SAIKON Chapter 1: A Day Of Regret, And A New Beginning

Read chapter 1 of SAIKON by SoraIkigai on NovelPedia.

[ 2,000 Years From Now — Serenia ] The city was already dead. It had simply not accepted it yet. Violet fire climbed the towers of Serenia and turned the glass black. Sirens had burned out hours ago. The streets below were filled with broken lights, overturned vehicles, and the last echoes of people who had believed the walls of the world were permanent. Above the city, the sky had been split open from horizon to horizon. Through the wound poured a color that did not belong to morning, evening, or any season known to man. At the center of the ruin stood a field of blades. Thousands of them pierced the scorched earth, angled like grave markers. Golden threads stretched between their hilts, crossing and tightening into a massive web. Every thread pulsed with fragments of memory: laughter in a kitchen, a child's name, a promise made at a doorway, a prayer cut short before it reached heaven. Malleus stood in the center of it all, one hand resting on a golden strand. His hood cast most of his face in shadow. Only the crimson ends of his hair caught the firelight. He studied the web with the calm focus of a man reviewing the final page of a document he had spent centuries writing. He plucked one thread. Far across the dead city, a tower folded inward and vanished into dust. "Still resisting," Malleus said. His voice held no anger. That made it worse. "Even at the end, humanity insists on leaving fingerprints." He let the thread go. "No one is coming to read them." A blade pierced through his chest. Blood fell onto the golden web. Where each drop landed, the threads blackened and snapped. Malleus looked down at the steel protruding from his body. His expression barely changed. "You chose a dramatic place to interrupt me." Behind him, Pyreton tightened his grip on the hilt. "You always needed an audience." Malleus gave a small, tired smile. "And you always arrived after everything worth saving was gone." Pyreton twisted the blade. For the first time, Malleus' breath caught. "Do not turn this into one of your lessons," Pyreton said. "Not tonight." "Then what should I call it? Revenge? Justice? A farewell gift to a world that never learned how to survive its own heart?" "Call it payment." Malleus was silent for a moment. Then Pyreton said the name that still had the power to make both of them human. "A'nari." The fire cracked through the city behind them. Malleus did not turn, but something in his face lowered its guard. "Do not use her as a weapon." "You watched her die." "I watched her choose. There is a difference, Pyreton, even if grief has made you hate the shape of it." "She trusted you." "She trusted the truth. I was only the man cursed to say it first." The blade went deeper. "You don't get to sound gentle when you say her name." Malleus closed his eyes. For a second, he looked less like the end of history and more like a man who had carried one memory too long. "She made peace with the road in front of her," he said. "You never did." "Because peace is what cowards name surrender." "No. Peace is what the dead leave behind when the living stop trying to drag them back." Pyreton's hand shook once. Only once. "Then die with your peace." He ripped the blade sideways. The golden web shattered. Every blade in the field rang at once. The city lurched. The wound in the sky widened, and for one terrible breath, something beyond the world noticed them. It had no face. No body. Only attention. Malleus began to fade at the edges, his body breaking into ash and black-gold light. The oxidized netsuke at his hip swung in a wind that came from nowhere. "Inevitable," he whispered. "All of it." His smile was the last thing to disappear. Pyreton stood alone among the blades. His weapon dripped light like blood. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath. He had killed the man at the center of the end. He had saved nothing. Then the violet fire thinned into morning. The field of blades dissolved into white ceiling plaster. The smell of burning me