blade.”

A gust of wind rattled the shutters. Outside, the sharp clang of chisels and dull thuds of collapsing beams echoed faintly. Snow swirled against the eaves—light, constant, uncaring. The bones of Osaka Castle groaned in surrender.

Hideyori sat at the far end of the chamber, draped in ceremonial silks, eyes fixed on a single red pin planted in the map before him. He hadn’t moved since Yukimura entered. His silence was not peace—it was paralysis.

“He would have blasted the walls down anyway,” said one of the junior retainers. “We all saw what his cannons did during the winter assault. The outer moats. The Sanada-maru... Even that held until it didn’t.”

Yukimura turned, jaw clenched. “So we just let him do it more politely this time? While bowing? While we sign the scrolls he puts in front of us?”

Harunaga adjusted his sleeves with deliberate calm. “You speak of honor as if we can afford it.”

Yukimura’s voice rose. “We can't afford this either—this slow bleeding. Piece by piece, he tears away the one thing our men had left to believe in: that this castle meant something. That our resistance meant something.”

Goto stepped forward, his voice cutting through like tempered steel. “We are not here to debate philosophy. The moats are being filled. The walls are down. If nothing is done, they will take even the memory of this place.”

A long pause followed. The only sound was the burning hiss of wet wood in the brazier.

Then, finally, Hideyori spoke.

Quiet. Flat.

“Would you have me break the truce?”

His voice did not echo. It fell—soft and weightless—like ash.

Yukimura didn’t answer immediately. His hand rose to the red pin on the map, fingers brushing it once, then letting it go. He looked not at Hideyori, but at the map between them—as if seeing something there no one else could.

“They’ve already broken it,” he said. “We’re just waiting to admit it.”

The room fell into a tense stillness after Yukimura's words. But that stillness was not peace. It was the pressure before a storm.

Outside the council doors, a different kind of presence lingered.

Not samurai.

Not human.

Across the outer gallery, beneath a sunless sky and framed by half-toppled watchtowers, three figures stood against the backdrop of melting snow and exposed stone. They didn’t speak at first. They didn’t need to. Their eyes were already saying too much.

Saki Kurokoma leaned casually against a cracked pillar, one boot planted on the fallen chunk of a turret. Her wings flared just wide enough to cast her silhouette in a posture of challenge. Her hat was tilted back, and she was grinning—but not kindly.

“Seems like your little castle’s coming apart faster than your meetings,” she said aloud, her voice a casual drawl that nonetheless carried clear through the corridor’s wind-chilled silence.

Inside the chamber, Yukimura stiffened. Goto’s eyes darkened, and Harunaga shot a wary glance toward the paper screens that separated them from the outer walk. No one moved to shut them.

“You’re not even pretending to leave anymore,” Goto muttered under his breath.

“Why should they?” Yukimura hissed. “They’ve already been fed. Now they’re just circling the bones.”

Yuuma Toutetsu emerged beside Saki with the exaggerated grace of someone used to acting amused by everything. She didn’t lean—she drifted, eyes half-lidded, twirling a spoon-shaped pin between her fingers like it were a writing brush.

“Harsh words,” she mused, her voice syrupy, teasing. “Isn’t this what you agreed to? You build. They tear down. That’s how empires work. One eats. The other starves.”

Yachie stepped forward last, gliding with the cold patience of a serpent rather than a general. She clasped her hands neatly before her. Her smile was as composed as a painted scroll, and just as unreadable.

“Such emotion from war leaders,” she said, addressing no one and everyone. “I do hope this isn’t a prelude to something... impolite.”

Inside the council, the younger retainers fidgeted, some whispering prayers under their breath. Even Yododono, seated beside her son, straightened with visible discomfort.

Hideyori finally looked up from the map.

“They’ve been watching since the walls began to fall,” he said quietly. “And they haven’t left.”

“No,” Yukimura said. “Because they expect us to fall next.”

Outside, Saki cracked her knuckles.

“Maybe we do,” she admitted, without venom. “But if you were stronger, we wouldn’t be here.”

“You came to test our ruin, not our strength,” Harunaga snapped, unable to hold back.

Yuuma gave a low chuckle. “Call it… curiosity. We like to see how long a flame flickers after the oil’s been drained.”

“Then I’ll give you something to watch,” Yukimura said coldly, stepping forward—but Goto’s hand stopped him.

“Not here,” Goto said. “Not now.”

Yachie, still perfectly composed, narrowed her eyes—not with anger, but with calculation.

“This is not our quarrel,” she said. “Not yet.”

“But it might become yours,” Hideyori said softly, not in threat, but in grim understanding.

Yachie inclined her head slightly. “That depends, my lord, on who chooses to draw the first line across the dirt.”

Yuuma shrugged. “Or who leaves the feast unattended.”

Saki, with a half-laugh, kicked a stone toward the crumbling wall beside her.

“Hell of a castle you had, though,” she said. “Even I’ll admit that.”

She spread her wings wide—not to fly, but to look larger. Taller. Unbent.

“You should’ve kept fighting.”

Yukimura’s jaw locked. Goto’s hands clenched.

Hideyori said nothing.

The wind changed again, scattering flakes across the tatami floors, and somewhere outside, another beam crashed down into the moat with a hollow thud.

The dismantling continued.

Chapter Text

Early spring clung to the fields like the last breath of winter—thin mist rolled low across the tilled hills, curling between pine trunks and half-frozen irrigation ditches. The ground was cold, but steady. Just outside Edo, where old battlefields slumbered beneath new rows of barley, something ancient stirred again.

After the Toyotomi’s fall, it wasn’t the remnants of men that the Shogunate feared.

It was what might come from beneath.

The earth broke.

And idols answered.

Rank upon rank, the Haniwa emerged—not from forges, but from ritual. Each stood over five shaku tall, sculpted in lamellar-patterned bronze and lacquered clay, eyes wide and unblinking. Bows rested at their backs. Polearms gleamed under prayer-painted symbols. They held perfect stillness—not out of fear or exhaustion, but because Keiki willed them to.

At their head stood Mayumi.

Her posture mirrored the ridgeline—straight, proud, still. Yellow lamellar gleamed in the mist like polished wheat. Her sword remained sheathed. She didn’t need it drawn.

Behind them, framed by an altar cart lined with magatama, painted shells, and offerings of polished mirrors, sat Haniyasushin Keiki.

The god of clay did not speak.

She watched.

Arms folded calmly, her expression unreadable, Keiki’s presence was serene, sovereign. She had sculpted every soldier. She knew each soul that gave them form. And she had summoned them not for conquest, but—as she’d said—for balance.

But that word meant different things to different men.

From the crest of the rise, another force approached.

Tokugawa banners snapped in the wind. Armor creaked, hooves beat in rhythm, and rifles glinted under the pale morning sun. The Shogunate’s procession moved with a slow, deliberate gravity—coiling around the inspection grounds like a ring tightening.

At its head rode two men.

Tokugawa Hidetada, Shogun by name and burden, wore blackened armor trimmed with gilt—his kabuto tucked beneath one arm, his eyes flint-hard. Beside him, older but still fearsome, rode Tokugawa Ieyasu, the retired Shogun. His gaze was colder than the wind off the Kiso Mountains. His right hand rested not on a sword, but on something hidden in the folds of his sleeve—a blade that had never seen ceremony.

The Assassins rode behind him.

Five in total—cloaked, silent, and alert. Among them strode Yagi Toshimichi, clad in full Brotherhood attire, his tanegashima slung low, and his matchlock pistol resting easy at the hip. The mark of the Hidden Ones shimmered faintly on the underside of his vambrace—visible only if you knew what to look for.

Yagi’s gaze flicked over the field of idols.

His throat was dry.

They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t alive. And yet they were present, in the same unsettling way volcanoes and storms were present.

They were not here to parley.

They were here to measure.

Ieyasu’s horse halted at the edge of the clearing.

The old warlord looked out across the ranks of clay warriors as if sizing up a force not yet declared enemy, but too dangerous to be friend. His voice was low, but it carried.

“So many idols,” he murmured. “And not one of them breathes.”

Keiki’s reply drifted like wind chimes over water.

“Nor do they hunger. Nor do they tire. They fight only when I will them to. That is their virtue.”

Hidetada stepped forward, arms clasped behind his back. His eyes swept the formation, then lingered on Keiki.

“And their danger.”

Keiki didn’t flinch. “Only if you believe I seek danger.”

“You did once,” Hidetada replied, tone like the tip of a blade. “In the Animal Realm. We remember.”

Yagi’s hand tightened on his pistol.

The tension was rising—just under the skin, like a fever.

Keiki’s smile was as faint as fog.

“I sought liberation,” she said, “for those who had none. That is what gods are summoned to do.”

“And the cost?” Ieyasu asked, his voice edged with history. “The invasion of the surface. The blood spilled. The balance shattered.”

Keiki turned her gaze to him—polite, but resolute.

“And still the Assassins did not oppose me. You watched. You hesitated. You feared.”

Yagi’s heart ticked hard.

She knows, he thought.

Keiki’s voice softened to a whisper of steel.

“Ieyasu—the Mentor of the Hidden Ones. The old lion who built an empire on silence and smoke. You think because I am a god of form that I am blind to function?”

Ieyasu’s only reply was a slow flex of his fingers beneath his sleeve.

Yagi swallowed.

His instincts pulled in opposite directions—Draw. Run. Wait.

He’d seen monsters. But this one—this deity—was calm. Not restrained. Not menacing.

Simply assured.

This is what power looks like when it has no need to prove itself.

Then Hidetada spoke again.

“To trust you would be folly. To ignore you would be suicide.”

He turned to Yagi.

“Let us test the truth.”

Yagi blinked. “...My lord?”

“You will fire upon the clay general,” Hidetada said. “Now. Here.”

The words felt heavier than lead.

Yagi hesitated. “Is this truly—”

“It is not a question.”

Keiki lifted a hand.

“I permit it,” she said, voice unshaken. “So long as Mayumi consents.”

Mayumi’s voice was as steady as her posture.

“Do it,” she said. “I am here to obey.”

Yagi’s mind scrambled for an ethical foothold.

This isn’t a test of Mayumi, he thought. It’s a test of Keiki’s control.

He nodded slowly. “Understood.”

His pistol slid free. He raised it with practiced calm. The Haniwa did not blink.

He fired.

The crack tore through the cold air. The ball struck Mayumi center-mass—then pinged off like stone skipping glass.

She didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch.

No mark.

No damage.

No sound but the dying echo of gunpowder.

Yagi exhaled. Set his jaw. Reached for the tanegashima.

One more.

He primed it. Took aim again. Fired.

Again, a clean hit. Again, a useless bounce. The bullet might as well have hit a shrine statue.

Yagi lowered his weapon.

The Assassins exchanged looks—one muttered something in Arabic.

Not one smiled.

Mayumi stepped back into formation like nothing had happened.

Ieyasu studied her with the quiet contemplation of a man mentally mapping every possible battlefield where these idols might march.

Then his gaze shifted back to Keiki.

“If you chose to turn on us,” he said, voice as dry as crushed stone, “not even I could stop you.”

Keiki’s expression remained unchanged.

“And yet,” she replied, “I have not.”

She looked at the gathered Assassins. Then to Ieyasu.

“I wait. I offer transparency. I show you my truth.”

The Mentor of the Assassins narrowed his eyes.

“For now.”

Chapter Text

The Animus room was dead quiet.

Only the screens moved—lines of genetic memory parsing across digital overlays, time-stamped and categorized by ancestral tag. The air smelled of ozone and concrete. One of the newer operatives scratched absently at his temple, eyes locked on a waveform spike that shouldn't have been there.

“...Anyone else see that?”

A second Assassin glanced over, leaning toward the display. “Yeah. Playback stuttered.”

“No desync?”

“None. Memory’s stable.”

They all stared at the timeline.

The feed had been following the expected path—Komatsu synced near-flawlessly with Yagi Toshimichi. Dismantling of Osaka Castle. The retreat. The death rites. Then—

Sudden jump.

Same ancestor tag. Different time stamp.

Two months later.

Different province.

The camera panned across lines of rigid, earthen soldiers in open formation beneath cloudy skies. Flags rippled. An older Ieyasu watched from a hillcrest.

Early spring. Edo outskirts. Haniwa. Idols.

One of the techs leaned forward. “How the hell did we get to this?”

“It’s still tagged under Yagi’s bloodline. But that’s not… We didn’t transition. No lead-in. Just jumped.”

“Check the ancestry log again. See if it branched.”

“Already did. No divergence.”

A third Assassin looked up from her panel.

“Someone want to explain how we’re seeing Edo pre-mobilization prep when we were still in post-Osaka winter thirty seconds ago?”

Silence.

No one answered.

No one could.

The feed kept playing.

Onscreen, Yagi raised a pistol at Mayumi Joutouguu. Fired. The shot deflected. Fired again. No damage. Every Haniwa statue remained unflinching. The sound design from the Animus grew colder—distant wind. Iron clinks. No music.

Then the voice of Ieyasu: “If she turns on us, not even I could stop her.”

The modern Assassins looked at each other.

One whispered: “We had no record of this. Not in any transcript. Not in Yagi’s letters. Not in the scrolls we scanned.”

“Because it wasn’t supposed to exist,” another muttered.

A red indicator lit up on the far terminal.

A new feed was incoming.

But this one wasn’t connected to Yagi’s line.

Or Komatsu’s.

One of the senior operators leaned forward, confused.

“There’s no DNA sync signature.”

“What?” the lead field tech barked. “That’s not possible. The Animus doesn’t fabricate—”

“It’s not fabricated,” the operator said slowly. “It’s… piggybacking.”

The playback on-screen glitched. Not jagged. Not corrupted.

Fractal.

The image twisted briefly into mirrored frames—like glass refracting glass.

A hum built in the walls. Low-frequency. Bone-deep.

The lights dimmed.

Then—without transition, without prompt, without ancestor data—

A new memory began.

But no one in the room recognized it.

Not the techs. Not the analysts. Not even the backups tracing auxiliary lineages.

It was alien.

And yet the Animus didn’t crash.

It embraced it.

Someone finally whispered:

“…Whose memory is this?”

No answer.

Only the feed.

Still running.

Still deeper.

The air above Osaka still carried the scent of soot, but the sound of marching feet was no longer Tokugawa. One by one, Toyotomi loyalists, ronin, and scattered samurai who had survived the winter siege returned. Scarred but alive, they came with solemn faces and cautious hopes, spared by the Shogunate's so-called "generosity" after the peace accords. For now, they were allowed to return—watched, but unchallenged.

The city stirred beneath them like something roused from the edge of death.

Work had already begun on the outer defenses. The moat—recently filled in by the Tokugawa—was now being dug out again. Old palisades were measured for reconstruction. Piles of shattered stone and scorched timbers were cleared from breach points as whispered orders moved down the lines.

And behind the battered outer walls, deep beneath the fractured keep, a chamber stirred that had not been opened to the public—or even to most Templars.

The true war room.

Torchlight flickered against polished lacquer, cast in crimson and silver. The Toyotomi mon blazed alongside the Templar cross on banners hung from each pillar. The floor bore concentric engravings older than the Sengoku period, their meaning lost to all but the most senior initiates. This room was not meant for mortals. It was meant for the shaping of futures.

And yet…

It was occupied by more than just the men of Osaka.

At the head of the table sat Toyotomi Hideyori, draped in dark robes, eyes sunken but cold with resolve. Beside him, the blackened steel of Gotō Mototsugu’s armor caught the candlelight. Sanada Yukimura stood at the war map, his hands clenched behind his back, jaw stiff with restrained fury. Around them stood other high-ranking Toyotomi commanders—Ōno Harunaga, Tsutsui Sadatsugu, Akashi Takenori, Kimura Shigenari, and more. Even Yodo-dono, veiled in silence, watched from her shadowed alcove.

But it was not them who made the room restless.

It was the uninvited guests.

Three figures lounged along the rear platform—none announced, none permitted. Yet none had been denied. Their presence wrapped around the chamber like a scent of danger: familiar, unshakable, unwelcome.

Saki Kurokoma stood with her arms crossed, wings flared deliberately to make herself loom larger than she was. She wore a wolfish grin as her sharp eyes swept over the assembled generals. “Not much of a ‘secret chamber’ if you leave the doors open,” she drawled. “Nice banners though. Love the cross motif. Very... holy.”

Gotō Mototsugu’s eye twitched. “This room is for commanders. Not beast-women strutting in like street performers.”

Saki rolled her neck with an audible crack. “Oh, I perform. Usually better than your last retreat line.”

Yukimura slammed a hand on the table. “Why are they here? Why do they continue to slither in and out as they please?!”

“Because,” said Yuuma Toutetsu, stepping forward with practiced grace, “we don’t believe in knocking when the house is on fire.” Her tone was airy, her eyes anything but. The spork-shaped ornament at her hip glinted as she spun it once, almost lazily. “And from where we’re standing, your roof’s already gone.”

Yachie Kicchou—still as ever—folded her hands in front of her, her polite smile untouched. “Continue your planning. We’re only here to listen.” Her voice was sweet. Her gaze was surgical.

Yukimura scowled. “Don’t pretend you’re not feeding on our desperation.”

Yachie tilted her head. “If you were strong enough to deny us, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

Gotō stepped forward, hand brushing the hilt of his blade, but Hideyori raised a hand—barely—and the tension broke, like a tremor held in check.

“We move on,” Hideyori said coldly. “Let them listen. They know too much already.”

Yukimura didn’t hide his disgust, but nodded.

“We’ve no time to wallow in paranoia,” he said, jabbing a finger at the map, where red pegs marked forward positions and hastily sketched Tokugawa roads. “Our only chance is to strike first. Not react. Strike. First.”

He turned to the commanders.

“Concentration of force. We gather what men we have and smash through each advance column before they converge. We use terrain, speed, and surprise. Defeat in detail. Each Tokugawa formation is vulnerable alone. Together? They will strangle us in weeks. Apart? We bleed them until they have no more breath to offer.”

He stepped around the table, locking eyes with each officer in turn.

“This will require coordination. Flank routes must be taken. Bridges seized. Our signal chains must be flawless. If a single spear arrives late, the line breaks.”

Saki gave an approving hum, arms still crossed. “Now that’s the kind of talk I like. About time one of you started growling.”

Gotō narrowed his eyes. “Don’t cheer just yet.”

“She’s not cheering,” Yuuma said, not even looking at him. “She’s judging. As we all are.”

Yachie’s voice followed like a breeze through dry leaves. “And we’re watching to see whether your conviction is as sharp as your rhetoric.”

Yukimura ignored them.

“If we act fast, we can hit them where they’re weakest. Take their forward bases. Cut their lines before the roads even finish drying. If we delay—we die. Slowly.”

The room fell quiet.

The flames flickered behind the banners. The weight of impossible risk hung heavy.

And behind them, the animal spirits of hell waited. Observing. Feeding.

Not on food.

But on potential.

Chapter Text

The spring winds carried more than blossoms that May.

They carried word.

Word of unrest. Word of fire rekindled in Osaka. Word that the Toyotomi had not been extinguished, only driven underground, and now—like embers catching wind—they burned anew. Ronin returned. Fortifications rose. Banners that had once been torn down with ceremony now flew again with quiet defiance.

These whispers moved swiftly across the provinces.

And Tokugawa Ieyasu heard them all.

He sat beneath the painted canopy of Sunpu Castle, unmoving, unmoved. The report was read aloud. Hideyori was amassing troops. Roads to Osaka once again bore the weight of marching men, and behind them, more than soldiers—ideology, vengeance, and something older, hungrier, watching from the shadows of the past.

Ieyasu did not blink. He folded his hands.

“Good,” he said.

No surprise. No outrage. Only a quiet finality.

“This time… we finish it.”

By early May of 1615, the Tokugawa began to move west.

Not in the thunderous roll of war drums—yet. Instead, under the pretense of a wedding. Ieyasu’s son, Tokugawa Yoshinao, was to be wed at Nagoya Castle. A convenient cover. Elegant. Plausible. One that would not alarm the peasantry or the court. But along the roads that fed into the capital, horses moved with armored riders. Oxen hauled kago bearing crates not of silks, but of powder, rations, and arquebuses.

And behind them, the call went out:

All loyal daimyo were to muster at Fushimi. Every bannerman. Every ashigaru. Every retainer not bound by old Toyotomi loyalties.

By mid-May, the land quaked with war.

It was a scene unlike any since the great campaigns of Sekigahara.

Banners flew like a thousand painted ghosts, rippling in the wind—blue, red, white, gold—each one bearing the mon of a house rising to answer the Tokugawa call. Columns stretched beyond the horizon: thousands of ashigaru bearing yari, matchlocks, katana, and jingasa glinting beneath the high sun.

Armors were lacquered and cinched tight. Helms were fastened with cords soaked in incense. Blacksmiths and priests moved from camp to camp, blessing blades, driving out spirits, sealing armor with sutras and prayer ropes. Monks read aloud sutras to calm the rank and file. Entire shrines moved with the army—portable, but sacred.

And then the murmurs began.

From the southern road came two riders—silent, unhurried, and unlike any the Tokugawa had ever seen.

One rode astride a warhorse of sculpted clay, lacquered smooth and marked with ancient funerary motifs. The beast made no sound, its hooves thudding with a weightless rhythm, yet leaving no mud nor dust in its wake. Atop it sat Mayumi Joutouguu—straight-backed, focused, eyes fixed forward like the point of a spear. Her yellow lamellar armor shimmered in the sunlight, worn not for show but from battles past, every dent and scrape a vow silently upheld.

At her side, a second clay steed approached—more elaborate in design, its bridle decorated with magatama and ropes of woven grass. Upon it rode Keiki Haniyasushin.

The sculptor god.

She didn’t seem to sit—she rested, as though the earth itself deferred to her. Her sleeves trailed like drifting prayer flags, and her expression was one of poised, divine indifference. She carried no visible weapons. But there was something in her silence that made hardened men lower their eyes.

The Tokugawa army slowed.

A hush rippled across the ranks—not fear, but unease. The ashigaru at the front shifted nervously, eyes flicking toward their officers. A young spearman whispered:

“Clay horses…”

Another answered, “No hoofprints. Look.”

Even the mounted samurai paused. One captain muttered a prayer under his breath, gripping his charm cord tighter.

“They don't breathe,” someone said.

“They don't need to,” came the reply.

Keiki said nothing. Her gaze passed over the gathering like a sculptor assessing flawed material. She made no gesture. No smile. She simply watched.

Mayumi’s hand never strayed far from her weapon. She scanned the ridgelines, each muscle of her posture attuned to unseen dangers. But her presence was not restless—it was vigilant. She did not fear the soldiers before her.

She judged them.

One Tokugawa retainer approached warily. “You travel without escort.”

Keiki inclined her head faintly. “The road does not need to be warned of the mountain.”

Mayumi added, tone level: “We are not lost. We are observing.”

“Then why ride through an army?”

“To remind it,” Keiki said, “that some truths cannot be marched past.”

Across the plains, southward—Toyotomi banners rose once more.

From within the walls of Osaka, the final gamble began.

War drums pounded again for the first time in months. Gates opened. Armored troops emerged in formations—Gotō Mototsugu’s vanguard, Yukimura’s cavalry, and the household troops of the remaining Toyotomi loyalists, now rearmed, repainted, and reborn in desperation.

The roar of sallying troops echoed from the stone courtyards, blending with the stomps of horses and the clattering of matchlock bands. Crimson, black, and silver flags waved over the bridges of the great castle.

But they were not alone in watching this movement.

Three figures stood atop a ruined turret overlooking the walls.

Their clothes were of no banner. Their allegiances, not human.

Saki Kurokoma stood tallest—wings half-flared, hair billowing in the wind like a war banner in her own right. She cracked her knuckles with a grin.

“Hah. So they’re finally done sulking.” Her teeth flashed. “About time we picked a fight.”

Yuuma Toutetsu leaned forward slightly, arms folded, lips pursed in a knowing smirk. “This isn’t picking a fight. This is throwing a banquet. They’re putting all their meat on the table.”

Yachie Kicchou remained utterly still, her eyes tracking the distant movement of the Tokugawa banners far beyond the treeline. Her voice was velvet over glass:

“They bring haniwa this time. The god of clay walks among men. Interesting.”

Saki scoffed. “Let her walk. I want to see if that stone doll army bleeds.”

Yuuma tapped her lip with a gloved finger. “You can’t eat them, you know. Just a heads-up.”

Yachie tilted her head slightly.

“We’ll see what they become once they lose faith.”

As the sun dipped toward the western ridges, the roads groaned under the weight of war.

The east moved west.

The west marched out to meet them.

And between them—uncounted gods, demons, and spirits prepared to reshape the soul of Japan.

Not through diplomacy.

But through obliteration.

Chapter Text

I've decided to discontinue this story. Looking back, the scale had grown so vast that it left little space for meaningful character development or a grounded point of view.

I’m restarting the entire crossover series from scratch.

Again...