The morning light was a bruised, sickly violet, cutting through the heavy fog clinging to the Seattle ruins. Ace stood in the center of the 40th-floor Armory, fully kitted and ready for the final ascent.
He turned toward the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and for a long moment, he just stared.
The transformation was absolute. The white and black contrast of his Arcane shihakusho looked sharp and clinical, layered perfectly under the heavy crimson of his Demon Hunter's Coat. The monochromatic base layer made the red of the coat pop with an aggressive, intentional violence. His raven-black hair, which had grown overnight to flow past his shoulder blades and down his back, gave him a wild, untamed silhouette that tied the whole look together.
On his hip sat the sleek, black Tensa Zangetsu replica; on his back, the massive, skeletal claymore of the Rebellion replica.
He looked like a legendary demon hunter—or a wannabe, at least. But there was one piece left.
Ace picked up the bone-white Hollow Mask from the workbench. He raised the mask to his face and let it settle.
The mask didn't just sit on his skin; it sealed. He felt a cold sensation as the bone-matter locked against his face, creating a vacuum-tight fit. Then, his world changed.
His vision didn't just sharpen—it shifted. The vibrant colors of the room bled away, replaced by a high-contrast spectrum of shimmering silvers and muted blues. Every shadow that had once concealed the corners of the workshop simply vanished, replaced by an eerie, internal glow that pulled every texture into focus. The world became a grainy, dichromatic map where the static furniture blurred into the background, but the slightest stir of dust or the distant scuttle of a spider snapped into electric clarity. He wasn't just seeing the room; he was tracking it.
This shouldn't be doing this, he thought, feeling the eerie aura from the mask wash over him. As it settled, he felt it more clearly than he had anticipated; the Hollow's instinct took him by surprise. A flood of predatory feelings surged into his mind, pushing his human hesitation into a dark corner.
He looked into the mirror, but he didn't just see his reflection—he looked into his own eyes and saw a dark reflection of himself staring back. A terrifying thought pierced his confidence: he had already inherited the spirit of Zangetsu and Ichigo. In theory, that meant he had inherited the Hollow, too. By linking the mask to that specific aspect of the story's lore, had he just given birth to his own Hollow side by giving it a physical manifestation?
He tore the mask off, breathing heavy as the world returned to normal colors. He looked down at the bone-white visage in his hands. He couldn't help but feel like the mask was looking back at him, and he shuddered.
Okay, he thought, swallowing hard. It's just in your head. And even if it's not, as long as I stay in control, it'll be fine. He put the mask back on. This time the overwhelming feeling was absent, but a slight echo of that predatory instinct was still there, buzzing at the base of his skull. It caused a spike of nervousness that he quickly buried deep in his heart. He could just imagine himself having two passengers in his soul, sitting in the dark, watching his every move.
He looked around the Armory, getting used to the new silver-and-blue vision, and then looked back at the mirror. A slow, shark-like grin spread behind the bone—though the mask itself remained a terrifying, static visage. He struck a classic, mid-action pose, hand hovering over the hilt of his katana, his coat flaring out like a crimson wing.
"I look absolutely ridiculous," he rasped, his voice distorted into a hollow, metallic resonance. "And it's the coolest thing I've ever seen. This... this is going to be legendary."
The "cool factor" was intoxicating. For the first time since he woke up in this nightmare, he wasn't just surviving, nor was he just acting like this was all a game. He was owning it.
Ace left the Armory, his movements now a series of silent, blurred glides. He bypassed the 45th-floor jungle, moving with a new kind of predatory confidence.
The Waraji Striders offered the final piece of the puzzle. Although they were reinforced to be as hard as tempered steel, they were entirely silent. As he moved, there was no click of metal, no shuffle of straw. His footfalls were a vacuum of sound, as if the system had deleted his "step" audio entirely. He moved with the weight of a titan, but the silence of a ghost.
He pushed open the heavy steel door to the 49th Floor. The luxury of the tower ended here. This was the mechanical gut—a claustrophobic maze of massive iron pipes, humming conduits, and rusted filtration tanks.
Without power, the darkness here was absolute. To any normal human, it would be a blind deathtrap. But to Ace, looking through the Hollow Mask, the pitch-black room was glowing with silver signatures.
Thrum. Thrum.
The vibration was louder here—the heavy, wet heartbeat of whatever was living in the rooftop pool above. Ace stepped into the darkness, his hand resting on the hilt of the Tensa Zangetsu replica.
In the absolute black, nothing moved. Then, through the mask's dichromatic map, he saw it. A faint, pale signature shifting behind a massive PVC pipe. Then another, crawling along the ceiling. They were Walkers that had mutated and adapted to the lightless industrial zones.
The Hollow Instinct flared. His hand didn't move because he told it to; it moved because his body knew the threat was there before his mind did.
Without a conscious thought, Ace leaned back with supernatural grace. A fraction of a second later, a pale, multi-jointed limb lashed out from a cluster of pipes, whistling through the air exactly where his head had been.
Ace didn't panic. He didn't even breathe. He felt the cold, metallic resonance of the mask vibrate against his teeth.
"I see you," he rasped into the dark.
With a blindingly fast draw, he slashed outward, severing the offending arm clean through the gap in the pipes. He picked his next target instantly.
He launched himself forward.
Ace became a blur of monochromatic motion. He kicked off a rusted filtration tank, using the Waraji Striders to grip the metal for a fraction of a second before flipping over a low-hanging steam pipe.
A Walker lunged from the shadows. Ace pivoted in mid-air, delivering a thunderous Taekwondo roundhouse kick that shattered the creature's ribs and sent it flying into a concrete pillar. Before it could even hit the ground, he landed on the wall, ran three vertical steps up the concrete, and launched a spinning hook kick that drove a second Walker straight through a rusted floor grate.
He was using the environment like a parkour gym, his heightened senses turning the cramped maze into a playground. He landed in a low crouch, the white and black of his shihakusho snapping as he stood.
Two more silver signatures were closing in from the pipes. Ace tightened his grip on the black katana, his long hair whipping behind him as he prepared to clear the floor.