The city never really slept.
Even at 2 a.m., the alley outside Kaito Han's apartment buzzed with soft neon glows and the occasional plink of rain dripping off rusted fire escapes. One lonely streetlamp flickered above like it was hanging on for dear life, casting a pale spotlight right where Kaito now sat—cross-legged on the damp ground, surrounded by a mess of old pages.
Old-school parchment. Faded ink that looked like it had been set on fire. And symbols that made zero sense in the modern world.
He stared at the strange writing—sharp lines twisted into fancy curves. Like someone set kanji on fire and said, "Yeah, perfect."
And the worst part?
Every time he looked at it for more than a few seconds, the lines moved.
"Alright... let's try this again," Kaito muttered, flipping open his holo-tab.
He aimed the scanner at the page.
Voice scan: ERROR
OCR match: NULL
Auto-translate: ???
He stared at the screen.
"No language found? Seriously?!" He groaned, flopping backward and rubbing his face. "What are you, you spooky little punk of a book…"
He'd found it in the attic days ago, and it hadn't left his side since. Not because he wanted it around—it just kind of… stuck. Every time he put it away, his hands twitched until he picked it up again. Like it wanted to be read. Or maybe it was bored. Who knew?
By sunrise, Kaito had made up his mind.
He skipped training. Ignored Manny's ten spammy calls. Threw on his hoodie, grabbed the book, and headed straight for the Tokyo Knowledge Tower—a massive spike of glass and tech that stabbed into the clouds like a glowing USB stick.
But Kaito didn't go to the fancy floors with the brainy scholars and AI nerds.
Nope.
He hit the freight elevator.
Down.
Way down.
B8 – National Library of Obsolete Archives.(aka the basement of stuff everyone forgot existed.)
The door opened with a hiss like something out of a zombie movie. The air smelled like rust and regret. Shelves packed with ancient data units, half-dead books, and cobwebbed AI nodes stretched into the distance.
Behind the front counter sat a grumpy old lady, flipping through a newspaper that was probably older than Kaito.
She looked up, squinting. "You don't look like a historian."
Kaito shrugged. "Just curious."
Her eyes narrowed at his bruised cheek and bandaged knuckles.
She tapped a key like it owed her money. "Section 12. Past-Linguistics. Third corridor. Red light. Don't touch anything that hums."
"Got it," Kaito nodded. "No humming."
"And don't lick anything either. Just saying."
"…Wasn't planning on it," he muttered as he walked off.
Kaito spent hours digging around—jumping between dusty shelves, jamming weird brain-data cores into ancient readers, trying to decode the mess that was the book's language. Most of the machines were older than his grandfather. One of them literally coughed when he powered it up.
He scrolled through dozens of half-corrupted files, weird syntax trees, broken translator code... until finally:
Match found.
Kaito froze. "Wait, really?"
Lines of text started to slowly fill the screen, decoding like some ancient riddle.
"This isn't gibberish..."
He leaned in, eyes wide. "It's a mix... Old Earth Cantonian and... Pali?" He kept scrolling. "Used by… martial clans? Ancient monks?"
The deeper he went, the heavier the air around him felt. Like the shelves were listening. Or judging.
"This isn't a book…"
He sat back, heart pounding.
"This is a manual. A legacy."
Page after page revealed ancient knowledge from a warrior culture that had vanished centuries ago. No showy performances. No fancy sponsorships. These guys didn't train for TikToks—they trained for real war.
Combat forms. Breathing techniques. Pressure-point maps. Mental conditioning. Strategies for fighting in pitch black. Philosophies of pain, honor, survival.
Kaito's eyes moved faster now. Every diagram sparked something in his brain—like he recognized it somehow, even if he'd never seen it before.
He grabbed his stuffs and hurried back—