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Chapter 62 - 49% Glass Ceiling

The Kashima Maru was a hovering hospital for a man who had become a living paradox. Ren Hanshin sat in a high-backed chair on the bridge, his eyes fixed on the grey horizon. He didn’t move. He couldn’t. Every time he shifted his weight, he felt the sickening grind of salt crystals against his joints. The salt bags, the collective grief of the Shinjuku porters he had absorbed was crystallizing inside his marrow. He was a man built of dirt and starlight, but the dirt was turning to stone, and the starlight was trying to burn its way out.

[Synchronization: 49.98% (CRITICAL LOCK)]

[Divine Mana: 0.05 / 150]

[Condition: Mana Burnout]

"Niisan, please, just take a sip," Haru whispered. She held a cup of warm broth to his lips, her hands trembling.

Ren tried to open his mouth, but the skin around his jaw felt brittle, like aged parchment. He managed a tiny sip before his body rejected it, a harsh cough racking his frame. He spat a mouthful of grey, salty phlegm onto the floor.

"It’s not working, Haru," Ren rasped. His voice was a thin, dry whistle. "The ’Human’ part of me... it’s hitting the ceiling."

****

The Glass Ceiling wasn’t just a number; it was a physical law. Ren had spent his life pushing past limits, but those were human limits. Now, he was trying to hold the power of a Primordial Goddess within a vessel of human limits, while simultaneously carrying the necrotic weight of a thousand dead souls.

It was like trying to contain a hot lava inside a glass jar. The jar was cracking.

"The scanners are picking up movement," Kaito said, his voice taut with stress. He was hunched over the radar screen, his face lit by the sickly green glow of the display. "The grey tide isn’t just following us anymore. It’s surrounding us. The God of Death knows you’re still, Hanshin."

"We aren’t still," Ren said, though the effort to speak made his vision swim. "We’re... preparing."

"Preparing for what? To die?" Tanaka barked. He was pacing the bridge, his hand never leaving his sword. "Ren, look at yourself! You can’t even stand! The Weaver’s Mark is halfway up your neck. If those cracks reach your brain, you’re gone. Either she takes over, or you turn into a salt statue."

Ren looked at his reflection in the dark glass of the bridge window. Tanaka was right. The red cracks; the Weaver’s Mark were no longer thin lines. They were deep, shining fissures that throbbed with a rhythmic, crimson light, and in the gaps where the red didn’t glow, his skin was turning the dull, matte grey of a corpse.

[The God of Fate is no longer singing. She is screaming. Her voice is a cacophony of sirens in his mind.]

[God of Fate]: Let go, Ren! Why do you cling to the broken cage? The mud is choking you! Give me the final part of synchronization and I will erase the pain.

’Not... yet,’ Ren thought. ’If I give in... Haru has no brother. The fleet has no porter. They only have a Sovereign.’

"Kaito," Ren forced himself to stand. The sound of his knees popping was like dry twigs breaking. "How far... to the Trench of Souls?"

"Ten miles," Kaito replied, his eyes wide as he watched Ren struggle to remain upright, "but the water is getting so thick the propellers are starting to overheat. We’re moving through a sea of wet concrete."

"Bring the fleet... into a circle," Ren commanded. He leaned vehemently on the map table, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "Lash the ships together. We need... a solid foundation."

****

After the night fell...

The Kashima Maru and its four companion ships were tied together with massive steel cables, forming a levitating island in the center of the grey waste. The mist had become so thick it was a physical weight, pressing harshly against the lungs of the two thousand survivors.

Ren stood on the main deck, supported by Tanaka and Kenji. He couldn’t feel his right leg anymore. It was a pillar of salt. His right arm was a useless, shining branch of crimson pain.

"Ren, you can’t go out there," Tanaka pleaded. "The ’Iron Legion’ is rising. The God of Death is sending his elite."

"I don’t have... a choice," Ren said.

From the grey water, figures began to emerge. They weren’t the clumsy spawns of Shinjuku. They were the Drowned Knights, former S-Rank hunters who had perished at sea, now reborn in armor made of blackened coral and bone. They hissed, a sound like steam escaping a pipe.

HISS!! HISS!!

There were hundreds of them. They climbed the hulls of the ships with unnatural speed, their jagged bone-swords shimmering with necrotic green light.

"DEFEND THE SHIPS!" Kaito’s voice roared over the speakers.

The Salt-Hunters fired their harpoons. The survivors threw Molotov cocktails made of engine oil. The battle was a chaotic, bloody mess of fire and brine, but for every Drowned Knight they knocked back into the sea, three more took its place.

Ren watched as a knight reached the main deck, its bone-sword raised to strike a terrified woman huddled near a shipping container. Ren moved, using his agility.

CRACK!!

His left femur snapped under the pressure of the sudden movement. Ren didn’t even flinch. He used the flow to ignore the pain, his body lunging in mid-air as he caught the knight’s throat with his left hand. He tried to use the mana, but an idea flashed in Ren’s mind. He forced the grief inside him outside, which he took in from the bags of dead porters.

He concentrated a portion of the grief he was carrying, the memory of a porter’s final, terrified breath, directly into the knight’s soul. The Drowned Knight didn’t just die. It exploded into a cloud of grey ash, unable to handle the raw, human weight of the memory.

Ren hit the deck, his broken leg buckling. He lay there, gasping, as more knights closed in.

[Divine Mana: 0.01 / 150]

[Synchronization: 49.99%]

"Ren!" Haru ran toward him, her sapphire light flaring.

"GET BACK!" Ren roared.

The air around him was beginning to warp. The breaking point was shattering. The Weaver’s power was leaking out of the red cracks, turning the surrounding mist into red silk. The steel deck began to melt where his skin touched it. He was becoming a hazard to the people he was trying to save.

[God of Fate]: It’s time Ren. The breaking point is broken! Admit it! You are not a normal human anymore! You are my executioner!

Ren looked at Haru. He saw the terror in her eyes. It was his own terror. He saw her sapphire core thumping with a frantic, desperate rhythm, trying to keep the god away from her brother.

"I... am... a porter," Ren whispered.

He reached into his coat and pulled out the Kusanagi-Vessel and with his right hand grabbed the hilt of the Kusanagi-Vessel. Ren took a gentle breath, unsheathed and sheathed the sword so fast, that it looked like he just drew an inch of sword out and sheathed it again.

ZAP!!

The resonance was a shock that nearly stopped his heart. The Weaver’s mana and the Earth’s intent met in his body, and the result was an agonizing friction.

"URRGGGH!"

Ren’s scream was like the sound of glass breaking. A shockwave of discordant energy rippled out from him. The Drowned Knights within ten yards were instantly vaporized. The steel deck was torn open, revealing the churning water below.

Ren stood up. His broken leg was held together by red threads. His joints were forced to move by divine will. He was a puppet being played by a goddess who is obsessed with him, and a man who refused to die. He looked at the sky. The grey horizon was being replaced by a whirling vortex of crimson silk and grey brine. The God of Death and the God of Fate were fighting over the territory of his soul.

"Is this... the best you’ve got?" Ren rasped, his eyes turning into twin pits of crimson fire.

He turned toward the ocean. From the deep, the Sea Behemoth was rising again. But it wasn’t just a beast anymore. The God of Death was sitting on its back, looking like an obscuring figure. Ren Hanshin stood at the edge of the ship, his body a battlefield of salt and silk.

"Tanaka... Kaito..." Ren said, his voice echoing with the double-tone of the heavens. "Take the fleet... into the eye of the storm. I’m going to... open the way."

"Ren, you’ll die!" Haru screamed, grabbing his tattered coat.

Ren looked at her. For a single second, the crimson fire in his eyes softened. He reached out and touched her cheek with his left hand. It was cold, but it was gentle.

"I’m already dead, Haru," Ren whispered. "I’m just... finishing the delivery."

Ren Hanshin stepped off the edge of the Kashima Maru. He walked on a path of red silk that stretched across the grey waves. Every step he took left a footprint of salt. He was the bridge between the heavens and the hell, and the bridge was breaking.

The breaking point had been reached. He was trying to take the Gods down with him.