Chapter 26: Origin of Black dranzer.
After the meal they gathered around the hearth.
Gingka told them everything.
The Dark Nebula facility. The crushing darkness of it. Ryuga appearing like a nightmare made flesh. L-Drago's overwhelming, suffocating power. The way it had torn Storm Pegasus apart piece by piece while Gingka was helpless to do anything but watch and feel every hit through the resonance bond.
"I lost," he said simply. "Completely. He wasn't just stronger. He was operating on a different level. Like comparing a candle to the sun."
His hands trembled slightly as he continued.
"And then someone else showed up."
He described Kai. The way the temperature had dropped when he appeared. The crimson eyes that reflected firelight wrong. The black phoenix erupting from his bey with wings that seemed to absorb light instead of reflect it.
"They fought," Gingka said quietly. "Kai and Ryuga. And I've never seen anything like it."
"The building started collapsing. The air itself felt wrong. Like reality was bending around them." He looked down at his hands. "I thought they were going to kill each other. Or maybe kill everyone there."
"Then the roof came down."
Silence.
"Another forbidden bey," Kenta whispered. "Like L-Drago?"
"Worse." Gingka met Hokuto's ancient eyes. "At least that's how it felt. L-Drago is pure destruction. But Black Dranzer..."
He struggled for words.
"It felt hungry."
Hokuto's playful expression vanished completely.
"Black Dranzer," the old dog said quietly. "You're certain that's what you saw?"
"That's what Kai called it. Right before they—" Gingka stopped. "What is it, Hokuto? Why does another forbidden bey exist? I thought L-Drago was sealed because it was the only one."
Hokuto was quiet for a long moment. The fire popped. Rain continued its steady assault on the roof.
Finally he stood and walked to an old cabinet in the corner. Retrieved a scroll that looked older than the house itself.
The parchment was dark. Almost black. It smelled like smoke and iron and something else. Something that made Gingka's skin crawl.
"Sit down," Hokuto said. His voice had changed. Stripped of all warmth. "All of you. This isn't a bedtime story."
They obeyed silently, forming a circle around the hearth.
Hokuto unrolled the scroll carefully. Crude drawings appeared in the firelight. Battlefields. Bodies.
"You want to know about Black Dranzer?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Then understand this first: it wasn't born. It was *made*."
His eyes reflected the firelight strangely.
"In a war that consumed empires, there was a priest. A scholar who studied the science of death. He watched kingdoms burn. Watched men kill each other by the thousands. And he became obsessed with a question."
Hokuto's voice dropped lower.
"Could death itself be weaponized? Could human darkness be given form?"
"He gathered materials. Ashes from fallen emperors who'd ruled millions. Blood from soldiers who died screaming his god's name. Steel melted down from swords that had each ended hundreds of lives."
Kenta's breathing had gone shallow.
"And he poured it all—all that death, all that rage, all that human darkness concentrated and distilled—into a single fusion wheel."
Silence.
The fire popped. Everyone jumped.
"What happened?" Madoka whispered.
Hokuto's expression was unreadable.
"It woke up."
Those three words hung in the air like a curse.
"The bey became aware. Started choosing its wielders. Always warriors. Always the ambitious. Always those who thought they could control what fundamentally cannot be controlled."
"For centuries it passed from hand to hand. Destroying armies. Consuming wielders." His voice became barely audible. "Growing stronger with every death it witnessed."
"That's impossible," Benkei said, but his voice shook. "Beys just don't—"
"This one does." Hokuto's eyes found Gingka's. "And so does L-Drago."
The old dog moved closer to the fire.
"Both were forged as weapons. Both became something more. Both developed hunger."
"They've clashed across history. Neither could consume the other completely. The dragon's ability to absorb power was countered by the phoenix's ability to steal rotation. They were perfectly matched."
"So they kept fighting. Century after century. War after war. Empire after empire."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"Until one day, a Pegasus wielder sealed L-Drago away. Ended the cycle—some say it was one of your ancestors, Gingka. The records are unclear.".
For a moment, Hokuto's voice almost sounded relieved—like a man remembering the end of a nightmare.
"But that wasn't the only thing that vanished."
His gaze slowly lifted, settling on Gingka with quiet, crushing weight.
"As L-Drago was sealed, Black Dranzer disappeared as well."
The fire cracked sharply, as if reacting to the name.
"No record of its destruction. No sign of its wielder. One moment it was there—burning across battlefields, devouring everything in its path…"
Hokuto's voice dropped to a near whisper.
"And the next… it was simply gone."
Kenta swallowed hard. "Gone…? Like it just vanished?"
Hokuto nodded faintly. His eyes darkened. "It was as if the world itself rejected it. Or perhaps…"
He paused.
"…perhaps it chose to disappear."
The room felt colder.
"For generations, it became nothing more than a myth. A warning told in fragments. Something even historians were afraid to fully record."
His gaze sharpened.
A long, heavy silence followed.
His gaze settled on Gingka and didn't waver.
"But now L-Drago is free. And Black Dranzer has appeared in the hands of Kai Hiwatari."
"The ancient rivalry has been reborn."
Kenta's voice came out small. Childlike. "What happens if they fight? If they really fight?"
Hokuto was quiet for so long Gingka thought he wouldn't answer.
"I don't know," the old dog admitted finally.
That admission—that even Hokuto with his centuries of knowledge and experience didn't know—was somehow more terrifying than any prophecy of doom.
"But I've lived a very, very long time," Hokuto continued softly. "I've seen empires rise and fall. Watched the world change a thousand times. Witnessed wars that reshaped continents."
He looked toward the mountains, though the walls blocked any view.
"And I've never been afraid."
His eyes came back to Gingka.
"Until now."
The fire crackled. Outside, thunder rolled.
Nobody spoke.
Madoka's fingers didn't just fly; they trembled slightly, a detail she masked by pressing harder into the keys. The glow of the screen washed out her face, making her look as tired as she felt.
"Black Dranzer," she whispered. The name felt heavy, like lead in her mouth. She didn't look up. She couldn't. If she looked at the others, she'd have to acknowledge the fear tight in her chest. "If it's forged from what you say... what does that kind of exposure do to the person holding it?"
Hokuto's ears flattened, his voice dropping to a gravelly low. "It hollows them out. It takes their strength and replaces it with hunger. Their bonds, their humanity—it consumes it all until they're just a shell piloted by something that was never human."
The "clinical" mask Madoka usually wore cracked. She bit her lip, her mind racing back—not to Gingka's cheerful heroics, but to a time before the Pegasus began its rotation. She remembered a boy who had been cold even then, but at least he had been there. This new darkness was different.
"Then it's a feedback loop," she murmured, her voice regained a frantic, protective edge. "It's not just magic; it's a resonance frequency. It's destabilizing the blader's natural wavelength to force a sync with the Dark Power."
She pulled up a jagged, pulsing energy signature on her monitor. Her eyes weren't just focused; they were desperate.
"If I can isolate the mechanism... find the counter-frequency... I can build a dampener into the launcher. Or a stabilizer for the wheel." She looked up, her eyes wide and wet with a mix of anger and worry. "I need to analyze it directly. I need to see what it's doing to his pulse while he's spinning it."
Kyoya scoffed from the shadows, crossing his arms. "Good luck. You think Kai's going to sit still for a check-up? He's not exactly 'taking appointments' for repairs, Madoka."
"I don't care if he wants me to or not!" Madoka snapped, her voice cracking as her temper flared. "He's going to break his Bey, and then he's going to break himself. I've known him too long to let him be this stupid."
She turned back to the screen, her jaw set in that stubborn line her friends knew all too well. She wasn't just fixing a machine. To Madoka, a Beyblade was a heart, and Kai's was currently redlining into a total collapse.
"Every Bey has a mechanical weakness," she muttered, her typing becoming a rhythmic, aggressive staccato. "Even the ones trying to eat their owners. I'll find it. I have to."
Hokuto watched her, noting how she didn't call it a 'problem' to be solved, but a person to be saved. That was the mechanic's burden—and Madoka's heart.
Then he turned back to Gingka.
"Your father sacrificed everything to seal L-Drago the first time," he said quietly. "Ryo gave his life so that bey would never hurt anyone again."
His voice carried a weight that pressed down on Gingka's shoulders like a physical thing.
"Now his son has to face not just the dragon he died to seal, but the phoenix as well."
Hokuto didn't finish the thought.
He didn't need to.
The fire burned lower. Rain hammered the roof. Outside, the storm showed no signs of stopping.
They sat in silence, each processing in their own way what they'd just learned.
Finally Hyoma stood and began banking the fire for the night.
"Storm should break by morning," he said. "Get some rest. You'll want to leave at first light."
One by one they found sleeping spaces. Rolled out blankets. Settled in.
But Gingka lay awake for a long time, Storm Pegasus clutched in his hand, listening to the rain and thinking about crimson eyes and black wings and a hunger that could never be satisfied.
***
Dawn broke clear and cold.
The storm had passed in the night, leaving the world washed clean. Puddles reflected pale sky. The air smelled like wet earth and and pine.
They packed their gear in silence. The weight of Hokuto's story from the night before sat heavy on all of them.
Gingka shouldered his bag and took one last look at the mountain peaks rising behind Koma Village. The shrine was up there somewhere. The torn pieces of blank parchment scattered in dust.
The place where he'd lost himself.
And found himself again.
Storm Pegasus rested in his pocket—damaged, exhausted, but alive. Their bond had survived the breaking. That was what mattered.
"We're not ready yet," he said quietly to the wind. To Pegasus. To himself.
He thought of Ryuga's mocking laughter echoing through the collapsing facility. Of Kai's crimson eyes burning with cold fire. Of black wings spreading wide enough to swallow the sky.
Two forbidden beys. Two bladers who'd embraced darkness and been transformed by it.
And him—just a kid from Koma Village with a damaged Pegasus and a restored spirit.
The odds were impossible.
But impossible had never stopped him before.
"When the time comes," Gingka said, "we'll face them. Together."
He looked back at his friends preparing to leave. Madoka triple-checking her equipment. Kenta helping Benkei with his pack. Kyoya standing apart but still present.
This time he wouldn't fight alone.
"Wait for us, Ryuga. Kai."
The smallest smile touched his lips.
"The real Storm Pegasus is coming."
***
Hokuto and Hyoma stood at the village edge, watching the group make their way down the mountain trail.
They stood there until the travelers became small dots against the morning landscape. Until even those dots disappeared into the tree line.
"You didn't tell them everything," Hyoma said quietly.
Hokuto's tail had stopped wagging entirely.
"No."
"About what happened the last time those two beys fought? When Pegasus tried to seal them both?"
"No."
The old dog's eyes stayed fixed on the empty trail.
Hyoma waited.
"The crater is still there," Hokuto said at last, his voice quieter now—less like a storyteller, more like a witness. "Vast enough to swallow entire cities. It lies where a great civilization once stood… long before any map remembered its name."
Hyoma didn't interrupt.
"Today, people call it the Ramgarh Crater," Hokuto continued. "They say it was formed by a meteorite. A rock from the heavens, falling with unimaginable force."
A faint, knowing pause.
"They aren't entirely wrong… but they aren't right either."
The wind shifted across the mountainside, carrying a dry, distant chill.
"What the world recorded as a falling star… was something far worse," Hokuto said. "It was the collision of two powers that should never have met at full strength."
Silence.
"Nothing thrives there," Hokuto went on. "Not truly. Life returns slowly, cautiously… but the earth beneath remains scarred. Even now, Bladers who pass near it say their Beys feel… uneasy. As if something buried deep below is still watching."
Hyoma exhaled quietly.
"Ancient records gave it many names," Hokuto said. "Out of fear… out of respect for what happened there."
His voice dropped.
"Some called it The Scar."
A beat.
"Others… The Silent Ring."
He turned away from the trail.
"If those beys finish what they started—if Gingka and his friends can't stop them—"
Hokuto didn't finish.
They stood there as the sun climbed higher, watching the trail long after there was nothing left to see.
"Should we have warned them?" Hyoma asked quietly. "About the crater? About what happened?"
Hokuto's laugh was bitter. Tired. Old.
"And say what? That the last collision between forbidden beys created a wasteland the size of a small country? That it killed everything—people, animals, plants, even the bacteria in the soil—in a single instant?"
He looked at his friend.
"They're already carrying the weight of the world. Let them hope a little longer."
His voice dropped to something only Hyoma could hear.
"Hope is all any of us have left anyway."
The old dog turned and padded back toward the village, suddenly looking every one of his countless years.
Behind him, Hyoma stood watching the empty trail.
The mountain loomed over them both, ancient and unchanging.
Keeping its secrets.
[END CHAPTER 25]