prologue: The Echo of Steel.
Sometimes, the silence in Zuarion City is louder than the roar of its engines.
I’ve spent most of my life listening to the hum of my own blood—a steady rhythm that quickens every time I unsheathe Shingetsu. They say I’m an Oni, a demon born of rust and betrayal. And there was a time, not long ago, when I believed it too.
I look at my hands and I don’t just see skin; I see the shadows of every man I’ve cut down. I see the trail of a war I never asked for, but one I am condemned to finish. Zuarion glitters from up here—a jewel carved in glass and arrogance—ignorant that its foundations are rotting with the pain of those the city itself forgot.
They say steel has no feelings. That a sword is just a cold piece of metal until someone wields it. But they are wrong. My blade is heavy. It weighs for the friends I lost, for the promises I couldn’t keep... and it weighs, above all, for the echo of a voice that refuses to fade from my memory.
I came to this labyrinth of lights for one reason only: LyriX.
She is the only light that the rust of Neo-Avora couldn’t corrupt, the only purpose left for a man who has forgotten how to pray. I have come for the truth, even if I have to burn this city of glass to the ground to find it.
I don’t care if the world remembers me as a savior or a monster. In the end, when the smoke clears and the neon fades, only one question will remain:
What is left of a man when he has nothing left to lose but his own shadow?
The answer is down there, in the heart of the empire. And I’m not leaving without it.
