Smoke still clung to the shattered execution plaza like a ghost refusing to leave.
The air stank of blood and scorched metal; ash drifted from the broken scaffolding like black snow.
Genji wiped Ren's electricity-burn from his cheek with the back of his glove. He looked at the red smear on his hand, as if confirming something he had already decided long before stepping foot here.
"Shiori," he said quietly, almost conversational, "do you know what happens to a land that shelters traitors?"
Shiori rolled her dislocated shoulder back into place with a wet pop and spat blood onto the stone tiles.
"It rots," she answered.
Genji nodded once.
Not raising his voice.
Not giving a speech.
Just issuing a death sentence like he was ordering breakfast.
"Then we cut out the rot."
He raised two fingers.
The signal.
The soldiers around the plaza straightened like puppets pulled by the same string.
A heartbeat of silence.
Then—
BA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA—!!!
Gunfire erupted at once, thunderous and overlapping, ripping into the early morning air as if the world itself was being torn open. Soldiers unloaded into the nearest rows of civilians — families, merchants, elderly — no warning, no mercy.
Bodies convulsed.
Clothes tore.
Blood misted into the air in bright, horrifying arcs.
Screams bloomed across Kakegawa like wildfire.
People sprinted in every direction — tripping, colliding, falling — trying to escape through alleys that were already filled with soldiers. Mothers threw themselves over their children. Men tried to shield strangers. It didn't matter.
Bullets didn't care.
SHHH-KRAAAANG—!
A rocket punched into a tea shop.
The explosion bloomed outward like a fiery blossom, sending wood, clay tiles, and human silhouettes flying across the plaza.
A burning body hit the ground near Ren and rolled, leaving a smear of blackened flesh.
He didn't even know if it had been a man or a woman.
Shiori stepped over the corpse casually, drawing her blade with her unbroken arm.
"I warned you people," she said, voice hoarse but steady.
"I told you… Kigen misuse brings consequences."
A child's voice cried out somewhere behind the soldiers.
Genji didn't turn.
He simply pointed toward the inner district.
"Advance. Block every exit. No one leaves Kakegawa."
The army surged forward.
Shields up.
Boots pounding.
Flamethrowers igniting.
"Cleanse the district."
Shiori inhaled once, sharp.
"No survivors."
A horn blared in the distance.
A horrible, metallic, haunting note.
BOOOOOOM—!!!
The eastern wall of Kagekawa exploded open as armored transports pushed through, tires grinding over stone and mud. Soldiers poured out in organized rows, rifles raised, masks on, eyes dead.
The slums of Kakegawa filled with screams.
Real screams.
Civilian screams.
A mother pulling her child back into a doorway.
A vendor overturns his stall trying to run.
A man tripping over his own feet as soldiers fired warning shots.
"They… They're shooting!? Why!?"
"Wh-What did we do—!?"
"They said they'd PROTECT us!"
"This isn't the Dominion—! This can't be—!"
But it was.
It was happening.
Kagekawa was being erased.
A civilian stumbled toward Genji, palms raised, tears in his eyes.
"PLEASE! My family—we follow the laws— we pay the taxes—why are you doing this!?"
Genji didn't even look at him.
A soldier stepped forward, swung the butt of his rifle—
CRACK.
The man dropped like a cut puppet.
Ren felt something break in his chest.
WHOOSH—!!!
A trail of fire roared down Main Street, washing over a row of merchant stalls and consuming everything in its path. The flames crawled up wooden posts, raced across rooftops, leaped to the next home, and the next.
Within seconds, half the street was a burning corridor.
The smell turned unbearable — cooked grain, burning paper, melting plastic… and the unmistakable stench of human skin.
Ren stumbled to his feet — not fully conscious, not fully awake. His siblings clustered around him loosely, not in a tactical formation, but raw instinct, fear, and fury knotting their bodies closer together.
No one spoke.
They couldn't.
Their voices would shatter under the weight of what they were seeing.
A man bolted past them, clutching his bleeding arm, eyes blown wide with terror—
A stray shot hit him in the spine.
He folded forward like a puppet with cut strings.
Another woman tried to run, dragging her elderly mother—
The flamethrower caught them both.
They didn't even have time to scream properly before they collapsed into a burning heap.
Ren's breathing turned ragged. Electricity flickered off his forearms in small, involuntary snaps — a newborn power convulsing with his horror.
Genji finally turned toward them.
His expression was almost gentle.
"This isn't personal," he said.
"Entire villages fall to prevent a single Grace-wielding threat from destabilizing the nation."
Shiori rested her blade on her shoulder, eyes dead.
"You Fiends should have stayed hidden."
Ren's voice came out like a scraped-raw whisper.
"You're… killing everyone."
Genji didn't blink.
"Kakegawa sealed its fate the moment your mother revealed herself."
A building behind him crumbled under its own flames, collapsing inward in a roar of sparks and embers.
Genji didn't look back at it.
He didn't need to.
He had already seen this scene many times before.
"Children," he said, "I'll offer you one chance for mercy. Kneel. I'll end this quick."
The plaza went quiet.
The fire crackled.
The soldiers advanced in formation.
Screams echoed far across the district.
A soldier sprinted at him, blade raised.
Ren's fingers twitched long before he realized they were moving. A cold tremor ran up his spine, tightening around his lungs like a fist. His breath came sharp and uneven, the world around him blurring at the edges as if someone else were pulling strings inside his muscles. He tried to speak—tried to tell Aya, or Kaede, or anyone that something was wrong—but his jaw locked mid-word. A buzzing filled his skull, not quite a voice, not quite a thought, something older and hungrier pressing against the inside of his mind. His vision flickered, black veins stretching across the whites of his eyes. Lightning crawled under his skin like insects. His body stepped forward without him, shoulders rising, hands curling into claws. Panic flared—but his nerves no longer obeyed him. Ren wasn't moving. Ren was being moved.
He unleashed.
KZZZ-RRRRAAAAHHHHMMM—!!!
Lightning exploded out of him in a violent eruption — no form, no technique, just pure instinctive rage. The soldier was thrown backward so violently his armor bent inward, ribs collapsing under the force.
He crashed onto the stone tiles, convulsing wildly as electricity surged through every nerve in his body.
Ren couldn't stop.
The lightning grew brighter.
Sharper.
Louder.
It howled like a feral animal, pouring out from Ren's palms in a white-blue torrent.
The soldier's skin blistered instantly.
Blood vessels burst beneath his cheeks, turning his face purple, then black.
His eyes rolled upward, pupils burning white.
He tried to scream — but his jaw locked, teeth shattering as electricity flooded his skull.
The smell hit next —
hair burning, flesh crackling, armor heating until it glowed faintly red.
Ren pushed harder.
The body began to lift off the ground, twitching violently, limbs jerking in unnatural angles. Smoke spilled from his mouth. His tongue blackened and split.
Finally—
The lightning punched a hole straight through his chest.
A blast of white-blue tore out the soldier's back, spraying burnt tissue across the stone like smoldering confetti.
The corpse dropped.
A smoking, twitchless husk.
Ren stood over it, chest heaving, electricity still crawling spider-like across his arms.
Genji stared at him for a frozen moment.
"…So," he whispered, voice barely audible over the crackling fires,
"That's the power of a Grace."
Ren's breath hitched sharply.
He staggered back.
"What… what did I just—"
But he couldn't finish.
Because dozens of soldiers were turning toward them now.
Genji lifted his sword, eyes cold.
"Children or not…
…your existence ends tonight."
And Kagekawa, once loud and alive, drowned under the sound of boots, gunfire, and screaming.
The genocide had begun...