"No," Ren said. "We're not."
Panda cracked his knuckles. "Civilians?"
"Everywhere. Hiding in buildings mostly." Ren jerked his chin back down the street. "Maki's already moving a group east. We need more hands."
Kusakabe pushed off the wall without a word.
Panda fell in beside Ren, his heavy steps surprisingly quiet on the broken pavement.
"How far are we pulling back?"
Ren glanced toward the deeper dark.
"Far," he said. "Very far."
Kusakabe lit another cigarette and started walking.
Ren grabbed Panda's arm before he followed. "Inumaki. You seen him?"
Panda jerked his head left. "Two streets over. Been trying to push forward."
"Find him. Tell him Maki's orders—pull back east." Ren let go. "Don't give him the option to argue."
Panda nodded and broke off.
Ren turned back toward the buildings.
It took a while.
Shop by shop. Building by building. Pulling people out from behind counters, from under tables, from bathroom stalls where they'd locked themselves in and stopped moving entirely.
By the time they reached the outer edge of the district, the street behind them was packed—dozens of civilians in a loose, frightened cluster, too scared to talk, too exhausted to run.
Maki walked point. Kusakabe held the left flank, a fresh cigarette already going. Inumaki drifted quietly on the right, hands in his pockets. Panda took the rear, his massive frame alone enough to keep the stragglers moving.
Nobody spoke for a while.
Then Panda drifted up beside Maki and glanced sideways at her. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Hey, Zen'in-senpai."
Maki didn't look at him. "What."
"You look... different."
She kept walking. "Different how."
"Like." He gestured vaguely at all of her. "Stronger. Scarier. I don't know how to say it without you hitting me."
Kusakabe snorted from the left flank.
Maki's eye twitched. "Then don't say it."
"No, I mean it as a compliment," Panda said quickly. "Strong good. Not like—I'm not saying you didn't look strong before, I just—" He stopped. "I'm going to stop talking."
"Smart," Inumaki said quietly from the right.
Kusakabe laughed under his breath and said nothing, which was the wisest thing any of them had done all night.
...
Somewhere in Shibuya
Sukuna rolled his shoulders and looked at Jogo the way a man looks at something that mildly entertains him.
"Land one hit," Sukuna said. "Anywhere on this body. Do that and I'll play along with your little war."
Jogo stared at him.
Then he smiled.
The temperature of the entire street spiked in an instant.
..
...
....
Megumi dragged his boots across the shattered asphalt. Every breath tasted like copper and dust. The fight inside Dagon's domain had emptied him completely—cursed energy down to nothing, the gash across his shoulder throbbing with a dull, relentless heat.
A sharp, obnoxious giggle cut through the quiet of the alley.
Megumi stopped cold, instinctively reaching for a shadow that wouldn't answer.
"Man, that really, really hurt!"
Haruta Shigemo skipped out from a side street, completely empty-handed. He looked like a wreck—ponytail undone, clothes shredded, a massive purple bruise swallowing half his face. Whatever had happened to him, it hadn't been gentle. His erratic, bouncing energy was entirely undiminished.
"That guy with the black sword is a total jerk," Haruta whined, pouting as he kicked a piece of rubble aside. His hand-hilted sword was lying in the gutter beside it. He scooped it up without breaking stride, twirling it once like he'd simply set it down. "But it's fine! Because I landed on a nice soft awning, and then I found you!"
His eyes widened, a sickeningly bright smile splitting his bruised face. He leveled the tip of his blade at Megumi's bleeding shoulder. "You look like you're about to fall over. I love it when they can't fight back!"
Megumi didn't waste his breath. He forced his battered legs to move, darting into the narrow gap between two commercial buildings—not out of fear, but necessity. He couldn't win a head-on fight like this. He needed a choke point.
"Hey! Wait up!" Haruta sang, boots slapping the pavement as he gave chase.
Megumi vaulted over a tipped vending machine, slipping on spilled soda and broken glass. His vision swam, black spots crowding the edges. Focus. Just a handful of cursed energy. Just enough for Divine Dog.
Swish. The blade missed his neck by a fraction and bit deep into the brick wall beside his ear.
Megumi threw his weight forward, rolling over his bruised shoulder. He spun into a defensive crouch, forcing his trembling fingers into the shadow puppet of the hound despite everything screaming against it.
Haruta yanked his sword free. The little hand on the hilt twitched and flexed on its own, and he giggled watching it.
"You're trying so hard!" He skipped a step closer. "But it's useless, right? You're completely empty!"
Megumi stared at him. Breathing ragged, muscles burning, running on fumes—Haruta was right. Fast, unpredictable, and entirely sadistic.
But Megumi Fushiguro wasn't the type to just roll over and die.
"Come find out," he rasped, dark eyes locking on with cold, stubborn defiance.
...
Maki stood at the front of the group, Playful Cloud resting against the cracked pavement, eyes fixed on the black wall of the veil a block away.
Ren stepped up beside her. He looked at the veil, then at her.
"Hold the line," he said quietly. "I'll be back."
Maki's head turned sharply. "Where are you going?"
"There's someone inside I still have a score to settle with." He kept his voice easy, casual. "Unfinished business. Won't take long."
Maki stared at him. She knew that tone—the one that meant he was telling the truth but not all of it.
"What someone," she said flatly.
"Just someone," Ren said.
The silence between them was short and very loud.
Her grip tightened on Playful Cloud. Every instinct she had said go with him. Her eyes cut toward the crowd, then back to him, calculating.
She grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him around the edge of a crumbled pillar, out of sight of the civilians.
"Come back in one piece," she said. "Every promise I made you in that station—all of them, kept. Every single one." A beat. Her jaw tightened slightly, like the next part cost her something. "And that bunny outfit you wouldn't shut up about. Fine. No argument."
Ren went very still.
He looked at her—really looked at her. The tight set of her mouth. The way her fingers hadn't let go of his jacket. The fact that Maki Zen'in, who didn't negotiate with anyone for anything, was standing in a warzone offering him concessions just to make sure he came back.
It wasn't about the promises. It was never about the promises.
He reached up and covered her hand with his, gently uncurling her fingers from his collar. Then he pulled her in and kissed her—slow this time, quiet, nothing like the desperate crash back in the station. Just him, making sure she felt it.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers.
"I'll be back," he said. Then, quieter: "Hey. There's also something I've been meaning to tell you. About your twin and me—we actually—"
"Later," Maki said immediately, pulling back and stepping around the pillar before he could finish. Her voice was perfectly level. Her ears were red.
Ren stared at the empty space she'd just occupied.
Then he turned and ran back into the dark.
...
The streets deeper inside the veil were a different world entirely.
No civilians. No voices. Just the low, distant groan of warping infrastructure and the crunch of debris under his boots. Every storefront was dark and shattered. Abandoned bags and shoes and phones littered the pavement where people had simply dropped everything and run.
Ren didn't slow down.
He could feel it before he could see it—a pressure in the air, dense and suffocating, like the atmosphere itself was being wrung out. The temperature climbed with every block. The asphalt beneath his boots was soft, the painted road markings half-melted into the ground.
Then he turned a corner and stopped.
Three blocks ahead, the sky was on fire.
Not metaphorically. The clouds above that district were burning, churning red and orange from below, lit up by something that had no business existing inside a city. A column of superheated air rose from the epicenter in a visible shimmer, warping the darkness around it like a heat mirage. The shockwaves hit him in rolling, invisible waves—each one pressing against his chest, his eardrums, his teeth.
His System pinged once at the edge of his vision. He didn't look at it.
He already knew what was down there.
Ren exhaled slowly through his nose. His hand dropped to the hilt of Nightfall. He started walking again—faster now, boots finding their rhythm against the melting road.
A slow, dangerous grin pulled at the corner of his mouth.
"My, my," he muttered, his voice barely audible beneath the roar of the distant inferno. "A volcano like you, going out like a candle." He clicked his tongue. "Can't have that."
He broke into a full sprint.
The heat slammed into him like a wall. His eyes burned. His lungs burned. The entire district ahead of him was glowing.