**Volume 2: Upper World**

  **Chapter 25: No Tomorrow**

  The Yokohama courtyard was gone.

  What used to be concrete and cracked asphalt was now a shallow red-black lake—blood, ichor, rainwater, bits of bone and armor floating like trash. Half a million bodies lay in heaps or drifted face-down. Neon signs from half-collapsed buildings flickered pink and blue, reflecting off the water in broken streaks. Demons still crawled from the rift overhead, slower now, like even they were tired of the slaughter. The air smelled like copper, ozone, and burning meat.

  Frosty stumbled through the carnage first—left arm gone below the elbow, stump wrapped in ice she froze herself to stop the bleeding. Her good hand clutched a broken bokken like a lifeline. She slipped once in the blood, caught herself on a fallen streetlight pole, kept moving. “Max?” she rasped, voice hoarse from screaming orders. “Hiro? Anyone?”

  A shadow moved ahead—Max, coat torn, blood on his face, Loyal Shade limping beside him with half its jaw missing. He saw Frosty, jogged over, shadows curling protectively around her missing arm. “You’re alive,” he said, almost surprised.

  “Barely,” she muttered. “Hiro?”

  “Over here!” Hiro’s voice—weak but alive—came from behind an overturned bus. She was on her knees, hands glowing soft gold, healing a gash across Cam’s chest. Cam’s wolves were down to two, one missing an eye, the other dragging a broken leg. Jessica leaned against the bus, sparks flickering weak between her fingers, shirt ripped open across her ribs. Taka melted out of the shadows beside her, Aoi and Ren right behind—Ren’s fists still wrapped in faint energy bands, Aoi clutching a tiny spatial crack like it was the only thing keeping her sane.

  They found each other in pieces.

  No one said much. Just nods, quick touches—Max clapping Frosty’s shoulder, Hiro pressing glowing hands to Cam’s wounds, Jessica sparking once to light their faces. They were missing people—too many—but they were still breathing.

  Max spotted it first: a black SUV, half-buried under rubble but engine still rumbling low. One headlight worked, the other smashed. Tires shredded, but the frame held. “That’s our ride,” he said.

  They didn’t ask how it was still running. Didn’t care.

  Max yanked the driver door open—keys in the ignition, miracle of miracles. “Get in. Now.”

  Frosty climbed in back, cradling her stump. Hiro helped Cam. Jessica slid in beside Aoi and Ren. Taka melted into the shadows in the trunk. They packed tight—sixteen survivors down to nine, maybe ten if you counted the wolves. No one spoke the number out loud.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Max floored it.

  Tires spun in blood, then caught. The SUV lurched forward, crunching over bodies, glass, demon limbs. They drove—fast, reckless—toward the highway out of Yokohama. Demons lunged, but Max swerved, shadows whipping out the window to knock them back. Frosty froze the windshield when a devil tried to smash through. They made it.

  Kira didn’t get in.

  She stood alone in the rain, watching the taillights fade. Her right arm—crushed by Lana earlier—was healed now, normal flesh again, no veins showing. Hiro had done it before they left—quiet, quick, no questions. Kira flexed her fingers, picked up a fallen sword from the ground—some Yakima member’s katana, blade chipped but sharp enough. She tested the weight, spun it once.

  Then she turned.

  Lana loomed thirty feet away—titan form shrinking back to ten feet, skin still cracked red, one eye bleeding from Kira’s earlier stab. The giant grinned, teeth like broken glass.

  Kira raised the sword—single-handed, stance loose but steady.

  “Now,” she said, voice calm over the rain, “let’s fight like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Lana laughed—deep, rumbling.

  The two charged.

  Meanwhile—above the carnage—

  Jane and Ray clashed.

  Jane weaved first—**Thundercut**, a single horizontal slash wrapped in red-black lightning. The air screamed as it cut forward, splitting raindrops in half, aiming for Ray’s chest.

  Ray rift-stepped—vanished, reappeared five meters left. Jane was already moving—quick, too quick—five **Echo Flashes** in a blur. First punch grazed Ray’s jaw—echo detonated half a second later, cracking bone. Second to ribs—echo burst inside. Third to gut—Ray doubled. Fourth to shoulder—arm buckled. Fifth to face—Ray’s head snapped back, black blood spraying.

  Ray balanced—purple eyes flashing.

  He crossed his fingers—pink-blue rift energy swirling.

  “Realm.”

  His domain opened—**Riftstone Abyss**.

  The world became a floating graveyard of broken rocks and endless rifts—jagged stone islands drifting in black void, portals opening and closing like mouths. Anything Ray willed froze in place—time locked around his opponents inside the realm. He kicked where Jane’s frame *should* have been—boot aimed at empty air.

  But Jane’s frame flickered—reappeared behind Ray, already swinging.

  **Dismantle: Crisp.**

  Fifteen cuts carved Ray’s left arm again—cleaner this time, deeper. Flesh parted, black blood sprayed in neat arcs, bone glinted before corruption blackened the edges. Ray grunted, spun—opened a rift under his feet, dropped through, reappeared twenty meters up.

  Jane stood exactly where Ray had been, fist still extended, grinning.

  “Missed again.”

  Their realms clashed.

  Jane’s **Endless Fracture** tore open—reality cracking into infinite mirrored shards, time dilating, reflections giggling.

  Ray’s **Riftstone Abyss** pushed back—stone islands smashing into shards, rifts swallowing mirrors, time-freeze locking against frame dilation.

  The two domains collided—pink-blue cracks spreading across the sky, ground shaking, rain freezing mid-fall then shattering. Demons screamed as they got caught in the overlap—bodies sliced in infinite loops, aged to dust in rifts, erased and reborn just to die again.

  Jane laughed—loud, manic.

  Ray’s smirk returned—small, dangerous.

  They stared across the chaos.

  Then the realms fully merged—shards and rifts twisting together, a storm of broken time and endless voids.

  The chapter ended.

  We cut away.

  Somewhere quiet—somewhere impossible.

  Sky sat on a worn leather sofa in a room that didn’t exist. Soft yellow light from a lamp he didn’t recognize. A cold soda can sweated on the coffee table in front of him—brand he liked as a kid, condensation dripping. A TV flickered on the wall, but the screen showed the courtyard—Jane and Ray fighting, realms clashing, blood and rain and death.

  Sky leaned back, eyes fixed on the screen.

  He looked tired. Older. The black corruption ring around his left eye had spread to his temple, faint cracks like broken glass under his skin.

  He picked up the soda—popped the tab. Took a slow sip. Cold fizz burned his throat.

  On the screen, Jane laughed as he dodged Ray’s rift-kick. Ray’s smirk never left his face.

  Sky exhaled—long, shaky.

  “I’m counting on you,” he whispered—to the empty room, to Jane, to Ray, to no one.

  The soda can sweated in his hand.

  The chapter ended.

  To be continued…