From Nihon With Love

        

At the bottom of the valley, the snow still cracked beneath Amano’s soles. The shrine was fading behind him, swallowed by thick mist.

Further down, stone lanterns marked a path. Votive banners fluttered faintly in the icy wind. In the darkness, one could hear the roar of the sea, a reminder that in this place, everything was shaped by water and ash.

Amatsu, under the mask of Amano, kept moving. His mind wavered between clarity and parasitic visions. He could already sense the echo of a dissonance. A rift. A strange gravitational current.

— They will come. She will come…

He raised his eyes to the tops of the pines. The branches swayed, but not in the direction of the wind. The air vibrated, as if dizzy.

Then the impact came.

A subtle grain from a gravitational wave, bursting out of nothingness and striking his half-stabilized body. The snow rose, then shattered into crystalline spray. The ground cracked under his feet. Rocks torn from the mountain rose into the air before exploding in a telluric crash.

Amano narrowed his eyes. Beyond the tear in the landscape, he thought he saw a translucent veil. Within it, a serpentine red-haired silhouette, surrounded by shifting geometric symbols.

Morriganne!

She had not yet revealed her full power. But her fractal imprint was already saturating the space.

…Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun…

A verse from Think Floyd pierced his memory like a stolen shard. Was it a message or a mockery? He clenched his fist tighter, tried to sink into the ground. But the gravitational wave was already pulling on him, tearing up the roots he was trying to restore.

He felt his substance cracking. His essence wavered between that of the ancient warrior and the cosmic shadow.

— Ridiculous… This inverted gravity… This isn’t her usual style. Does she want to cast me out of this world?

He thrust his hands into the melting snow, staining it with swirling black ink. A torrent of raw chaos surged, breaking the earthly attraction around him. The air filled with static electricity; the pines cracked like glass under the pressure.

---

Morriganne frowned. Her light was like the setting sun, tinged with sorrow.

— More resilient than I imagined… she whispered, her voice lost in the rift.

She tried to force her way through. Her fingers wove a new network of sigils. Each one vibrated with a dissonant echo. But then, a presence emerged behind her.

A hand — or the shadow of a hand — brushed against her nape.

— Morriganne!

She spun around, and the fissure vibrated like a string on the verge of breaking.

In that fractal space where time no longer held sway, the Guardian stood, her contours shifting between feminine and ethereal. Her voice, both chant and whisper, resonated without echo.

— Still playing at your childish rituals. You think you’re channeling chaos, Morriganne? You are nothing but a conduit!

Morriganne’s irritation showed; her hair floated around her like a halo of flames. She advanced, her sigils wavering between solidity and digital fluidity.

— Guardian, are you here to hinder me once again? Look at him! He absorbs energies that will turn him into an even greater threat!

The Guardian remained impassive. Shreds of light folded around her, like the pages of a burning book.

— Amatsu is more than a scourge. He is a reflection of what you have become — creatures dependent on the chaos you try to control.

Morriganne clenched the crystal tightly between her fingers. A grinding sound echoed: the gravitational core was about to collapse.

— Enough of your parables! He must be destroyed.

The Guardian gave a faint smile, filled with cold pity.

— You are aiming at the wrong target, Morriganne. And you know it.

All around them, a landscape of snow-covered pines, broken torii, and fractals overlapped. The unstable nexus closed in the flap of a bird’s wing.

Further away, Amano, freed from the gravitational grip, caught his breath. He watched the last luminous particles float around him. His boots dug into snow blackened by the echoes of battle.

— Morriganne… And a Guardian… They still think I am fragile. They forget that I am Chaos!

He straightened up, the shadow of his Trilby hat masking his blazing eyes.

— Nihon… with love!

His laugh, almost human, faded into the night.

The streets of Kokyo, capital of Nihon, were bathed in the icy glow of neon lights and resembled the pulsating arteries of an insatiable beast. A constant flow of rumors, trafficking, and damp breaths slid along walls covered with esoteric symbols and interactive advertisements.

Beneath this cybernetic flesh, the city beat like a sick heart.

Amano Kagaseo moved slowly through this urban maze, yet his imposing presence was felt like an anvil pressing on the necks of those who crossed his path.

Three days earlier, he had appeared in the middle of downtown, emerging like a hallucination in a shabby karaoke bar where yakuzas had gathered to celebrate a deal. He hadn’t spoken to them; he had simply stood there by the door, smoking a cigarette, with a smile almost filled with compassion.

When he left, they were all on their knees, their mouths open on a name they didn’t understand. None of them survived the night, their faces frozen in a mask of unspeakable terror.

From then on, his nickname spread through the streets: The Kingmaker.
A title whispered with feverish fascination and dread. Low-level thugs, informants, clan leaders — all passed the word along. Some claimed to have seen him negotiating with shadows, with spirits. Others swore he traded lost souls for a mere touch, leaving behind frozen bodies, but burning dreams.

For Amano, those deaths were inevitable. Each contact with humans awakened in them a fracture: ancestral fears, forbidden impulses, buried memories… And he absorbed it all. Memories, desires, regrets. All of it became vital energy that, ironically, nourished his own humanity and allowed him to walk upon Tellure without dissolving into it.

Some nights, he stood on the roof of an abandoned love hotel, gazing at the sea of flickering signs. Rumors rose up to him like a murmur he filtered absentmindedly.

He knew that elsewhere, further west, another city already awaited him: Moskeva. The Cyber-Rome, the true arena where he could impose himself among the lords of shadow.

Kokyo was nothing but a training ground — a first drop of chaos injected into the veins of the world’s organized crime.

That night, Amano decided to leave the city without looking back, leaving behind an intriguing mystery. Fifty members of a yakuza clan were discovered dead, all bearing the same expression of stupefaction on their faces and all having perished at the same moment. An investigation was opened, but it revealed nothing conclusive.

Only the black flag of his coat was seen, fluttering behind him as he moved away from the city. The goal of his journey was blurred, but his instinct guided him. Each step he took carried a sense of prescience, a connection to the fragile fabric of this world — one that threatened him as much as it fascinated him.

---

— So, it was him? Amano?

The interrogator’s voice was calm, but her gaze betrayed an impatience she could not hide.

Dave, strapped to that cold chair, allowed a faint smile to surface.

— Labels don’t matter. You can call him whatever you like, but what he is… you’re not ready to understand.

She didn’t react to the provocation. With a gesture, she adjusted the documents in front of her — blurred images of Kokyo and reports on the victims.

— You are convinced that his actions are not directed against us? That these deaths are merely a by-product of his presence… accidental?

Dave closed his eyes for a moment, as if searching for words.

— He didn’t act out of hatred. Not yet… What you witnessed is chaos resonating with our own. When he walks, he awakens what we try to bury. And for some… it breaks them.

A heavy silence settled. The interrogator observed him, scrutinizing every muscle of his face, every imperceptible tremor.

— And you? Why didn’t you succumb? Why are you still here?

Dave opened his eyes, a glimmer of mockery within them, and replied without thinking too much:

— Maybe I’m closer to him than you think. Maybe…

She remained motionless, mulling over that ambiguous answer. Then she stood, closing her file with firm resolve.

— We’ll see. That will be enough for today.

She left the room, leaving Dave alone in the harsh light. A fleeting smile crossed his face.

— Closer than you think? Dave wondered, not knowing where the thought had come from — sudden, and strangely familiar.