Chapter Three:

  “Breathtaking”

  Reality tore itself shut behind them with a sound like thunder caught in a canyon.

  The light vanished. Crimson sky slammed into existence. Realmweaver dropped into the world with a violent hiss of displaced air and momentum John wasn’t ready for.

  There was no road. Just stone.

  The tires hit ancient ground and shrieked. Realmweaver fishtailed hard, kicking up dust and cherry blossoms as the car spun. John fought the wheel, muscles locked, lungs useless.

  The cliff came too fast.

  Stone crumbled under the front wheels. The world fell away in front of them.

  He slammed the brake.

  Realmweaver stopped. The front tires hung over empty space.

  John didn’t move. Couldn’t.

  The air outside was still. Fragrant. Cherry blossoms floated in lazy spirals, the petals ignoring gravity like they had somewhere more important to be. He let go of the wheel and realized his hands were shaking.

  Realmweaver spoke cheerfully, with the breezy confidence of a tour guide completely ignoring the fact they’d nearly died.

  "Welcome to Eldoria and The Thousand Isles, John."

  The windshield tinted slightly to filter the deep red glow of the sky. Far in the distance, crimson clouds curled above jagged black mountains. The world felt painted—but not by human hands.

  "I do hope you find the atmosphere satisfactory," Realmweaver added, her voice carrying the practiced calm of a hostess in a haunted house. "Though I’ll admit, our entry point was a bit... abrupt."

  John slowly opened the door. His shoes touched stone that remembered a world before names. The edge of the cliff held firm, but barely.

  He looked down.

  And the scale of what waited below caught his breath.

  The valley stretched wide beneath the cliff—an ocean of stillness framed in blood-red light.

  John squinted. At first he thought the landscape was covered in stones or ruins, but then his brain caught up.

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  People.

  Thousands of them.

  Kneeling in perfect rows, every one of them wore white robes that rustled like paper in the breeze. Behind each knelt a taller figure, still as stone, their armor dull black, segmented like beetle shells. There was something about them that made John’s skin prickle—the kind of stillness that made you wonder if they were holding their breath... or didn’t need to breathe at all.

  The Shadow Samurai.

  They didn’t move. None of them did. But the silence carried weight. It wasn’t peace. It was pause. The whole valley was waiting.

  Cherry blossoms floated down across the scene, drifting through the gaps between bodies like they were part of the ritual. The petals ignored logic, falling in slow motion, turning where they pleased. Like they knew.

  "Quite the turnout," Realmweaver said lightly. "Though I should mention—we weren’t exactly invited to this particular ceremony."

  John didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to witness this.

  "What is this?" he finally asked.

  "You’re witnessing Tokyo’s insertion," Realmweaver replied, her tone dropping into something closer to reverence. "Their Dive has just begun. This is how most chose to arrive."

  The Shadow Samurai adjusted—barely. A shiver passed through the rows as they raised their long, curved swords in quiet unison.

  Realmweaver continued, softer now. "A whopping eighty-nine percent of Tokyo's Players opted for a traditional entry method. Ritualized. Honorable. Seppuku."

  John swallowed. The air smelled of cherry blossoms and cold steel.

  "Seppuku," Realmweaver said, "is a form of ceremonial death. In ancient times, it was a warrior’s way to preserve honor. A short blade drawn across the abdomen. A second—called the kaishaku—was chosen to end it quickly."

  John took a step closer to the edge.

  "And those guys in the armor—"

  "The kaishaku," she confirmed. "The Shadow Samurai. Constructed for this purpose. Symbolic and exact."

  Below, the wind picked up. But the figures didn’t waver.

  Cherry blossoms swept between the kneeling rows like a final blessing.

  And then—

  As one, the white-robed Players moved.

  There were no screams.

  Only the whisper of blades through cloth. The air rippled. Then came the second movement—the clean, silent sweep of the Shadow Samurai’s black swords.

  John’s stomach turned. Not from gore—there was none. Just the weight of it.

  Just the meaning left behind.

  Just silence—and what it meant.

  The valley exhaled.

  And the petals kept falling.

  John stood at the cliff's edge, staring into the valley where silence had become a character all its own.

  The ceremony was over.

  The white-robed figures were gone.

  Only cherry blossoms remained—scattered like ash across the stone. Some drifted still, caught in air that didn’t know whether to be warm or cold.

  The Shadow Samurai had vanished too.

  No bodies. No sound.

  Just the memory of movement.

  Just the echo of purpose.Realmweaver said nothing at first. Maybe she knew silence wasn’t meant to be interrupted.

  Eventually, her voice returned—lower, softer than usual.

  "Should we head to the insertion camp?"

  John didn’t answer right away. His hands rested on the edge of a stone, fingers curling into dust that felt older than time. The last of the petals brushed past his arm.

  He exhaled.

  "They weren’t just dying," he said. "They were choosing."

  "Yes."

  He turned back toward Realmweaver, climbed in without another word.

  The cabin closed around him. The engine purred, gentle and alive.

  "We don’t know what we’ll find at the camp," Realmweaver said.

  "That’s fine."

  John adjusted his grip on the wheel. His hands were steady now.

  He looked once more at the empty valley—at the petals and the stone.

  "Let’s go."

  Realmweaver hummed in reply and eased back from the cliff.

  They turned toward the smoke on the horizon, the sky bleeding red behind them, the blossoms left to scatter like forgotten prayers on the wind.