One month.
That's how long he had been inside his cell.
Thirty-one days of pure silence. A room without clocks or windows. A bed without any sheets. Bright lights that never turned off. And restraints that didn't just hold him — they bled him every second.
Lucien sat upright now, his wrists bound to the sides of the chair by cuffs that he could break easily if he wanted to. The air inside the room buzzed with an invisible field that made his skin tingle constantly, like ants crawling beneath every inch of flesh. They called it "containment."
He called it something else.
"Training his mind."
Because no matter how much they cut, burned, starved, or drugged him — he hadn't broken.
Not once.
Not even when they ripped his fingernails and fingers out one by one.
Not when they fed electric currents through his spine and chest until his vision shattered into pure white.
Not when they dropped him into sensory deprivation tanks for seventy-two hours straight, then woke him with screams, images, and strobe flashes meant to rewire his soul.
He didn't scream the entire time.
He didn't even blink when he was in there.
On the first day, they asked him questions.
"Where does your divine-like energy come from?""What kinda god are you bonded to?""How did you override the kill-switch in Shinjuku that night?""Do you still feel the urge to destroy everything?"
Lucien had only smiled faintly.
"Does it even matter at this point?"
They stopped asking questions after that. And started testing and hurting him instead.
By week two, they resorted to hallucination poison. A thick purple gas that flooded the chamber, causing the mind to twist back on itself.
Lucien saw things. His thought he saw his mother's face, melted and distorted. Ayumu's and Kagetsu´s body split in half. Jason screaming for help. Rylen drowning in his own blood. Emiluna burning alive while smiling at him.
But even through that, he remembered the voice.
Not theirs.
Her voice.
The Creator of Gods.
A presence that wrapped around his mind like silk and shadow.
"They want to break the shell. Let them try. They'll never reach the core of your pain.""Be still. Be silent. Let them fear what they can't control."
By week three, the worst part began.
They called it the "Mirror Protocol." He was strapped into a chair of blades — the inside lined with reflection panels that duplicated his image, then twisted it. He'd watch dozens of versions of himself scream, bleed, and die over and over. Sometimes they talked back.
Sometimes… they mocked him. Calling him a loser and an orphan.
And yet he stayed calm.
Each test brought more and more pain — chemically induced seizures, bone vibration drills, nanite disassembly and regeneration attempts. Every wound was healed just enough to test on Lucien again the day after.
It wasn't science.
It was fear in lab coats.
But Lucien had learned something in the time that he was here. Something they hadn't.
The containment cuffs weren't perfect.
Every 6.43 hours, the right-side wall panel's energy field glitched — a microsecond flicker. Too fast for any normal human to perceive.
But Lucien wasn't normal anymore at this point.
He hadn't acted on it. Not yet. But each day he stared at it longer.
Timing it. Studying it to perfection.
Preparing for the day.
Because when he moved, there would be no second chance.
Outside the facility, the world kept going.
Division Five operated in fragments — like a machine missing its engine.
Jason sat alone in the training hall of the fifth division, punching a reinforced pillar until his knuckles bled through the wrappings. He hadn't spoken to anyone in almot a week. Not even Rylen. Not even Emiluna.
After Lucien's arrest, Jason had been placed under review for "dereliction of protocol." They tried to suspend him for a year. Said his decision to fight alongside Lucien during the Shinjuku/ Shibuya incident endangered civilians.
He almost accepted the punishment.
Until Karu walked into the boardroom, dropped Jason's full combat record onto the table, and said:
"You suspend him, I be walking away with him."
Jason was still here in the Nighguard Corps.
But he felt like a ghost in his own squad.
Emiluna, meanwhile, had gone to visit Lisa.
Lisa was in stable condition after the fight with the level 3 monster. Her suit — Violet Danger X — had fused with her spine during the last fight, overloading her nervous system. She'd needed surgery on her spine. Now she lay wrapped in gauze, barely moving.
Emiluna sat beside her, a bag of chips unopened in her lap.
"You should be sleeping Lisa," she said softly.
Lisa's lips cracked a grin. "Sleep's for humans."
Emiluna snorted. "You're not a demon yet girl."
Silence.
Then Lisa turned her head. Her violet eyes serious.
"You think he's still alive by now?"
"…He is," Emiluna whispered. "But he is probably not the same Lucien that we know."
Lisa clenched her fist. "They're gonna kill him soon. I can feel it."
"Not if we stop them," Emiluna replied. "But we can´t do it not alone."
Somewhere in Tokyo's high court, deep in a private briefing room, Ministry of Justice and Security Kaido Fujimura adjusted his cufflinks.
He was calm. Always calm. The type of man who didn't shout — he didn't need to.
The people in the room listened to him like he was law incarnate.
"I've seen the data of the DemonBoy" he said, pacing slowly. "One boy. One divine core. Level 2 abomination defeated. Fifty city blocks vaporized."
He stopped talking for a second.
"Now tell me — why is that not enough to justify execution?"
The room murmured.
"We're not killing a child anymore," said one member.
"He's not a child," Fujimura snapped. "He's a vessel of something we don ´ t understand. You think i care about morality? About restraint? He's calm now, sure. But the moment he slips — the moment that divine spark ignites — Tokyo won't survive it a second time."
Another councilwoman spoke. "But he hasn't acted out since his arrest. If anything, he's been… compliant."
Fujimura turned to her with a sharp smile.
"That's what scares me most about the boy."
He pressed a button. A projection lit up. Images of Lucien strapped down, calm-eyed, unmoving and steady — enduring pain levels far above normal human thresholds.
"This is not submission. This is planning and plotting. He's waiting for the right moment. Watching every camera and movement. You've all seen the same footage."
He let the silence hang.
"Preemptive execution is the only option. Publicly. We set an example. We show we're still in control of this country."
And far beneath the earth, in a cold, sterile room painted with bloodless white light, Lucien opened his eyes.
He had heard everything.
Not through walls. Not through technology.
He felt it in his core.
Like a cold wind brushing against his spine.
Plans. Words. Decisions being made.
All of them spinning toward the inevitable.
And Lucien didn't blink.
He smiled.
"When the time comes…"
"…burn it all to the ground."
Jason stood alone on the rooftop of HQ, the night wind dragging against his black leather jacket like invisible hands trying to pull him backward.
He didn't move for hours.
Didn't flinch.
His knuckles were still bruised after his so called training session in the fifth training ground. His jaw ached from biting down on guilt every time he walked past Lucien's empty room.
He remembered how it had felt to laugh with him. To train with him and learning him new tricks.
Now the silence was louder than any explosion he'd faced in Shinjuku.
"Jason."
He didn't turn around. Didn't need to.
Emiluna stepped beside him, her long white coat fluttering in the wind.
"Still thinking about quitting the corps?" she asked.
"No i'm not quitting," Jason muttered. "I just… don't know what we are anymore without him. What I am. We watched them take him. We let them take him."
"You think I'm proud of that Jason?" she said, voice sharp. "You think I sleep at night?"
He clenched his fists. "We're Division Five. We're supposed to protect our own family."
"We still can Jason," she said softly. "But not if we fall apart before the real fight even starts."
Jason didn't reply to her. But the tremor in his hands began to fade.
Meanwhile, in the med bay, Lisa struggled to sit up as Emiluna gently adjusted the IV tube in her arm.
"Stop acting tough for me," Emiluna said, narrowing her eyes. "You're still recovering from your injuries."
Lisa smirked. "I am tough. This is just inconvenient."
They sat in silence for a moment.
"Why did you ask to see me?" Lisa finally asked. "You don't even speak that much."
"Because i don't dislike you like i do others," Emiluna muttered. "You're just reckless. And arrogant. And snarky."
"…You just described half our squad."
Emiluna smiled despite herself.
Then her face darkened.
"I came because I needed to ask you something. About Lucien."
Lisa blinked. "Go on."
"You also saw him fight on TV right. At full power. That monster in Shinjuku… it was evolving in real-time. And Lucien—"
"Destroyed it like a god."
Emiluna nodded. "So you get it. He's not the threat to. The system we live in is."
Lisa sat up straighter, her voice low.
"I get it. Which is why I'm telling you now — if they announce his execution…"
"I won't let it go that far," Emiluna said. "None of us will let that happen to him."
Rylen found Karu on the upper training field of the HQ, surrounded by shattered dummies and burned earth.
The air was still sizzling with the aftermath of Chrono Breaker tests. Time energy warped in the sky like distant thunderclouds.
"Training again like always?" Rylen asked, approaching slowly.
"Not training," Karu said without looking back. "Preparing."
"For what?"
Karu turned, his eyes gleaming gold.
"For the moment we stop waiting and attack."
Rylen exhaled, stepping closer. "You're thinking of breaking him out."
Karu didn't deny it.
"I've seen the files. I've seen the pain they're putting him through right in this moment. This isn't justice. It's torture. And now they're talking execution?"
Rylen clenched his jaw. "I know. But charging in won't fix anything and you know that"
"It'll save him."
"It'll turn you into a criminal too," Rylen snapped. "Then what? We lose our strongest weapon and give them all the proof they need that Lucien inspires rebellion."
Karu was silent for a long moment.
Then he whispered, "I'd rather be a traitor with a spine than a soldier who kneels to people with power."
Rylen stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"I know you want to act. Hell, I do too. But there's a time for fury and rage… and a time for precision."
Karu's gaze softened — just barely.
"You're saying we just wait."
"I'm saying we prepare. We plan. Because if we do this wrong… he dies anyway."
Later that day at night, a Level 3 Abomination emerged in the coastal district of Shinagawa. Black tendrils of acidic mist slithered across rooftops. Civilians screamed. Sirens echoed.
Division Two was too far. Division Three was still recovering.
Only Division Five could respond.
Karu joined Rylen.
The creature stood twenty feet tall, dripping with bio-toxic sludge. A maw like a split shark's jaw gaped open across its chest, belching steam that melted asphalt.
It roared.
Karu rolled his neck. "Ugly beast."
Rylen tapped his comm. "Jason and Emiluna are five minutes out."
"We won't need them today."
Rylen arched an eyebrow. "Cocky as always."
Karu smiled. "Just confident in us."
The creature lunged.
Karu moved first — a blur of black and gold. Time fractured around his boots as he Flashstepped beneath the monster's claw, driving a fist laced with Chrono-pulse into its knee.
CRACK.
The limb shattered like glass under pressure.
The creature howled. Acid sprayed in all directions.
Rylen flipped over the wave, his dual blades drawn. With a smooth spin, he carved two deep lines across the abomination's flank, avoiding the corrosive blood with inch-perfect grace.
They moved like dancers — brutal, precise, unstoppable.
Karu Flashstepped again, this time appearing in midair.
"Rylen — launch."
Rylen crouched, then pushed off with explosive force, hurling Karu upward with a palm strike to the heel.
Karu spun.
Then punched downward.
"Chrono Breaker: Spiral Collapse."
The sky cracked. The monster's torso imploded inward like crushed tin.
Its scream didn't last. It had no lungs left.
Rylen landed beside Karu, both covered in sizzling black gore.
"Two minutes, ten seconds seconds," Rylen noted.
"Too slow, were getting old" Karu replied.
But they smiled at each other — just a flicker.
Because in that moment, they knew: the storm was coming.
And they were ready to stand in its path.