At the central command of the Japanese Maritime Forces, a heavy silence fell across the room.
Officers stood still, their faces etched with disbelief, as the trajectory maps flickered on the main screen lines once precise now veering wildly off course.
“Failed...?” murmured a senior officer, his voice barely more than a whisper. His eyes remained fixed on the screen, unblinking.
“What sort of phantom commands that vessel? We are beneath the waves, and yet they manoeuvre as if gliding down a motorway in broad daylight!”
His voice grew sharp, cracking under the weight of frustration and a reluctant trace of admiration.
“Captain!” called out a young lieutenant from across the room, stepping forward with barely restrained urgency.
“Give us the order. Let us try again...” His tone burned with a soldier’s pride and a hunger to redeem what had just slipped through their grasp.
Takumi Aso, officer and commanding captain, stood in stillness, the dim green glow of the radar casting ghostly reflections across his face.
His eyes, once sharp with resolve, now gazed through the screen as if glimpsing a spectre on the other side.
After a moment’s silence, he gave the faintest shake of his head.
“Sergeant Keita… I fear we are not equipped to confront this adversary,” he murmured the words calm, but underscored by a quiet finality.
Keita Nakamura was struck dumb. In all the missions they had weathered together, he had placed unwavering faith in Captain Aso.
His judgement, his instincts, his uncanny ability to navigate chaos.
Not once had he heard doubt in his commanding officer’s voice.
And now, before his very eyes, he witnessed it, not fear, but a profound recognition.
The look of a man who had glimpsed something beyond the familiar borders of human comprehension.
“But Captain…” Keita protested, voice taut with urgency. “They’re breaching our territorial waters. We can’t simply do nothing!”
Takumi turned to him then, and for a fleeting moment, a serene smile flickered on his otherwise drawn face.
“Leave it to me. I shall inform the Supreme Commander myself,” he said with quiet certainty, before striding from the control chamber, leaving behind a silence so deep it seemed to echo.
No one moved.
Keita’s gaze swept across his fellow officers, each one equally paralysed, their expressions caught between disbelief and dawning resignation.
With a weary exhale, Keita lowered his eyes as though surrendering to a reality none of them had expected.
Meanwhile, Takumi walked with steady steps down a corridor cloaked in shadow.
A passage forbidden to all but the highest-ranking officials. The gloom closed around him like velvet.
Outwardly, he carried himself with composed grace, but within, unease coiled tightly around his heart, whispering of powers not yet understood, and battles not yet begun.
At the terminus of the dimly lit corridor stood a door unlike any other carved with solemn precision and exuding an air of quiet dread.
Flanking it were two guards, rigid as statues, their gazes locking onto Captain Takumi the moment his footsteps echoed near.
They did not carry the weapons of the modern soldier, no rifles nor sidearms adorned their belts.
Instead, they bore sheathed katanas at their hips, blades forged in a different age, where honour was drawn in steel and duty was silent and absolute.
“Captain Takumi,” one of them called out, voice taut with protocol.
The other shifted slightly, fingers brushing the hilt of his sword, not in threat, but in reverent readiness.
Takumi inclined his head with deliberate calm, “The Supreme Commander must be informed without delay. An unidentified vessel is en route to our territorial waters moving at unnatural speed. We engaged with torpedoes, but… all attempts failed,” he said, his voice low and weighted with the gravity of the revelation.
A flicker of astonishment crossed the sentry’s otherwise impassive face.
“Understood. Please wait here,” he replied, then turned and disappeared behind the heavy door, leaving Takumi with the other silent sentinel and the humming tension of what lay beyond.
Moments passed, long enough for the air to thicken with apprehension before the door opened once more.
The guard bowed, deeply and with ceremony.
“You may enter, Captain. The Supreme Commander is awaiting your report,” he announced, his words calm and measured, though they carried the iron edge of finality.
Captain Takumi inclined his head in a solemn bow, then stepped into the chamber, a space of hallowed stillness, where time itself seemed to tread softly.
At the heart of the room, upon a raised wooden dais veiled in folds of lustrous silk, sat a man of indeterminate age, though time had etched its mark upon him with quiet precision.
His long black hair, bound neatly behind him, bore the pallor of age, now more silver than shadow with only the faintest trace of violet glimmering through, like the last embers of a dying star.
His eyes remained closed, his presence rooted in a silence so profound it bordered on the sacred.
The weight of unspoken wisdom hung in the air like incense in an ancient temple.
Captain Takumi sank to his knees without hesitation, his breath shallow, and bowed until his brow met the polished floorboards.
His voice, when it came, was barely more than a breath.
“Supreme Commander…”
It was not merely a greeting, it was a vow, a surrender of ego before something far greater.
The elder’s eyelids lifted with the stillness of drifting ash.
His gaze, when it found Takumi, held a calm ferocity like a quiet sea concealing untold storms.
“Rise, Takumi,” he spoke not loudly, but with the kind of authority that needed no volume to be heard across empires.
Takumi opened his mouth to speak, urgency and shame battling for precedence, but the Supreme Commander raised a single hand, bidding silence with regal precision.
Then, with the faintest curve of a smile, less warmth than omenn, the elder murmured, “Vuradisuta has come.”
Without a word of warning, the man’s hand moved like a shadow through moonlight silent, swift, and absolute.
In one seamless motion, he seized the samurai blade resting at his side...
SLICED!!!
The red apple poised on the table was instantly carved into eight immaculate pieces.
They fell apart with uncanny grace, each slice landing without protest, save for the gentle whisper of juice pattering onto the lacquered wood.
Captain Takumi remained utterly still, rooted to the floor by something deeper than fear, something ancient.
His breath caught in his throat, his uniform clung to his back, soaked with cold sweat.
“Eat,” the Supreme Commander said simply, extending one of the slices to him while placing another between his own teeth, chewing with the serenity of a man wholly unbothered by consequence.
“Th-Thank you, Supreme Commander…” Takumi stammered, his voice a strained whisper.
Though dread laced his every fibre, he took the slice with both hands, bowing ever so slightly, as though the fruit itself bore divine significance.
As they chewed, silence returned like fog, thick and watchful, until the elder’s voice broke it once more.
“It is a mercy you did not succeed in striking it.”
Takumi lifted his gaze, startled, “Supreme Commander… forgive me! What do you mean?”
The man inclined his head ever so faintly, his expression unreadable beneath centuries of discipline.
“Vuradisuta,” he said quietly. “That is its name. Closest companion to Ryu.”
“A-Ah…” A chill ran down Takumi’s spine. His eyes widened. “He… he is the Young Master’s companion?!”
The man inclined his head once more, “He is the sole remaining hope for my son’s recovery,” he said, rising from his meditative seat with the grace of a seasoned warrior.
His bearing was upright, his presence now radiating the silent fury of restrained power.
Captain Takumi remained kneeling, paralysed by the weight of the moment. His heartbeat thundered in his chest, each thud a warning bell of dread.
“If Vuradisuta perishes… and the cause is your doing…” the Supreme Commander murmured.
His voice barely above a whisper, yet it cleaved the air like the blade he wielded.
In one fluid motion, too swift for the eye to follow, he unsheathed his katana and lashed it towards the wall.
SLICED! SLICED! SLICED!
Steel sang through silence, slicing again and again, until the markings upon the stone formed a single, grim ideograph.
「虐殺」
Gya-koo-satsu
(Massacre)
Captain Takumi’s body dropped lower still, prostrating himself in abject submission, forehead pressed hard to the floor.
His limbs shook uncontrollably, and his voice was a mere ghost of breath.
“F-Forgive our ignorance… Supreme Commander…”
The man said nothing at first, letting the silence linger like a drawn blade at the throat.
At last, his voice emerged. Calm, but ice-edged.
“He is not our enemy. You are to let him reach our shores unharmed. Withdraw your fleet.”
Then he looked directly into Takumi’s eyes, with a gaze as implacable as a mountain beneath stormclouds.
“And this secret! You will entomb it. Not one soul must hear of it. Not one whisper must escape.”
“Y-Yes, Supreme Commander!” Takumi gasped, his hands slipping slightly against the floor as he scrambled into a low bow once more.
“Now go!,” came the final command, delivered with the certainty of a man who did not repeat himself.
Takumi did not pause. His legs carried him with the urgency of a man fleeing some ancient curse.
He tore through the dim corridors, the echoes of his footsteps scattering like startled birds through the silence.
His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts, as though he had left more than just words behind in that sanctified chamber.
The guards stationed at the threshold turned their heads as he passed, alarm flashing briefly in their eyes.
But Takumi gave them no glance, no nod of protocol or acknowledgement.
His face, drained of all colour, bore the vacant pallor of one who had glimpsed a truth too heavy to bear.
Neither soldier spoke, they simply exchanged a look that said, "Something has changed."
Inside the chamber, all was still.
The elder commander stood alone at the centre of the room, unmoving, carved in silence like the last sentinel of a forgotten age.
His eyes drifted shut, not in weariness, but in invocation.
A long breath flowed from his chest, deep and measured, as though he were drawing power from the very bones of the earth.
And then, something shifted.
A ripple of light, faintly violet, shimmered around him, not with heat or brilliance, but with the quiet intensity of purpose.
It rose like mist from his limbs, curling gently into the air, coiling and reaching outward across invisible threads of space and time.
The chamber, though unchanged in form, seemed to pulse with a subtle rhythm, like the breath of the ocean itself.
His mind, sharpened by decades of silent discipline, sought beyond stone and steel, stretching across the deep blue expanse.
His thoughts brushed the skin of the sea, feeling, sensing…
Until they found what they sought, the submerged vessel Swift70, gliding like a shadow beneath the waves, its precious passengers still intact.
The man pivoted on the spot, facing the direction of the submarine.
And then, as though compelled by something greater than ritual, he lowered himself to the floor.
One bow. Then another. And another still.
Each movement was slower than the last, burdened with reverence and desperation.
His palms pressed against the cold floor as though it were sacred earth, his head lowered so deeply that his shoulders trembled under the weight of his hope.
“My Lord, Vuradisuta…” he breathed, the name escaping like wind through autumn leaves. “Please… come swiftly… bring healing to my son…”
A single tear fell, then another. They struck the ground like rain upon stone.
His eyes were raw, his voice frayed at the edges.
And in that moment, all his might, all his rank, all the legends whispered in his name meant nothing.
He was no longer a commander. He was simply a father, undone by love, pleading across the void.