Chapter 98 — Mortal Instinct
The blow landed before the decision to dodge had finished traveling from Haru's mind to his body.
Haru was in the air — not from a calculated jump but from pure defensive impulse, his body acting before any conscious deliberation. The fake Kuto's fist passed underneath with a force that belonged not to the real Kuto but to an illusion that possessed his physical abilities without the emotional limits or the weight each person carries behind every strike.
He landed three meters away.
The uneven ground received him with the honesty of a surface that offered no cushion. His knees absorbed the impact, his palms found the dirt, the falling position trained deeply enough that his body found it regardless of his current state.
"Brother, you're getting boring." The fake Kuto's voice carried a calculated boredom that differed from the real Kuto's genuine coldness — not an absence of emotion, but a simulation of it. "Come play already."
Haru remained on the ground for a moment.
Not out of weakness. Out of thought.
*What if I kill this Kuto and it's the real one.*
The idea had been there from the beginning, with the persistence of something that could not be fully archived. Every time the dagger was in the right position, every time the angle was available — the thought arrived before the strike, and the strike stopped.
*I can't lose another brother. I can't.*
The fake Kuto advanced.
The punch came from below with a speed that gave no warning — aimed straight at Haru's chin before he had finished getting up. The impact wasn't lethal, but it carried real weight, launching his body backward and bringing the ground to him again, this time with less grace.
Haru rolled.
He stopped on his back. He looked up — at the smoke that served as a ceiling in this field with no visible sky.
*Why am I hesitating. Why.*
The answer was simple. Too simple to be comfortable.
The fear of losing someone special again.
*Again.*
---
The memory arrived without asking permission — using the physical pain as a gateway to older pain, taking advantage of the moment when his defenses were occupied with the present to bring the past unfiltered.
The mountains of Thailand had that specific high-altitude blue — not the blue of the plains, but the blue of a high place where the air had less between it and the sky. The small village with houses that were enough because enough was what there was, and what there was, was what mattered.
Haru had run.
Not as an adult — as a child who had not yet learned that running toward someone revealed too much about how much that person mattered. His feet on the mountain dirt with the lightness of a body that still didn't have enough years to carry weight.
"Brother! Brother!"
Hazu turned.
The smile he wore in that moment was the one Haru had guarded more carefully than anything else he had ever owned — not because it was rare, but because it was completely genuine. The kind of smile that asked for nothing in return, that existed simply because the person in front of him existed.
"It's you, Haru."
They sat on the hill with the comfort of people who had been in that place enough times for it to belong to them by accumulation.
"What are you looking at, brother?"
Hazu pointed upward. At the white dot moving with the slowness of something very large and very far away.
"That airplane."
Haru looked. He saw a small white dot.
"It's small."
"No." The smile held the patience of an older brother who appreciated the question before correcting the answer. "It's big. It only looks small because of the height."
Haru looked again at the dot that was big in a place he had not yet visited.
"Would you like to go up in that airplane?"
"Yes. With you and the whole family."
Hazu fell silent for a moment with the kind of silence that belonged to someone who had a thought he wasn't ready to say completely.
"Just the two of us. Our parents have already had their time. We'll have enough money to buy that — and much more."
"Why, brother?"
"Forget it."
The wind passed with the temperature of altitude — cold, but not uncomfortable when you were next to someone.
"Don't be late for dinner. It's Christmas. We're celebrating together."
"Okay, brother."
Hazu stayed on the hill.
Haru went down.
---
The gift box was made of woven straw, with the quality of something handmade that communicated that its value lay not in the material but in the time spent. Haru held it with the care of someone who had thought about what was inside for days.
The noise reached him before the house.
Not the sound of celebration — another kind. The kind the body recognizes as wrong before the mind has finished cataloging what it is hearing.
The door opened.
The smell came first.
Then the image.
Hazu was on his knees with the posture of someone engaged in concentrated work. Around him — the family. Mother. Father. The grandparents who had come for Christmas. The uncles. Arranged in a way that was not accidental.
The jars were thick glass with a transparency that hid nothing of what they contained.
The world spun.
Not as a metaphor — a physical sensation of a system that had received incompatible information and was now disoriented, trying to make the pieces fit.
"Brother." The voice came out without volume, without intention of being heard or unheard. "Why."
Hazu raised his face with the expression of someone caught in a task he had hoped to have more time to complete.
"Haru. I thought you'd be later."
"What is this, brother."
Not a question. A statement seeking an answer, but without the strength of a real question, because questions assume there is an acceptable answer.
"A bear." The voice came out with the calm of something rehearsed. "It came here. Killed everyone. Ran away."
"Why are you removing their organs."
"It would be a waste to bury them without making use of what they have of value."
Haru knelt beside his mother. The hands that had carried the gift box found her shoulders with the care of someone still trying to be normal, still trying to find the version of reality where this had an explanation that was not the explanation it was.
"Leave them. We'll bury them with what remains."
Hazu stood up.
His expression changed with the speed of a mask that no longer needed to be maintained.
"You really like living in misery."
The kick came before Haru had finished processing the sentence. He fell with the specific confusion of someone struck by the person they least expected — not from pain but from fundamental disorientation.
"I never liked this life. Never. This is my chance." Hazu's voice had the quality of something stored long enough to build pressure. "It wasn't easy. And you won't be the one to ruin it."
"It was you." The words came out with the clarity of someone who had reached a conclusion he didn't want to reach. "You did this."
Hazu raised his hands with a smile Haru would never again be able to see the same way.
"I did it for us."
The bamboo was on the ground two meters away. Haru didn't remember picking it up. It was simply in his hand with the presence of something reached before any conscious decision.
It entered Hazu's stomach with a force that was not calculated rage but a system that had reached its limit before it had the vocabulary for what it was feeling.
Hazu looked at the bamboo.
Then at Haru.
The smile that appeared was the wrong one. It was the smile of someone who had received confirmation of what he had expected.
"I'm proud of you, brother." The blood was beginning to mix with the words. "You want all the money for yourself. I always saw that you were like me."
Haru didn't answer.
He stood there looking with the emptiness of someone who had done something he still didn't fully understand the meaning of.
"Sell the organs." The voice was growing smaller with the gradualness of something ending. "Our family. Mine. Have a dignified life. This is our legacy to you."
Hazu stopped.
The silence that followed was of a different kind than any Haru had known before.
---
Years later, in a world that was not his own, the first time Haru opened his eyes in this place — the first thing he saw was Kuto.
With the same face.
The same structure. The same jawline. The same shape of the eyes with a quality that should have been impossible but was there with all the evidence of something real.
*I will not lose him again.*
The oath had not been spoken aloud. It had been made more permanently than words — engraved in the kind of place from which fundamental decisions come, that do not need to be repeated because they were never forgotten.
---
In the smoke, Haru stood up.
The wounds were present with the persistence of real damage that the system had not erased. Three cuts of varying depth. The shoulder that had absorbed a blow that should have been dodged but wasn't because the hesitation had lasted half a second too long.
He looked at the fake Kuto in front of him.
The illusion wore Hazu's smile.
Not Kuto's smile — Hazu's smile. The distinction the smoke had failed to make because the smoke used what it found, and what it had found in Haru was the overlap of the two people, the confusion that Haru himself had fed for months without admitting it was confusion.
"You are not the brother I want to protect."
The voice came out flat, not lacking emotion. It was emotion that had finally found direction.
"Then finish it." The fake Kuto assumed a stance with the provocation of an illusion designed to pull. "Come, brother."
Haru ran.
The HUD activated with the presence of a system recognizing a critical state.
---
**[UNIQUE SKILL: MORTAL INSTINCT — ACTIVATED]**
**[CONDITION: CRITICAL ACCUMULATED DAMAGE]**
**[LAST BREATH: ACTIVE]**
**[ABSOLUTE REFLEX: ACTIVE]**
**[BLOODLUST: ACTIVE — BONUS FROM WOUNDS]**
---
The speed was different.
Not greater in the sense of faster — different in the sense of more precise. As if the wounds had stripped away unnecessary layers and what remained was only the essential. Every movement carried the economy of someone who had stopped saving resources for later because the later depended on the now working completely.
The fake Kuto swung his sword in a descending arc.
Haru did not dodge — he passed under the arc with the technical distinction of someone who didn't avoid the blow but used the space it opened. The left dagger sliced the inside of the illusion's forearm. Black smoke poured from the cut with the quality of a wound on something made of smoke — not blood, but the substance the smoke had to lose.
The fake Kuto retreated.
*It reacts to damage.*
The information arrived with the clarity of observation that was only possible now that hesitation was gone.
Three strikes. Fast. Each in a different spot with the distribution of someone testing rather than trying to end it — identifying where the illusion was densest, where resistance was greatest, where the smoke that composed it was most concentrated.
The neck was where the illusion invested the least.
The thought arrived and the decision happened in a time with no measurable interval between them.
Haru created the clone.
Not with elaboration — the body that knew the skill executed it without needing to name it. The copy of smoke and shadow took his form and began to move with the quality of a decoy that didn't need to be perfect, only convincing for the right amount of time.
The fake Kuto saw the clone approaching from above.
Its eyes went upward with the response of something that detected an aerial threat.
Haru was already on the left angle.
The dagger went to the neck with the precision of a finishing blow he had delivered in more fights than he could name. Not with force — with location. The right spot was enough.
The fake Kuto clutched its neck.
It fell to its knees with the descent of something that had lost structure.
"Brother—" the voice came out with the quality of a final attempt. "It's me. I'm Kuto. Don't—"
The dagger entered its forehead.
The fake Kuto dissolved with the speed of an illusion that had completely lost cohesion — not gradually, but all at once. The black smoke that formed its body spread with the quality of a substance returning to a diffuse state before dissipating.
The space where it had been became empty.
Haru stood at the center of that emptiness with daggers in hand and wounds that Mortal Instinct was sustaining beyond what they would normally endure.
"It's finally over."
His hand moved to the system menu with the automaticity of a veteran who checks available resources after combat.
---
**[SYSTEM SHOP]**
**[MANA POTION — AVAILABLE]**
**[HEALING POTION — AVAILABLE]**
**[SERVICE: CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE]**
---
Haru remained silent for a moment with the expression of someone who had processed the information and reached the conclusion that it was inconvenient but not surprising.
"Damn."
He looked at his wounds. At his shoulder. At the cuts that had a depth that would need attention before they became urgent, but were already on the wrong side of that line.
He sheathed the daggers.
He began to walk — not run, his leg still wouldn't allow running — in the direction he had lost sight of during the illusion. The direction from which the real Kuto's voice had last come, before everything had turned into smoke and illusions and memories the smoke had found and used.
*I need to find my brother.*
The thought came with the clarity of someone who knew exactly what he needed to do, so every step had purpose.
Not the brother from the real world.
The one from this time.
---
Kuto walked.
The illusions had come in sequence with the organized structure of a system testing in stages — first at a distance, then closer, then with the quality of visions that required facial recognition before rejection.
His mother had appeared first.
Kuto had cut her down without stopping.
Not with cruelty — with the economy of gesture of someone who had recognized the tool and therefore would not give the tool what it needed to work. The sword descended, the illusion dissolved, and Kuto continued with the same pace.
His sister had appeared next.
Otomi.
With the name the Mage had shouted across the entire field as if the name itself were the key and the lock was what lay beneath everything Kuto had built. With the right voice and the right face and that specific detail only possible if the Mage had access to memory and not just form.
Kuto paused for half a second.
Only half a second.
Then he cut.
The illusion dissolved with the speed of something that had bet everything on hesitation and, when the hesitation wasn't enough, had nothing left.
*He uses what he finds.* The thought was cold and precise as he kept walking. *And what he found was the name. Not what the name means — only the name as access. He doesn't know what's underneath. He only knows that something is.*
An important difference.
The illusions stopped.
The smoke continued, but the shapes within it stopped being people Kuto knew and became merely smoke with the quality of something that had exhausted the approach it was trying.
Then the smoke parted.
Not from wind or natural dissipation — from decision. The space in front of Kuto cleared with the deliberation of a revelation that wanted to be seen as revelation, that had chosen timing rather than accident.
The Fear Mage was there.
Its form was ogre-like in proportion — broad, tall, with a scale that communicated that the human form had been a starting point and not the destination. The black cloak was torn in patterns that spoke not of battle but of long use, of something worn so long that the tears had become part of its identity. The pale-white skin had the quality of something that had never seen the sun or had seen a different kind of sun.
But the eyes.
The eyes were human.
Completely human with the disturbing specificity of a wrong detail in a face that was not fully human — as if humanity had remained only in that point and departed from everything else.
"Hmm." The voice held the satisfaction of someone who had reached the moment he had been waiting for. "I like to personally savor my main courses."
Kuto looked at him.
With no expression that communicated what he was processing internally. Without the anger the Mage had probably expected after the family illusions. Just Kuto's gaze — the look of someone evaluating a problem before solving it.
"You've finally decided to drop the cowardice."
"Cowardice." The Mage tilted his head slightly with the quality of someone considering the word before responding. "Interesting framing for someone who cut down the illusions of his own family without hesitation."
"I took half a second longer on the second one. Your diagnosis is inaccurate."
The Mage remained silent for a moment.
Then something that might have been laughter.
"Good that you're like this." The voice carried the quality of a fighter who appreciates his opponent before defeating him. "It will be more satisfying."
"I agree." Kuto drew both swords with the fluid motion that needed no elaboration to communicate what it communicated. "I'll be quick."
"As will I." The Mage rose with the expansion of something that had been contained and was no longer. "With you."
The smoke around them condensed with the quality of an arena closing — not imprisonment, but a space chosen for what was about to happen.
Kuto breathed.
*He doesn't know what's underneath. He only knows that something is.*
*There's a difference.*
The swords rose.