POV: Ryuu Takeda
Location: Sector 27 — Bone Market, Intake Grid → Red Null Locker Ring
Time: Unmarked (Local node desynced)
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"Some names buy their way into the Bone Market. Others fight for it. The rest? They bleed until they're remembered."
— Unofficial Rule #1, Red Null Gateboard
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| Descent into Silence
No lights. No signs. Just rust, heat, and the weight of names no longer carried.
Ryuu Takeda moved without announcement. The grate had already been opened for him—like the city was expecting a wound to return.
The Thermal Recycling Annex was a lie. Everyone called it what it really was now: the Bone Market.
And the place beneath it?
Red Null.
Where aura signals vanished.
Where Core sync failed.
Where fighters stepped in with a name and left with nothing but scar tissue.
No biometric surveillance.
No trauma sensors.
No MIRAGE trace.
You fought. Or you disappeared.
Ryuu's boots clanged against pipe-laced steel. He didn't flinch.
The heat wasn't from vents—it radiated from anchor pressure, the residual weight of dozens of vow-touched fighters, failed relics, and desperate souls circling each other like ghosts waiting to matter again.
"New blood?" someone slurred from above.
A gateboy—barely sixteen, brash with leftover courage—leaned over the scaffold. He tagged Ryuu with a pulse-scan.
The scanner buzzed. Then failed.
`[ERROR — ■■■■■_CORE // COMPATIBILITY FAILURE]`
`[Signature Unreadable. Echo Profile: Anomalous]`
The boy's grin died.
Ryuu didn't stop walking.
---
The intake slab shuddered.
Error spikes warped across the screen.
`[UNREGISTERED SIGNATURE // ANOMALOUS THREAD PATTERN]`
The handler's gaze dropped to the courier badge on Ryuu's belt, then down to the shattered watch tied to his wrist.
"Alias?" he muttered—not really asking.
"Crimson."
The word stuck.
Not a choice. A memory.
The registry etched it in. No questions. No corrections.
He didn't explain it. Didn't need to. Haruki's name was no longer on the grid.
Only this one was.
Crimson—had just been born. A name not chosen—but owed.
The moment he stepped inside, the system pinged.
[ADMISSION REQUIRED: CHALLENGER RITE — INITIATE MATCH]
[FIGHTER ID: UNMARKED // DESIGNATION: "CRIMSON"]
[APPROVAL: WAIVED — OVERRIDE DETECTED]
"You bleed, we count. You live, we weigh."
The handler stamped him in.
---
| One Hour Earlier — Bone Market, Lower Grate
Ryuu had watched his first match from above. No gear. No name. Not yet.
No rules. No refs. Just fists.
One wore modified riot harnesses bolted with bone. The other fought barefoot and grinned like he'd already forgotten who he was.
Technique didn't matter.
Only pain.
Only persistence.
Whoever survived got to forget their real name for one more day.
Ryuu didn't blink.
No one fought for glory. They fought to forget.Something inside Ryuu—a part buried too long—listened.
---
| Locker Grid, Red Null Inner Ring
They offered gloves.
He stripped them to the knuckle plates. Wrapped his forearms tight.
Then bound Haruki's shattered watch around his right wrist like a totem. Not to protect.
But to remind him who no longer had the chance to fight.
The walls trembled.
A roar bled through the vents.
It was time.
---
| Match 01 — Crimson vs. Caller
Aura: Suppressed
Caller was lean, cocky, covered in synthetic glyph tattoos that shimmered—failed Echo branding.
"You a screamer?" he sneered.
Ryuu didn't reply.
Caller lunged—sloppy.
Ryuu didn't block.
He moved through.
A feint with the left.
His elbow caught Caller's hip on the turn.
Momentum shifted.
Caller stumbled. Ryuu didn't wait.
He stepped in—low guard. Hooked behind the knee.
Caller fell.
Ryuu mounted.
Fist. Fist. Elbow. Palm.
No scream. No hesitation.
Only intention.
Caller's body twitched once. Then went still.
The Time the fight took was 31 seconds.
No one declared a winner.
No names were called.
They just dragged the body away.
The market took note.
---
| Match 02 — Crimson vs. Splitjaw
The arena floor trembled before Splitjaw even entered.
Splitjaw was different. He wasn't human anymore.
Too still. Too big.
Steel ligaments. Bone-etched shoulders. A prototype gone wrong.
Ryuu didn't react. He just stepped forward as the doors clanged shut behind him.
The moment the bell sounded—though no one ever actually rang one—Splitjaw moved with unnatural grace, catching Ryuu's leg mid-feint and slamming him down like he meant to leave a crater. The grate caught his spine with a brutal clang, air evacuated from Ryuu's lungs in a hard gasp. Copper hit his tongue. The world spun, fractured. For half a second, he wasn't in Red Null.
He was under a different light.
Wires. Screams. Haruki's hand slipping out of his grip.
His own voice refusing to scream.
A name they had tried to code into numbers.
Then the pain rushed back in—less sensation, more confirmation. It reminded him he was still here. Still standing.
He pushed himself up, slower than before—but not out of weakness. Deliberation honed his every breath. Because Splitjaw hadn't broken him. He'd woken something older.
"You weren't made to burn," a voice whispered inside him. "You were made to break."
Ryuu stood.
No stance. No theatrics. Just focus—the kind that burned clean.
Then he moved.
One step forward.
The crowd leaned in.
Close guard. Sliding motion. Not flair, not speed—precision. His fingers closed into a knife-hand, not aimed to punch, but cut. He jammed it hard into the tracheal anchor nestled beneath Splitjaw's left collar—a weak point in every augmentation mesh. A flash of resistance. Then a collapse.
Splitjaw dropped like a cut elevator line.
Ryuu didn't follow up. Didn't posture. Just stood there, chest rising slow, the fire behind his eyes burning silent. He wasn't here to entertain.
He was here to remember what had been taken—and make someone pay for it.
The match was done in 68 seconds
No applause. No chants. Just stares.
The pit began to whisper.
"Who is this?"
"He doesn't scream."
"He doesn't seem to be a rookie."
---
| Interim — Locker Grid
They stopped asking his name.
The HUD above marked him:
[CRIMSON – 2:0 — VALID ENTRY GRANTED]
Payment tokens blinked.
He left them.
Tightened the watch.
Then stepped back into the dark.
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