The Storm Unleashed
The second blast from the Breaker Engine struck where Jin had been. Stone exploded in a fountain of shattered masonry and lightning-lashed debris.
But by the time the echo faded, he was already moving.
The world narrowed to a corridor of light. Each step landed with a resonance that cracked the ground beneath him, threads of blue fire rippling outward in jagged webs. The Saber pulsed in his grip, no longer merely steel—an extension of the Circuit itself.
Integration: 99%.
---
Kasane ducked as a splinter the size of a spear shaft sheared past her head. She did not look back to see if Jin still stood; she did not need to. The air itself told her—saturated with a pressure so dense she could feel it in her bones.
"Daigo!" she shouted.
The boy's pale face appeared behind the broken parapet.
"Stay down!"
He nodded, clutching the talisman to his chest as if it were the last promise in the world.
---
At the base of the slope, Isayo drove her sword into the mud and raised her gauntleted hands.
"Form the Seal!"
Her adepts converged, each raising a scribed rod of bone. A low chant began—seven voices merging into a single, throbbing note that made the air quiver.
Jin paused halfway down the slope, eyes locked on them.
"Binding Rite," he murmured.
Ancient. Rare.
Futile.
The adepts thrust their rods into the earth. White lines splayed outward in a precise hexagram, enclosing Jin within a cage of blinding radiance. The mud hissed as the seal rooted itself, each glyph sinking deeper into the ground.
Isayo stepped forward, voice raw.
"This is not a mortal barrier," she called.
"It was carved in the age before men could name the stars."
Jin looked at her, the lightning in his veins flickering in slow, measured pulses.
"Then it will die as they did."
---
He raised the Saber.
Power gathered—not as a surge, but as a gathering tide that seemed to pull the very breath from the air. The seal flared brighter in defiance. The adepts strained, voices rising to a hoarse crescendo.
Integration: 99.5%.
Jin closed his eyes.
And exhaled.
The seal shattered.
It did not explode. It did not scream. It simply ceased to exist, as if the universe had reconsidered the laws that allowed it to stand.
The adepts collapsed in a ring of scorched earth, their rods falling from nerveless hands.
---
Isayo did not retreat.
She drew her sword and took a single step forward, her armor creaking.
"Even now," she rasped,
"You think yourself a god."
Jin opened his eyes. They glowed with a steady, impossible light.
"No," he said softly.
"I am simply no longer bound by the limits you worship."
---
Above them, the Breaker Engine's crew struggled to reload the mechanism. Shiori's archers, hidden along the ruined parapets, unleashed a volley. Arrows struck armor and flesh, sending two operators toppling from the platform.
Kasane turned to Shiori, who crouched beside the broken gate.
"You said you could disable it."
Shiori's gaze never wavered.
"I said I could buy time."
Kasane's teeth bared in a humorless smile.
"Then do it."
---
Jin moved again.
This time, no one could follow.
He crossed the last stretch of churned earth in a heartbeat. The Saber's blade scythed upward. The nearest soldiers fell in a single sweep, their armor split in silent flashes of white.
Isayo lunged to meet him.
Their blades met in a shriek of force. The impact threw her back ten paces, armor smoking, but she landed in a crouch, teeth bared.
"Again!" she shouted.
And came on.
---
Kasane watched them clash—two figures bound to opposing convictions, neither willing to yield. But where Isayo's strikes were measured, Jin's were inevitable.
He parried her upward sweep and stepped into her guard. The pommel of his Saber struck her helm with a dull crack. She staggered, vision swimming.
"Yield," Jin said, voice low.
She spat blood and raised her sword again.
"No."
Jin's eyes flickered with something almost like regret.
Then he moved.
A single cut—clean, precise.
Isayo fell to her knees, her blade dropping into the mud. The crack across her breastplate glowed faintly, a line of seared iron that stopped just short of her heart.
He held her gaze.
"You fought with honor."
Isayo gasped, each breath ragged.
"Then…finish it."
Jin shook his head.
"No."
He turned away.
"You will bear witness."
---
Shiori appeared at Kasane's side, bow lowered.
"He spared her," she murmured.
Kasane did not look away.
"He doesn't kill out of cruelty. Only necessity."
"And when this… Integration… is complete?"
Kasane's hand tightened on her spear.
"Then we will learn whether he remains a man."
---
Above them, the Breaker Engine finally fired again.
But this time, the bolt never reached its mark.
Jin lifted his free hand.
The air around him condensed—light bending inward in a spiral that gathered at his palm.
He closed his fingers.
And the energy of the Breaker's blast folded in on itself, collapsing in a silent flash that left nothing but drifting ash.
---
Integration: 99.8%.
The Circuit's presence filled every cell, every thought. He felt the world in ways he could not name—each heartbeat in the valley, each breath drawn in fear or hope.
And beyond that…
A vast, waiting silence.
The Crown of Resonance.
---
Kasane approached him slowly, Daigo at her side.
"You're almost there," she said.
"Yes."
"Can you… stop it?"
He turned to her.
"Would you have me?"
Kasane's face did not change.
"I would have you remain yourself."
Daigo swallowed.
"Master…"
Jin knelt so he could meet the boy's gaze.
"If I forget," he said quietly,
"You will remind me."
Daigo's eyes filled, but he nodded.
"I will."
---
At the valley's edge, the remnants of the Moon's army were in retreat—lines dissolving as panic took hold. Shiori's scouts pursued them only so far before falling back.
When the last standard disappeared over the ridge, silence claimed the field.
Jin rose, the Saber resting across his shoulders.
"Kasane."
She straightened.
"You stood with me."
"I did."
"Will you stand again?"
Her eyes met his without hesitation.
"To whatever end."
---
Integration: 99.9%.
The last fraction waited—like the held breath of a god.
Jin lifted his gaze to the sky, where dawn was breaking in a flood of pallid light.
"Then bear witness," he murmured.
And he stepped across the final threshold.
---
The storm did not roar.
It unfolded.
A lattice of radiance spread from his body, rippling across the broken earth. The wind bent around it, clouds shattering into ribbons of fire. Every watcher fell silent. Even Kasane could not move, pinned by a presence that was no longer merely human.
Integration: 100%.
For one heartbeat, Jin hovered between mortality and something vaster.
Then the lightning sank into his veins and became quiet.
When he lowered his hand, the storm obeyed.
---
He turned, eyes glimmering with calm, impossible light.
"It is finished," he said.
And for the first time since the Circuit chose him, he felt no division between the man and the power.