Arc III.5: “Zero”
Chapter III: “Ground Zero”
Episode II: “Fall of Kukito”
[Day of the Fall]
The sky was gray, and rain poured as if the planet itself was weeping.
Kuro stared at the dead woman on the ground.
Kukito was hunched over her, arms locked around her like he could undo time by refusing to let go. Where the rain struck his shoulders, it hissed—turning to steam before it could cling.
Kai stood beside Kuro—motionless, breath shallow, eyes unable to blink.
Is that… Ms. Mizuka? Kuro’s thoughts snagged. Is she… dead…?
Kukito’s voice came out low—too calm to be safe.
“Did you do this?”
The steam stopped. The rain touched him normally again.
Kuro’s gaze dropped to Mizuka’s wrist.
A thin red thread circled it—rain-darkened, frayed at the knot, stubbornly intact.
Something in his chest tightened. Even now… It’s still here.
Ryoda stood a few steps away, cloak heavy with water, expression carved from regret and law.
“Yeah,” he said. “I killed her.”
Kukito’s eyes widened.
Golden aether surged—then buckled, as something darker rose underneath it. A circular array of purple runes formed around Kukito’s feet, etching itself into the wet ground like a wound that wanted to open.
His hand tightened around a jagged violet shard—pressure so hard it cut his palm. Blood ran down his knuckles and vanished into the rain.
I swear… I’ll erase him.
Not a plan. A vow.
Ryoda’s pupils tightened. That formation…
A cold thought surfaced: a Discordant Harmonic Covenant.
“Go!” Ryoda snapped, turning his head just enough to bark the order. “Get out of here!”
Kai and Kuro launched backward at once—training overriding fear.
Then Kuro twisted mid-flight.
“Wait.” He looked back, breath catching. “I need to get Ms. Mizuka’s body.”
“What? No.” Kai grabbed his arm. “You can’t go back—Kuro, it’s too dangerous!”
Kuro yanked free, eyes wet and furious. “I don’t care!”
His voice cracked. “Master Kukito isn’t himself—but I still owe them. I owe her.”
Kuro dove back toward the storm.
Kai swallowed hard, then pivoted.
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Dammit…
“I have to find Master Raida.”
He shot through the rain like an arrow.
[A few moments later]
Elsewhere in the city, the Utopic Sages clashed with rebel Dystopians—streets lit by aether flares and shattered stone.
Kuro hovered at the edge of the chaos, clutching Mizuka’s body against him as if shielding her from a world that had already taken her.
His eyes kept snapping back to the center of it all—where Kukito’s presence raged like a broken star.
Raida and Ryoda faced him together.
Kuro’s throat tightened.
Master… I know what you lost. I know what you failed to protect…
But is this really the answer you were trying to teach me?
Raida wiped rain and sweat from his brow, tightened his gi, and re-set his stance—calm, firm, hurt beneath the discipline.
“It doesn’t matter how strong you get, Kukito,” Raida said. “True strength is what you refuse to become.”
Kukito’s aura churned—gold strangled by violet. The runic array pulsed once, as if listening.
“Refuse?” Kukito laughed—no warmth in it. “You’re going to preach to me about restraint?”
He pointed at Ryoda, hand still bleeding around that shard.
“My intentions are pure. My motivation is love.”
His voice rose—controlled, but trembling with pressure.
“Love for my people, who’ve been crushed for centuries under your rule. Love for my family—who you stole from me.”
He stepped forward, and the air felt heavier.
“Don’t speak to me about purity,” Kukito said, teeth bared. “You don’t know what I’ve lived through.”
He slammed a fist into his chest.
“And it’s not just me.”
His eyes swept the battlefield—burning streets, wounded bodies, the district that never stopped bleeding.
“There are hundreds of thousands like me. And when I free them… I’ll go beyond this planet. I’ll tear chains off any world where the powerful decide who suffers.”
His voice softened at the end—almost gentle, which somehow made it worse. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Ryoda.”
He extended his hand.
“Give me the Heart.”
Ryoda lowered his head, jaw clenched, fists shaking—not with fear, but with grief that had nowhere to go.
“You’re not wrong about the suffering,” Ryoda said. “But you’re choosing the wrong salvation.”
He looked up, eyes bright with pain.
“You don’t have to hurt our people to help them.”
His voice tightened.
“Stop this—now. Surrender. We can still fix this together.”
“Our people?” Kukito’s smile snapped into something sharp. “Our people?”
His aura surged. “Where was ‘our’ when Dystopians were dying in the dark?!”
He pulled his arm back, violet pressure gathering.
“Fine. You leave me no choice. I’ll finish you here and rip the Heart of Utopia out of your—”
Raida moved.
Not loud. Not theatrical. Just decisive.
“Nuclear Fusion: Brown Dwarf.”
A dense, brown-gold sphere formed—heavy matter compressed into a violent core. Gravity tugged at the air inside the field; debris lifted; the rain bent.
Kukito’s eyes flashed.
The technique caught him.
Kuro’s breath hitched. “Master—?!”
Ryoda’s stance shifted as he took the sphere’s “weight” into motion—carrying the containment, forcing the clash away from civilians, away from the district—toward infrastructure that could survive impact.
Kuro followed—clutching Mizuka—too late to stop anything.
[After the explosion]
Ten minutes later, the world was broken.
The ruins of a reactor complex smoldered—metal warped, stone liquefied, and the ground split with glowing veins of magma.
“MASTER!!” Kuro screamed into the smoke.
He tore through debris until his hands bled.
Then he found him.
“K… Kuro…” Kukito whispered.
Kuro froze.
Kukito’s body was… wrong. Limbs missing. Half his torso gone. The edges of the wounds were trying to close—slowly, stubbornly—regeneration straining against damage too vast to forgive.
“Dammit—!” Kuro grunted, lifting him.
He’ll die.
Not later. Not eventually. Soon.
Mizuka lay beside him in the wreckage—sheltered under a half-collapsed panel, rain washing her face clean like the world was pretending it hadn’t done this.
Kuro forced his eyes away.
Kuro’s hands shook as he shifted Kukito’s arm.
There—wrapped at the wrist—another red thread. Not clean. Not ceremonial.
Tied wrong. Tied desperate. Like someone had tried to force fate into agreement.
Kuro swallowed hard, then reached for Mizuka’s wrist first.
“I’m… sorry,” he whispered—more to the world than to her.
He slid the thread free, careful not to snap it, and wound it around his fingers.
Then he did the same to Kukito—pulling the second thread loose and pressing both into his palm like they were the only pieces of them he could still save.
If I can’t protect them… I can at least carry what they left behind.
Kuro shot into the air—carrying Kukito, and aimed toward a hospital—then stopped as the planet shuddered again.
A chasm opened across the city. The ground screamed. Magma rose like the planet was bleeding out from the inside.
The planet is dying.
Kuro’s heart slammed. “No—no, no…”
He changed course.
“NAMI!” he roared into the district, voice raw.
And because the universe still had one cruel mercy left, she heard him.
They found a small ship—barely legal, barely functional—and launched through the rain as the world cracked behind them.
Far above the dying horizon, Cataline stood inside a quiet command bay, two fingers lifted as if pinching invisible air.
A filament of aether—hair-thin, red-lit—trembled between her fingertips.
It wasn’t a leash. It was a reading.
The filament pulled—subtle, inevitable—toward a moving point in the storm, tightening as if it recognized a knot that had been disturbed.
Cataline’s eyes narrowed. “Found you.”
Within the same day, a fleet intercepted Kuro—silent, disciplined, unnatural.
Acier’s troops.
And with them—
Cataline.
She stood at the ship’s ramp as if she belonged to the void itself. Calm. Composed. Eyes unreadable.
“Let us take him,” Cataline said to Kuro.
Kuro’s arms tightened around Kukito instinctively. He felt his relationship with her—whatever it once was—rotting in real time.
“He’ll die without our treatment,” Cataline continued, voice level. “We have the finest doctors in the universe.”
“And healing pods that can restore what’s been lost.”
Her gaze sharpened just slightly.
“You don’t have a choice—unless you want to watch him die.”
Nami stepped close and placed a hand on Kuro’s shoulder. Her voice was soft, but steady.
“You should listen to her.”
Kuro’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
“…Fine.”
He let go—slowly, like surrender was a physical wound.
Cataline’s soldiers lifted Kukito away with efficient care.
To keep eyes on his master, Kuro and Nami stayed with Cataline’s forces—close enough to watch recovery, close enough to learn what kind of cage they’d stepped into.
Meanwhile, Kai—along with the Lyte family—escaped off-world.
[Next Time on Lyte of Utopia]: “Life of Lyte”
[Yield Levels]:
Kuro: 12,000
Kai: 8,000
Cataline: 16,500
Raida: 20,000
Ryoda: 50,000
Kukito: 21,000
- (Amped: 4z)
- Dying: 5
- Recovering: 1,000
Bowl: 2,000
Cette: 1,000
Tub: 500