The city didn't sleep anymore. It just twitched.
Billboards blinked in silence. Neon lights buzzed above empty sidewalks. Tokyo had become a ghost with glittering skin—alive only in fragments. And somewhere in its stomach, Lucien walked alone in the rain.
Three days. That's how long it had been since he disappeared from the Fifth Division's outpost. Three days without shelter. Three days without warmth. Three days without food—real food or something to drink.
His ribs showed when he shifted. His hoodie clung to his shoulders like wet paper. Bruises still marbled his body from the prison escape, half-healed but stiff. Each step felt like dragging a corpse behind him. And yet… he walked.
Because stopping meant remembering.
And remembering hurt more than the hunger.
Lucien rounded a corner and ducked into a dark alley behind a shuttered ramen shop. The trash bins reeked of oil, mold, and expired broth. He knelt by one and found a half-eaten rice ball on the concrete—wet, dirt-speckled.
He picked it up. Hesitated.
Then ate it.
His pride of being a Nightguards Corps member had vanished two days ago. He wasn't some mythical weapon or divine vessel out here. He was just a dirty boy with shaking hands and empty eyes. A boy who, despite everything, still wanted to be good.
He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Rain started falling again. Cold needles on raw skin.
Back in the shadows of Kabukicho, Lucien felt the feeling again.
A ripple of static in his brain—subtle, sharp. A monster's presence. Two, maybe three. Low-level. Weak and ready to be killed.
He moved instinctively, pulling the hood over his face and darting across the street. A flicker of power surged beneath his skin, painful in his underfed state, but still there.
He ducked into an abandoned train station, descending into a flooded corridor beneath the city. The scent of rot and rust curled in the air.
Then he saw them.
Three monsters. Crawlers. Level 5. Maybe level 4. Sloppy amalgamations of bone and scale, slithering through the muck. Human-shaped, vaguely, but hunched and crooked. One sniffed the air and shrieked.
They sensed Lucien.
Lucien didn't run. He didn´t need to
He stood up straight.
And let go.
With a flick of his wrist, one of the beasts exploded against a wall in a crunch of shattered bone and blood. Another lunged. He sidestepped and sent a telekinetic blast upward, slamming it into the rusted ceiling.
The third circled him, cautious.
Lucien stepped forward.
The monster leapt.
He caught it mid-air with both hands and screamed as he poured raw divine energy through his arms. Purgeflame surged from his palms—white fire tinged with red—and the creature ignited like paper soaked in gasoline.
It died screeching.
Lucien stumbled backward, breathing hard.
Blood splattered his shirt. His legs trembled.
But he smiled.
Just a little.
Because out here—fighting these things—he didn't feel like a fugitive.
He felt like something right.
Morning – Division Five Barracks
Inside the Fifth Division barracks, the silence was a presence of its own.
Jason threw his towel over his shoulder and walked toward the common room in his undershirt. The scent of eggs and instant rice drifted from the kitchen. Rylen stood at the stove, focused, moving with mechanical precision.
Emiluna sat at the table, fully suited, sipping her tea without a word. Her long silver hair was still damp from the shower. Her eyes were heavy—sleep-deprived, haunted.
Jason slid into the seat across from her.
"Any updates Emiluna?" he asked, voice low.
She didn't look up. "No signal from the tracker since yesterday afternoon."
Jason exhaled through his nose, frustrated.
Rylen set plates in front of them. "Eat. We've got patrol in four hours."
Jason stabbed a piece of fish. "Are we gonna talk about it? Or just keep pretending everything's normal?"
"We have to pretend," Emiluna snapped quietly, her gaze flicking toward the surveillance drone mounted in the corner of the ceiling. "You know they're watching us."
Jason's jaw clenched. "They interrogated us again for hours yesterday. We lied to their faces. Again."
Rylen sat down slowly. His face was calm, but the knuckles on his right hand were cracked and bleeding.
"They'll keep pressing us," he said. "They think we're hiding him somewhere."
"Because we are," Emiluna whispered.
Jason buried his head in his hands. "This is fucked."
Afternoon – Division Five Gear-Up
Back at the barracks, Rylen stood in front of his locker, securing his black armor piece by piece. The clicking of straps and magnetic locks echoed softly.
Jason paced behind him, checking his pulse scanner.
"Still nothing," he muttered.
"Lucien will contact us when he's ready," Rylen replied.
Jason snapped. "What if he's not ready? What if he's bleeding to death in some gutter?!"
Emiluna emerged from the briefing room, face pale.
"They increased the surveillance team again," she said. "Two new units watching the building. Unmarked drones in the sky."
Jason cursed under his breath.
Emiluna looked at Rylen. "How long can we keep this up?"
Rylen's voice was a whisper. "As long as it takes."
"You'd go down for him, wouldn't you?" Emiluna asked.
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Lucien stood beneath a bridge, arms folded, eyes locked on the distant skyline. The hunger was louder now. His body begged for sleep. His powers felt like coiled barbed wire inside his chest.
But monsters didn't rest.
And neither could he.
He sensed another one—something stalking a family near a train station two blocks away. He moved before he could think.
The battle was a bit more intense this time.
A Level 4—a mutating chimera with armored legs and acidic breath. It lashed at him, slicing his side. Lucien screamed and retaliated with a barrage of telekinetic strikes, lifting the creature into the air and ripping it apart mid-flight.
The family never saw him.
They just ran.
Lucien used regenaration to heal himself.
By 11:45 PM, Lucien found a new place to hide—beneath a covered stairwell behind an abandoned pachinko parlor. He sat with his back to the wall, shivering, staring at the rain falling in heavy sheets.
Somewhere out there, the world kept turning.
Somewhere, Rylen, Jason, Emiluna… they were still fighting. Still lying for him.
He wanted to reach out. To say thank you. To say sorry.
But he couldn't.
Because part of him still wanted to burn it all down.
Part of him liked the silence. The fear. The raw, brutal justice of it.
And part of him hated that part.
He curled tighter beneath his coat.
A nearby billboard lit up with static, the words BREAKING ANNOUNCEMENT flashing in red and white.
Lucien didn't move.
Not yet.
Because part of him already knew—
Tomorrow, everything would change.
At precisely 9:00 AM, the world paused.
Billboards froze mid-ad. Subways slowed to a crawl. Thousands of digital screens across Japan, from Tokyo's crowded Shibuya Crossing to the solemn temples of Kyoto, lit up with a single crimson banner.
"LIVE BROADCAST – MINISTRY OF JUSTICE & SECURITY"
The screen cut to a tall man standing behind a marble podium.
Kaido Fujimura.
His navy-blue uniform bore gold embroidery and seven medallions, glinting like polished authority. His expression was unreadable, a perfect mask of solemnity and power.
Behind him stood six ranked officers from the National Military Division and a representative from the Nightguard High Command.
Kaido adjusted the mic. Then spoke.
The Broadcast
"Citizens of Japan. Allies of our great nation. I speak to you today not with pride, but with gravity."
"Four days ago, an individual known as Lucien or 'DemonBoy'—Nightguard recruit—escaped from a classified detention facility where he was being held under suspicion of mass destruction, insubordination, and also now he is being charged with possession of unregistered divine abilities."
"Since that day, he has remained at large."
"And since that day, dozens of officers, security personnel, and defense systems have been obliterated by a force that continues to defy our understanding of balance and order."
He paused. The airwaves held their breath.
"We have reason to believe that Lucien is no longer operating as a human being. He is, by all practical and spiritual measures, something else. Something dangerous. Something unstable."
"And so, with full authority of the Global Protocol and consensus from allied forces—"
"—we now declare Lucien a Class One Global Threat."
"Effective immediately, a $10 million international bounty will be placed on his head. Alive or dead."
The words echoed through satellites, smartphones, news networks, and public terminals.
Japan exhaled.
And the world changed.
Rylen
Rylen stood in the locker room, a half-cleaned blade in his hands.
The moment the screen lit up, he froze. The footage of Lucien's blurry silhouette—taken from prison security tapes—played behind Kaido's declaration. He was labeled: "The Traitor of the Fifth."
His fist tightened around the hilt of his sword until blood ran down his palm.
"They're hunting him," he whispered.
Emiluna, standing beside him, said nothing.
Because there was nothing to say.
Jason dropped the dumbbells mid-rep.
The clang echoed across the Division Five gym as sweat rolled down his neck. He ran toward the screen in the corner, shoulder-checking another cadet without noticing.
He stared at the bounty.
The number glared at him.
$10,000,000.
"Motherfuckers," he breathed.
He thought of Lucien after the escape. Thought of how he'd hugged him like a brother. Thought of the laugh they shared at the hot pot dinner.
And now the world wanted his head.
Jason kicked the screen off the wall.
Emiluna didn't cry.
She sat in the armory, holding her gloves, watching the live feed on her visor.
Her face was cold. But her eyes burned.
She remembered how Lucien had asked—begged—her not to follow him. Not to make it harder. And she had let him go, not because she didn't care.
But because she did.
Now, she stared at the Minister's face, etched in political calm.
"If you ever touch him," she whispered to the screen, "I'll carve your spine out."
Inside a high-tech data vault, Ayumu folded her arms as the announcement played on the lab monitor.
Around her, the other operatives looked stunned.
But Ayumu didn't flinch.
She'd suspected something like this was coming. Lucien was too strong, too wild, too unknown. Her analytical brain had been compiling probabilities since the moment he escaped.
But… still…
$10 million?
That wasn't a bounty.
It was an execution order disguised as a reward.
She turned off the monitor. "Idiots," she muttered. "You're forcing him into the corner."
And corners create monsters.
Kagetsu was in the middle of his sword forms when his watch blinked red.
He paused mid-swing. Looked down. Read the headline.
"Lucien Declared Global Threat."
His jaw locked.
He remembered the boy covered in blood in the Hunt week and when he fought him—who risked everything to fight a near level 1monster no one else could. Who stood up, again and again, even when the world spat in his face.
Kagetsu lowered his blade.
"Is this what justice looks like now?" he muttered.
Lisa stared at her screen with trembling hands.
Her bunkmates chattered nervously in the background, some even whispering things like:
"Didn't he kill everyone who was in that prison?""Maybe he deserves it…"
She didn't answer them.
She just pulled her blanket over her head and buried her face in her knees.
Because the truth was… Lucien didn't just fight for them.
He changed them.
Made them believe in something more than orders.
And now the world wanted him gone.
Kisuke lit a cigarette.
He watched the announcement from a rooftop above the Fourth Division barracks, one hand in his coat, the other gripping a sniper scope.
"Ten million," he murmured, blowing out smoke.
"For the head of a boy who refused to die."
He chuckled, bitterly.
"Hell of a price for someone they tried to bury."
He looked up at the sky. It was raining again.
He didn't hear it right away.
He only saw the faces.
Faces on the giant screen across from Tokyo Tower. All watching the man behind the podium. Kaido's voice was distorted slightly by the rain—but the message was clear.
Lucien stood in the shadows beneath the bridge, drenched and shaking, blood still caked beneath his fingernails.
His heart beat slower.
He stepped forward, the light from the billboard catching his face.
And then he heard the words.
"Lucien is no longer considered human."
"Ten million dollars for his capture or elimination."
He felt the world tilt.
Everything quieted.
The sounds of traffic, rain, distant shouting—faded.
Inside his head, another voice returned.
"This world never wanted you.""Burn it down."
Lucien dropped to his knees.
His fingers dug into the pavement. His divine power pulsed erratically in his veins—hot, acidic, volatile.
His vision blurred.
He thought of Rylen's hand on his shoulder. Jason's terrible jokes. Emiluna's silence. Karu's smile. Lisa's food. Kisuke's weird calm.
He thought of every kindness.
And then he thought of the screams.
The lab.
The torture.
The fear.
He gritted his teeth.
"I want to help people," he whispered.
"But I want to kill them too."
He punched the ground.
"I want peace…"
Another punch. Blood on his knuckles.
"…but I want vengeance."
He looked up at the screen.
Kaido's image flickered as the rain distorted the light.
"Which one do I listen to?" he asked the sky.
No answer came.
Only thunder.
And the soft, constant blink of the tracker on his wrist—still glowing.
Still connected to his family.