Ishiki left Kenji’s house with a soul Havier than lead.
He moved through the darkening arteries of a dying paradise. The walk was a blur as he let his feet carry himself towards the secondary wall.
Today had been a gauntlet of emotional flaying’s. First Yuki, with her blinding, terrifying idealism. Now Kenji, with his crushing, suffocating despair.
And Ishiki... he stood in the middle, without knowing what to do? and what was happening with his life.
He didn’t activate [Ghost Blade] when he walked through the thinned crowds of people. They all went by their own businesses’ not paying him any attention. And he did not too.
He stepped on a small bridge and stopped around at the middle of it. The world had fully changed now... he spent a lot of time at Kenji’s house gathering vital information that even the princess didn’t have.
Or maybe she did... if she had other people other than Ishiki working for her... which was not out of the realm of possibilities.
Ishiki sighed, discarding the thoughts... those were all he thought about now a days. He stood besides a tower of white stone with a brass lamp hanging from it. These towers were located at every 100 meters here.
They were the only source of illumination, now that the blazing heart of the Angel had stopped heating the world.
Above the city was an illusion. An illusion of a sky and that sky didn’t had the pale, beautiful and cold moon that Ishiki liked.
"Aethelburg," Ishiki muttered, staring up at the void. "A goddamned cage with a fake sky and a fake sun."
He almost laughed at the twisted things he was witnessing.
As he turned around to move once again... he caught a glimpse of himself in the river below... it was almost hidden by the lonely shadows cast by the lamp.
He leaned against the railing, staring down at his reflection. The water was still, acting like a perfect mirror.
The person that looked back was familiar and yet alien.
That face belonged to a boy who had been sixteen when the world ended. A boy who got C-minuses in exams and spent his weekends arguing with Ren about video game lore.
Now his long hair fell like a curtain over his past self... his eyes were deeper and more mature than they had been, something had gone missing along the way.
Ishiki closed his eyes, and the memory hit him like a physical blow. The fall of the world he knew and then the white void.
The endless, terrifying nothingness where he had woken up with his body piecing itself together from pixels. It was the start... or the end?
He had been so confused back then, scared even. He thought he was dead and everyone else was dead too.
In a way, he was right. The boy named Ishiki who lived in the shadow of Neo-Tokyo died that day. What came back was a Player.
He chuckled at the revolting thought.
His trial was an absolute execution ground... he was destined to die. Either by the hands of the shogun... or the tainted demons... or the emperor, his father himself.
But he survived... that was the moment when a seed has been planted. The seed of the monster Kenji was so afraid of becoming.
’refused to die... I ate things... I did things...’ That was how Kenji had confessed about his dark thoughts.
What exactly had he done... and that was not even the thing Ishiki was worried about much... what caught him off guard was Kenji’s last line. He said he would kill the kill the emperor.
Well, that didn’t matter who killed him... as long as it happened Ishiki was happy.
His grip on the railing tightened until his knuckles turned white as he remembered the dread he had faced at the start of this scenario.
He had almost died on the first day, he remembered the pain of his ribs cracking, and how he had crawled through the underbrush, dragging his broken body inch by inch.
That was not pleasing at all... actually nothing related to that forest was remotely pleasing. Or maybe somethings were.
He made quite a few friends there... Alex, Filch, Nina, and Yuki too. Though the last one was a little complicated.
And that was where he had felt the hunger for power for the first time in his life. When he realized that in this new world, you were either the predator or the meat.
He opened his eyes and faced his shadow once again. Ishiki hadn’t eaten corpses or actually he did... eat corpses of withering beasts. But he had also consumed something else.
He had consumed his own innocence and he had traded his humanity, piece by piece, for survival and growth.
"Are we monsters?" he whispered to the reflection in the water. The reflection didn’t answer of course... it just stared back at him.
At last, he Shoved the thoughts away as he failed to find the moment where he had changed. Maybe he hadn’t changed at all.
’I am just overthinking things. Am I not?’
Ishiki slowly got away from the railing and winced as he noticed that a wood splinter had cut against his finger. Slowly... the cut was closed and healed on its own.
He didn’t pay it much attention and walked away from it... through the secondary ring, approaching the golden wall.
For him, life wasn’t about saving the world. Yuki could have that burden. It wasn’t about regrets or running from truth. Kenji could drown in that.
For Ishiki, it was all about surviving another day and then the day next to it and then the next. It was not like he craved immortality... no, he just wanted to live his life to the fullest.
It was not like you get a life again.
Walking though the streets, he didn’t head for the gate. Instead he headed for an empty area near the wall.
The golden cliff loomed above him, hundreds of meters of smooth, polished gold metal meant to be unclimbable. The guards patrolling the base were alert, their eyes scanning for anyone foolish enough to try.
Ishiki stood at the base, looking up and then grimaced. ’I think I have actually gone insane.’
He was going to climb this wall now.