"Love is the loneliest throne."
The moon hung low over Tokyo Area, shrouded behind a curtain of thin gray clouds. The artificial skyline—pieced together after years of ruin—glimmered like a memory of the city that once was. Inside the Imperial Palace, the ornate meeting chamber was filled with silent tension.
Seitenshi sat alone at the head of a long obsidian table. Though her guards stood discreetly in the corners, she had dismissed her secretaries and advisors for the evening. Before her, a holoscreen replayed a muted feed from Koharu's containment footage. Her lips were pressed into a tight line as she watched the child whisper to shadows no one else could see.
A cursed child who could commune with the enemy.
The implications were staggering. Politically, militarily, ethically.
But it wasn't the child's power that unsettled her the most.
It was the man standing at her side in the video: Rentarō Satomi.
His expression had been unreadable as he listened to Koharu, protective but distant. Unmoving even as the girl whispered of death and memory. He looked older, wearier than the last time she'd seen him in person. As if the burden he carried had grown heavier since the Gastrea War—and she had no place in helping him carry it.
Seitenshi's gaze dropped.
Even now, she could recall the warmth of his voice when he had once promised to protect her life. Not for her status. Not for politics. But because he believed in something greater—something no one else could see in her. That memory had been enough to fuel her resolve through countless political battles.
But time had passed.
And Rentarō had only drifted farther from her.
"Your Highness," came a voice from the door. Lieutenant Tendo—the Prime Minister's security liaison—bowed as he stepped in. "The sat-comm has linked. You're needed for the emergency council."
"I'll be there shortly," she replied, her tone firm.
The lieutenant hesitated. "Should I notify Commander Satomi?"
Seitenshi's eyes lingered on the frozen image of Rentarō on screen.
"No," she said quietly. "He has more urgent matters."
The door closed behind the lieutenant, and silence returned.
Seitenshi rose, walking slowly to the palace balcony. The night breeze kissed her face. Somewhere in the eastern district, Rentarō was preparing for the next battle. He wouldn't think of her. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
She closed her eyes.
There were days she hated the crown she wore—because it was the only thing keeping them apart.
At that same hour, Rentarō was deep beneath Sector 6, walking the sterile corridors of the Special Defense Intelligence Bureau. His boots echoed softly against the steel floor. A fresh report had come through—Gastrea activity in District 10 had tripled, and a new strain was spotted exhibiting behavior eerily similar to Koharu's "visions."
Kisara walked beside him, flipping through a tablet. "Koharu said some of them want to protect her. Like they see her as a host—or a priestess."
"Which means someone's been engineering the virus to respond to psychic resonance," Rentarō muttered.
"That's not evolution. That's control."
He nodded. "It's Grunewald. He's testing the edge of the link. Seeing how far he can push the threshold between cursed child and Gastrea."
They turned a corner and entered a secured analysis chamber. Shōma was already there, standing beside a table covered in scattered schematics and biogenetic logs. At the center was an old datapad retrieved from a previous battle site—its casing cracked, but data intact.
"I decrypted this an hour ago," Shōma said. "It's from a former Ark facility. Guess whose project code is all over it?"
Kisara frowned. "Grunewald?"
Shōma nodded. "And it confirms something worse. Koharu isn't the only one. There are others."
Rentarō's jaw clenched. "Others like her?"
"Or worse."
Meanwhile, Koharu sat quietly in her isolation room, staring at her own reflection in the mirrored wall. The voices had grown faint since Rentarō last visited—like echoes behind glass.
But one voice remained.
It was not violent. Not angry. It simply watched.
"You're still here," she said aloud.
The voice responded, not in words, but in sensation: recognition.
We are pieces of the same silence. Flesh of two worlds.
Koharu shivered. "Why me?"
The feeling that returned was sorrow. A sorrow so deep it felt older than war, older than civilization.
Because the old world must die… and the new one must speak with both tongues.
She backed away, afraid.
"Rentarō… please come back soon."
Far above, in a concealed hangar bordering the ruined border of Old Tokyo, a tall man in a white coat stepped out of a freight elevator. His silver hair glinted under artificial light, and his cold smile never quite reached his eyes.
Dr. Albrecht Grunewald examined a tank filled with pale fluid. Inside, suspended in stasis, was a child—unconscious, hair floating like weeds in water. Her vitals were stable, her code pure.
"Soon," he murmured. "Koharu will either join us, or she will break."
He tapped the side of the tank.
"And when she does, you, my dear twin prototype, will be ready to replace her."
The girl in the tank didn't move.
But her fingers twitched.