The first person to escape Zone 404 complained about the walk.
That was how Raiyo Zarake introduced himself.
Ten minutes earlier, Aoikishi had been explaining why nobody was supposed to come out at all.
He stood before a hallway that folded inward every few seconds.
The same black door appeared at both ends.
Between them, the walls kept changing their minds about how far apart they were.
“Zone 404,” Aoikishi said.
“The part of Headquarters that forgot what a hallway is for.”
Kaosu folded his arms.
“Looks like a hallway.”
Aoikishi pointed toward the far door.
The door opened.
The near door opened at the same time.
Both showed the back of Kaosu’s head.
Kaosu turned.
Both doors copied him.
Nyxus leaned toward Yamiya.
“He looks better from that angle.”
Kaosu looked at him.
“I’m standing beside you.”
“I know.
Very disappointing.”
Yamiya stepped closer to the warped wall.
Her reflection appeared a second late, then walked away without her.
“What happens if someone enters?” she asked.
“They keep finding the next door,” Aoikishi said.
“The problem is that every door becomes the first one again.”
He traced one finger along the wall.
The surface folded like paper.
“Distance resets.
Direction resets.
Even the reason you chose a door can be returned to its starting point.”
Nyxus frowned.
“So you can walk forever and make no progress.”
Kaosu glanced at him.
“You finally found a power that represents you.”
Nyxus considered that.
Then he nodded.
“Fair.”
Aoikishi looked back at Zone 404.
“The fracture existed before ACT moved in.
The Concord sent three reconnaissance teams through it years ago.”
Yamiya’s expression tightened.
“Did they come back?”
“Their last transmissions showed them opening the same door for hours.”
Aoikishi paused.
“Outside, only seconds had passed.”
Nobody joked after that.
For almost five full seconds.
Then Nyxus raised his hand.
“Why did we build our headquarters around it?”
“We didn’t,” Aoikishi said.
“I did.”
Kaosu stared at him.
“That answer was worse.”
“Living beside broken space teaches you to notice when reality starts repeating itself.”
“That sounds like unpaid training,” Yamiya said.
Aoikishi smiled.
“Most training is.”
A door opened at the far end of Zone 404.
Everyone turned.
A man stepped through carrying a black coffee mug.
Four swords rested across his back.
He looked tired.
Not injured.
Not afraid.
Just annoyed.
Raiyo took one look at the corridor and sighed.
“Why is this hallway so long?”
Nobody answered.
Raiyo kept walking.
He passed the first black door.
Then the second.
The loop did not return him.
Zone 404 opened behind him and let him out.
Yamiya’s notebook slipped halfway from her hand.
Kaosu’s mouth opened.
Even Aoikishi stopped smiling.
Raiyo took a slow drink from the mug.
Then he noticed all four of them staring.
“What?”
Kaosu found his voice first.
“How did you get through there?”
Raiyo looked back at the impossible hallway.
“The door was open.”
“That is not an answer,” Yamiya said.
“It got me here.”
Yamiya stepped closer.
“Did you phase through the reset?”
“No.”
“Did you cut the loop?”
Raiyo looked at her notebook.
Then at her.
“I walked.”
Kaosu moved between them.
“You think you’re funny?”
Raiyo studied him from boots to hair.
“No.”
Kaosu waited.
Raiyo took another drink.
“I think you are.”
Nyxus covered his mouth with both hands.
It did not hide the laugh.
Kaosu’s red aura flickered.
“You have no idea who I am.”
“Correct,” Raiyo said.
“You haven’t done anything worth remembering yet.”
Kaosu took one step forward.
Red threads crawled across the floor beneath his boot.
Aoikishi lifted one finger.
The threads stopped at the edge of his shadow.
“Stand down, Kaosu.”
Kaosu didn’t look away from Raiyo.
“He came into our base.”
Aoikishi glanced at Zone 404.
“If that place couldn’t keep him, the front door was never going to.”
Raiyo walked past them.
Kaosu turned after him.
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere quieter.”
“You just walked into our headquarters.”
Raiyo looked over one shoulder.
“And it was almost peaceful.”
He disappeared around the corner with his coffee.
Kaosu stared after him.
Yamiya looked toward Aoikishi.
“You know how he escaped.”
Aoikishi’s eyes remained on the corner.
“I have a theory.”
Nyxus pointed after Raiyo.
“Does the theory explain why he stole one of our mugs?”
Aoikishi checked the shelf beside Zone 404.
One mug was missing.
He sighed.
“That may be the greater threat.”
Kaosu’s chair was occupied.
That was how the fight actually began.
He entered the main hall expecting to find it beside the central display.
Instead, Raiyo was sitting in it.
Reclined.
One boot rested against the lower rung.
The stolen mug steamed on the table beside him.
Kaosu stopped in the doorway.
Raiyo looked up.
“Are you lost?”
Kaosu’s voice became very calm.
“You’re in my chair.”
Raiyo checked the seat beneath him.
Then the empty chairs around the room.
“I don’t see your name.”
“Move.”
“No.”
Kaosu’s aura returned.
Raiyo reached for his coffee.
Kaosu put one hand over the mug.
Raiyo looked at the hand.
Then at Kaosu.
“That was brave.”
Kaosu leaned closer.
“Move before I make you.”
“You recycle threats.”
Raiyo lifted the mug out from under Kaosu’s palm.
“Try a new one.”
Yamiya entered behind Kaosu and opened her notebook.
“If you’re going to break something, use the courtyard.”
Nyxus followed with a biscuit.
“Outside has less furniture.”
Kaosu pointed at Raiyo.
“He started this.”
Raiyo looked at Yamiya.
“Does he always explain events incorrectly?”
“Usually louder,” she said.
Kaosu turned toward her.
“You’re taking his side?”
“I’m protecting the chairs.”
Aoikishi appeared in the doorway.
He looked at Kaosu.
Then Raiyo.
Then the coffee mug.
“That was mine.”
Raiyo took another drink.
“Was.”
Aoikishi was silent for a moment.
“Courtyard.”
Kaosu smiled.
The chair rolled backward.
Kaosu caught it before it hit the wall.
Nyxus nodded approvingly.
“He really does care.”
“I will kill all of you.”
Aoikishi started walking.
“Not inside.”
The courtyard was already cracked.
That removed some pressure.
Kaosu and Raiyo stood twenty paces apart.
Nyxus sat on the steps with his biscuit and a wrapped sandwich beside him.
Yamiya stood near the planter with her notebook ready.
Aoikishi took the center.
“House rules,” he said.
“No killing.
No permanent damage.
First person forced to yield loses.”
Nyxus raised his hand.
“If someone dies, do they lose automatically?”
“Yes.”
“Good rule.”
Aoikishi looked at Kaosu.
“Control your output.”
Then he looked at Raiyo.
“Control your cuts.”
Raiyo rested one hand on the lowest sword hilt.
Kaosu rolled his shoulders.
“What’s your name?”
“Raiyo Zarake.”
Kaosu smiled.
“I like knowing what to put on graves.”
Raiyo’s expression didn’t change.
“Then ask someone who plans to die.”
Nyxus whispered to Yamiya, “That one was good.”
Yamiya wrote something down.
Kaosu pointed at her.
“Stop scoring them.”
“I’m taking combat notes.”
“You wrote ‘Raiyo, one.'”
Yamiya closed the notebook halfway.
“Combat note.”
Aoikishi stepped back.
“Begin.”
Kaosu vanished from his starting point.
The first punch came straight for Raiyo’s face.
Raiyo did not block.
He drew one sword an inch.
Something disappeared between Kaosu’s fist and its target.
Not Kaosu.
Not Raiyo.
The final piece of distance.
Kaosu’s punch passed beside Raiyo’s cheek.
His knuckles struck nothing.
Kaosu landed three steps behind him.
He turned immediately.
“You moved.”
Raiyo slid the sword back into its sheath.
“No.”
Yamiya’s stylus hovered above the page.
“He cut the route.”
Aoikishi nodded.
“Not space itself.
The relationship between the punch and the place it was meant to arrive.”
Yamiya glanced at him.
“For one inch?”
“The distance was small,” Aoikishi said.
“The rule he cut wasn’t.”
Nyxus lifted his biscuit like a judge’s flag.
“Point to the relationship.”
Kaosu attacked again.
This time he came low.
A kick cut toward Raiyo’s knee.
Raiyo shifted his heel.
The inch of ground beneath it vanished.
He dropped just enough for the kick to pass over him.
Kaosu spun into an elbow.
Raiyo drew.
Steel flashed.
Kaosu’s arm stopped halfway.
His shoulder turned.
His fist did not.
For a second, the limb hung useless at his side.
Kaosu looked down.
“What did you cut?”
“The message,” Raiyo said.
Yamiya’s eyes narrowed.
“From the nerves?”
Aoikishi watched Kaosu flex his fingers.
“The arm still works.
The order telling it to strike no longer reaches the muscle cleanly.”
Nyxus nodded.
“He hung up on the punch.”
Raiyo glanced toward him.
“That is unfortunately accurate.”
Kaosu shook his arm once.
Red energy crawled beneath the skin.
The cut began repairing itself.
Kaosu smiled.
“Temporary.”
“So is patience,” Raiyo replied.
Kaosu rushed him with the other side.
Knee.
Shoulder.
Head.
No wasted motion.
Raiyo cut the knee’s destination.
Kaosu changed into a shoulder before the cut finished.
Raiyo removed its momentum.
The shoulder stopped short.
Kaosu drove his forehead forward.
Raiyo barely leaned away.
The strike grazed his jaw.
A tiny pebble rolled under Raiyo’s heel.
He slipped.
Kaosu’s good fist struck his ribs and sent him across the courtyard.
Raiyo hit the ground, rolled once, and rose on one knee.
Kaosu laughed.
“You missed one.”
Raiyo touched the line of blood at his mouth.
“The pebble?”
“It wasn’t there when we started.”
Aoikishi’s gaze dropped to the courtyard.
A cracked tile.
A loose pebble.
A bad step.
Kaosu had not controlled each event.
He had nudged the first accident and let the rest inherit it.
Raiyo stood.
Kaosu’s grin widened.
“You cut decisions.”
Red threads began slipping away from his body.
“Try cutting what happens without me.”
The first figure formed behind Raiyo.
It looked like Kaosu seen through red glass.
Not a clone.
It had no breath.
No weight.
Only an unfinished consequence waiting for a body.
Raiyo turned and cut it across the chest.
The figure broke.
Its destruction cracked the tile behind him.
That crack shifted the planter.
The planter fell.
Raiyo stepped aside.
The falling stone struck the ground and sent a shard into the air.
A second red figure appeared where the shard should have landed.
Yamiya wrote faster.
“The first failure caused the second attack.”
Aoikishi nodded.
“Calamity carrying itself forward.”
The second figure struck.
Raiyo cut the relationship between its hand and the impact it was meant to produce.
The fist passed his shoulder without touching him.
The denied impact cracked the tile beneath Raiyo instead.
A shard jumped from the floor and struck his ribs.
Weaker.
Not gone.
Raiyo’s eyes sharpened.
Kaosu remained across the courtyard, one arm still numb.
“You can cut the attack,” Kaosu said.
“The consequence already has somewhere else to go.”
A third figure formed above Raiyo.
Then a fourth behind him.
Nyxus lowered his biscuit.
“He brought friends.”
“They’re not friends,” Yamiya said.
“Neither are Kaosu’s.”
Kaosu looked toward the steps.
“I can hear both of you.”
Raiyo reached over his shoulder.
The second sword came free.
The nearest red figure lost its route to him.
A third blade cleared its sheath.
The falling planter lost its momentum and stopped inches above the ground.
Raiyo drew the fourth.
He crossed the hilts until each hand held two blades.
The courtyard went quiet.
Not from pressure.
From precision.
Four blades.
Four separate relationships held beneath four edges.
Distance.
Momentum.
Destination.
Consequence.
Aoikishi’s expression changed.
Kaosu noticed. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“So he finally impressed you.”
Raiyo settled into a low stance.
“No.”
He pointed one blade toward Kaosu.
“You finally made me use both hands.”
Kaosu’s eye twitched.
“You’re holding four swords.”
“And you still needed help from a pebble.”
Nyxus whispered, “Raiyo, two.”
Yamiya wrote it down.
Kaosu’s aura flared.
Heat rolled through the courtyard.
The wrapped sandwich beside Nyxus began to smoke.
Nyxus looked down.
The bread caught fire.
Everything stopped.
Nyxus stood.
“No.”
Kaosu glanced toward him.
“We’re fighting.”
“I was eating.”
“The sandwich wasn’t in your mouth.”
“It was next.”
Raiyo lowered one sword slightly.
Kaosu pointed at him.
“Don’t you dare stop.”
Nyxus picked up the burning sandwich.
He looked at it with quiet grief.
Then he walked across the courtyard.
Aoikishi watched him go.
“Nyxus.”
“Referee decision.”
“You are not the referee.”
Nyxus placed the burning sandwich on Kaosu’s head.
Kaosu froze.
Mustard slid down one side of his face.
Nyxus stepped back.
“Match suspended.”
Kaosu blinked.
Once.
Twice.
“Did you just put lunch on my head?”
“You burned it.”
“During a fight.”
“Exactly.”
Kaosu removed the sandwich very slowly.
“I’m going to kill you.”
Aoikishi raised one hand.
A blue line appeared around Kaosu.
Space folded.
Kaosu vanished.
From somewhere inside Headquarters, his voice echoed through the courtyard.
“AOIKISHI!”
Yamiya stared at the empty spot.
“Did you put him in Zone 404?”
“Temporary cooling period.”
“You said people don’t come back.”
Aoikishi tapped the small blue marker on his wrist.
A matching point appeared in the air, moving rapidly through a looping hallway.
“I mark everyone in ACT.
I always know where they are.”
Kaosu’s distant voice returned.
“I CAN HEAR YOU!”
Aoikishi closed the display.
“He’s fine.”
Nyxus looked at the sandwich remains in his hand.
“He owes me lunch.”
Raiyo sheathed two swords.
“Charge it to Kaosu.”
From somewhere inside Zone 404, Kaosu shouted, “I CAN STILL HEAR YOU!”
Raiyo glanced toward the wall.
“Good.”
Aoikishi waited until the courtyard settled.
Then he looked at Raiyo.
“You cut more than matter.”
Raiyo sheathed the third blade.
“So do you.”
Aoikishi smiled faintly.
“ACT could refine that.”
Raiyo paused with the fourth sword still drawn.
“Join your faction?”
“That was the implication.”
“I don’t work under people weaker than me.”
Nyxus sat back down.
“This should be short.”
Raiyo glanced at him.
“You sound confident.”
“Aoikishi breaks things before they know they’re broken.”
Aoikishi sighed.
“That is not an endorsement.”
“It sounded good.”
Raiyo faced him.
“One exchange.”
“No.”
“If I win, I leave.”
“You can leave now.”
“If you win, I join.”
Aoikishi studied him.
Raiyo raised the fourth blade.
“No tricks after the result.”
“Trust me,” Aoikishi said.
“You do not want this fight.”
Raiyo’s eyes narrowed.
“That is usually what losers say.”
“It will be over before it starts.”
“Confident.”
Aoikishi’s expression became almost sympathetic.
“Literal.”
Raiyo attacked.
He cut the distance first.
One moment he stood across the courtyard.
The next, his blade was at Aoikishi’s throat.
Aoikishi did not dodge.
He did not block.
He lifted two fingers.
Raiyo stopped.
Not his sword.
Not his body.
His continuation.
The attack had a beginning.
It no longer possessed the relationship required to become a next moment.
Raiyo hung one step from Aoikishi, blade raised, coat caught in motion.
His eyes moved.
Nothing else did.
Yamiya’s stylus stopped above the page.
“You cut his movement.”
Aoikishi shook his head.
“I cut where the movement was going.”
Raiyo forced one word through clenched teeth.
“Inertia?”
“No,” Aoikishi said.
“Inertia would have carried you forward.”
His fingers remained raised.
“I removed forward.”
Aoikishi lowered his hand.
Raiyo’s motion returned without the attack behind it.
He landed on both feet.
The blade stopped safely beside Aoikishi’s shoulder.
For the first time since leaving Zone 404, Raiyo looked surprised.
Aoikishi pointed toward the black doors behind them.
“You escaped the loop by cutting the corridor’s claim that every next door was the same door.”
Raiyo said nothing.
“That was clever,” Aoikishi continued.
“Raw.
Wasteful.
But clever.”
Raiyo looked at his sword.
“You can teach that level of control?”
“I can teach you why the cut worked.”
“And the rest?”
Aoikishi glanced at the three sheathed swords.
“The rest depends on whether you can listen without insulting everyone in the room.”
Raiyo considered this.
“No.”
“Close enough.”
A blue doorway opened beside them.
Kaosu fell through it with the burnt sandwich still in one hand.
He hit the courtyard on one knee.
Then looked up.
Raiyo was already walking toward Headquarters.
Kaosu stood.
“Where are you going?”
Raiyo looked back.
“I joined.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You stole my chair.”
Raiyo took the final drink from Aoikishi’s mug.
“I’ll need somewhere to sit.”
Kaosu’s aura returned.
Aoikishi stepped between them.
“Briefing in ten.”
Kaosu pointed at Raiyo.
“He is not sitting in my chair.”
Raiyo continued walking.
“Then arrive first.”
Kaosu ran after him.
Nyxus picked up what remained of his lunch.
Yamiya closed her notebook.
“What did you write?” Nyxus asked.
She looked toward the hallway where Kaosu was already shouting.
“ACT gained a swordsman.”
A crash came from inside.
Yamiya added one more line.
“And lost its last peaceful chair.”