Chapter Text
Thunder cracked across the sky as rain lashed down like needles, striking Jin’s fevered skin with merciless precision.
He felt a pressure at the back of his knees and across his spine—hands, strong and impersonal, hoisting him off the ground with a rough, mechanical efficiency.
Even as he was dragged away, Jin could no longer summon the will to move so much as a toe.
His body had long since surpassed its limits.
Torn muscle fibers screamed into his brain, demanding nothing but sleep and surrender. His head lolled back helplessly, limbs swinging like a marionette’s.
He no longer cared.
Perhaps this was fitting.
Letting his pathetic fate fall into the hands of the worst father imaginable—maybe that was the most appropriate end for someone like him.
Maybe he didn’t even have to think anymore. Everything that was going to happen had already been decided.
For a fleeting moment, he thought his head had been adjusted, cradled in the crook of an arm. He might have imagined the brief seconds during which Kazuya seemed to study his face in silence. Surely, it was a hallucination.
Then—he was flung.
Air rushed past him, and with it came a sickening sense of abandonment.
Now he would fall. Fall endlessly.
Jin braced himself for an infinite descent into darkness, a bottomless abyss. Instead, his body rebounded with a jolt. The unexpected impact startled him.
This wasn't what he’d anticipated. It wasn’t correct.
He had prepared himself for obliteration—a shattering of bone, an instantaneous liquefaction of flesh, the terror of becoming nothing. But this? This felt more like falling off the top bunk of a bed. Had Kazuya, stripped of the Devil's power, suddenly been reborn with the benevolence of the Virgin Mary?
Regardless, even if he had landed on the gentlest patch of rock in the Mishima family’s cursed history, Jin’s body—ravaged by the apocalyptic battle moments before—could not endure the impact.
Something dull and rubbery pressed into the exposed skin of his back. It was hot. Wet.
Blood?
And still, there was no stir from the Devil within him.
That writhing thing, that ever-present shadow, was truly gone. To recognize that at the brink of death—how ironic.
Jin's lips twisted into a faint, broken smile.
And then, his frayed consciousness began to dissolve, like tar melting into a black, bottomless lake.
A faint whirring, like the hushed murmur of an electronic device, stirred Jin from the depths.
The scent of a forest—cool, clean, almost too vivid—floated to his nose, evoking a distant memory. A curtain of summer drizzle, fine as silk, and the way it used to cling to the down on his arms and face as he stood still, absorbing it all. That sensation returned now, uninvited.
Dreams upon waking always brought with them a peculiar mix of comfort and dread. For Jin, it meant that the act of waking itself was never quite peaceful.
His brow furrowed as he pried open heavy lashes, as if to escape the drugged pull of a fading hallucination.
Above him stretched a ceiling, deep navy, the color of ocean trenches. Recessed lighting scattered a dim, placid glow, like starlight filtered through water. Jin parted his lips, gazing blankly upward, then closed his eyes again, chasing the psychedelic green trails that danced behind his eyelids.
...Right.
Ah.
Ah, so he’d failed to die—again.
The realization was a creeping, icy weight settling low in his abdomen. He groaned softly, stifling the heat rising in his throat, something like rage or something worse. For several long seconds, he simply held his breath. A pause to pull himself back from wherever he’d been.
Then, at last, he let the air out slowly. A sigh. A decision. Time to switch gears.
The past was already gone. It couldn’t be undone.
What his subconscious craved most now was context.
Where was this place?
How many days had passed?
Or... had it been months?
There was no pain in his body—not a single sharp edge of sensation. Was that anesthesia? Or something more severe? Spinal trauma, maybe?
The thought frightened him more than he wanted to admit. Pathetically, desperately, he willed strength into his thighs—and to his relief, they responded. They stirred beneath him like waves.
Good. Still intact.
Turning his head with care, Jin exhaled again, lighter this time, grateful he could still move. That faint electronic noise from before—he decided to track it down.
He let his half-lidded gaze wander, and the source revealed itself with surprising ease: a sleek, black lacquer table, adorned with inlaid floral patterns that shimmered like opal. The sound came from an aroma diffuser perched atop it, whispering soft plumes into the air.
Jin blinked, slowly.
That... was not something he expected to find in one of his uncles’ cyberpunk military compounds. It looked more like a piece you'd find in the palace of a forgotten dynasty.
He moved only his eyes, sweeping the space around him with renewed awareness.
This wasn’t an ER. It didn’t feel like a hospital at all. More like... a penthouse.
For a moment, he wondered if this was all a waking dream. His gaze drifted to the wall of glass nearby.
Sky. Air.
Scorched?
No... not fire. Sunset.
Brilliant gradients of gold and crimson painted the horizon in sharp, surreal strokes. From how close it looked—almost touchable—he deduced he was somewhere high up, maybe near the top of a skyscraper. Below, the city sprawled out like a living organism, lit with a million pinpricks of glitter and motion. Even the vulgar neons were blooming as if nothing in the world had ever gone wrong.
That wasn’t right.
The city was alive. Its arteries were full of light. Power was flowing, uninterrupted, unbothered.
Something was wrong.
A clattering sound behind him made Jin’s heart nearly stop.
He bolted upright on the sofa and turned.