1.63: Power of WillI awoke in pitch darkness.

  The pain in my wrist was a serrated bde sawing through my nerves. My breaths rasped shallow and uneven, each inhale scraping like sandpaper down my throat. The floor beneath me was cold stone, not asphalt. Wherever I was now, it wasn’t the street anymore. My limbs shook as I forced myself upright.

  SNAP.

  A sharp finger-snap echoed through the void…… and the world exploded with light.

  “GAAAH—!”I spped both hands over my helmet’s facepte, my eyes clenching shut. The sudden brightness carved straight through my retinas like a spear of white-hot agony.

  “Susumu, is it?”

  His voice slithered through the room… smooth, derisive, utterly in control.

  I blinked rapidly until my vision adjusted. Sparkles clouded everything, drifting like mocking stars. Eventually, Mitsuhiko’s face came into focus… calm, collected, sitting backward on a chair like he was about to give a motivational speech in a delinquent high school.

  Except this was no pep talk.This was a nightmare.

  I gulped hard.

  I knew… deep in my bones… I didn’t stand a chance.We never did.Not even fighting together.

  Now my wrist was shattered and everything was taken from me.

  He leaned an elbow on the chair’s back, his chin resting zily on his knuckles.

  “What was your game?” he asked mildly, as though chatting over tea.

  I shrugged stiffly and forced out a ugh. “I’m going to capture you. For Reiko. For Tokyo. You’re a vilin… someone has to make you pay for your crimes.”

  I gritted my teeth, grateful for the helmet that hid how pale my face had become.

  “Pay?” he echoed, shaking his head softly. “Trust me. I’ve already paid a heavy price for my power. The highest price I had to pay… was Reiko.”

  “YOU KILLED HER!”I lurched upright, my righteous fury ripping through me.

  He lifted a hand, almost bored. “Don’t bother. If you rush me again, I’ll just have to humiliate you further.”

  “DAMN YOU, YOU BASTARD! HOW COULD YOU KILL REIKO—???”My voice cracked.My heart cracked.The bracelet on my broken wrist bzed with a new, furious light.

  “You’re misinformed,” he said quietly. “Oh, my actions led to her death, yes… you could certainly make that cim. But I didn’t kill her.” His eyes sharpened. “She committed suicide. It’s true. And everyone in this city deserves to hear the truth. Including you.”

  The words struck like a hammer.

  My stomach lurched.My chest tightened.

  Reiko…?Reiko, who dreamed so fiercely…?Who pnned her life with quiet determination…?

  I snarled, a sound ripped from somewhere deep and animalistic within me.

  “Don’t you DARE mock me! You don’t know anything about her! Reiko would NEVER kill herself! She had dreams… unrivaled ambitions… she wanted to be happy! You STOLE all of that from her!”

  “Fool,” he sighed.

  He ughed……a trembling, humorless ugh that cracked at the edges…And for a brief, impossible instant, I saw something like regret flicker in his eyes.

  That flicker was enough to make my rage erupt.

  I unched myself at him, my body fring with sudden growth, spiritual power tearing through my veins like wildfire…

  …but my feet SNAPPED to a halt.

  “Wha—?!”

  Something yanked me down.I hit the ground hard, pain sparking along my side.

  A dark smear spread across the floor beneath me…There was a pool of swirling shadow, thick and alive, with baleful golden eyes gring up from its ink-bck depths.

  The shadow wreathed around my ankle, squeezing, tightening.

  “Behave,” Mitsuhiko murmured behind me.“Or you’ll lose that foot.”

  I thrashed, panic and fury colliding—But the pressure increased, crushing down with terrible strength.

  Pain spiked up my leg.The bracelet’s glow flickered…dimmed…and died.

  I couldn’t call my power.I couldn’t even breathe.

  “I’ll be kind,” he said, rising from the chair with a slow, graceful motion.“Before I finish you… I’ll tell you the sad story of Reiko’s folly.” His eyes gleamed. “And mine.”

  A cold shiver ran down my spine.

  He leaned back in the chair, folding his hands calmly, as though beginning a lecture he’d given a thousand times.

  “My family,” he began softly, “once had a bright future. A future that they threw away.”

  His tone held no exaggeration, no theatrical flourish… just cold certainty.

  “Our arts created yokai in the distant past. Using our scrolls… our imagination… our dreams… we gave them form. Every spiritual creature across Japan traces its lineage back to my ancestors. To say we were kami would be understating the truth. We were creators. Our consciousness birthed an entire ecology of spirits.”

  I stiffened.He spoke like someone stating simple history, not myth.

  “After we created them, others began experimenting. Humanity realized the potential of the consciousness arts… and new spirits were born. Some yokai were born from our lineage; others were born from the minds of talented individuals worldwide. Gods, demons, angels… all figments of consciousness.”

  A chilling smile tugged at his lips.

  “But without faith… without belief… those foreign gods faded. Most are long gone. Only in Japan did yokai persist. Only here did our creations blend into human society, unnoticed and uncelebrated.”

  His eyes hardened.

  “And as people lost spirituality… consciousness dimmed. The arts withered. My family decayed into irrelevance.”

  He tilted his head.

  “But I reversed that atrophy.”

  He tapped the object in his hand lightly, almost fondly.

  “Under a tatami mat in the old home, I found a cache of our ancestral tools. With that discovery, I realized what my family had forgotten: the arts were never gone. They were simply dormant. Waiting for someone strong enough to recim them.”

  He paused… nostalgic, almost wistful.

  “I trained. I hardened my mind and body. I spent years struggling to understand the scrolls, studying alone without a master. My progress was slow, excruciatingly so… until one day, at st…”

  He snapped his fingers.

  “... Eureka. I realized the truth: consciousness is will. Mind over matter.If one’s will is like steel, chance itself can be twisted.”

  “I returned to my family,” he continued, his voice chillingly calm, “and decred that I was the rightful heir to our heritage. I would restore our legacy. I would rebuild the world… One built on spirituality where our family would return to its former greatness. A world where the strong rise and the weak fall. The natural order of things.”

  He let out a humorless chuckle.

  “They called me delusional.”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “So I demonstrated my mastery. I showed them the early extent of my arts. And still… They rejected me. Banished me. Told me they never wanted to see me again.”

  His eyes darkened… completely.

  “So I ensured they never saw anything again.”

  My stomach roiled. I wanted to vomit.He murdered his whole family in cold blood.I gred at him, my teeth clenching.

  “I summoned Enenra,” he said, almost reverently. “The creature in our scrolls made of pure darkness and smoke. I had studied it extensively. When I finally visualized it clearly enough… it manifested. Overwhelming. Feral. Terrifying.”

  His voice lowered.

  “I imagine you don’t know what Enenra is. Picture shadows that can suffocate light.” He clenched his fist as though quenching the sun. “Smoke with knives for fingers. That is the nature of the demon I created.”

  My breath caught.

  “The moment it arrived… It tore my family apart. Limbs, blood, bone… the walls were decorated with their remains. I had no control over it. None. It simply carried out the command I gave it.”

  His eyes gleamed with something like grim pride.

  “‘You’ll never see again.’ That’s what I told them.”

  A chill punched through me.

  “Enenra interpreted that sentence with perfect obedience.”

  He csped his hands.

  “After that, I lived as a vagabond. Traveling from city to city. Training. No one was charitable. People fear what they can’t understand. So I stole what I needed… first food, then money.”

  His tone remained conversational, but the content twisted my stomach.

  “I avoided killing until one day a martial artist blocked my path. He was better than me. Outcssing me. So I had Enenra crush him. There is no fighting Enenra.”

  His eyes narrowed with something dark and satisfied.

  “That was my turning point. My first act of true ruthlessness. And it worked.”

  “As time passed, I would accumute some modest wealth. And I realized that money makes the world move. So I followed its path… but I digress…”

  He spread his arms slightly.

  “I stole enough to attend college. When I reached Tokyo, I enrolled, trained my mind, and cultivated connections with the sons of powerful businessmen. Their fathers became my gateway.”

  He tapped a finger against the chair thoughtfully.

  “I learned how to bend chance… how to assert my will over reality. After that, my grades soared. Opportunities fell into pce. I became one of the university’s most admired students.”

  His smile grew… slow and cold.

  “When I graduated, I used those connections to step into a corporation with a bright future. And I carved my way up, one acquisition at a time. I built an empire. I crushed anyone who tried to sabotage me. I could have cimed the country itself, but why bother? Governments crumble. Corporations endure.”

  And then…his voice softened.Oddly.

  “That was my life… until Reiko appeared.”

  His eyes shifted… not softening, but dimming with something like longing.

  “She materialized out of nowhere. Like an illusion born from my own imagination. She struck me like a missile. Perfect. Radiant. Alive.”

  I swallowed.

  “She changed everything,” he whispered. “I had only cared about money and power… but she made me realize there was something more to living.”

  A tremor rippled through him… tiny, but real.

  “And that… was the beginning of everything that followed.”

  His expression shifted—softened, even… as though this was the part he’d rehearsed the most.

  “We dated many times,” he said quietly. “To recount every detail would take far too long… but to summarize, I realized something I had never allowed myself to feel.”

  He folded his hands.

  “I was lonely.”

  The word hung in the air like a confession.

  “I had thought myself beyond such pathetic human concerns… but that woman’s nature dismantled me. Her presence, her ughter, the way she teased and toyed with me… I was helpless before her power.”

  He inhaled slowly, as if remembering a taste.

  “Our love blossomed. I know… I know… she felt the same. The night we finally stopped dancing around it… she stopped pretending to resist. Her kisses were mind-numbing. The softness of her body against mine… the warmth of her breath…”

  His fingers curled slightly on the chair’s back.

  “I had taken money, power, lives, opportunities… yet nothing I’d seized could compare to her.”

  He lifted his gaze to meet mine with razor-edged intensity.

  “I would have built the world anew for her.”

  My stomach twisted.

  “Our retionship progressed to the point we discussed marriage. There was a strong possibility she might bear my child. I realized I could recreate my family… properly this time. My descendants would rise to lead humanity back into a world of spirituality. With her as my wife, my legacy would be unstoppable.”

  His voice held twisted affection… delusion dressed as sincerity.

  “One night, however,” he continued, tone dipping, “I completed a ritual to strengthen my spiritual power. A bloody ritual… yes. Demon ink requires the blood of yokai and the willing blood of humans who believe in you like a god.”

  He gave me a thin smile.

  “Do not misunderstand. No one is killed. Devotion alone is required. A cost willingly paid.”

  His fingers tapped the chair again, rhythm steady, controlled.

  “But afterward… I sensed something wrong. A disturbance. A shift in the air.”

  My pulse spiked.

  “I hurried toward the genkan elevator. And there she was.”

  His eyes unfocused slightly, remembering.

  “Reiko stood waiting for the doors to open. Tense. Pale. I studied her… and instantly recognized she was preparing to leave me.”

  His voice lowered to a hush.

  “She held my summoning scroll.”

  My breath caught.

  “I had grown negligent. I was blinded by love. And trusted her.”

  He clenched his jaw ever so slightly… showing his first real sign of anger.

  “When our eyes met… I saw fear. And hatred. In her. It was directed at me.”

  He exhaled slowly through his nose.

  “It shocked me. Truly. I rushed forward to stop her from stealing what was mine. She struck me. Hard.”

  He mimicked the motion lightly with a flick of his hand.

  “And then she said the most ridiculous thing.”

  His eyes sharpened, voice tinged with cold, brittle amusement.

  “‘Take your hand off me! It’s over! I’m leaving you!’”

  He smiled… thin, dismissive.

  “I will never believe those words reflected her true feelings.”

  His gaze drifted toward the ceiling… then back to me.

  “She was overwhelmed. Confused. Afraid of the truth of who I am. But she did not mean it.”

  His voice dropped into a soft, poisonous whisper.

  “She couldn’t have meant it.”

  Relwing