The Syndicate compound loomed against the night sky like a fortress cast in black steel. The gates recognized him, the guards didn't even glance his way as he entered, slippers sliding onto the marble floors. Inside, the halls were near silent—only the occasional murmur of operatives finishing the night's blood work.
Ren moved like a ghost.
In his pocket, his fingers brushed the old bracelet.
Worn leather, rough against his calloused skin.
A wolf's head, etched deep into the center, almost ancient in its design.
He squeezed it tightly once before letting it drop back into his pocket.
What the hell was Y trying to tell him?
That goddamn wolf.
"The wolves…"
He had heard that name before. Long ago.
On his first mission with Emi—the mission that….
The memory clawed at the back of his mind like a half-forgotten nightmare.
Who were the wolves? Were they connected to Y somehow?
Connected to him?
To Itoshi?
The questions gnawed at him like hungry rats.
Too many scattered pieces.
And fuck it, Y's mind games were starting to get under his skin.
Ren ground his teeth silently, forcing himself to calm the storm in his chest.
There's a pattern here, he told himself.
There's always a pattern. Y's a bastard, but he's not random.
First the boy.
Now the bracelet.
All the pieces had to connect somehow.
He just needed more information.
Ren made his way through the Syndicate's interior, down into the deeper levels—where the Gokumon Archives were kept.
Few people ever had the clearance to come down here.
The Gokumon Archives:
The vault of knowledge.
Every scrap of history, every secret, every ugly truth the Syndicate had ever stolen, bought, or bled from the world…was kept here.
And at the center of it all sat the man who knew everything:
Senzō Aramaki.
The Keeper of Secrets.
A man older than most rumors.
Trusted only by the Elders themselves.
Ren stepped through the final iron door into the Archives.
The room smelled of old paper, iron, and a strange chemical bitterness.
Stacks of parchment, steel filing cabinets, encrypted terminals—all piled neatly like a library designed by madmen.
At the center, sitting behind a massive steel desk, was Senzō.
White hair, combed neatly back.
Sharp black eyes behind round glasses.
He barely looked up as Ren entered.
But when he did, he immediately stood—offering a respectful bow, low and proper.
"Ren-sama," Senzō said with the reverence most saved for gods. "An honor."
Ren returned a short nod—nothing more.
He never showed respect to anyone…except to the ones who deserved it.
The true pillars of the Syndicate.
"I need information," Ren said, voice low and cold.
"Of course," Senzō said, gesturing for him to sit. "Whatever you require."
Ren stayed standing.
"The Wolves," he said bluntly. "Tell me everything you know."
For a second, barely half a heartbeat, Senzō froze.
The man's fingers twitched. His glasses slid slightly down his nose from the sudden sheen of sweat.
Ren's eyes narrowed.
Got you.
Senzō adjusted his glasses with a trembling hand.
"I… The Wolves…are ancient history, Ren-sama," he said carefully. "There's almost nothing we know. They were a clan…one so powerful that they rivaled even the Takeda…but they are extinct now. Dead and buried."
Ren said nothing.
Just stared.
Senzō's hand twitched again.
A bead of sweat ran down the side of his temple.
"They existed before the Syndicate itself," Senzō continued hurriedly. "Some say…dating back to the very beginning of human civilization. Assassins of pure instinct and strength. But records are scarce. There's very little to find. They're just…legends now."
The air between them tightened.
Ren's eyes, cold as a blade, pinned Senzō to the spot.
"You're lying," Ren said quietly.
The old man's throat bobbed as he swallowed hard.
"I swear, that's all I know," Senzō said, voice thin and strained.
Bullshit.
The way his eyes darted.
The way his fingers drummed nervously against the table.
Ren had seen better liars on their deathbeds.
But fine.
For now.
He wouldn't push.
Not yet.
He turned without another word and walked away, his slippers echoing across the ancient floors.
But inside, his mind was already slicing the situation apart:
Why was he hiding it?
What the hell was so dangerous about the Wolves that even the Syndicate's Keeper of Secrets would squirm?
Ren's grip tightened around the bracelet in his pocket until the old leather bit into his skin.
He was going to sleep, he needed to be fully energized to dig into this wolf shit tomorrow.
Meanwhile…
The rain didn't fall—it slammed.
Not like water.
Like knives.
Each drop hit the earth like a judgment, like the sky was trying to drown something ancient crawling out from beneath the crust of the world.
In a land no map dared chart—where even memory refused to linger—stood a monolith.
Black iron. Blood stone. A scar in the shape of a tower. It jutted from the ground like a monument to something older than sin. The trees had died around it decades ago. The soil cracked like burnt flesh. Nature had abandoned this place.
At its base, a steel hatch hissed open.
White mist. Frozen breath. The door exhaled like the mouth of hell.
And he stepped out.
Y.
Rain clung to his white robes like blood-soaked linen. His hood was down. His cloak shimmered in the storm, the sigil of the blood moon etched across the back in violent crimson.
Three figures followed. Two men. One woman. Cloaked in white, heads bowed. Arashi was among them—face hidden, heart sealed.
They didn't speak. They didn't have to.
Y's presence said more than language ever could.
He stepped forward. The rain parted like it feared him.
Thunder cracked—but he was louder.
His voice was quiet. Deep. Controlled. But it carried.
Like scripture.
Like prophecy.
"It's not chaos I desire."
The others lowered their heads. The wind listened.
"It's correction."
TOKYO.
A crowded market bursts into screams as masked figures open fire. No warning. Just metal and blood.
Civilians fall like dolls, faces frozen mid-laughter. The red moon is painted on the concrete—smudged by bootprints and arterial spray.
"For centuries they've lied, built kingdoms on corpses and crowns made of ash."
KYOTO
A powerful crime lord is dragged screaming through his estate. Gold rings fall from severed fingers. His family is already dead. He watches white cloaks ripple through the smoke like ghosts.
A woman kneels beside him, blade humming.
Then silence.
"They feed on the dead. On obedience. On silence."
SHANGHAI
Three assassins vault from rooftops like shadows made flesh. They slip through windows, end lives with surgical precision, vanish before alarms can sound.
A city's power grid collapses. Entire political structures fall in a night.
"But silence is a choice. And I reject it."
MOSCOW
A Syndicate facility lies still.
Security footage glitches. Every camera static. The control room's lights flicker out. An alarm chirps once—and dies.
Inside: a massacre. Blood on every surface. On the walls, a message carved with fingernails:
WE SEE YOU
"Let their towers burn. Let their blood answer for the centuries stolen from us."
INDIA
The Crimson Eagles' sacred temple explodes into fire.
Ancient weapons melt in the blaze. The clan master's remains are indistinguishable from the ash. Someone from inside betrayed them. They don't know who.
In the distance, through firelight and smoke—figures in white walk away. Untouched.
"This is not rebellion."
THE UNDERWORLD COUNCIL
In a sealed obsidian chamber, the leaders of the world's most corrupt organizations argue in a frenzy.
One man—an oil baron, feared across continents—answers a vibrating phone. He listens.
He chokes.
Across the room, a blade slips through his spine. The call was already in the room.
"This is simply judgement."
THE SYNDICATE TOWER
Lightning rips the sky open.
Elder Daizen stands alone on a high balcony, arms crossed, face locked in that same ancient frown. Shion wipes blood from her sword in quiet tension. Masaru crushes a wine glass with his bare hand, crimson dripping to the floor.
Tsukasa chants something beneath his breath. And Kaito Takeda says nothing—just stares at a file, and it says
"Y- Abilities: Unkown
Techniques: Unkown
Danger: Unkown
Knowledge: Unknown
Threat: Unknown"
"The age of kings is over."
THE GOKUMON ARCHIVES
Flames devour history.
Scrolls. Ledgers. Secrets. Every hidden truth the Syndicate tried to bury—gone.
A single figure stood in the firelight, calm, still, masked. Watching it all die.
"Let the old gods drown in their own rot."
OSAKA
It was raining across all of Japan—across every city where the rain fell—a strange tension rippled through the storm.
Ren lay on his bed. He was sleeping or at least trying too. He never really slept easily but this night must have been different because he drifted away so easily.
He didn't wrap himself in his blanket, He wasn't shivering.
But his hands had started to tremble not long after.
It wasn't fear. It was something else. Something he couldn't name.
Suddenly—he snapped his head to the left. A sharp pain pierced the side of his skull like a migraine laced with needles.
And then—
A flash.
A crimson field.
A boy.
White hair, black eyes.
Surrounded by bodies.
Sitting. Silent. Alone.
Not Toshi.
Him.
Or… was it?
His chest tightened.
He gasped—his vision collapsing into static for a moment.
Elsewhere, in a dark room lit only by the flicker of a broken lamp, Toshi sat on a futon, knees drawn to his chest.
Hikari had left the room to get him water.
His white hair hung over his hollow face. His eyes hadn't moved in hours.
But then—his fingers twitched. Slightly.
He tilted his head, just barely.
Outside the window, thunder cracked. But inside, a drop of blood ran from his nose.
No wounds. No contact. Just blood.
And a whisper—so faint it was almost thought:
"Do you remember?"
He didn't know where it came from.
He didn't know who it was for.
But for the first time since Ren found him—Toshi blinked.
Back at the monolith, Y raised his face toward the sky.
Rain poured down his face like war paint. His eyes were hidden beneath the mask, but a faint breath escaped him—like he'd felt something.
A flicker of something primal passed across his spine.
Not fear.
Recognition.
He turned his head slightly, and muttered—not to the others, not even to himself—but to the storm:
"The fracture is beginning to bleed."
And somewhere across the broken web of the world, fate began to tighten its threads.
Y stood with his arms spread, face turned toward the broken sky. Rain danced along his cloak, thunder erupting behind him like applause.
His voice was no longer quiet.
It was absolute.
"From their ruins, we will build the new age. And return the world back to what it once was. Project Shinketsu no Jidai begins now"
The others fell to their knees.
Not to him.
To the future.
To the purge.
And even though he was far away, Ren felt a chill crawl down his spine—like the first whisper of a storm he couldn't yet see.